The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1017: The End of the World | Skeptical Sunday

Episode Date: July 14, 2024

If you're constantly obsessed over predictions that the end of the world is nigh, Andrew Gold has some (mostly) good news for us on this Skeptical Sunday! Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we’re joined by On the Edge host Andrew Gold! On This Week's Skeptical Sunday, We Discuss: Throughout history, would-be prophets and doomsaying groups have predicted the end of the world, but all have been wrong so far. This includes religious prophecies, cult beliefs, and misinterpretations of ancient calendars like the 2012 Mayan prediction. The concept of the end of the world is often used by religions and cults to control their members, instilling fear and promoting compliance with their rules and beliefs. There are several potential threats to humanity's survival, including climate change, nuclear war, pandemics, resource depletion, and the development of artificial intelligence. However, the likelihood of these causing a complete end to humanity is debated. The Fermi Paradox and the concept of the Great Filter suggest that advanced civilizations may face barriers to long-term survival, which could explain why we haven't encountered alien life despite the vastness of the universe. While concerns about global threats are valid, it's important to maintain perspective and not become overly anxious. Humanity has shown resilience and innovation in the face of past challenges. By staying informed, curious, and skeptical, we can work towards addressing potential threats and shaping a positive future for ourselves and future generations. Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [e-mail] and let him know! Connect with Andrew Gold on Twitter and Instagram, and check out On the Edge with Andrew Gold here or wherever you enjoy listening to fine podcasts! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1017 This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host Andrew Gold. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers. On Sundays, we do Skeptical Sunday. rotating guest co-host and I, break down a topic you may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions. Topics such as circumcision, sovereign citizens, recycling, chem trails,

hypnosis, homeopathy, and more. And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, we've got some starter packs that'll help you do it. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion, negotiation, psychology, disinformation, cyber warfare, crime cults, and more to help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today, we're taking a journey into one of the most fascinating, perplexing, and sometimes unsettling realms out there. The end of the world. I don't know whether it was the pandemic, climate change, or the Ukraine-Russia war, but there's something apocalyptic in the air.

Many people think the world is going to end, but we'll be casting a skeptical eye over the people who have said exactly that and been wrong throughout history. We'll also be looking at Oppenheimer and Barbie or Barbenheimer, if you will, delving into the beliefs. Do you use that in the UK, Andrew? Do you use Barbinheimer? No, yeah, you're welcome. That's been all the rage here, Barbenheimer. We're going to delve deep into the beliefs of culture and religions, talking about aliens, the Fermi paradox, and then looking at how the world might actually end to help us navigate through this labyrinth of theories, beliefs, and predictions. We're joined by a very special guest, Andrew Gold, host of the daring and insightful podcast, On the Edge with Andrew Gold. Make sure to check it out. I've been a guest on it.

I mean, one of the best guests on it anyway. He's known for pushing the envelope and fearlessly examining the extremities of human beliefs and society. Andrew, great to have you back on the show. Thank you, Jordan. It's a pleasure to be here, and it sounds like we have quite a conversation ahead of us. If we get time to do it before the end of the world... That's right. The doomsday clock is ticking. And what is the doomsday clock, by the way?

I keep hearing about that. Yeah, well, we'll get into that. If there's time... No, sorry, right. The doomsday clock is a symbol that represents the likelihood. of a man-made global catastrophe, managed by the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Science and Security Board, the clock has been ticking metaphorically since 1947. The closer the clock is to midnight, the closer we are to global disaster.

The decision to move the hands of the clock is made by the board, taking into account the current events that could lead to a global catastrophe such as nuclear risk and climate change. So you can probably guess my next question. What time is it? It's 90 seconds to midnight, which is the closest it's ever been to disaster. That's comforting. It's a mix of climate change, AI, and the war in Ukraine, as you say, that have caused that shift. Do they ever move it back? I feel like this is one of those things where they're like, it's six minutes to midnight.

And then 10 years later, they're like, it's two minutes to midnight. And we're at 90 seconds now. It's like, okay. But AI is not going anywhere. Climate change is probably not going anywhere. I mean, are we just really getting closer to disaster? Is it just a bunch of old people that are like, ah, well? When I was younger, the clock was 20 minutes to midnight, and it's way worse now because we're old.

