It’s The End Of The World Again

It’s only a matter of time. This world had a beginning, and all created things have beginnings and ends. Thus, this world will have an end. I want to stress this is a certainty.

But when?

There are several theories. One Science model takes existence and its “laws” as an occult given, posits several things about the way certain things like stars work, and then predicts the big bright star out the window will come to a vainglorious end, puffed up with pride, which swallow up our world some Y billion years from now. (The exact value of Y is not important to us.)

Let’s call that the Sun Shines Brightly model, because there are rival Science end-of-the-world theories. Such as “climate change.” This one says for any year X, add 100, and that sum will be the end date of the world because of “runaway” “global warming”. The details are sketchier than the SSB model, and it’s not clear that everything goes (to soften an old saying) mammaries ascendent when the end arrives. But it will surely kill all of those who are alive in the year of our Lord X+100.

Nuclear winter is a third Science model, which functions much like “climate change”, but where the constant X is a lot lower, say, 10. Thanks to yet another conflict in the Land of Perpetual War, we may have a chance to test this one.

The AI apocalypse, say rationalists, a people descended from those who began the French Revolution, will cause the world to turn into paperclips. I’m not sure if they mean one large paperclip, or lots of little ones. But in any case, you yourself, and all you see, will turn into a paperclip. I do not jest. The timing of this is some small period of days or weeks after the Singularity. This is the point at which computer models decide to turn the world into paperclips.

There are more modest variations of AI doom, but they are all in the same vein. My favorite is the one where AI takes everybody’s job, so nobody can work, or have money, and so everybody starves.

Nanobots turning the world into grey goo is Science model number four. We’re told scientists will manufacture wee frisky robots, who like the AI that can only think of paperclips, contemplate only reproduction, and will thus multiply ceaselessly and uncontrollably until all material, including your body, is used in the replication and production of more nanobots. Oddly, scientists never say why they will create these robots. This, like “climate change”, is always some years off.

A fifth Science model, and one more familiar to us, is Gain-of-Lethality. Scientists anxious for glory will create a virus so deadly that all life is wiped out. Timing here is less precise, but it could be any day.

Coming in at number six are UFOs. For reasons unspecified, but if you’ve seen the Oscars are far from unclear, aliens will arrive and roast us. I mean they’ll either laserbeam us all into hot particles so small they’ll only be useful to nanobots, or they will cook us up. To Serve Man and all that. This will happen “soon”.

Number seven: nuclear fusion at long last comes on line, instantly when the switch is thrown there forms a black hole into which are all sucked. CERN is reportedly laboring at this as we speak.

That gives a flavor but does not exhaust the many ways some believe Science will end the world.

I start this list with Science, because of course there are any number of Religious models for the end of the world, and because Scientists often amuse themselves by poking fun at those who cling to their Bibles, dumb rubes who believe silly and weird things, bizarraries which they are far too smart to consider.

(Perhaps AI-powered nanobots powered by microfusion can be trained to eat carbon dioxide, which the aliens were causing us to produce, this miracle chemical being in short supply on their own planet; after which we confiscated the alien ships and escape the planet before the sun blows up.)

A prominent religious theory, in the news today, has Dispensationalist Christians—the real, hardcore immanentizers of the eschaton—prodding Our Lord to get into the Return business by unconditionally loving everybody’s favorite foreign country and setting off Armageddon. For this singular service, they expected to be whisked away from earth before the terrors they purposely hurry along, and not-so-secretly wish for, can be unleashed.

Of course, most Christians believe Our Lord will indeed return. Some sects make a good living predicting that this will be “soon.” Jehovah’s Witnesses did this often enough with hard dates, but have since learned to soften their stance. Most of the rest rely on the idea that “no man knows the day or the hour.”

Many religious Jews, happy to take money and support from Dispensationalists, while dismissing their ideas as crazy, await their Messiah, who will come and triumphantly destroy their enemies. Muslims are awaiting the Twelfth Imam whose presence signals the End. Muslims, incidentally, also believe Jesus (as prophet) himself will return and slay Antichrist. Buddhists see Maitreya coming, who again shows up for the final battle. Hindus say it will be Vishnu. And so, curiously, on. The world has always been waiting for its end.

These, as you know, are only a fraction of religious end-time models. Which brings us to the peer-reviewed paper “End of world beliefs are common, diverse, and predict how people perceive and respond to global risks” by Matthew Billet and others in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (My quotes are from a preprint.)

I am delighted they mention the most prominent prophet of the Dispensationalists, Hal Lindsey, who wrote the blockbuster (the word is cliche, but accurate) The Late Great Planet Earth. Which was also a film (starring Orson Welles!, and which I saw in the theatre when I was a boy). Lindsey’s ideas are still alive, though much massaged to keep up with current events. The paper’s authors say

Lindsey’s book was enormously influential in shaping the political-theological platform of the Reagan administration, invigorating a politically engaged Evangelical conservatism that continues to shape American policy today…

And how.

As I say (nauseatingly often), we are all expert at finding evidence which comports with our models or theories or beliefs (take your pick). But almost all of us (yes, even scientists) are lousy at finding evidence which disconfirms what we believe. Our authors discover these propensities about beliefs in end-times models.

As we cannot help but see events as fitting our favorite theory, it’s natural to act on them, and act more urgently the closer we think the end is. This is far from surprising. Our authors discover this, too. Only they felt they had to lather on a lot of their own theory on this proposition. They gave samples of people various questions, numerically scored answers, and then slapped them into statistical models. Some of the questions (with model numbers we can ignore):

My favorite were the “Personal Control” section, which show people are happy to be involved at ending this Vale of tears. There is fun in thinking about the freedoms (there is no better word) awaiting us if we knew the world was ending shortly. If it doesn’t, we still have to pay off the credit cards, shovel the snow, endure the illness, experience terrible loss, and everything else. How much better to suppose the end is near.

Where the authors err is focus. Most people don’t think about these things constantly, and when they do it is usually only vaguely. But they can think about them when asked, as they were here. Alas, the act of observing these attitudes creates an immediacy in the minds of those answering, especially knowing one is in a “study”, and brings theories to seem more urgent. By which I mean the authors’ results will paint a more anxious scenario than we find in life.

Yet it remains true, as I said at the beginning, that the end will come. So it’s a question which theory is the correct one. Naturally, I, like you, think my favored theory is the most likely correct, just as you think yours is, and that all the others wrong, or improbable.

Here are the various ways to support this work: