So at a certain point this stopped being the “We are on the verge of nuclear war” sign and became the “How upset are people on the left” sign

It's set by people for whom the clock serves as a mechanism to garner alarmist attention whenever they feel short of it. In so doing, they diminish not just themselves, but science as a whole.

At best, the clock is indeed a measuring device; one not of our peril, but of the anxieties of a group of otherwise non-notables. In that sense, it figures that it'd say we're closer to "doom" than during the Cuban missile crisis, because that's the intensity of current vibes, particularly if you're a modern activist plugged into the techno-socious of reactionary negativism.

The Doomsday Clock has been set so consistently high as to be completely meaningless as a benchmark.

I've always felt the idea was interesting, but the execution was silly. There are real, systematic problems - both specific to major countries and those that are common to nearly all.

But while they are very concerning, none of them I would say are an immediate, existential threat. Nuclear threat during the cold war was very real. International tensions were high and one mistake could have meant the death of countless millions.

What we see today is nothing like that. Is there vast inequality? Yes. Are there systems with terrible rewards? Corruption? Environmental concerns? Yes, yes, yes.

But none of those are apocalyptic in the way that I feel the Doomsday clock is meant to represent.

IMO they've used it so often for the wrong thing, that now it's watered down to the point of being meaningless.

So it's set by scientists. But the article fails to mention it's an art project. The clock itself being an art piece, and the setting of it a performance.

I have looked but I can't find out if it actually means something. Does 89 seconds before midnight mean we have a 50% chance to survive the next N years somehow?

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The Doomsday Clock really strains credulity; I'd love to see a case for how we're closer to (as defined in this article) total nuclear annihilation or even a limited exchange than we were at any point in the cold war. The case is not convincingly made by any of the subjects in the article.

Nuclear proliferation is still something to be taken with deadly seriousness but the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences needs to cut the hyperbole and present their case more convincingly.

> He believes that the erosion of shared reality is a greater danger than putting AI in control of nuclear weapons.

Likely the hype of the doomsday clock contributes to that erosion.