It's disingenuous to call this a "clock", given clocks keep their own time through a rigorous standard of counting the passage of precisely measured causality. While we may be "closer" to doom by some arbitrary consensus mechanism, only humans can choose the causality of enabling that final "doom" event, or putting it off for another day. Or, put another way, it ain't over till it's over.
The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic clock face that represents a countdown to possible global catastrophe. It has been maintained since 1947 by the members of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board, who are in turn advised by the Governing Board and the Board of Sponsors, including 18 Nobel Laureates. The closer they set the Clock to midnight, the more vulnerable the scientists believe the world is to global disaster.
There's nothing "sharp" about these people. If they were sharp they'd be spending their free time solving hard problems (which include cancer, aids, Alzheimer's) rather than maintaining an imaginary clock. Absolute nonsense, these "scientist" should be ashamed of themselves and in my mind they've already lost all credibility.
A glance at the board's membership suggests the clock is a side project. Their daytime pursuits include nuclear research, environmental policy, public health preparedness against bio-attacks, climatology, and quantum physics. http://thebulletin.org/science-and-security-board
So they are not scientists? They haven't done anything to solve the worlds problems? I take it you are in a position to judge, since you seem to be handing out judgement even more freely than they are?
So if you were smart, you'd be spending time solving hard problems instead of wasting time chatting to people on HN, yes? Well no, you're able to maintain a social life and hold political views and so on in parallel to your professional activities. Why wouldn't you think the same to be true of these scientists?
Analogies are comparisons of two things, usually for clarification. A clock uses comparative based mechanics to keep time. On the other hand, these scientists are claiming their opinion is a "factual" event that can be compared to a "clock". I'm pointing out that someone is using mixed messaging to try to tell the future when the future hasn't happened yet. The last thing we need right now is for a bunch of people who "speak for science" trying to say that it's a fact we're closer to blowing ourselves up. It's a fact we haven't blown ourselves up yet and an opinion that it stays that way.
Is the state of the world a fact? I'd argue it is. Are some states of the world have greater likelihood of global catastrophe than others? Likewise, I'd argue there are. Trying to determine whether that likelihood is greater or lesser compared to other times is useful, though it might not be easy (or even possible) to measure it quantitatively with arbitrary precision. In that sense the Doomsday Clock represents an opinion as opposed to a absolute numerical value.
Some opinions are more valid than others. I think it's reasonable to weight the opinion of the The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board heavier than the average person, and I also think its something reasonable people can disagree about.
I feel like we've all witnessed so much madness the past few years that we've become desensitized. Nothing shocks us any longer. This is worrying because it allows for gradual escalation until the inevitable.
(I think this is true regardless of political orientation.)
Advancing it by 30 seconds seems very similar to a parent who has made some threat that they never intended to carry through, counting 1, 2, 2-and-a-half, 2-and-three-quarters...
If you have such a long established tradition of using "minutes" as some kind of metaphor for upcoming doom, it doesn't feel meaningful to suddenly start talking about half-minutes.
>represented an analogy for the threat of global nuclear war; however, since 2007 it has also reflected climate change,[4] and new developments in the life sciences and technology that could inflict irrevocable harm to humanity.[5]
It has been this way for nearly a decade. It's also plausible that they are linked - climate change destroying natural resources (land, food, etc.) certainly has the potential to inflict political instability and conflict.
The clock is now closer to apocalyptic midnight, than at any time during the lifetime of vast majority of readers here, myself included. It is worse than during both the Caribbean crisis and early 80th.
The closest nuclear war threat, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, reached crisis, climax, and resolution before the Clock could be set to reflect that possible doomsday.
How dare these "scientists", what gives these people the right to do this? To strike fear and panic in the markets and the world because a man was elected that doesn't share your political views? They can take their imaginary clock and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.
Life has never been better. It's been proven time and time again that statistically speaking the human race has never been happier or healthier. Let's move on past Donald Trump and all get back to business, this is getting ridiculous.
This actually seems very logical and non-political. If the US president advocates nuclear proliferation, that clearly increases the risk of nuclear war, regardless of whether you like them or not. The only more obvious reason to move the clock toward midnight would be the start of an actual war between nuclear powers.
