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Comment by strasser | Hacker News Reader

moving some imaginary clock back and forth to give/relieve oneself anxiety always struck me as kinda weird.

Don't people have anything else to do?

The concept of how close humanity is to global catastrophe is difficult to convey directly, yet it's useful to be able to do so. The Doomsday Clock is one easy way.

Large, complex systems are by there very nature difficult to understand. Being able to summarize them easily — even if they don't completely capture the nuance — allows people to get an idea of what's going on. It's not much different from using KPIs and other metrics to understand a business.

You can argue that the metrics aren't useful, but providing reasons why you think so, and possibly suggest better ways would help justify your claim.

The problem is that they don't have a clear method of calculation and a clear meaning of what a minute means.

For example, let's made up some criteria:

1 minute = 99% probability of human extinction in 10 years

2 minutes = 98% probability of human extinction in 10 years

3 minutes = 97% probability of human extinction in 10 years

I'm not sure what 2 hours means. Probably the scale should not be more complex than (100-p) * min/%

Or perhaps it's better to define 1 minute = 90% probability of human extinction in 100 years

Or 1 minute = 50% probability of human extinction in 1 year

It's not clear what 1 minute before doomsday officially means.

Moreover, let's say that they define that 1 minute is x% chance of humanity destruction in y years. How are they calculating it? Do they have any model? How did they calibrate the model? How did they test the model? Is it reliable?

It's a made up number, without any scientific base. It's only an opinion of a bunch of people that happened to work as scientific, not a scientific measurement.

I think you've made a lot of valid points. It's a pretty complex system they're trying to quantify.

You have to start somewhere, and having a group of people who specifically decide to take into account what they consider useful criteria and deliberate about it is a step forward. I think it's clear it could be better if it were more rigorous. It wouldn't surprise me if there are people out there working to do just that. It's not useless just because it's attempting to quantify a complex system in a more subjective manner when it's not clear better alternatives are available. You're right that it's an opinion of scientists, and not a scientific measurement. They're experts in their fields and their opinion does mean something. You're free to weight that how you want, of course.

It blurs the line between science and bullshit. For example in

  Scientifics say the Doomsday clock is 2:30 minutes before Midnight

  Scientifics say this wall painting is 40.000 years old

Which one is reliable? Which one should a young Earth creationist believe? Are 40.000 years real years or some kind of metaphor? Is that number reliable?

They should each be interpreted in the context they're intended. What does it mean to describe a particular pain to be a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10? Or the numerical values on the Likert scale to measure opinion? Do these similarly blur the line between science and bullshit? The question "are we closer or further from global catastrophe?" is one worth trying to answer. The Doomsday Clock is one way to make this comparison. Indeed, the Doomsday Clock value is much more like pain or Likert scales in that it's used for comparison, as opposed to an absolute value.

I'm not sure what you're arguing so strongly against. I'm not saying the Doomsday Clock is perfect. I think it's useful. It can likely be improved. When/if we can find better quantitative representation for this, I agree we should use it.

Come on—trying to determining the risk of a nuclear war or any global catastrophe and communicating that risk to the public seems pretty important to me.

Don't fixate on the "imaginary clock" aspect, it's just a representation.

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