The Doomsday Clock is an out of date metaphor and should be replaced.
I think it was valuable during the cold war for the doomsday clock to be a representation of risk that everyone could easily recognize and talk about, but I think it is now likely doing more harm than good.
Bad Things:
-Trying to include many types of risks: The doomsday clock was originally a representation of the risk of large scale nuclear war, now it includes climate, biorisk, and AI. Tracking progress and risk in these fields is complex. Tracking them all at once it’s not really clear what increase or decrease in the clock means or if you should have trust in the risk evaluations from these disparate fields. (Oh, also looks like Anders Sandberg already said something like this)
-Adding too much granularity (now with seconds!): This seems like a move because they want it to move forward to give people a sense of urgency, but it was already real close to midnight. Probably it should have been moved much further away from midnight when the cold war ended and increase or decrease depending on stability of current nuclear deals.
Qualities I’d like in new symbols of potential global catastrophes:
-Representing specific global risks
-Easily explainable what heuristics/data are being used to alter the state of the new symbol
-Simple Representation
Probably not so hot take.
The Doomsday Clock is an out of date metaphor and should be replaced.
I think it was valuable during the cold war for the doomsday clock to be a representation of risk that everyone could easily recognize and talk about, but I think it is now likely doing more harm than good.
Bad Things: -Trying to include many types of risks: The doomsday clock was originally a representation of the risk of large scale nuclear war, now it includes climate, biorisk, and AI. Tracking progress and risk in these fields is complex. Tracking them all at once it’s not really clear what increase or decrease in the clock means or if you should have trust in the risk evaluations from these disparate fields. (Oh, also looks like Anders Sandberg already said something like this)
-Adding too much granularity (now with seconds!): This seems like a move because they want it to move forward to give people a sense of urgency, but it was already real close to midnight. Probably it should have been moved much further away from midnight when the cold war ended and increase or decrease depending on stability of current nuclear deals.
Qualities I’d like in new symbols of potential global catastrophes: -Representing specific global risks -Easily explainable what heuristics/data are being used to alter the state of the new symbol -Simple Representation