What’s Doomsday got to do with it? questions for John Mecklin
From Avondale: Q: Regarding nuclear warfare and how that affects the clock, how do you differentiate rhetoric and empty threats from a serious potential issue? A: Essentially, everyone on the board and who decides on the time until midnight is a professional (including 15 Nobel laureates). These professionals discuss and really study what is rhetoric [...]
“Fallout” as a Result of “Nuclear Colonization”
Group: Raphael Barnes, Claire Paterson, Jack Plants In “The Age of the Fallout” by anthropologist and professor Joseph Masco, he highlights the impact of what is termed fallout– a notion he considers a to have solidified during the Cold War (1947-1991). Although initially “constituted as the bomb’s lesser form” (142), Masco explicitly identifies fallout as [...]
Doomsday
Group Post Sept. 11 Elsie, Meredith, Dani G, Dani D How does the future affect the present? https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/can-the-future-affect-our-decisions-in-the-present/ In this article, Radcliffe ponders the question about whether or not the prospect of the future can affect the present. People tend to be very critical about their present day actions affecting the future. [...]
Doomsday Clock skeptics attempt to ask non-threatening questions:
Skype conversation with John Mecklin: Group: Armando Dollero, Ousmane Sow, Oscar Fossum What questions did we ask? What inputs do you consider in calculating the time until midnight? About this idea of “misperception”: what happens if you get down to seconds? Do you fear that as the clock approaches midnight that the clock could lead to [...]
Doomsday Questions
Terminality Notes click this here
Linear Time, Telos, and Extinction
Group: Raphael Barnes, Claire Paterson, Jack Plants An essential facet of the modern, disenchanted, secular world is the conception of time as linear, unceasing, and perpetual. In a discussion of the problems faced in the secular subject of history, Chakrabarty notes that: "History’s own time is godless, continuous, and, to follow Benjamin, empty and homogenous [...]
Politics of Conservation
Group 1: Elsie, Meredith, Dani G, Dani D What is human intervention? Destruction vs conservation http://www.endangered.org/10-easy-things-you-can-do-to-save-endangered-species/ (conservation) What is the quality of life of species in captivity? This opinion piece in The Guardian is written by someone who supports zoos for their efforts in conservation and capability to reintroduce species to their [...]
Conceptualizing Biodiversity
first group paper click it
why should we care about extinction? a running thesis
Group: Armando Dollero, Ousmane Sow, Oscar Fossum Our group was interested in understanding extinction from a philosophical standpoint. For example, what is the significance of extinction to humans (subjectively), and is there any significance to extinction on an objective level? Instead of tackling such large questions in today’s group research project, we decided to [...]