You only speak for yourself when you say that "life has never been better". It's the same kind of numerical arrogance that made the left ignore the plight of rural America, because the unemployment rate is technically very low. There are many people under thread by the Trump administration, many of them are students that I personally know. And so is the environment. In what measure has the environment never been better? By any measure I have read it is the worst it has ever been, and we live in it.
Stop being so dramatic. Name a single concrete thing that makes your life worse than 1930s era depression bread lines. Have you had to stand in any breadlines recently? Ever been ruled by a communist dictator? 100 years ago hot water was a luxury for only very rich people and the average lifespan was some ~30 years.
Yes we have environmental challenges from our modern lifestyle but if you want to go back to being dead at 30 on average be my guest. I'll take the "never been worse" environment, the internet, self-driving cars, and everything else that's going really well.
Yes a leader with some policies you might not agree with got elected. Guess what? I've had 8 years of that. Did I go around posting how "threatened" I was by Obama? No. I could have, after all, the extra-judical drone strikes, fast and the furious scandals, increasing race-baiting and racial tensions were all prime candidates. Stop letting people make you so fearful and scared.
I hear this a lot and I'm not saying its totally wrong but everyone seems to be placing a lot of blame on "the left" for ignoring the plight of middle class workers and rural america, but do you have specific examples of this? In many of these places the republicans have been in power for a long period of time, why have they not addressed their issues? We've even had long stretches of time where all branches of the government were controlled by the republicans and why were these issues not addressed? "The left" has hardly been able to implement anything for years due to total opposition, how are they supposed to help their opponents constituents when they can't even address their own?
Acknowledging the economy is changing is not necessarily "ignoring the plight". I would argue that trying to find ways to use the increased profits and efficiency that has been created by globalization to benefit everyone is not ignoring the plight, its a totally reasonable idea. Basic income is an example of this but it is a complete non-starter in america largely because of the party that these specific rural blue collar Americans vote for. Is it the governments job to guarantee good factory jobs to everyone (the irony being what made a lot of these jobs good was unions, also opposed by "the right" generally)?
I think it is wrong to totally legitimize the viewpoint of rural middle class blue collar whatever Americans that resulted in our current political circumstances. That isn't to say they don't have grievances (I say they, growing up it would have been we) but that doesn't validate the decisions they've made. Rural Americans have voted against their interests for decades and now blaming the left for their plight is a stretch. It goes both ways, I think that the left should pay attention to rural Americans just like non-rural Americans, but that doesn't mean their conclusions are totally valid.
No. This idea that the "left" ignored rural America is completely unfounded. The left did no such thing. The left did, however, choose not to make idiotic and unfulfillable promises that things would go back to the way they were when someone could drop out of high school and get a $30/hour manufacturing job.
The left is constantly trying to help rural and middle America. Job retraining programs, expanding healthcare, providing more for education. These are all things the left has done.
Right, because the "Doomsday Clock" has no credibility. The fact that the New York Times posted an article based on the "findings" a few crackpot "scientists" is disgraceful.
Experience and years of practice applying the scientific method to difficult problems. You're free to challenge it, but if you're asking such basic questions it might be that you're ignorant and should gather more information before forming an opinion.
"Experience and years of practice applying the scientific method to difficult problems." And where in that skill set do they qualify to predict the end of the world based on what a politician says.
"The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes" - Donald Trump
"Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all." - Donald Trump
Both of these quotes within the last month. Are you serious??????
The media loves to do this, but those quotes are taken out of context. Basically everything Trump says is wildly taken out of context.
The context of his nuclear weapons comments are basically, "If someone thinks they can beat the U.S. in nuclear capability, they are wrong. We will always be the best, so don't even try Russia and China."
Tell that to all the trans people that now have to worry if "Small government conservatives" are going to legislate what bathroom they can use, or if employers can discriminate against them. Tell that to all the Dreamers who now have to wonder if they're going to have a future. Tell that to the 20 million or so people who are worried that their health insurance will be ripped away from them, with no replacement.
I am a dreamer and I've never felt better, which is why I think that a gaggle of crackpot scientists with political bias whom arrogantly and irrationally state that "doomsday" is 2 and half minutes away is nonsense.
