Complacency about the serious challenges the world is facing is not an option. But the idea that we are almost at the point of no return via the Doomsday Clock isn’t helpful.
I agree here. During the Cold War, the doomsday clock was literally doomsday. It measured how close we appeared to be for society-ending, humanity destroying all out war between two nuclear powers, each with several times the nuclear weapons needed to end us all.
Now we’re in constant war, threat of constant war, endless instability, and yes, the American government is one of the biggest factors in recent reductions to global stability. We’re actively making things worst, from at least trying to do the right thing. It’s surely a catastrophe to the people affected, we’re talking hundreds of thousands to millions of unnecessary deaths, we can’t minimize that …. But it’s not an end of humanity level threat.
I don’t know what would be more effective imagery, but we’re closer while at the same time farther from catastrophe, so maybe it’s time to move on
“Don’t make me count to three! One! … Two! … 👀 … Two and a half! … Two and five eighths! …”
The doomsday clock was effective until rich people realized they could just ignore it.
Or monetize icrementing it forward.
So… the doomsday clock has run out of time, is that what you’re saying? Seems apropos.
It stopped being useful ever since they stopped using it just to visualize how quickly a nuke war could end things. Climate change is serious as shit, but it’s not going to lock in total devestation within the next two minutes. Same goes for many other slow-burn threats they try to cram in there. Many of them are already here, pretty much none have a discreet threshold to count towards.
The word you want is discrete.
You can remember it, because the T separates the Es into discrete entities
English spelling sucks by being detached from pronounciation episode 978
Logically, I think we are past the point of no return. So yeah, we may not have blown up yet, but the outcome now seems inevitable.
I don’t know, even a broken Doomsday Clock is right twice a day.
Maybe humanity wasn’t meant to survive? We have all the high quality data and analysis, we refuse to act on it. We have helpful communication tools like the clock. Information is not the issue. The will to fight our uglier instincts has held everything up to now.
We should at least consider the possibility that we are not up to the task.
I think it would be better to get humanity out from under the boot of tyrants before you make such judgements. We still live under the crushing oppression of kings, albeit under different names and often from the shadows.
That tyranny is at the heart of the point I was making.
It outlived its usefulness ever since kids stopped being taught how to read analog clocks in schools. But in seriousness a nuclear attack could happen at any time and most people are just too burned out to care anymore. One can only live with a constant diet of modern news media for so long until they get desensitized.
It doesn’t sound like analog clock reading is quite dead, even if it’s in decline.
https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/52878-younger-americans-hard-time-reading-clocks
Younger adults are much less likely than older Americans to be able to instantly read an analog clock. 95% of Americans 65 or older say they can instantly tell the time from the hour and minute hands, while only 43% of adults under 30 can. 78% of Americans with college degrees say they can instantly tell the time on an analog clock, compared to 68% of non-college graduates.
Almost three decades ago, my mom told me that her father had despaired of in-his-era kids being unable to read analog clocks.
