1017: The End of the World | Skeptical Sunday

23:00It's so surprising how fear can spread when we don't fully understand something. The Y2K bug scare that had a lot of people worried about a computer-triggered apocalypse, I guess. I remember people freaking out about how all our systems would crash. We wouldn't have power. We wouldn't have water. Nuclear defense would go down. Or the missiles would just suddenly be like, I don't know what to do. Maybe I'll launch straight up in the air and then straight down and just detonate on a major city. I don't know. The clock's wrong. Which now, looking back, makes absolutely no sense. And And people will riot in the streets and everyone will die from dysentery.

23:31Can you shed some light on that one? We were but babes back then, I believe. I mean, I was 20. That makes me feel old. I was 11, but I remember it well. And yeah, it's funny. I don't know your demographics, but there are bound to be many listeners who weren't even born or were very young when Y2K was a thing. So this will sound really weird and stupid to them. Y2K or the year 2000 problem was due to a computer programming shortcut. To save data, many computers used two digits. So the year 1998 was written out as 98. The problem was that when the year 2000 arrived, these computers would read 00, as in 1900.

24:06So there was a lot of fear about this causing big problems. The most vivid image from this time, as I recall, because I was 11 and these things haunted my nightmares, was planes dropping from the sky. I just imagined that was going to happen everywhere. I still have that nightmare, like planes just going through our roof. So even my 11-year-old brain, though, was going, well, hang on, that's not how science works. Like, surely that's ridiculous. But you just think, well, all the adult scientists, all the sensible adults seem to be saying this is going to be a huge problem and the world is going to end.

24:35Perhaps Y2K is one of the best examples then of how the fear of the end of the world can take hold of us and push aside all attempts at common sense, science, and reasoning. It is really ridiculous. Some of that stuff is ridiculous. Sure, the water treatment stuff, maybe not going like, okay, I don't really understand how that works. Maybe that's a thing. But the planes dropping out of the sky is the equivalent of thinking, oh, if there's a power failure in my house and the microwave clock blinks zero zero, it's just going to spontaneously explode and destroy the whole kitchen. Yeah. A plane being like, I don't know what time it is.

25:06Straight into a mountain makes it makes no sense. But there must have been some scientific grounding to this. Right. Because it wasn't just morons that thought, oh, the Y2K bug might do something bad. Yeah, I think there were problems and issues around structures and banks, and governments spent billions addressing those problems. But the risk of planes falling out the sky was actually always extremely low. And that was really media hysteria. So were there actually any issues at all when the clock struck midnight in the year 2000 began? Did it do anything? Yep, yep. And I wrote some down. So when the year 2000 came, things were pretty much fine aside from a few glitches.

25:41In Japan, a nuclear power plant alarm was reportedly triggered at midnight, although it didn't result in any operational issues or safety threats. In Australia, bus ticket validation machines in two states stopped working, refusing to recognise the 2000 date. In Delaware, USA, 150 slot machines at a racetrack stopped working due to a Y2K bug. In Sheffield, the United Kingdom, incorrect Down syndrome risk calculations were given to 154 pregnant women due to a Y2K bug in a computer programme, leading to two abortions and four undetected Down syndrome cases. Okay, so that last one is pretty sad and serious, to be fair.

26:21I mean, imagine you maybe had an abortion and you were like, oh, shoot, I didn't have to do that, or the opposite. So maybe it's not fair to say that Y2K caused no problems at all, but its effects were hugely exaggerated, which probably says something about our obsession with the end of the world today. I just, I gotta presume we've always made these kind of predictions and then been proven wrong by the very fact that we are still alive. We're still here. Yeah, I suppose that's the downside of predicting the end of the world. You never get to gloat that you were right. You'll only ever look like an idiot or just be dead.

26:52Contrary to popular belief, Nostradamus didn't actually predict the end of the world. His writing was all in code and bits of Latin and French and symbols, and so it's really hard to decipher what he actually meant. And it seems he may have referenced various doomsday scenarios, but didn't necessarily put a date on them. His predictions are deliberately vague, and they're often exaggerated or modified by interpreters to fit certain narratives. Yeah, I've heard that a lot of his predictions that supposedly came true, they read more like horoscopes. So if you prod and you twist and you kind of give a little bit of flexibility over here and you maybe shift the date by a few more years, something that resembles something he maybe kind of said happened roughly about the time he maybe kind of said it might, but it was a little bit different, but not really.

