This clock idea is such a waste of time and resources.
Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
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Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#22If it were not for nukes, the people moving the clock would be drafted and clock materials used to build a cannon in world war 5. So much for percived danger and actuall danger.
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#23These "intellectuals" complain and have these elaborate demonstrations about a destabilizing world all the while doing everything they can to create FUD and usher in that world.
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#24On a completely unrelated, but way less scary note....
"Doomsday Clock #3" is out today from D.C. comics.
It's a mega event that crosses characters from Alan Moore's The Watchmen with more traditional D.C. characters like Batman and Superman. I'm enjoying it quite a bit even though its exploitative and somewhat tarnishes the legacy of the greatest comic book of all time.
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#25This is pathetic. It's not even a "doomsday" clock, it's a "a couple of random countries go to nuclear war with each other while the rest of civilisation watches and cleans up after they're done" clock.
Sure, it'd be remembered in history books forever and up to hundreds of millions would die but this wouldn't even register on a "doomsday" scale.
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#26A clock is such a terrible metaphor. It only moves forward. And it moves forward despite any actions humans take. If anything, it is slightly better suited for climate change.
What they should be doing is providing a confidence level of nuclear war, eg 3±2% chance of nuclear war in 2018.
Furthermore, conflating nuclear apocalypse with other existential threats to humanity (climate change, disease, asteroid, gamma ray burst, vacuum decay, etc.) is at best confusing. I guess a general "5% chance irrevocable extinction event begins in 2018" would have some value, it would be far better to report on individual extinction vectors so we can prioritize countermeasures.
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#27On a completely unrelated, but way less scary note.... "Doomsday Clock #3" is out today from D.C. comics. It's a mega event that crosses characters from Alan Moore's The Watchmen with more traditional D.C. characters like Batman and Superman. I'm enjoying it quite a bit even though its exploitative and somewhat tarnishes the legacy of the greatest comic book of all time.
Coincidence?
Or clever marketing? #FollowTheMoney (just kidding)
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#28Does it ever move back? I mean, I've read this same article a half dozen times over the past 20 years or so and I keep wondering what kind of clock it is that is perpetually 5 mins. to midnight but can move two minutes forward all the time and yet NEVER REACH FREAKING MIDNIGHT?
It's Zeno's doomsday clock. (It doesn't make the news when they move it back, because it's harder to take political advantage of baseless reassurance than baseless fear.)
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#29The Ig Nobel Prize people really should honor this group.
One top-level comment is sufficient on HN. It takes a certain amount of hubris, or blithe ignorance, to post multiple top-level comments.
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#30A clock is such a terrible metaphor. It only moves forward. And it moves forward despite any actions humans take. If anything, it is slightly better suited for climate change. What they should be doing is providing a confidence level of nuclear war, eg 3±2% chance of nuclear war in 2018. Furthermore, conflating nuclear apocalypse with other existential threats to humanity (climate change, disease, asteroid, gamma ray…
They've actually moved it backward several times:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock#/media/File:Doo...