That's what it sounds like to me. I think that sometimes, look, we have to listen to experts and scientists and people who have got a clock that predicts the end of the world or whatever to an extent. But I also think, as we've spoken about before, a little bit, when we're trying to be skeptical, that sometimes people are really, really good in their chosen area and in their chosen field. And to predict the end of the world, you really need to be able to sort of draw so many different fields together to have any understanding of it. They do move it back, and for a couple of years, it was sort of all right until the pandemic hit and then the AI and Ukraine. But I really feel like me and you could just, or anyone listening could just sit there and go, okay, well, this year seems a bit bad. So let's move that clock closer to midnight and let's move it back and so on. Sure. I mean, also it's the board of

atomic scientists or something like that, you said, right? So I get that, they have their finger on the pulse of nuclear holocaust. But do they know all about climate change? Do they know anything about AI, probably not nearly as much as they know about being an atomic scientist. So, I don't know, are they, just stick to nuclear war guys. We'll have different clocks for the rest. That's my opinion. But anyway, I guess the release of Oppenheimer came out at the right time, right? It's amazing how you can look back at different time periods and see how the movies reflected the concerns of the day. That's right. We are fascinated by the concept of the end of the world or things coming to get us and kill us. So you've got invasions of the body snatches in the 1950s

reflecting the concerns that communists were infiltrating us. And the day after tomorrow in 2004 reflected our growing concerns about climate change. So Oppenheimer today may be about something that happened in a different era with the whole Second World War and all of that stuff. But its release coincides with our anxieties today about the end of the world. What about Barbie? What does that say about us? I suppose if you want to be super pseudo-intellectual about it, it reflects our generations pining to cling on to the days of youth and innocence as they slip from the hands that once combed the hair of their favorite doll. Did you have a doll, Jordan? Yeah, I did. It wasn't a Barbie. Not that I should have any shame about that. But no, I had a couple dolls. I had something called a Beanie Boy, which was like a little guy wearing a hat that had a spinner on it that I took off really early in the game. It had the thing where you pulled the cord and it would say. say something like, hi, I'm Beanie Boy or whatever, right?

One of those. And I cracked it open when I was older and there's a tiny little record in there. That's how they made the sound. Oh, that's quite cool. Yeah, really cool, right? Yeah. So no electronics needed. Just you'd pull the cord, it would pull a spring and it would play this little record

that said, hi, I'm Beanie Boy or whatever. And I have still another doll that's a little tiny baby that my daughter plays with now. Oh, that's always sweet, isn't it being able to pass those things? And my grandma sewed clothes for it. And my daughter still has those little baby clothes on that little baby. Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah. That is beautiful.

It is. I'm glad I asked. Yeah, this is very relevant to the apocalypse that we're talking about right now. It is relevant. Your listeners must want to know a bit more about the real Jordan Harbinger and to know about the dolls. I know that you and I talk about dolls a lot off camera and off audio. It's one of my favorite topics off camera, for sure. Anyway, back to movies.

The other big hitter this summer was Mission Impossible. And if you're going to obsess about the end of the world, it makes sense that you also obsess about the idea of saving the world, and that's what Tom Cruise believes he's doing in real life. It's why so many of his movies feature him saving the world. Back in 2005, he was at his most vocal about his religion or cult Scientology, and that coincided with his role in War of the Worlds, where he saved us all from an alien invasion. Well, it so happens that Scientologists also believe that an evil alien called Lord Zeno is responsible

for all the sadness and bad stuff in the world, and Scientologists have to save us from our own reactive minds. Tom Cruise is one of the highest ranking Scientologists in the world, and so he's able to use Hollywood movies as propaganda for the cult, which then ruins families and commits all manner of abuses and atrocities. There are many reasons that we look past those abuses, and that Scientology still has a hold on its members, including the allure of Hollywood and Tom's famous smile. But one of them is our fascination with the end of the world and our pursuit of some kind of religion to save us from it. That's how Scientology survives.

It's so interesting. Yeah, you hear all kinds of creepy cult stuff about them that we didn't even cover on the shows. I'm sure you hear about one where they locked everyone in a trailer and they were like making him lick the floor clean. Do you hear about that one? Yeah.