27:38It's all sort of 2020 hindsight, fit the square peg through the round hole. nonsense. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And humans are pattern seekers by nature, so we can make pretty much anything fit the narratives we want to believe. American Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping predicted the end of the world several times, including the date of May the 21st, 2011. But the cognitive biases of these predictors, the people who do the predicting, are just crazy when he woke up not dead the next day. And by the way, just imagine that the night before, how nervous you'd be or excited or I don't even know what, like, how do you go to sleep?

28:11Like, you know, do you set an alarm? Do our alarms a thing the next day? Right. Okay. No, I'll just wake up when I'm dead. That's fine. I'll wake up gasping for air. Yeah. Horrible. Anyway, he woke up and he was like, ah, right, there is air. I can breathe and everything. So I'm just going to change that to October the 21st, 2011. So he just moved it five months back. I don't need to tell you that he was wrong. The world did not end, although it did for him just two years later when he died in 2013. Yeah, it's just got to be a little awkward. You got to think those people are true believers as well.

28:43Otherwise, it is way too high stakes and embarrassing to predict something like this, and then just be wrong, a few months later, wrong again, a few months later, wrong again. Then you're like, why don't I kick it down like five years? And then you just die. And everyone's like, that guy did not get that right at all. Wow. Cringe. Super cringe. Super cringe, embarrassing, and disappointing. That's the key word. Because going back a little further, there was the prophecy of William Miller. His followers known as Millerites, not Millerites, he called it the Second Advent, and it was part of the Second Great Awakening, and it was due for October the 22nd, 1844.

29:20Christ was coming and everything, and then he didn't come to be there. People called the Great Awakening then the Great Disappointment. Set yourself up for that one though. Set yourself up with that branding. It did then start the Seventh-day Adventist Church, who believe that Jesus did on that day start atoning for sins and clearing things up to come back at a later date. So Jesus has come back. It has set in motion some things about the end of the world, and Jesus will be back after these messages. Yeah. I love that the Millerites were disappointed that the world didn't end. But I guess if you believe that the Lord is coming down and you're going to heaven and then you finally get to gloat to everyone else that your religion was the correct one the whole time while cherubs are feeding you grapes in paradise, I can see why that's kind of disappointing.

30:08And the next day you're just like, crap, I have to cut the lawn today. All right. So with that in mind, will the world soon end? Presumably it has to. Does everything that has a beginning have an end? I'm getting philosophical now for probably no reason. Let's get philosophical. I don't think there's any real reason to believe the world will end in our lifetime. So, I mean, so, so, so many people have been wrong before when they predicted it would do. And I wonder if there's a hint of narcissism in believing it will happen when you're alive. A bit of like, oh, Sod's Law, you know, typical. Just when I was enjoying being alive, the world had to end.

30:42I mean, I must admit, I get tempted by that kind of thinking sometimes, you know, stuff like the pandemic. It's like, yep, had to happen when I was alive. Couldn't have just been not the pandemic. Anyway, even historical figures that we all know, Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther, made false predictions about the end of the world. Jim Jones of the Jonestown Massacre, obviously, is another one who thought a nuclear holocaust would annihilate us in 1967. Charles Manson had it at 1969. He thought that would be the end of the world. As I referenced before, the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses has repeatedly predicted it wrongly and wrongly and wrongly, and they keep going.

31:18As for the time ahead, Well, 1960s scientist Heinz von Furster predicted 2026 death by overpopulation. I don't know what that exactly looks like, just we're very squashed, I suppose. The UN warned in 2018, and that's a proper thing, the UN, of course, the United Nations, that we have until 2030 to prevent climate catastrophe. It appears that me, you and everyone listening to this will in a very short time on a cosmic level have perished millions of years ago, because that's not that long on a cosmic level. That's the blink of an eye for the universe and an exceptional amount of time for us. You can imagine distant space creatures landing on this dusty rock in millions of years and wondering if intelligent beings ever inhabited it.

32:04And then being like, what is this? Oh, it's a copy of MTV and everything that was on it. Wow, these people were absolute morons. They just played this show called Ridiculousness 23 hours a day. It was like they left a camera on inside a trailer home. Well, maybe that's what Mars is to us. Maybe millions of years ago, Mars had people like us building societies, climbing to new heights, arguing about trans-Martian rights, maybe. And now it's just a bunch of dust. It is a funny thing. I love that thought of like, you know, it seems so epic and galactic that there are these people out there or animals or whatever they might be or may have lived millions of years ago.

32:40But it's so funny to think of just the mundane daily things they might have argued about that seemed so important in the moment. And now it's just like your plan is just dust. And so will ours be at some point. But you know, such are the lengths of time that it's entirely possible that Mars did have a civilization at some point. And the Mars rover has found substantial evidence that Mars once had liquid water on its surface and may have had conditions for life. But we found no evidence of any such society having existed or civilization. We've got to specify, I suppose, what we mean by the end of the world.

33:11A lot of the apocalypse imagery from the Bible and other religions and things came at a time when we didn't realise we were one sphere among trillions. So is the universe the world that's ending? Is the earth the world? In which case the end of the world will probably end in a billion years, when the sun heats up to such an extent that the oceans will evaporate, resulting in a greenhouse effect that will make it almost impossible for life. In five billion years, the sun will grow into a red giant and potentially engulf the Earth. But scientists have discussed nudging the Earth out of the sun's growth spurt, or when it gets big, if we just move the Earth a bit further out, which would take 1 billion years to do if they would sort of do it year by year, nudge us very, very slightly, but it could potentially lead us to safety.

33:55I can't see anything going wrong with nudging the Earth out of its orbit just a little bit each year. What could go wrong with that? We should definitely start doing this. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And to think we're over here concerned about Hunter Biden's laptop or whatever. It's like, yeah, can we nudge the earth out of the orbit? Yeah, let's do that. Anyway, have you seen those dick pics? Unbelievable. Feeling like it's the end of the world? Cheer yourself up with one of the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. Once again, thank you for listening to and supporting the show.

34:26JordanHarbinger.com slash deals has all of the promo codes. Use the AI chatbot or you can email me and I'll look up the code for you. Thank you for supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. Okay, so if we're still around in 5 billion years, we got to survive 4 billion years in a boiling greenhouse with no water and no whatever else or like too much CO2 or whatever it is. Oh, gosh. That's going to be a problem. Yeah, I think so. By the end of the world, we don't really mean the universe or the earth. We really mean the end for humanity. I think that's what a lot of people really mean.

35:03I don't want to lose all optimism for the humans of 5 billion years in the future. I mean, look at how far technology has advanced in the last 20 years. The fact that we're able to have this conversation right now from California to London, while hundreds of thousands of people around the world listen at different times. I mean, that would have been seen as magic just 50 years ago or 100 years ago, and would have been beyond human imagination just a few hundred years ago. So we can't imagine the technology then of 200 years in the future. It's utterly beyond our comprehension. So what about 1 ,000 years or 10 ,000 or a million years?

35:35So the humans of 1 billion years time, that's 1 ,000 million years, we can't even begin to speculate. Perhaps to them, the problem of the sun engulfing them or evaporating the oceans is as easy to solve as it is for us to cure infections today with antibiotics. Right. So the idea is to keep staying ahead of the game, see how long we can outrun our own mortality. Some people think climate change will kill us within a few generations. So there's a race to find alternatives that prevent that problem before it ends the world. Others believe sentient AI is going to be the death of us. So we've got to figure out how to align them with us before it's too late.

36:16Then there's, of course, the peril of nuclear war. Shout out to Oppenheimer. So we're constantly inventing cool, crazy stuff and then trying to solve the bigger and bigger problems that this new tech gives us. Yeah, and that's why we're so obsessed with the end of the world, because every time we invent something, we need to keep at the back of our minds the very real possibility that it's going to kill us and end the world. Oppenheimer killed hundreds of thousands of people in Japan. It was devastating. But those two bombs packed the equivalent of 15 and 21 kilotons of TNT. Today's bombs pack what would be 300 kilotons of TNT, significantly more.

36:52Nuclear expert Francois Diaz-Morin believes a full-scale nuclear war between Russia and the US would kill 360 million people directly. So that doesn't even count, you know, all the people over the months from just being near it. Right. Yeah. So you can see why people worry and why they're so fascinated and terrified of the concept of the end of the world. But as you've said, people have been predicting the end of the world since they could write on stone tablets. Yeah, absolutely. I've long been fascinated by the Fermi paradox. I love that little paradox, named after physicist Enrico Fermi, who famously asked, where is everybody?

