I guess it serves some evolutionary purpose, since it's so deeply ingrained.
We've done quite well with these people among us so far, despite them always, since the dawn of humanity, being wrong.
The last collapse happended to the natives of a whole continent just a few centuries ago by new types of disease. I don't think they expected that, so they didn't need to be wrong, it just happened.
But it's an interesting point. While the world never ends, entire peoples and nations do get extinguished with some regularity, and having people around who always look for ways this can happen could serve a credible evolutionary purpose, even though they're almost always wrong.
Also as others pointed out, you misinterpret or misrepresent the interviewee’s words by placing “the end of the world” alongside TFA’s as though a thoughtful discussion with domain experts (in biology) is the same as the ravings of apocalyptic cranks.
Do you have an argument besides the ad hominem directed at “these people among us”?
Sticking your head in the ground and going la la la not happening, it’ll be ok, pretending people are suggesting the end of the world when they aren’t isn’t going to help and that is what people are protesting about.
I’d like to think we’d come up with solutions because I think there is some hope,but comments like this make me lose hope as I think it shows people with no hope or vision for change and improvement.
Without an understanding of why it worked in the past, there is statistically no reason to believe it will work again.
Also, you can read human history as a record of societal collapse. Sure they recovered, it took sometimes hundreds of years for the history we know of. Since we talking climate and it may take hundreds if not thousands of years to stabilise again, one could argue, this is the scale of collapse we’re looking at. Humans could very well survive, but I wouldn’t call returning to the stone age something we should strive for…
I think religions are worldviews that appeal to universal human needs. If they all converge on some variation of Doomsday, that says something about human nature.
We atheists have to fill this need in other ways. When I was young it was nuclear war, after the Cold War it's been mostly environmental disaster. Now AI is coming up as a new candidate.
You're right that no one serious implies the literal death of every single human. A big enough disaster fills the need well enough.
This is of course just my personal speculation. I can't prove it, and have been wrong many times before.
> We've done quite well with these people among us so far, despite them always, since the dawn of humanity, being wrong.
Also known as "a just so story," with nods to Rudyard Kipling. Or, more recently, "evolutionary psychology."
Also, the world is not ending. Just the way it has been working since the Industrial age.
Sounds about as logical as a guy falling from the 30th floor, repeating at each floor “so far, so good”.