Yeah, Mike Rinder was one of the top Scientologists and he wrote a book recently. It was only out a few months ago where he talks about exactly that kind of thing. They get like put in a little room and the leader, David Miscavich, would just walk in and just punch them in the face every now and then,

until they started to admit to crimes that they hadn't committed, like mad, insane crimes, and then he would sort of stop punching them quite as much. So weird. That's a whole different level of psychopathy. So either way, humans have been imagining the end of the world for a long time. We've seen it in old stories, religions, and now in science. Why do you think we're so fascinated by this idea? Maybe it's because we love mysteries or we're searching for a bigger meaning. It could also be that we're obsessed with the end of the world because we're afraid of death and we're trying to understand what that might look like on a larger scale or trying to prepare for unexpected scenarios in which our worlds are turned upside down.

Whatever the reason, polls across 20 countries a decade ago showed that 14% of people believed the world would end in their lifetime. 22% of people in the US believed that and 23% in the UK. Most Brits, however, thought it would be nuclear war or AI, while Americans thought it would be the rapture, so religious stuff. It also found the poll a correlation between belief in the end of the world and lower incomes and lower levels of education. That's interesting. The lower levels of education and lower levels of income believed that the world would end. There's definitely something else there. There's a missing piece there.

And of course. Religion may be as well. Religion maybe, yeah. Obviously you mentioned Scientology, but many religions fixate on the end of the world. In the book of Revelation, the Christian world ends with the rise of the Antichrist, the Second Coming. of Jesus. I mean, I know that much. Is that sort of thing common to other religions? Like, is there an Islamic rapture? Yeah, yeah, there is. And I suppose like, you know, any good story has a good ending, doesn't it? And fire and brimstones are pretty cool ending. So I think that's

why we wanted to do this episode, really, just thinking about the cults and religions and people who have predicted the end of the world for such a long time. And there are some very real things affecting us, like climate change and war. But we also think, you know, we shouldn't get too down about it. We've been here before many times and people have been so wrong at predicting the of the world so many times. So with religion, there are a few things that I think are going on, and one of them is to ensure we are compliant and that we follow the orders of the religious leaders so that our worlds don't end. There's a whole word for religious beliefs in the end of times, eschatology, which sounds like something rude for some reason.

Yeah, it sounds like some kind of illegal porn that's popular in Eastern Europe or something. Yeah, eschatological porn. Yeah. I bet someone somewhere does get off on thinking about the end of the world. Anyway, if someone is telling you that the world will end and you'll either spend eternity in hell or live it up in heaven, and all you've got to do for the latter scenario is obey the rules the leaders have dictated to you, well, there's your religion. As you were suggesting, Islam has a similar ending to Christianity, a series of events leading to a day of judgment. It also has a return of Jesus. I didn't know that. Along with wars.

Yeah, it's cool, isn't it? He features in that one as well. Crossover episode. So there'll be wars and moral decay as well at the end for Islam. So that kind of thing can lead people from various religions to point to wars and bad weather and things that don't seem to correspond with religion necessarily, but then say, hey, that's a religious thing. The end is nigh. It's very nigh, which is a funny word that's only used after the end, isn't it? Yeah.

You don't say anything else is nigh. No, that's true. Unless it's Bill Nye, the science guy, who doesn't believe in any of those religious stuff at all. Judaism has some sort of king guy who comes down to rule over everyone. Hinduism believes in a cycle of four steps that go round and round, and we're at the end of our cycle now of the four steps, in the most violent and awful stage of it. Vishnu will soon come down and basically hit the reset button and we go again,

which does sound like one of the scientific theories for the end of the world that scientists have, the oscillating universe theory, which is a big crunch where we all basically go back in to the big, bang and then come out again and live this moment over and over again. So in that sense, I suppose that the Hindu belief is similar to what some scientists believe will actually happen. So whether the religions force this fixation with the end of the world on us, or whether humans are just fascinated by thinking about the end of the world, you can see how we've been told about its end for millennia and it hasn't yet happened. The major religions