Good for you. You are in the minority. I'll ask you how you feel again after Trump discontinues the program. You remember that was one of his big campaign promises, right?
The "Doomsday Clock" is delusional. I want you to think long and hard whether or not the world appears to be imminently ending on your drive home from work today.
That's funny, seems to me it's the other way 'round -- a man was elected who arbitrarily lashes out depending on who hurt his ego that particular day, erasing millions of dollars of shareholder "value". And, for once, it's not a matter of political views. It's a matter of being a decent fucking human being, which our president is not.
I agree with your 2nd paragraph. We're happier, healthier, and safer than we've ever been. And we're going to need to work REALLY hard to keep it that way.
I've taken vague note of the Doomsday Clock for a long time -- and it's a clever concept without a coherent calibration mechanism.
No quarrel with their directional moves ... now or at any other time. But they've ended up in the incongruous situation of saying that 2017 at this very moment is already more risky than the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, or Barry Goldwater's mutterings about nuclear options in Vietnam in 1964, or the China-Russia border war of 1969.
No. Simply no. They missed the chance in the early 1990s to move the clock back to about 3 p.m., giving themselves much more room to create carefully graduated increments of alarm as fresh stresses arose. The current state of play in the USA deserves much more than a 30-second adjustment, and somewhat less than a declaration that it's 2 1/2 minutes before midnight. I can think of at least a dozen ways things could get worse before we're at imminent risk of breathing radioactive isotopes for the (annoyingly short) rest of our lives. Some of those perils already popped up in the 1950s/1960s, and we made our way through them.
The current clock settings hardly do justice to the scientific method, or the rightful role of subject experts in public debate.
Come on—trying to determining the risk of a nuclear war or any global catastrophe and communicating that risk to the public seems pretty important to me.
Don't fixate on the "imaginary clock" aspect, it's just a representation.
The concept of how close humanity is to global catastrophe is difficult to convey directly, yet it's useful to be able to do so. The Doomsday Clock is one easy way.
Large, complex systems are by there very nature difficult to understand. Being able to summarize them easily — even if they don't completely capture the nuance — allows people to get an idea of what's going on. It's not much different from using KPIs and other metrics to understand a business.
You can argue that the metrics aren't useful, but providing reasons why you think so, and possibly suggest better ways would help justify your claim.
The problem is that they don't have a clear method of calculation and a clear meaning of what a minute means.
For example, let's made up some criteria:
1 minute = 99% probability of human extinction in 10 years
2 minutes = 98% probability of human extinction in 10 years
3 minutes = 97% probability of human extinction in 10 years
I'm not sure what 2 hours means. Probably the scale should not be more complex than (100-p) * min/%
Or perhaps it's better to define 1 minute = 90% probability of human extinction in 100 years
Or 1 minute = 50% probability of human extinction in 1 year
It's not clear what 1 minute before doomsday officially means.
Moreover, let's say that they define that 1 minute is x% chance of humanity destruction in y years. How are they calculating it? Do they have any model? How did they calibrate the model? How did they test the model? Is it reliable?
It's a made up number, without any scientific base. It's only an opinion of a bunch of people that happened to work as scientific, not a scientific measurement.
I think you've made a lot of valid points. It's a pretty complex system they're trying to quantify.
You have to start somewhere, and having a group of people who specifically decide to take into account what they consider useful criteria and deliberate about it is a step forward. I think it's clear it could be better if it were more rigorous. It wouldn't surprise me if there are people out there working to do just that. It's not useless just because it's attempting to quantify a complex system in a more subjective manner when it's not clear better alternatives are available. You're right that it's an opinion of scientists, and not a scientific measurement. They're experts in their fields and their opinion does mean something. You're free to weight that how you want, of course.
It blurs the line between science and bullshit. For example in
Scientifics say the Doomsday clock is 2:30 minutes before Midnight
Scientifics say this wall painting is 40.000 years old
Which one is reliable? Which one should a young Earth creationist believe? Are 40.000 years real years or some kind of metaphor? Is that number reliable?
