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Doomsday Clock moved to 2.5 minutues to midnight. Cloest to midnight since 1953.

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T

The Albatross

Member
Lime said:
Uhm, no, there's a host of factors as to why it moved closer during Obama's tenure. It's not just the US and it's not just nuclear war that are included in the analysis
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Yes, a host of factors that are all meaningless bull shit devised to write media headlines. It's about as useful as the "NATIONAL DEBT TICKER," another meaningless bull shit contrivance devised to write media headlines.

I completely agree with the motivation behind the concept of the Doomsday Clock, a way for stupid people to get alarmed about global nuclear threats hopefully motivating more people to support nuclear disarmament, but it's still a meaningless, bull shit contrivance.

Also this cutesy thing about climate change or cyber threats getting added to the Doomsday Clock, c'mon. The only reason this is a headline and a thread is because the Doomsday Clock was devised by Oppenheimer and other physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project. If the Doomsday Clock is a clock ticking down to when avocados will cost $3/each at Aldi, then it loses all of its meaning.
 
F

friskykillface

Banned
Welp

I always said the world would end when I graduate from college and it's happening in May, but that was luck after taking 6 courses last semester, my highest class count since 2007

I doomed us 😎
 
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
The Albatross said:
Exactly.

Consider this, the Doomsday Clock theorists think that Barack Obama was more likely to launch global thermo nulear war than Richard Nixon.



This is... not true, as long as we're looking at the same bull shit chart:

600px-Doomsday_Clock_graph.svg.png


I mean, even aside from the fact that the Doomsday Clock is a bull shit contrivance... In 1991, George HW Bush was in office. By 1993, Bill Clinton would take office and the Doomsday clock wwould apparently tick closer to midnight by some 10 seconds over those 8 years. Further back, during the Carter administration, the clock would tick closer to midnight by 2 seconds. During the HW Bush administration (1989 to 1993) it would tick back some 10 seconds (the largest drop). Looking at this chart, Obama would enter office in 2009 about 5 seconds to midnight, and then by 2015 while Obama was still in office, the clock would be 3 seconds to midnight. What you're saying is just wrong as long as we're looking at the same chart in the OP.

But, still, the clock is meaningless bull shit.
Click to expand...

It also never changed for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also known as the actually closest to midnight we've ever been.

I'm concerned about nuclear war and humanity's inability to survive climate change but the clock is a guess and shouldn't be authoritative.
 
P

Plum

Member
The Albatross said:
Yes, a host of factors that are all meaningless bull shit devised to write media headlines. It's about as useful as the "NATIONAL DEBT TICKER," another meaningless bull shit contrivance devised to write media headlines.

I completely agree with the motivation behind the concept of the Doomsday Clock, a way for stupid people to get alarmed about global nuclear threats hopefully motivating more people to support nuclear disarmament, but it's still a meaningless, bull shit contrivance.
Click to expand...

Is climate change meaningless bullshit to you or are you just intentionally ignoring the fact that it isn't just a clock for nuclear war anymore? It's hard to tell with the two seemingly opposed paragraphs in this post.
 
T

The Albatross

Member
Plum said:
Is climate change meaningless bullshit to you or are you just intentionally ignoring the fact that it isn't just a clock for nuclear war anymore? It's hard to tell with the two seemingly opposed paragraphs in this post.
Click to expand...

I don't see how you could possibly read any of the 10 posts I've made in this thread and think that I'm saying that climate change, nuclear war, or $3 avocados are meaningless bull shit (well, maybe the last one).

Unless you're being intentionally dense (which is what I suspect here), it's not hard to tell at all because I've written this in plain, obvious English at least 5 times. I'll write it again:

The Doomsday Clock is meaningless bull shit.
 
P

Plum

Member
The Albatross said:
I don't see how you could possibly read any of the 10 posts I've made in this thread and think that I'm saying that climate change, nuclear war, or $3 avocados are meaningless bull shit (well, maybe the last one).

Unless you're being intentionally dense (which is what I suspect here), it's not hard to tell at all because I've written this in plain, obvious English at least 5 times. I'll write it again:

The Doomsday Clock is meaningless bull shit.
Click to expand...