do seem to all think we're in this really degenerate and decrepit stage now that the world will end and that we all better to start behaving if we want eternal salvation, but we keep on waiting and the end isn't here yet. One thing I'm wondering about is the difference between a cult and a religion, because they both seem to be obsessed with the end of the world. They both use that to control their members' behavior and beliefs. Let's talk about a darker side of the end-of-the-world beliefs. For example, the cult Heaven's Gate. Can you tell us about their beliefs, what led to their tragic end? This is like a web designer cult. Yeah, yeah, you can still see that website and all that stuff up online,

and it just looks very comic sands and neon writing and stuff which sort of belies how serious it all was. Heaven's Gate is a great example of a cult that told its members that the end of the world was close, nigh. The cult was started in the 1970s by a man named Marshall Applewhite. They believed that Earth was going to be recycled and the only way to survive was to leave their bodies at a specific time. This belief sadly led to the death of 39 of their members,

including Applewhite, as they sought to join an alien spacecraft, they believed, was trailing the Hallie Bop comet. Hale Bop. Is it Hale Bop? Yeah, it was a comet. Yeah, it was a comet. I'm pretty sure it's Hale Bop. Although now, maybe I just read it wrong my whole life.

No, okay, I'm thinking of a different. There's a different comment. We know a bit about comets, you and I, called Haley's or Halley's Comet. There's Haley's Comet. Okay. Yeah, no, this is Hale Bop, not Haley's Comet. Totally different. Totally different.

Different mass suicide. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, they believed was trailing the Halebop comet. This event marked one of the most infamous cases of cult-related mass suicides in history. Yeah, I think what's so interesting about that is that you often think that super religious or culty people maybe don't actually believe in what they're talking about and that there's just cognitive dissonance or they try to make themselves believe or it's a big old grift. But then when you kill yourself in the name of the cult, that to me suggests they probably really did believe that they were exiting their bodies to survive.

some sort of weird alien comet stuff. Yeah, that's right. And it shows just how appealing or strong this feeling that the world is ending is. They really, really believed it and thought they had to kill themselves to get away from the end of the world. As you know, I cover a lot of cults on my podcast

on The Edge with Andrew Gold. And I remember speaking to an ex-Jahover's Witness who lives in an area where there are occasional earthquakes, and he still wakes in the middle of the night to a slight rumble, and his brain prepares him for the apocalypse. His dad used to make them train for this in the middle of the night. He'd run in shouting, like, it's the apocalypse now.

And they'd have to, like, quickly get changed and run down and be there really quickly before, like, I don't know, the apocalypse got them or something. I don't know. That's really traumatizing. No wonder he still has problems with this. Oh, man. Like, if you've had a growing up like that, that must be really difficult. But as much as I criticize the abuses of Tom Cruise and the Scientology leader David Miskavage all the time,

the ex-Scientologists I speak to believe that Tom and David Miscavich. are true believers in the alien origin story. It really seems that way. So as much as these ex-Scientologists hate Tom Cruise, they think he's doing what he does because he thinks he's morally compelled to. He literally believes he's saving the world, and that's a very nice feeling.

I can kind of see that, right, that Tom Cruise really believes in it. But when the guy, Ms. Cavage is so abusive, I don't know, maybe he's a psychopath and he believes in it. I don't know. It's just hard to imagine because it is so dumb. Yeah, well, that's the thing. Or most people don't even know about the dumb Lord Zeno stuff.

You don't even get to know that until you've passed a certain stage and given hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like most non-Scientologists who know the story of Lord Zeno because of South Park know more than most Scientologists know about the Lord Zeno story. You know what you'll want to hang on to while you're dying in a fiery apocalypse? One of the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. Thank you for listening and supporting the show.

Your support of our sponsors does keep us going. all the deals, discount codes, and ways to support this show at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals or use the AI chatbot on the website to find a promo code or email me and I'll friggin't send it to you, lazy SOB. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. Right, so us watching YouTube videos or whatever about Scientology know more about real Scientology than actual Scientologists because they're not allowed to watch that stuff and they're shielded from this because their brain might not be able to contemplate it. Basically, they need to be sufficiently brainwashed and already committed tons of money before they get the actual ridiculous stuff.

