
Time to Stop the ‘Doomsday Clock’. – Lawrence M. Krauss - DavidVoid
https://www.wsj.com/articles/time-to-stop-the-doomsday-clock-11579734922
======
basseq
_> 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.

~~~
arethuza
It's not quite so "campy" when you realise how seriously people who were
actual _nuclear war planners_ regarded Dr. Strangelove:

[https://www.wired.com/2018/03/geeks-guide-doctor-
strangelove...](https://www.wired.com/2018/03/geeks-guide-doctor-strangelove/)

I can recommend Ellsberg's book on nuclear war planning if you have
difficulties staying awake at night.

~~~
jmkni
> I can recommend Ellsberg's book on nuclear war planning if you have
> difficulties staying awake at night.

Are you implying it's boring?

~~~
arethuza
No - I meant its literally the only book that I have read that caused me to
have difficulties sleeping for a few nights.

Edit: Don't downvote jmkni - my fault for wording things strangely.

~~~
rbanffy
Some books kept me awake, but I wouldn't say I was calm enough to be
functional in that period.

~~~
arethuza
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.]

------
sasasassy
Well, of course.

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.

No, right now is much closer. (sarcasm)

~~~
makerofspoons
The clock now includes threats from climate change and disruptive technology,
which global civilization is doing next to nothing about.

~~~
goatlover
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?

~~~
hedora
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.

It seems much worse than the nuclear scare to me.

Here’s a HN discussion of the API report:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20325359](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20325359)

Here’s a report from the same organization walking through the math:

[https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/...](https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/API%201982%20Climate%20models%20and%20CO2%20warming.pdf)

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.

~~~
goatlover
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.

------
sehugg
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._

[https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-
time/](https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/)

~~~
whatshisface
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?

~~~
sehugg
They say more in the link if you care to read it:

 _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._

~~~
whatshisface
Exactly, a typical policy statement, and not at all related to nuclear physics
or any scientific expertise.

------
rc_mob
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.

~~~
brink
It's fear mongering.

~~~
Frost1x
Entirely correct.

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.

~~~
cr0sh
> 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.

------
jagged-chisel
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.

------
nfg
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!

~~~
Luc
Something by Oppenheimer perhaps? E.g.
[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1949/02/the-
ope...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1949/02/the-open-
mind/305431/)

Or Einstein:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1947/11/atomic-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1947/11/atomic-
war-or-peace/305443/)

~~~
nfg
Luc these both seem so close to what I have in mind, but neither are it.
Thanks so much though - if nothing else they’re both great reads!

------
Whatarethese
So many Wall Street Journal articles. Do that many people pay for the service?

~~~
philpem
Everyone's using archive.is to get under the paywall...

~~~
rohan1024
How come they have access?

------
rbanffy
We may need a non-nuclear one too. We are getting increasingly creative in
self-destruction methods.

~~~
murph-almighty
I thought they incorporated other existential threats like climate change?

~~~
Ohn0
That "clock" is more like a thermometer or a melting snowman

------
whatshisface
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.

~~~
jacquesm
At the time Twitter didn't exist, and Trump has - more than once - come close
to declaring war on another country through Twitter.

~~~
whatshisface
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.

~~~
cr0sh
Trump wanted to nuke a hurricane.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/what-if-nuke-nuked-
hurricane...](https://www.businessinsider.com/what-if-nuke-nuked-hurricane-
trump-detonate-2019-9)

Trump has asked in the past why we have nuclear weapons if we don't use them.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/03/trump-asks-why-us-cant-
use-n...](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/03/trump-asks-why-us-cant-use-nukes-
msnbcs-joe-scarborough-reports.html)

Trump, during a visit to the war memorial in Hawaii - had no idea what Pearl
Harbor was about, at least according to one book:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-pearl-harbor-
memorial-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-pearl-harbor-memorial-
tour-john-kelly-stable-genius-2020-1)

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?

~~~
whatshisface
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.

------
supernovae
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.

------
michaelhoffman
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_M._Krauss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_M._Krauss)