What is your reasoning for this though? Because so far it seems that you think it's meaningless bullshit because it only looks at nuclear annihilation which yeah, if you only looked at that recent fluctuations would make no sense, but that isn't the case.

Though your comment about climate change being "cutesy" and only meaning Avacados will reach £3 in Aldi seems to make me believe that you're putting less importance on those issues than the scientists who make the clock in the first place. If that's what you think climate change is leading to then of course it's meaningless bullshit to you.
 
J

jacob armitage

Banned
I understand its tensions in the world at large that contribute to this, but having said that, Americans to revolt and remove their corrupt government, its been 6 days. Don't just resist. Don't wait, we can't afford it. Revolt.

zbarron said:
I know it's not new, but come on, spoilers man.
Click to expand...

Dude, it came out 30 years ago, we're well past needing to mask spoilers.
 
R

Red

Member
The Albatross said:
I don't see how you could possibly read any of the 10 posts I've made in this thread and think that I'm saying that climate change, nuclear war, or $3 avocados are meaningless bull shit (well, maybe the last one).

Unless you're being intentionally dense (which is what I suspect here), it's not hard to tell at all because I've written this in plain, obvious English at least 5 times. I'll write it again:

The Doomsday Clock is meaningless bull shit.
Click to expand...
The Doomsday Clock is a scale of warning from a group of scientists about how urgently we should consider the future that is at stake. It doesn't perfectly represent some aspect of reality, but it is not meaningless, and it is not bullshit.
 
C

Cartman86

Banned
The press conference where they announced it is a worth a watch. They are very clear with their reasoning and the symbol of it all.

Red said:
The Doomsday Clock is a scale of warning from a group of scientists about how urgently we should consider the future that is at stake. It doesn't perfectly represent some aspect of reality, but it is not meaningless, and it is not bullshit.
Click to expand...
This for crying out loud. This is a response from exactly the group of people you would expect given everything about the Trump presidency.
 
F

Fancyarcher

Member
Plum said:
Climate change has been slowly getting worse for decades now.
Click to expand...

Yes, climate change is a huge problem, but I'm not exactly sure that's the only reason why the clock has been moving closer and closer. It's a fairly flawed system regardless of how intended it is, but I suppose that's like any system.
 
P

Plum

Member
Fancyarcher said:
Yes, climate change is a huge problem, but I'm not exactly sure that's the only reason why the clock has been moving closer and closer. It's a heavily flawed system regardless of how intended it is.
Click to expand...

Because as climate change gets worse and as any attempts to stop it grow fewer and less powerful the probability that it gets bad enough to destroy society only grows larger. Since this is a system more about probability than a literal "we have x amount of time," something like the largest global power making its official policy to reverse all climate change progress would almost definitely make put things 'closer to midnight'.
 
T

The Albatross

Member
Red said:
The Doomsday Clock is a scale of warning from a group of scientists about how urgently we should consider the future that is at stake. It doesn't perfectly represent some aspect of reality, but it is not meaningless, and it is not bullshit.
Click to expand...

I struggle to find meaning in something that arbitrarily considers the height of the Korean war, the height of Regan-era militarism, and the midst of Barack Obama's presidency all roughly the same on a scale that has fluctuated "17 [arbitrary] seconds" over the last 60 years.

I think the motivation behind the Doomsday Clock, that of sending an alarmist warning to stupid people using a concept that they can understand (a ticking clock), is a noble one. I'm also a huge admirer of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Ferme. But that doesn't make it any less sensationalist. To me, it's the equivalent of the National Debt Clock on 6th Avenue in New York City. National Debt is a real thing and clocks are a nice way to elucidate a complex point to somebody who can't understand it, and the motivation behind the national debt clock may be a sound motivation, but the actual meaning of a debt clock or doomsday clock is so insignificant compared to the amount of play that both get in the media.

They're both hysterical alarmism that target stupid people with the result of only making them more hysterical and probably making them more stupid. If you need something hopelessly alarmist with such a meaningless degree of difference between 3 seconds to midnight and 2.5 seconds to midnight to tell you that there's something important going on, then I feel sorry for you.
 