Because otherwise, if you showed up and got the ridiculous stuff on day one, you'd be like, this is so dumb. I am never coming back to this stupid place again. But when you've been in it for three years and you've dropped 100K, it's like, oh my gosh, they must be telling the truth about the aliens. That's the swindle. Nice. As we were saying before about my ex-Jhovah's witness friend who still thinks he's dying.

One ex-Scientologist Mark Headley, he was telling me that he, after leaving, Scientology finally thought, okay, I'm going to look up what happened with Lord Zeno. But the thing is, you're told as a Scientologist that if you learn about that before you're at the right level and have given enough money, you will develop pneumonia and die. It's very specific. So even though he had left Scientology, he was scared to look this up. And when he did, he remembers waking up the next morning and being like, oh my God, I'm still here. It wasn't true. It wasn't the end of the world for reading about the Scientology. It must all be bullshit. And that got out of it. That was like the last strain of belief. Although I can imagine then he goes in as a taco

and he's got a jalapeno in his throat. He's like, oh my God. Oh my gosh. I knew I should have done it. I'm going to run back to the Church of Scientology and pay $50,000 more dollars to get this jalapeno removed from my psyche. Yeah. I love you, Tom Cruise. Help me. So I often discuss that difference between a cult and a religion with guests and we all have different theories about exactly what it is. And one of the main differences is that a cult often has a kind of paywall. If you enough you can ascend to a higher status and be privy to more knowledge about the cult. But there are aspects of religion that do this too. For centuries the Bible was only written in foreign languages. So you had to be really well educated and wealthy to be able to actually read it in ancient Greek

or Latin or whatever it was. It was in several different languages, but not English. But nowadays, you can just go get a Bible and you have access to it all. Whereas in Scientology, you don't even get to hear about that alien story, as I was saying, until you've paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. So that, for me, that's a cult. Yeah, didn't the Catholic Church sell indulgences so your dead relatives could move up from one circle of hell or a different part of heaven or whatever? So I don't know. There's that. I'm going to leave that out there.

They don't do that anymore from what I understand. But that's also like, well, do they dip their foot in the cult waters? You're right, though. The Bible was written, I think, in Latin only or Greek only or maybe both. But then was it Martin Luther who was like, hey, maybe we should just translate this thing into German and everybody can read it. And then people were like, how dare you? Yeah, I read about a guy recently who had that, I guess it was the 1600s, I can't think of his name right now. He had this whole crusade, like he was going to be the guy that translated it to English.

And he did that and he had to flee. It was the Old Testament and then he wanted to do the New Testament as well. He had to flee to Germany and lived there for a while and he was smuggling the English texts of the Bible into the UK or into England. I don't even know if it was the UK back then. But he was doing all that, but they caught him. and I think they sort of burnt him at the stake, I think. He was either that or he was hanged. That's reasonable.

That's reasonable. Yeah, that's totally reasonable response to that. Yeah, because it upsets the power structure, right? It's like all the authority was coming directly from the church and the people that were associated with it. And then when you could read it yourself, you're like, I don't really need this guy who is being kind of a jerk about everything and taking my money and diddling kids or, you know, whatever. I don't need to listen to this person. Yeah. I can just read it myself at home.

Yeah. So interesting difference between cult and religion. I suppose you could also say that you. can normally leave a religion if you want. I mean, they don't love it when you do that, but there are all sorts of coercive tactics and cults that prevent you from leaving. Often they have collateral on you. They've recorded all your secrets. So if you go, they could release that to the world and screw up your life. I know that's a thing with many, many cults. Scientology included. Nexium had a bunch of that. And there have been times

when the end of the world theories have spread into the mainstream. They breach popular culture. The last big one I can think of was in 2012 when everybody was like, the Mayan calendar or something, something is going to end. I don't really, what was going on with that? Yeah, so a lot of that was based on the Meso-American long-count calendar developed by the ancient Mayans. A bit like the Hinduism I mentioned before, their calendar had cycles and 2012 was just seen as the end of a cycle. So it was sort of misinterpreted in the mainstream news as a prediction for the end of the world. And it wasn't quite that. It was more just we were coming to the end of a cycle. So the 2012 panic was mainly due to confusion and hype, and it led to all sorts of theories as to how the world was going to end.

