In 2024, the Doomsday Clock remains at 90 seconds to midnight | Hacker News Reader

In 2024, the Doomsday Clock remains at 90 seconds to midnight

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20 pointsgeox9 comments

The Doomsday clock is just a bunch of (mostly) old men flipping hands on a clock based on nothing but their gut, and attracting a lot of attention.

It is a total and complete embarrassment.

Recently someone recommended the book "Level 7" by Mordecai Roshwald here, I recommend it now in turn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_7_(novel)

I have never met anyone that has read that book besides me.

There is 2 of us now!

I recommend it too!

A reminder that there is no quantitative process here whatsoever and these people simply pick a number from thin air and then use it as an opportunity to talk about themselves and their opinions.

Shouldn't they at least have various p(doom) numbers for various things they think are problems? I don't really know how you could construct a "seconds to midnight" (or minutes to midnight, theoretically this thing is supposed to be a whole 24 hour clock, but when's the last time that happened?) value for something that's inherently probabilistic.

"The clock's original setting in 1947 was seven minutes to midnight. It has since been set backward eight times and forward 17 times. The farthest time from midnight was 17 minutes in 1991, and the nearest is 90 seconds, set on January 24, 2023."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock

I think 1947 was significantly more perilous than 2024. 1949 when the USSR under Stalin tested their first atomic bomb the clock was set to only 3 minutes to midnight. When populations are scared, they become irrational. Look at all the laws that were passed after 9/11. I'm glad people are starting to become immune to this sort of thing.

Unfortunately for them, this particular fear mongering mechanism has a numerical limit. In a few years it will be 0.05 seconds to midnight, then 0.005 SECONDS TO MIDNIGHT!!

I mean, I agree about the fearmongering, but the comparison is off.

1947 was significantly safer than 2024 precisely because the USSR had tested successfully. If the US was the only country with nuclear weapons, it would have nuked the USSR, China, and a dozen other countries by now. This is how the US operates with technological advantages (when it still had them); From the air, from afar, safe on its big little island on the other side of the globe.

But today, it no longer has that advantage, and it's a dying empire, which in 1947 clearly it wasn't. Dying empires get desperate, especially after the loss of technological supremacy; all of its geopolitical rivals have hypersonics now, the US can't get one off the ground. It's been doing every desperate thing it can to extend the neocolonial party another few years. This is way more dangerous.

>If the US was the only country with nuclear weapons, it would have nuked the USSR, China, and a dozen other countries by now.

Have any backup for this? The primary way the US gets countries to do what the US wants is to throw unholy gobs of money at them.

>But today, it no longer has that advantage, and it's a dying empire, which in 1947 clearly it wasn't.

You think the US is a dying empire, or Russia? If it's the US, whatever you are reading isn't based in reality. Name a peer.

These guys are delusional. They moved it 3 times during the last president for attention, but 10 seconds during proxy war between NATO and Russia.

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