They should each be interpreted in the context they're intended. What does it mean to describe a particular pain to be a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10? Or the numerical values on the Likert scale to measure opinion? Do these similarly blur the line between science and bullshit? The question "are we closer or further from global catastrophe?" is one worth trying to answer. The Doomsday Clock is one way to make this comparison. Indeed, the Doomsday Clock value is much more like pain or Likert scales in that it's used for comparison, as opposed to an absolute value.
I'm not sure what you're arguing so strongly against. I'm not saying the Doomsday Clock is perfect. I think it's useful. It can likely be improved. When/if we can find better quantitative representation for this, I agree we should use it.
Perhaps the clock sits on a train of which the current velocity of our situation relative to the speed of light has increased when compared to the speed of the "good ol` days" train. Thus, 30 seconds perceived at our current speed while on this train would be perceived as a much longer time if viewed from the other train. Perhaps our situation will continue to gain velocity to a point which great increases in danger to human kind is perceived to be only a fraction of a second, until the point at which we reach the speed of light, our matter becomes energy and we have no need for clocks anymore.
This clock seems rather opinionated. What happens at midnight? Or better... what if nothing happens? And how would this work anyway... some country launches the first nuke, and someone goes running to update the clock to midnight?
"On Thursday, the group of scientists who orchestrate the Doomsday Clock, a symbolic instrument informing the public when the earth is facing imminent disaster, moved its minute hand to two and a half minutes before the final hour."
Trump's bellicosity toward China and Mexico make me wonder if we are headed toward a new Cuban Missile Crisis. I'm sure Mexico is waiting to see if Trump is serious about changing the One-China policy, or if it is a ruse to get a better trade deal. If it is serious, then it isn't inconceivable that Mexico could invite China to establish a presence.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 175 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock
These are sharp people. They're fully aware it's not a clock in the strict sense you're pedantically ascribing. It's a useful analogy.
Well, this update in the clock can't take a significant amount of time.
Some opinions are more valid than others. I think it's reasonable to weight the opinion of the The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board heavier than the average person, and I also think its something reasonable people can disagree about.
(I think this is true regardless of political orientation.)
If you have such a long established tradition of using "minutes" as some kind of metaphor for upcoming doom, it doesn't feel meaningful to suddenly start talking about half-minutes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock
It has been this way for nearly a decade. It's also plausible that they are linked - climate change destroying natural resources (land, food, etc.) certainly has the potential to inflict political instability and conflict.
As a parent, I've taken this through as far as 2 and 255/256. (Although by that point it had changed from a threat to a math lesson.)
The closest nuclear war threat, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, reached crisis, climax, and resolution before the Clock could be set to reflect that possible doomsday.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock#Symbolic_timepi...
Life has never been better. It's been proven time and time again that statistically speaking the human race has never been happier or healthier. Let's move on past Donald Trump and all get back to business, this is getting ridiculous.
Yes we have environmental challenges from our modern lifestyle but if you want to go back to being dead at 30 on average be my guest. I'll take the "never been worse" environment, the internet, self-driving cars, and everything else that's going really well.
Yes a leader with some policies you might not agree with got elected. Guess what? I've had 8 years of that. Did I go around posting how "threatened" I was by Obama? No. I could have, after all, the extra-judical drone strikes, fast and the furious scandals, increasing race-baiting and racial tensions were all prime candidates. Stop letting people make you so fearful and scared.
Acknowledging the economy is changing is not necessarily "ignoring the plight". I would argue that trying to find ways to use the increased profits and efficiency that has been created by globalization to benefit everyone is not ignoring the plight, its a totally reasonable idea. Basic income is an example of this but it is a complete non-starter in america largely because of the party that these specific rural blue collar Americans vote for. Is it the governments job to guarantee good factory jobs to everyone (the irony being what made a lot of these jobs good was unions, also opposed by "the right" generally)?
I think it is wrong to totally legitimize the viewpoint of rural middle class blue collar whatever Americans that resulted in our current political circumstances. That isn't to say they don't have grievances (I say they, growing up it would have been we) but that doesn't validate the decisions they've made. Rural Americans have voted against their interests for decades and now blaming the left for their plight is a stretch. It goes both ways, I think that the left should pay attention to rural Americans just like non-rural Americans, but that doesn't mean their conclusions are totally valid.
