> The clock is a publicity stunt—and a successful one.
Is it? I had no idea it was still a thing. I associate it first and foremost with fiction. Specifically, Dr. Strangelove: the campy black comedy that's fifty-six (56) years old.
If pushed, I probably would have guessed it was a real thing from the Cold War. Let me be clear: I couldn't have said with certainty that the Doomsday Clock was a real thing.
I had no idea that it was maintained in 2020. It belongs in the era of Burt Ward in tights. "Time to Stop the 'Doomsday Clock' — Because No One Cares" might be a better title.
The book includes accounts of his time at BLAND, sorry RAND, the sheer banality of it all makes it all the more shocking - young men calculating whether it would be 100 million, 600 million or far more and oops shame about Finland.
[A job where you feel that meetings you attend feel like the Wannsee Conference can't be good.]
I think you've got what @jmkni said mixed up with the common saying "read this book if you have trouble sleeping at night" -- which means exactly as you said.
"If you have trouble staying awake" would be the opposite, and I'd take it to mean the book is positively terrifying.
According to them we have never been closer to doomsday. Not when the Soviet Union got the atomic bomb, not when North Korea attacked, not during the Cuban missile crisis, not during the wars in the middle East with Israel, not during the Berlin crisis on the Tiananmen square protests, and most recently when the US used conventional warfare against a country that supposedly possessed weapons of mass destruction.
How does one estimate the probability of doom from either of those things with any sort of reliability, given that they would be one off (future historical) events? Where's the science in predicting the future of civilization?
Since you asked, here’s some (old) science predicting the future (current state) of civilization:
In 1980, the American Petroleum Institute correctly predicted the current environmental crisis would happen now.
From the report:
"Timescale for significant impact, very roughly 50 years"
"1°C Rise (2005): Barely noticeable"
"2.5°C Rise (2038): Major economic consequences, Strong regional dependence"
"5°C Rise (2067): Globally Catastrophic effects"
They also predict that climate problems will cause global economic growth to halt in about 2025.
There’s no reason to think the trend lines in the report are suddenly incorrect. In fact, current events are well within the error bars of their model.
Averting it requires billions of people to agree to change course, and so far our leaders are doing nothing to make that happen.
Of course, much progress has been made in climate modeling since then, and now we’re more sure we’re screwed. On the other hand, since the report is 40 years old, it’s trivial to go back and confirm their predictions were correct so far.
That's a climate prediction with future predictions on what they expect to happen to civilization. But since it's not 2025, we can't say whether economic growth will halt. 2067 is the predicted doomsday year.
Of course if we overlay that with Kurzweil's singularity in 2045, then all bets are off. To the extent we take such predictions seriously.
In other news, the Doomsday Clock has moved closer to midnight:
Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond. The international security situation is dire, not just because these threats exist, but because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode.
This is a great example of the author's point - what can nuclear physicists say about "cyber-enabled information warfare," other than by copying the ambient claims floating around Washington?
Continued corruption of the information ecosphere on which democracy and public decision making depend has heightened the nuclear and climate threats. In the last year, many governments used cyber-enabled disinformation campaigns to sow distrust in institutions and among nations, undermining domestic and international efforts to foster peace and protect the planet.
Oh goodness. He is trying to tell us that scientists cannot use this to keep the public aware of nuclear war threat. I didn’t even see one negative of having the clock in the article. Just saying over and over science is not politics.
>Yet there’s a deeper problem. Not only is the Doomsday Clock unscientific; the factors of its setting are now dominated more by policy questions than scientific ones. The former may be important, but claiming the authority of “atomic scientists” is appropriate only for the latter.
...
>But today the clock’s setting is determined more by concerns about how superpowers can engage in arms-control talks, about potentially reckless statements by world leaders, or about what policies would best reduce carbon emissions. These are important questions, but not ones on which scientists can claim special authority.
If the scientists have no special knowledge of the likelihood or effects of a nuclear war, promoting the Doomsday clock is simply policy advocacy based on an appeal to authority masquerading as objectivity.
There was a time when they did have special knowledge, but as he points out, that time has passed.
My question is: if there really is a crisis (e.g. nuclear war threat, climate change, etc.), these days, how do you get the general population to notice and act accordingly without fear mongering? I'm not sure I have a better solution, unfortunately.
I tend not to support fear mongering and typically lean on providing education, but that requires time that some situations don't allot for. In the case of the doomsday clock, it makes some sense. The problem is the fear factor has really disappeared and few today experienced the fear of real nuclear threats like those during the peak of the cold war.
> The problem is the fear factor has really disappeared and few today experienced the fear of real nuclear threats like those during the peak of the cold war.
Few even know about the clock, or what it represents, or historically represented.