D

Davide

Member
The Albatross said:
I struggle to find meaning in something that arbitrarily considers the height of the Korean war, the height of Regan-era militarism, and the midst of Barack Obama's presidency all roughly the same on a scale that has fluctuated "17 [arbitrary] seconds" over the last 60 years.

I think the motivation behind the Doomsday Clock, that of sending an alarmist warning to stupid people using a concept that they can understand (a ticking clock), is a noble one. I'm also a huge admirer of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Ferme. But that doesn't make it any less sensationalist. To me, it's the equivalent of the National Debt Clock on 6th Avenue in New York City. National Debt is a real thing and clocks are a nice way to elucidate a complex point to somebody who can't understand it, and the motivation behind the national debt clock may be a sound motivation, but the actual meaning of a debt clock or doomsday clock is so insignificant compared to the amount of play that both get in the media.

They're both hysterical alarmism that target stupid people with the result of only making them more hysterical and probably making them more stupid. If you need something hopelessly alarmist with such a meaningless degree of difference between 3 seconds to midnight and 2.5 seconds to midnight to tell you that there's something important going on, then I feel sorry for you.
Click to expand...
Yes this.
 
T

Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!

Member
Red said:
The Doomsday Clock is a scale of warning from a group of scientists about how urgently we should consider the future that is at stake. It doesn't perfectly represent some aspect of reality, but it is not meaningless, and it is not bullshit.
Click to expand...

Maybe they should have named it something other than the fuckin doomsday clock then
 
F

fredrancour

Member
lawnchair said:
thank you, should've been first post

PS, why do we have this stupid clock?
Click to expand...

cause during the cold war enough nuclear scientists and engineers felt bad about their field's contributions to a potential doomsday scenario that they started it up as a dramatic way to promote awareness of how potentially effed we were.
 
A

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Sounds like bullshit if you ask me.

Almost none of the nuclear powers have any enemies.

Edit: oh it counts climate change now? Oh, well we already knew we were fucked in the long term on that
 
R

Red

Member
The Albatross said:
I struggle to find meaning in something that arbitrarily considers the height of the Korean war, the height of Regan-era militarism, and the midst of Barack Obama's presidency all roughly the same on a scale that has fluctuated "17 [arbitrary] seconds" over the last 60 years.

I think the motivation behind the Doomsday Clock, that of sending an alarmist warning to stupid people using a concept that they can understand (a ticking clock), is a noble one. I'm also a huge admirer of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Ferme. But that doesn't make it any less sensationalist. To me, it's the equivalent of the National Debt Clock on 6th Avenue in New York City. National Debt is a real thing and clocks are a nice way to elucidate a complex point to somebody who can't understand it, and the motivation behind the national debt clock may be a sound motivation, but the actual meaning of a debt clock or doomsday clock is so insignificant compared to the amount of play that both get in the media.

They're both hysterical alarmism that target stupid people with the result of only making them more hysterical and probably making them more stupid. If you need something hopelessly alarmist with such a meaningless degree of difference between 3 seconds to midnight and 2.5 seconds to midnight to tell you that there's something important going on, then I feel sorry for you.
Click to expand...
Who is being alarmed only because the Doomsday Clock ticked down a little bit?
If it does alarm people who previously were not alarmed, and encourages them to take a better look at the current political climate, is that a bad outcome?
This is worth writing about because it is the opinion of a committee of scientists. Do you dismiss the opinions of other scientists who call for action now, but may not have previously?
Is the problem only because they use the dramatic name "Doomsday Clock"?
Do you disagree with their assessment?
 
P

Pancake Mix

Copied someone else's pancake recipe
Do unto others as they've done to you
But what the hell is this world coming to?

Blow the universe into nothingness
Nuclear warfare shall lay us to rest

Fight fire with fire
Ending is near
Fight fire with fire
Bursting with fear
We all shall die

Time is like a fuse, short and burning fast
Armageddon's here, like said in the past
Click to expand...

Pretty concerned right now
 
Whompa02

Whompa02

Member
Seriously what is this? Some sort of conspiracy mumbo jumbo? Scientists? Scientists of what? Doom?

I'm so lost here...
 
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