The left is constantly trying to help rural and middle America. Job retraining programs, expanding healthcare, providing more for education. These are all things the left has done.
Dow hits all time record high for second day in a row.
The first amendment.
https://fas.org/about-fas/
"Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all." - Donald Trump
Both of these quotes within the last month. Are you serious??????
The context of his nuclear weapons comments are basically, "If someone thinks they can beat the U.S. in nuclear capability, they are wrong. We will always be the best, so don't even try Russia and China."
That's it.
Tell that to all the trans people that now have to worry if "Small government conservatives" are going to legislate what bathroom they can use, or if employers can discriminate against them. Tell that to all the Dreamers who now have to wonder if they're going to have a future. Tell that to the 20 million or so people who are worried that their health insurance will be ripped away from them, with no replacement.
I agree with your 2nd paragraph. We're happier, healthier, and safer than we've ever been. And we're going to need to work REALLY hard to keep it that way.
No quarrel with their directional moves ... now or at any other time. But they've ended up in the incongruous situation of saying that 2017 at this very moment is already more risky than the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, or Barry Goldwater's mutterings about nuclear options in Vietnam in 1964, or the China-Russia border war of 1969.
No. Simply no. They missed the chance in the early 1990s to move the clock back to about 3 p.m., giving themselves much more room to create carefully graduated increments of alarm as fresh stresses arose. The current state of play in the USA deserves much more than a 30-second adjustment, and somewhat less than a declaration that it's 2 1/2 minutes before midnight. I can think of at least a dozen ways things could get worse before we're at imminent risk of breathing radioactive isotopes for the (annoyingly short) rest of our lives. Some of those perils already popped up in the 1950s/1960s, and we made our way through them.
The current clock settings hardly do justice to the scientific method, or the rightful role of subject experts in public debate.
Don't people have anything else to do?
Don't fixate on the "imaginary clock" aspect, it's just a representation.
Large, complex systems are by there very nature difficult to understand. Being able to summarize them easily — even if they don't completely capture the nuance — allows people to get an idea of what's going on. It's not much different from using KPIs and other metrics to understand a business.
You can argue that the metrics aren't useful, but providing reasons why you think so, and possibly suggest better ways would help justify your claim.
For example, let's made up some criteria:
1 minute = 99% probability of human extinction in 10 years
2 minutes = 98% probability of human extinction in 10 years
3 minutes = 97% probability of human extinction in 10 years
I'm not sure what 2 hours means. Probably the scale should not be more complex than (100-p) * min/%
Or perhaps it's better to define 1 minute = 90% probability of human extinction in 100 years
Or 1 minute = 50% probability of human extinction in 1 year
It's not clear what 1 minute before doomsday officially means.
Moreover, let's say that they define that 1 minute is x% chance of humanity destruction in y years. How are they calculating it? Do they have any model? How did they calibrate the model? How did they test the model? Is it reliable?
It's a made up number, without any scientific base. It's only an opinion of a bunch of people that happened to work as scientific, not a scientific measurement.
You have to start somewhere, and having a group of people who specifically decide to take into account what they consider useful criteria and deliberate about it is a step forward. I think it's clear it could be better if it were more rigorous. It wouldn't surprise me if there are people out there working to do just that. It's not useless just because it's attempting to quantify a complex system in a more subjective manner when it's not clear better alternatives are available. You're right that it's an opinion of scientists, and not a scientific measurement. They're experts in their fields and their opinion does mean something. You're free to weight that how you want, of course.
I'm not sure what you're arguing so strongly against. I'm not saying the Doomsday Clock is perfect. I think it's useful. It can likely be improved. When/if we can find better quantitative representation for this, I agree we should use it.
Otherwise they should have used something more appropriate to make their point.
You mean the people the administration is overtly sidelining in favor of their 'alternative facts' on a wide gamut of subjects?
1984's Iron Maiden - 2 minutes to midnight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qbRHY1l0vc
I never really understood the meaning behind the lyrics until now.
http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-59-the-destroyer-o...
Certainly worth a listen.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Doomsday%20Clock&sort=byDate&p...