Few understand the existential dangers humanity is under threat from; those that do shout into a void of apathy, hardly even receiving an echo.
Some are patted on the head with a "That's nice dear..." or worse, met with scorn and anger.
The world has forgotten the we have the literal power to destroy ourselves, to make the planet virtually uninhabitable for humanity, if not most of life, by our acts. Some in power have even had the gall to ask why we shouldn't use these weapons we have, otherwise why have them? Ignorant. Fools.
The only way humanity will learn its lesson is by abject overpowering demonstration. Of course, by then, it will be too late. But the lesson will be learned, in the most harsh manner possible.
I'm not sure how such a 'device' could be anything other than political. There's not a mathematical formula, based on science, driving the setting of the clock. It's set at the whim of its caretakers according to their perceptions of the risks in the world.
Here’s a chance to ask - I’ve been trawling my history and searching like mad to find an article I read a year or two ago which I’m almost certain was linked from HN. It was an essay or opinion-piece about nuclear war which I believe was written in the 50s or thereabouts by someone who was an involved in the Manhattan project. In my head I think it was called something like “the meaning of war in the age of atomic weapons” or something along those lines. Does anyone have any idea what I might be remembering? For what it’s worth the tone was negative!
I think it's great that it includes factors like climate change and disruptive technology in addition to nuclear threats, which are just as grave of a threat as nuclear weapons. I disagree with the author that it's time to do away with the clock, the Bulletin is doing a great job of keeping it relevant and useful in the 21st century.
I hate to say it, but I agree with the author. The scientists running the Doomsday clock nowdays bump it up for things like Trump tweets, while in the past it would get advanced for things like the invention of the Hydrogen bomb. If it is following the zeitgeist of what everybody is already saying then it is not useful on its own.
Nothing happening today is even comparable to the past events of a world where nuclear attacks were seen as a legitimate first strike option. There has been a lot of "doomsday time inflation," where inconsequential things today move the clock just as much as serious threats yesterday.
You don't believe a man this ignorant about such things, who is "commander in chief" and "carries the nuclear football" - ie, he is in command of our entire nuclear arsenal (let that sink in for a second) - you don't believe that the clock moving on a tweet of his nearly taking us to war (or anything of that nature) isn't a reason for it to move?
I don't think there is much of a correlation between Trump tweets, Trump thoughts, and Trump actions. Of course I could be proven wrong at any moment, but I would not be around any longer to observe it... In any case, judging how much panic should be had every time the President mouths off is something that nuclear physicists are not abnormally qualified for, at least not above anyone else. There really doesn't need to be a special panel of atomic scientists dedicated to reading Trump tweets.
What population collapse? World population is still rising. US population is still rising.
Fewer humans would be a good thing for just about all the global human created problems. Far fewer humans would give a chance of sustainable numbers, sustainable industry and agriculture, remove the need to destroy habitats etc.
Considering that abortion is about terminating unwanted pregnancies, I fail to see a problem here.
Nuclear war and climate change are real threats. We came incredibly close to war in 1983 when Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov refused to launch against a false US attack. If you don't believe in the threat of climate change then you're not paying attention or willfully disregarding evidence.
The doomsday clock isn't for every source of death or life-preventer, it's specifically for doomsday events like nuclear war. Otherwise various bacteria would dominate everything else.
First of all, there's no evidence that he was "kicked off", and even if he had been... so what?
The world is full of disgruntled people who dish dirt on their former associates. We call these people "whistle-blowers". They have many motivations for doing that, but that's not really relevant. The motivation for making the claims is completely orthogonal to the truth of the claims.
Can you (or anyone) address his actual thesis? Given that pretty much the only attempted rebuttals I've seen are ad hominem attacks, I suspect the answer is "no".
"ASU found that the preponderance of evidence suggested that Krauss had violated the university's policy against sexual harassment by grabbing a woman's breast without her permission.[30][31] As a result, Krauss was not renewed as Director of the Origins Project and the University moved its staff to a project run by planetary scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton, formally ending the Origins project.[32]"
Did we have to read it? A scientist saying scientists can or can't do this doesn't mean much...
Scientists discovered ozone depletion.
Scientists discovered what caused depletion.
Scientists pushed for a political resolution.
Scientists and politicians can be both scientific and political. In fact, our system is better when they're both.
I love Lawrence's books and some of his speeches. I just don't buy this kind of stuff.
Also, "publicity stunt" is "in the eye of the beholder". Not quantitative and unscientific so meh. If doomsday clocks can get people to take action, they should.
