Cue the Iron Maiden...
Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
31–40 of 75 posts
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#32Aye carumba the comments on this article are a cesspool.
If you don’t think the way Trump and Kim Jong Un have been interacting is a reason for concern I don’t even know what to say to you.
And the point of this isn’t to make people panic, it’s to point out how dangerous of a situation we are in and maybe get people to think about it and change course in some way.
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#33Graph with reasons it moved forward or backward -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock#Changing_settin...
Stupid -
"There have been heightened tensions between the U.S. and North Korea over the past few months, which Bronson said did influence the changing of the time."
NK sends nukes kills at best millions probably hundreds or 10 of thousands if really lucky.
We anillate them with small nukes or boring conventional weapons.
World goes fuck and really tightens up nuclear weapons making us further away from "Dooooooms day"
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#34A 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...
Yeah I know (thanks for the link). I mean using a clock as the way to communicate how likely nuclear war is happens to be a terrible way of communicating to a public that knows clocks only, and naturally, move forward. Having seen a clock and reading this news, it would be reasonable for children to expect us to reach nuclear war very soon, which is not at all accurate.
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#35Stories like this are the reason that I think that the following headline format is rightly banned from HN in the future:
"Scientists ."
Nobody cares that "scientists" did something. We care about the science of what they did, sure. But this is a built-in appeal to authority that seems completely anti-hacker to me.
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best part of this submission is definitely the pithy comments.
It was always little more than a political statement made by scientists using their scientific respect in non-scientific contexts, a major negative. But they had some justification; the Cold War threat was that the two major superpowers would fling thousands upon thousands of highly-destructive warheads at each other, and anything that might conceivably be valuable in one of their proxies, which meant every major cit…
Arthur C Clarke's short story "The Last Command" is a fun, relevant read (it's like 3 pages long, but DON'T google it because you'll have the ending spoiled and there are no free copies online).
Try a library?
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#37It's depressing to see adults participate in such a stupid publicity stunt. Their silly clock was at 7 minutes to midnight during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Does anyone think we're in a more dangerous moment now than we were then?
+1.
Weirdly, I don't remember The Doomsday Clock being advanced like this during the last decade, when North Korea was furiously and successfully building its store of warheads. That was evidently a time of perfect pacificity.
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#38It's depressing to see adults participate in such a stupid publicity stunt. Their silly clock was at 7 minutes to midnight during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Does anyone think we're in a more dangerous moment now than we were then?
> Does anyone think we're in a more dangerous moment now than we were then? Yes. Then, we had world leaders whose philosophies and policies almost led to war, but who personally didn't really want to go there. Now we have a couple world leaders who don't seem to grasp the significance of their fights, and are just driving their decisions with their own egos.
CIA says Kim Jong Un is still a rational actor.
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#39It's depressing to see adults participate in such a stupid publicity stunt. Their silly clock was at 7 minutes to midnight during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Does anyone think we're in a more dangerous moment now than we were then?
> Does anyone think we're in a more dangerous moment now than we were then? Yes. Then, we had world leaders whose philosophies and policies almost led to war, but who personally didn't really want to go there. Now we have a couple world leaders who don't seem to grasp the significance of their fights, and are just driving their decisions with their own egos.
Publicly. I highly doubt either of the two leaders you are thinking about really believe nuclear war is an actual option. Mutual assured destruction is still a thing.
Regarding the saber rattling from current POTUS, stating our nuclear arsenal is the most powerful in the world is a non-statement. It changes nothing other than public perception of his political position. It doesn't reduce or increase the power he wields nor does it reduce or increase the power held by NK.
Re: Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead to 2 minutes to midnight
#40It's depressing to see adults participate in such a stupid publicity stunt. Their silly clock was at 7 minutes to midnight during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Does anyone think we're in a more dangerous moment now than we were then?
+1. Weirdly, I don't remember The Doomsday Clock being advanced like this during the last decade , when North Korea was furiously and successfully building its store of warheads. That was evidently a time of perfect pacificity.
There is a saying in English, It takes two to tango. Perhaps the change reflects the arrival of the dance partner.
Also of concern is the new Russian coastal city killer drone submarines and their new generation of hypersonic reentry ICBMs. It is clear evidence that they do not wish to accept a world where the largest military power has anti missile technology capable of diminishing the effectiveness of the Russian offensive nuclear capability.