While looking over lecture 4 I found this topic interesting that people for over hundreds of years and still up to this day are continuing to make predictions that the world is going to end on any given day. While this may be based off peoples reasoning of some sort, it continues to be wrong. As for how it will happen, consists of people’s ideas that threats like asteroids, nuclear war, climate change or ecological collapse to name a few is the how. However, the reason I find it so interesting is it almost feels like a common idea from people but there’s never any real evidence proving why people keep having these predictions. As for could any of these things happen in the future on any given day the answer is yes but the possibility of these scenarios occurring are if maybe even 1 % a year for all of them. So, what intrigues me is why many people do make these predictions with sometimes a wide range of ways that it could happen as well as sometimes a large range for when exactly with no evidence hard reasoning backing it up.
I remember as a kid that some people were in absolute fear the world was ending in 2012 when it was predicted. So, with the prepping that came along for some also came chaos and confusion for others. While I remember hearing of the possibility of this catastrophe, I also remember watching the movie “2012” and thinking how scary this day would be if occurred. However, being a young kid, I didn’t investigate the facts so I assumed this could happen. While people online went back and forth with ongoing research and much debate it seemed like there were true believers on one side and non-believers on the other. In reality, from hundreds of years ago from the first prediction of the world ending to today, they lack real scientific evidence and couldn’t be farther from the truth. None of the end of the world evidence has yet to come true and often fall into pseudoscience. For example, the world ending in 2012 which was convincing enough entertainment for a countdown and movie. In reality this specific day was tied to a astronomical phenomenon and ended up a misunderstanding of the calendars purpose which marked the beginning of a new cycle. Commonly the end of the world claims are proven over and over again with critical thinking meaning all circumstances included why most actually could never even happen this soon in reality as well as the dates they were “suppose to” happen. Furthermore, while one person makes a claim that the world will end on a specific day, there is hundreds of credible scientists who view the potential global risks of all sorts and approach these false accusations daily. As for the world ending in 2012 and the other end of the world predictions these date continues to pass with no incidents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeYt-Pq6C7U
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I agree a lot with what you said and honestly i wish i could go back in time and truly see it, I was 8 when people thought the world was going to end but honestly i remember nothing about it. But i agree that it is crazy that so many people believed that it was true and were actually prepping for it. I wonder if something like that happened now would people believe it more because there is social media and it can get to more people.
ReplyDeleteI remember the 2012 end of the world scare too! I was 9 years old and absolutely petrified and 100% convinced that the world would end, like everyone else in my class. I can't believe actual grown adults actually bought into this fad as hard as they did though. There were huge groups of people that took the Mayan Calendar prediction really seriously. Later on in Lecture 4, we talk about future end-of-the-world discussions and it looks like there are no shortages of future predictions. It seems like as long as civilization has been around there have been people predicting when it will eventually collapse.
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