Dreaming of the End of the World

by Neil Levy

Doomsayers have always been with us. Equally, predictions of doom have always failed to materialise. Apocalyptic cults have been a recurrent feature of American society, in particular. Some have given specific dates for the destruction of the world, which the faithful would survive through preparation and prayer. The failures of the prophesied destruction, followed by the subsequent renewal of religious fervor among many of the disappointed, formed the basis of Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance.

Predictions of doom occur outside a religious context, too. Popular culture has featured many apocalyptic narratives recently, with the world we know ending in zombie outbreak, a nuclear war, a virus outbreak, or an alien invasion. But predictions of doom are also made by genuine experts.

There are two prominent examples from recent times. The possibility of an extinction-level disaster resulting from the creation of an artificial general intelligence is so widely discussed and prophesied that it has developed a shorthand in popular culture: what is your (p)doom? The other example is of course climate change. Here predictions of extinction are less common (though far from unknown), but forecasts of the possible effects of climate change include the loss of coastal cities, the displacement of millions of people and a consequent increase in armed conflict, and a reduction in food supplies – predictions that plausibly count as catastrophic.

Here I’m interested in a common riposte to these sorts of predictions, one that stems from the observation that forecasts of catastrophe have been a recurrent feature of human cultures. Should we discount such predictions, based on the fact that there’s something within human beings that make them attractive to us? A number of sceptics have pointed not only to religious prophesies, but also to the failed prophecies of apparently impeccable intellectuals (such as Paul Ehrlich’s prediction of widespread starvation in The Population Bomb, and predictions of a new ice age made in the 1970s) to cast doubt on fears about climate change as just the latest iteration of a recurrent narrative. Some people have dismissed fears about AI on a similar sort of basis.

Should we take this sort of argument seriously? To some degree, we probably should. If it is true that there is a fascination with apocalyptic narratives (as their prevalence in popular culture seems to indicate), then it is appropriate to worry that we find them more attractive than we should in other contexts, including in some contexts in which they are presented as factual. 

The boundaries between fictional narrative and factual have often blur. Entertainment is a major reason why people consume factual narratives. That’s obvious with documentaries – no one watches a true crime series on Netflix to be informed. Even when we watch news or current affairs (or read about them online), part of the motivation is entertainment. Sometimes, the lines blur sufficiently that we take a fictional attitude toward purported fact. 

I think this is true with regard to how many people consume conspiracy theories and tales of the paranormal. I suspect only a small proportion of the people who watched Ancient Aliens on the History Channel were tempted to believe any of it. Some watched it for entertainment while remaining wholly sceptical. Others became absorbed by it, perhaps to such a degree that they might even have said they believed it. But they didn’t; not really. Instead, they became absorbed in make-believe.

There are two kinds of evidence that people often don’t really pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. One concerns the kind of evidence they cite or are moved by; the second concerns the behavioural consequences of the stories. The kind of evidence cited is often transparently weak. That someone can’t see, offhand, how the pyramids were built isn’t good evidence it must have been aliens. Those who cite evidence like this clearly aren’t really concerned with whether their theories are true.

Further, people who claim to be convinced by bizarre conspiracies are rarely moved to action by them, at least not any action beyond posting on social media. We see much the same phenomenon with predictions of the end of the world. An Ipsos poll found that around the world, one in seven people reported believing the end of the world was near, with 8% naming December 2012 – the time when the Mayan calendar resets – as the date of the apocalypse. The poll was taken in May of that year. Needless to say, few people seem to really have lost any sleep, let alone made sure to visit their loved ones or taken out large loans in the expectation they’d never need to pay them back. Their behavior indicates they weren’t really believers.

I suspect that for some people, predictions of climate breakdown play the same role as the Mayan prophecy. These predictions are more to be enjoyed than feared for them. But the behavior of climate scientists who predict catastrophe doesn’t seem anything like this. Both in their evidence gathering activities (which are held to an even higher standard than is typical in science, since they come under hostile scrutiny from well-funded sceptics) and in their behavior, they show every sign of being true believers – for example, in their anxiety about the  future, or in deciding not to have children. This looks very different from the sorts of emotions and behaviors of those who are entranced by apocalyptic narratives. Our fascination with end of the world scenarios doesn’t seem to explain the kind of stance climate scientists take.

Of course, millennial cults have had their true believers too. Such devotees – those who abandoned their jobs and donated their money – have always been a tiny minority of the population, though. While thousands of people were associated with the Millerite movement, for example, there are only a few, and largely anecdotal, reports of Millerites actually abandoning their businesses or otherwise engaging in actions that would be costly when the world failed to end. While we all love a good apocalypse, only a few people will really believe in one without good evidence.

The numbers also count when it comes to the real experts. While Paul Ehrlich’s predictions were widely discussed, relatively few experts pronounced themselves convinced by them, and even fewer gave real signs of being true believers. Despite the myth, almost no expert predicted the coming of an ice age in the 1970s. In fact, most scientific papers published in that decade predicted warming, and of course they were right.We are fascinated with apocalyptic narratives, and some people probably enjoy – without believing – predictions of climate breakdown for just this reason. The same is probably true with regard to some who embrace p(doom). It’s probably too soon to judge whether the experts who predict p(doom) are true believers responding to good evidence, but our fascination with the end of the world seems to have little to do with why climate scientists believe that we face the realistic prospect of catastrophic events in the future.