If it was as easy as education - we wouldn't need this post or Lawrence saying what he did. We have a society that shuns education as elitism, anti-capitalist, socilist or whatever they believe.
a) From Wikipedia: The allegations were from buzzfeed, and were later unsubstantiated in an official enquiry with the 'victim' who said "she did not feel victimized, felt it was a clumsy interpersonal interaction and thought she had handled it in the moment."
b) What does this have to do with his opinion on the doomsday clock?
Honestly this outrage culture, and mob mentality is pathetic.
The buzzfeed article details quite a number of allegations. There is no one victim.
In any case, the victim you're referring to essentially confirmed that the allegation was true. She merely said (in effect) that she was not particularly bothered that Krauss had touched her breast without permission. That does not make the behavior appropriate.
I've upvoted you for two reasons. First, I think you're sincere. Second, I think it's important that someone respond to you rather than just downvote you and you're currently greyed.
> There is no one victim.
This is not relevant. @iron0013 didn't cite anything other than a brief snippet of the Wikipedia article. No other evidence was provided and no argument was made linking the snippet to Krauss' credibility or arguments. As far as I can tell, @iron0013 saw this snippet and immediately wrote of Krauss. That's not a reasonable position and it spawned this subthread, which, although I've participated in it, I find to be mostly off-topic.
> She merely said (in effect) that she was not particularly bothered that Krauss had touched her breast without permission.
You're paraphrasing a Buzzfeed article which is paraphrasing an ASU report which paraphrased the alleged victim. Here is her statement to the public: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr9OIty2XGg
> See also the ASU investigation report, which is available here:
It's important to note that this report was prepared by a potential party to the allegations for the same party. It cannot simply be cited as evidence. At best, it should be treated as a suspect secondary source. In no case is it appropriate to treat it as a conviction.
> Besides all that, Krauss unapologetically helped Epstein after he was released from prison.
This is wholly unrelated to his argument against the Doomsday Clock than the allegations which lead to his resignation from The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
And this is the crux of the issue. With extremely limited evidence (far, far less than you or I have provided), @iron0013 decided Krauss should be completely ignored, without even consider Krauss' argument. He's certainly free to do so, but based on the voting down of his comment, I'm happy to believe that the majority of people don't want to live in a world where others can be socially, professionally, and politically ostracized for alleged wrongdoing without so much as a trial.
I've offered the evidence here so people can make their own determinations, but I do so with the understanding that this entire subthread is off-topic and irrelevant to the issue at hand.
For me, personally, I don't have enough information to convict him or acquit him; and I think the rational choice is to acknowledge that the accusations exist. At best, I think @iron0013 could have pointed out the circumstances of Krauss' resignation, but even then, it's not relevant to the arguments Krauss makes. His motivation largely doesn't matter unless you're trying to somehow not 'let him win.'
I think it's clearly relevant to consider the full range of allegations against Krauss, not just one picked at random that's no more relevant than any of the others. The Esptein connection is relevant because it highlights his ethical bankruptcy in this area.
The BuzzFeed article I linked to contains the full ASU report. It's helpful to have a direct link, but I wasn't linking to the wrong page.
My paraphrase is accurate. It's clear from her statement that Krauss touched her inappropriately and that she didn't like it. It's for Krauss's employer to decide whether that's a firing offense, not her. It baffles me that anyone would cite this in defense of Krauss. I mean, look at the title of the video!
Obviously, there is little connection between Krauss sexually harassing women and whatever he is saying in this article. I was responding to correct people who aren't aware that he has an indisputable record of sexual harassment.
> she was not particularly bothered that Krauss had touched her breast without permission. That does not make the behavior appropriate.
> It's for Krauss's employer to decide whether that's a firing offense, not her.
Yeah, I think you've made your standpoint abundantly clear.
2 adults had an interaction, both are fine with it, then and now, but being a woman she is clearly not capable of deciding for herself if this was offensive, so you are happy to feel violated on her behalf.
My feelings don't come into it. My point is that a university is perfectly justified in firing a professor who touches women sexually without their permission.
You yourself care so much about this woman's point of view that you either haven't bothered to watch the video, or have decided to wilfully misrepresent its contents.
Is it really worth this much effort of yours to defend the honour of a guy who is so involved with a pedophile rapist and pimp that he arranged a conference on said pedophile's private island, where he kept his sex slaves?
Like, isn't at that point time to step back, look at the situation, and go "wait, this does not seem right"? To think that maybe this guy might just be rotten, and maybe he is neither worth listening to or defending?
If you think I'm defending Krauss, you're missing the point entirely. I'm defending a value system that includes a presumption of innocence. It's well within ASU's rights to listen to the allegations, conduct their own investigation, and decide whether or not it is right for them to employ Krauss. Taking that decision as proof of wrongdoing on Krauss' part isn't at all compelling.