37:29Referring to aliens and stuff. The paradox is about the difference between the high chance of life in space and the fact that we have no proof of any civilizations anywhere. One possible explanation to the Fermi paradox is the Great Filter, which suggests that all advanced civilizations face a barrier at some point that stops them from going any further. The scary part is that we don't know if we've passed this filter or it's still to come. Ah, okay. So he's saying the universe is huge. There are trillions and trillions of habitable planets in theory, or maybe there's an infinite amount. Not sure how the math works.

38:06And the time scales are enormous too. So some civilizations out there theoretically have been going for millions or even billions of years. And you'd think by then they would have invented super fast travel. they'd be able to go through wormholes or whatever bend space time travel at the speed of light or in some ways we haven't even imagined probably that right if they're going that distance and they're doing that with energy sources we can't even begin to imagine like harnessing whole stars or something like that yeah you'd expect somebody or something somewhere would have colonized the milky way by now and yet there's no alien civilization that we know of yeah that's right One theory I like is the zoo theory.

38:46It suggests that aliens have discovered us and don't want to interfere. They just watch us. Perhaps we're just entertainment on their reality TV shows, as South Park has suggested. It might also be that no matter how long a civilization exists, no matter how smart they are, how good their technology is, the distances of space are simply too vast to cover everything, to get across great spaces like that. There are parts of the Milky Way where things are a little denser, because we're in a suburb of the Milky Way. So there are parts where the stars are closer together. And it's fascinating to imagine aliens who have discovered one another and now vacation on one another's planets, or maybe even face off in great wars.

39:27But the sad end of the world possibility is the great filter, the concept that every great civilization builds incredible technology that eventually leads to its own demise. It might be impossible once you build AI to go on, although I'd still say that the AI would then colonize the universe. You'd expect that even if the AI kills all the people, it would then want more and more resources and they'd be sending robots out or whatever it might be. We don't know what side of the great filter that we're on. But if no one is out there, I think it would be extremely unlikely that we're the only ones who ever got past it.

40:02So we really could be about to face the end of the world in some sort of filter way. Something might stop us from going further, or at least we'll die out as a race before creating interstellar travel beyond our neighborhood of the Milky Way. How do you think the world might actually end? Is it going to be a big natural event? You think it'll be a man-made disaster? or you think it'll be something we can't even imagine? That's the big question, Jordan. The truth is, of course, we don't know. There are many big risks that we face, like the ones you mentioned, and others like climate change and super smart AI.

40:33An asteroid impact is pretty unlikely, but could decimate us if it did happen. Over millions of years, if you sort of count all those years together, that asteroid collision becomes a little more likely. Although we might have great ways by then of deflecting asteroids by then, because we're already working on that. If a big asteroid comes, you know, how do you deflect it? then there's the extremely unlikely possibility of a gamma ray burst that happens close enough to wipe out our ozone and kill us all. The scary thing about that is that since the gamma rays travel at the speed of light, by the time we see it, it's already hit us.

41:08We wouldn't be able to detect it beforehand, and it would be so quick, and it was so scary. So that's a really scary thought. It could happen just now while we're listening to this or recording this or whatever. There is, of course, the depletion of resources possibility as well, which we see in movies like Interstellar. That's the reason they have to leave Earth, because there's just no essential materials. So that could happen as well. Right. It always feels like that couldn't happen. Like, well, we can't just run out of stuff. We tend to imagine this march towards technological progress and we sort of trust the people in charge.

41:40Or at least we feel like somebody somewhere knows what they're doing and is monitoring all this stuff. but then look at how COVID took us by surprise and the economies around the world were just desecrated. I think it would be fascinating to gaze into the future and see if progress is followed by regression. And if it's cyclical, like in Futurama, they show these worlds killing each other and then just building themselves up over and over again. Yeah, I love that. That's the iconic scene of the first Futurama episode and Fry's Frozen. You see like the thousand years happen and it's like they just go back to, you know, cavemen basically and then build up again and so on.

42:14And maybe that's what's written in the stars for us. I don't know. But it's funny, you know, we're so intelligent, we've come so far, but sometimes you're reminded of just how fragile we are. Like with the pandemic, that's another thing that could wipe us out. Not just pandemics, but biological warfare. Imagine if COVID had been, by a quirk of bad luck, 100 times more deadly. Well, that's most of us gone. Imagine a country or a person, basically a troll of humanity, manufacturing the deadliest virus to humans. because people can just do that so cheap now in their own basements and garages. So look, that said, a pandemic is supposedly unlikely to cause the end of the world because humans are so resilient and there will always be numbers that survive.

