Doomsday scoreboard

Perception of the Doomsday Scoreboard

• Some expected a parody of doomsday conspiracies and were unsettled that several “serious” models (e.g., Limits to Growth, Fourth Turning–style cycles) look at least superficially plausible.
• Others see the site as the ultimate “nothing ever happens” meme: catastrophic predictions keep failing while history mostly slogs along.
• A few argue the tone is smug, given how much real suffering is already occurring.

Quality and Types of Predictions

• Complaints that putting religious “second coming” prophecies on the same list as scientific or system-dynamics work (Limits to Growth, IPCC-style analysis, Turchin’s cliodynamics) is misleading.
• Limits to Growth is described both as “laughable” (invoking the Simon–Ehrlich wager) and as a useful, if imperfect, model of overshoot and collapse; one commenter links Python code for simulating it.
• Some note missing entries (e.g., Turchin’s unrest prediction, IPCC projections, Year 2038), and ask how “pending” vs “active” are defined; the author explains it’s tied to the prediction’s stated date range.

What Counts as an “Apocalypse”?

• Debate over whether a US civil war or Great Depression–scale crisis really qualifies. Many see that as a low bar compared to extinction or global societal collapse.
• Others broaden “apocalypse” to include narrowly averted disasters (e.g., asteroid deflection) or major regional collapses.
• Distinctions drawn between “end of the world as we know it” vs human extinction; the scoreboard mostly tracks the former.

Survivorship Bias and Historical Collapse

• Several point out survivorship bias: we only see the timelines where predictions failed; societies that collapsed may have had accurate prophets whose records were lost.
• Counterpoint: collapse often doesn’t erase all knowledge (Roman, Maya, etc.), and in some collapses many people may even have been better off post‑collapse (Tainter’s thesis).

Climate, War, and Real-World Crises

• Some argue that, scoreboard aside, we’re already in something crisis-like: pandemic lockdowns, mass surveillance, major wars, Gaza, democratic erosion, and an emerging “technofascist” order.
• Climate concerns dominate many “doomer” comments: fears of missed emissions targets, lethal wet‑bulb temperatures, and billion‑person migrations from South Asia; others mention geoengineering and rich–poor survival asymmetries.
• Nuclear weapons are framed as a persistent “sword over us”; nuclear disarmament is seen as politically implausible, but conventional great‑power war is also viewed as catastrophic.

Psychological and Philosophical Themes

• One thread argues that fear of apocalypse is really fear of inevitable loss and impermanence; even without doomsday, everything we value is eventually lost.
• Replies stress timescale: people fear abrupt near‑term endings that nullify their lifetime efforts, not abstract millennia‑scale endings.
• Several emphasize focusing on a “gentle” transition and minimizing avoidable suffering, individually and societally.

Religious Apocalypse Debate

• Some note that, within Christian scripture, the apocalypse is supposed to arrive without warning, undercutting date‑setting; others counter with “signs” passages and prophetic books.
• A long sub‑thread debates the internal consistency of Christian doctrine around the Trinity and Jesus being “fully human and fully divine,” using this as an example of how contested and interpretive apocalyptic texts are.
• One commenter urges treating Revelation as largely about past Roman-era events rather than a script for future technological or political horrors.

Miscellaneous and Humor

• Comparisons to other old‑web “end of the world” curiosities and calls for similar scoreboards for financial bubbles.
• Jokes about someone etching Wikipedia on metal or glass to survive collapse.
• Meta‑observations: people rarely imagine they live in the “middle” of history; bangs are more narratively appealing than slow whimpers, so doomsday predictions will keep coming regardless of their track record.