"This does not seem right" is not proof enough for me to convict someone in my own mind. I have reasonable doubts. As far as I can tell, I've done more work than anyone in this thread to find the evidence both for and against the allegations against Krauss. If the best argument you can offer is "Well, it looks shady and his motivations might be in question, so we should ignore his arguments on that basis rather than on whether they are sound," you're just wasting your time and mine.
You've got a mob mentality. It might feel good. It might do some good. It might feel effective. It might feel like winning. But it's going to have false positives, going to do more bad than good in the long run, and it might even do bad to you personally. You need a rethink.
The presumption of innocence is the standard used in criminal trials. It makes no sense to apply it outside a courtroom to someone who isn't accused of a crime.
The allegations against Krauss are backed up by direct testimony and eyewitness evidence, not merely some general appearence of shadyness.
There's no "mob mentality" involved. There's good evidence that Krauss is a serial sexual harasser, and that is why I think that he is one.
Every contrarian likes to imagine that they're standing up to a baying irrational mob. But in most cases they're just missing something obvious that everyone else can see clearly.
None of this, obviously, entails that Krauss is wrong about the clock thing.
The presumption of innocence has to be social and cultural, not just legal, for it to have any meaning at all. And I suggest that if it’s not social and cultural, it’s unlikely to be legal for long. The idea that we should abandon it out of hand because some people do bad things is mob mentality. It’s not like mobs are always wrong about their targets. It’s their decision processes that define them.
The evidence you found is not compelling. The evidence I found is not compelling. The ASU statement is not evidence. It’s hearsay. (It’s hearsay even if it’s all true.) No one has even bothered to address the fact that ASU is a party to the accusations and also has potential liabilities to manage.
If I’m missing something from your point of view it’s not because I haven’t seen what you’ve shown me. It’s because you’re “reading between the lines” which, while often useful in deciding whether to let someone in our home or business, is wholly inappropriate when deciding whether to vilify someone. “I don’t want to leave this guy alone with my daughter” is much different than “We shouldn’t listen to this guy about anything.”
And, again, the issue here is @iron0013’s original post, in which he not only doesn’t cite any of the things you and I cited, but goes a step farther and tries to use the fact of Krauss’ resignation as evidence of his motivations without even bothering to make an argument. Then people piled on the idea that we shouldn’t listen to Krauss at all. I’m willing to stipulate that you don’t have a mob mentality. Although we disagree, I think you’re reasonable. But surely you can see that it exists.
The presumption of innocence is an irrational bias that we introduce in criminal cases in order to favor false negatives over false positives. If you think that we should all be applying the presumption of innocence to each other all the time, then you've fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the principle that you think you're defending.
I think the original post didn't provide citations because Krauss's inappropriate behavior is well known and easy to verify from the sources in the Wikipedia article.
This discussion would be a lot easier if you'd just make your defense of Krauss, instead of accusing everyone else of being part of a mob. Krauss is not the victim. The victims are the women he harassed and the sex slaves of the pimp who bankrolled him, and who he publicly defended. Extraordinarily, you still talk vaguely as if there is some realistic doubt about any of this.
There is not such a lack of public voices that we must give every single one, even though of absolutely awful people, an equal hearing.
There are many, many people who would be more informative to listen on this topic. They could have been given the space to write an opinion article in this prestigious newspaper. It didn't have to be the sex pest. We missed out on hearing a good person speak on the subject, because a bad one was given the opportunity instead.
B) The clock is a publicity stunt by an organization that he has reason to feel aggrieved by. It's a conflict of interests not to mention that he has another axe to grind with them.
He was driven out of multiple positions by an allegation which is so unsubstantiated the alleged victim herself disclaims it. Complaining about the new McCarthyism doesn’t make one a reactionary any more than participating in it makes one a hero.
He may be motivated by sour grapes, as you suggest. You’ve got to make that case, though; not just state it’s obvious.
But even if you’re right, it’s absolutely irrelevant to his argument. What you’ve done here is simply attacked his character without evidence and without addressing the actual issue.
"Cancel culture" is a set of cultural behaviors whereby poorly or incompletely substantiated allegations result in the tarnishing of reputations via virtue signaling amplification.
Is it? I had no idea it was still a thing. I associate it first and foremost with fiction. Specifically, Dr. Strangelove: the campy black comedy that's fifty-six (56) years old.
If pushed, I probably would have guessed it was a real thing from the Cold War. Let me be clear: I couldn't have said with certainty that the Doomsday Clock was a real thing.
I had no idea that it was maintained in 2020. It belongs in the era of Burt Ward in tights. "Time to Stop the 'Doomsday Clock' — Because No One Cares" might be a better title.