42:54That's what scientists seem to be saying. It won't wipe us out entirely. AI is a big one at the moment. Everyone's talking about it because of ChatGPT and all the other chatting devices. And there's a huge race now to find ways to align AI with humanity. but we don't even know what that means. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company that's created ChatGPT, was saying that typically with technology we get it wrong like 20 times before we get it right. Well with the question of alignment of AI we don't have that option to get it wrong. Once we get it wrong once the cat is out the bag. The AI keeps getting smarter and from then on outfoxes every attempt by us to shut it down.

43:33So if alignment isn't done just right that's it and We're in a bind because the West has to keep developing AI because the only thing scarier than a world where we built AI that might kill us is the Russians or the Chinese or someone else getting there first. Many people think that where we are now with AI is basically the start of the end. We're in a sort of arms race with other countries to build AI before anyone can stop to consider the safety and alignment concerns. But again, a lot of other people believe that the AI doom mongers are exaggerating just like the old world predictors because they want attention for their product.

44:09There's no total consensus that AI would necessarily do us any harm. It's just that it could do. Yeah, it's starting to sound a little bleak, but then I guess this is a podcast episode about the end of the world. Yeah, each of these issues from climate change and resource depletion to nuclear war and AI is a big threat. But we have reason to be positive. We have a history of being resilient and innovative. Our best defence against these threats is understanding them and being ready. And also, I'd hope that people listening take on board all of these concerns, but don't obsess about them. History is full of times we've mistakenly thought the world would end from the Y2K concern to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

44:47Just as people worried in the 50s and 60s about death via nuclear war, and those before them thought Spanish flu would be the end of days, and those before them saw the Black Death as the ultimate end, we now rightly worry about climate change and AI. But we can do this. We're pretty cool. Plus, in the scheme of things, it's best to be thankful for every day we have on this planet and to enjoy our time with our loved ones and our favorite podcasters. Nicely done. But let's say we've spent all those nice times with our loved ones and favorite podcasters, and we've cured mortality and we're living billions of years.

45:21Imagine yourself living in the restaurant at the end of the universe in Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy. It's that little glass dome of a restaurant and you can see the universe end around you. What do you see? Eventually, Earth will succumb to time, oceans evaporating, forests wilting, and cities crumbling to dust. The sun will expand into a red giant, consuming its planets before turning into a cold white dwarf. Meanwhile, galaxies will drift further apart in an ever-expanding universe. Stars will dim, nebulas fade, and the cosmic structures disperse into intergalactic emptiness. All light will dwindle until only the faintest remnants remain, marking the universe's final breath and the silencing of the Big Bang.

46:06The once vibrant cosmos will become a frigid, infinite wasteland. Our unique journey in the cosmic ballet will be long gone. Now that was poetic and pretty depressing, man. Pretty freaking depressing. Tell it to the universe. Look, I still think we're going to live forever, and maybe I need that kind of cognitive dissonance. You know, I can't get up in the morning if I think I'm going to die one day. So the point is we're all just guessing, predicting and falling back on this tribal paranoia. I think when you see how many generations were wrong before us, it should give us hope of at least lasting some significant amount of time.

46:40It may feel like the end is nigh, but it always feels that way and it never happens. Well, at least it hasn't happened so far. And hey, despite the unknowns and dangers we face, We also have the power to shape our future. And to our listeners, always remember, the world is a complex and sometimes daunting place, but it's also filled with mystery and wonder. Stay curious, stay informed, and most importantly, stay subscribed to this podcast and stay skeptical. That's what I meant to say. And as we wrap up this special edition of Skeptical Sunday, I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger, reminding you to question everything, especially people who tell you that something is the end of the world, literally or otherwise.

47:18Until next time. Thank you for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to Jordan at jordanharbinger.com or use the form on the website. Show notes on the website, transcripts in the show notes, advertisers, deals, and ways to support this show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram, or you can connect with me on LinkedIn. And you can find Andrew Gold on his podcast, On the Edge with Andrew Gold, anywhere you get your podcasts. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird, Millie Ocampo, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

47:55Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show, like joining a doomsday cult and trying to escape on a comet. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love, and if you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism that we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. Here's a sample of my interview with Scambuster Coffeezilla.

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