This became popular in various forms of media and was tied into a number of different pseudo-scientific and fringe theories. Some people claimed that 2012 would be marked by catastrophic reversal of the Earth's magnetic field, while others suggested that Earth would collide with a mythical planet X or a black hole. Some people tied the 2012 date into new age theories about a coming, spiritual transformation or shift in consciousness. All these ideas were widely debunked by scientists. For instance, while the Earth's magnetic field does reverse polarity every few hundred thousand years, there's no reason to think it would cause a catastrophe. And it's also not due to reverse any time soon.

As for Planet X and Black holes, astronomers have found no evidence to suggest that Earth is in danger from such things. And as for the new age theories, these aren't considered scientific at times. as they're not based on any kind of empirical evidence or testable hypotheses. So while the 2012 phenomenon was indeed linked with a variety of different beliefs, none of them were supported by scientific evidence or widely accepted by the scientific community. It'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 people will riot in the streets and everyone will die from dysentery. Can 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 zero zero, as in 1900. So 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 imagine that was going to happen everywhere and like going, I still have that nightmare. Like it's 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. Perhaps 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 attempt.

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, uh-oh, if there's a power failure in my house in the microwave clock blink zero-zero, it's just going to spontaneously explode and destroy the whole kitchen. A plane being like, I don't know what time it is. Straight into a mountain. It just 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 in Japan. 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 recognize the 2000 date. In Delaware, USA, 150 slot machines at a racetrack stopped working due to 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 program leading to two abortions and four undetected Down syndrome cases. Okay.

Well, that last one is pretty sad and serious, to be fair. I 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 got to 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. Contrary 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. It'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, like how nervous you'd be or excited or I don't even know what? Like, how do you go to sleep? Like, 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 know that you got to think those people are true believers as well. Otherwise, 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. Christ was coming and everything, and then he didn't come to be there. People called the Great Awakening then the Great Disappointment. Oh, set yourself up for that one, though. Set yourself up with that brand. It did then start the Seventh-day Adventist Church, who believed 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. And 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 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. I 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, you know, Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther

made false predictions about the end of the world. Jim Jones of the Jones Town 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. As for the time ahead, while 1960s scientist Heinz von Furster predicted 2026 death by overpopulation. I don't know what that exactly looks like, just we're very squire 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. And 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-Marsian 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. But 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 planet 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. 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. A lot of the apocalypse imagery from the Bible and other religions and things came at a time when we didn't realize 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 5 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, you know, when it gets big, if we just move the earth a bit further out, which would take 1 billion years do if they would sort of do it year by year

nudge us very, very slightly, but it could potentially lead us to safety. I 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, can we nudge the Earth out of the orbit?

Yeah, let's do that. Anyway, have you seen those dickpicks? 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. Harbinger.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 five billion years, we've got to survive four 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, the universe or the earth. We really mean the end for humanity. I think that's what a lot of people really mean. I don't want to lose all optimism for the humans of five 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? So 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. Then 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. Nuclear expert, Francois Dias Morin,

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? Referring 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. 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. And the timescales 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 bent 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. It 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 like a suburb of the Milky Way. So there are parts where like 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. But 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.

So 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? 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. An 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 to decimate us. 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 it's hit, like by the time we see it, it's already hit us. We 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.

Wow. 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, wow, 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. Or at least we feel like somebody somewhere knows what they're doing and his monitor. 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. And 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 and 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, a hundred 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's 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 would always be numbers that survive. That'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 chat GPT 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 ChatGBTGPT, 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. So 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. So 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. There'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 defense 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, just 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. Imagine yourself living in the restaurant at the end of the universe and 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, nebulous fade, and the cosmic structures disperse into intergalactic emptiness. All light will dwindle until only the faintest remnants remain, marking the universe's fire. final breath and the silencing of the Big Bang. The 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. It 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. Until next time. Thank you for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to Jordan atjorniger.com or use the form on the website. Show notes on the website, transcripts and the show notes, advertisers, deals, and ways to support this show, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram, or you can connect with me on LinkedIn, and you can find Andrew Gold 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 Fogarty, Ian Baird, Millie Ocampo, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our 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.

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