Will the world end in Sirince, Turkey on December 21, 2012?

  • Thread starter jim mcnamara
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In summary: Otherwise, it would just be preventative measures.In summary, the conversation covers various topics including the current time in Sydney, Australia, the Mayan calendar predictions, the Y2K scare, and the concept of self-defeating prophecies. The speakers discuss their skepticism towards the Mayan predictions and compare it to the Y2K scare. They also mention their experiences with the Y2K bug and the success of preventative measures. The conversation concludes with a discussion on the idea of self-defeating prophecies and how they can actually make a prediction more likely to come true.
  • #1
jim mcnamara
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The time in Sydney Australia is 6:28AM, as of right now. December 21, 2012.

I sure hope the Mayan Calendar nutcakes are miserable. Because they sure made a lot of gullible people unhappy or scared...

Just like the Y2K thing - I worked with a lady who bought a $3000 generator because all of the utilities were going to fail Jan 1, 2000. She still has it in the box, I believe.

The current Mayan nonsense is just like Y2K -
'deja-vu all over again' as some great wit used to say.
 
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  • #2
jim mcnamara said:
The time in Sydney Australia is 6:28AM, as of right now. December 21, 2012.

I sure hope the Mayan Calendar nutcakes are miserable. Because they sure made a lot of gullible people unhappy or scared...

Just like the Y2K thing - I worked with a lady who bought a $3000 generator because all of the utilities were going to fail Jan 1, 2000. She still has it in the box, I believe.

The current Mayan nonsense is just like Y2K -
'deja-vu all over again' as some great wit used to say.
We all know that the only time zones that matter are the ones in the continental US. That's only fair since the majority of the nuts live here. I wonder if that guy is going to jump off the cliff through a magic portal that will appear at 11:11 AM MST and save the world?
 
  • #3
We''ll know if he succeeded in a few hours. I'll keep you posted.
 
  • #4
jim mcnamara said:
The current Mayan nonsense is just like Y2K -
'deja-vu all over again' as some great wit used to say.

I hope not, because Y2K was actually real. I worked on fixing a few genuine Y2K software bugs. None of them would have hurt the general public, but some of them could have cost my employers $millions through inability to ship products.

And I knew the owner of a small shop who had no accounting system for a several weeks after Jan 1 2000, till his database software got itself working in the right century.
 
  • #5
AlephZero said:
I hope not, because Y2K was actually real. I worked on fixing a few genuine Y2K software bugs. None of them would have hurt the general public, but some of them could have cost my employers $millions through inability to ship products.

And I knew the owner of a small shop who had no accounting system for a several weeks after Jan 1 2000, till his database software got itself working in the right century.
What about the UNIX 2038 problem?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
 
  • #6
Evo said:
What about the UNIX 2038 problem?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

We don't have to worry...

...either 64 bits would save us or we would die anyway according to Mayan/New Age prediction.


(I used "or" so I think that technically speaking this sentence is true)
 
  • #7
So what's the next big apocalypse? How many Mayan 2012 end of the world websites are there?
 
  • #8
AlephZero said:
I hope not, because Y2K was actually real. I worked on fixing a few genuine Y2K software bugs. None of them would have hurt the general public, but some of them could have cost my employers $millions through inability to ship products.

I agree with you, Y2K is not a good example of a debacle. We spent a huge amount of money and time upgrading old systems and validating clock rollover problems with legacy systems that would have costs millions to replace.

The reason the economy did not crash was people worked for years examining code and fixing the Y2K problems that were found.
 
  • #9
nsaspook said:
I agree with you, Y2K is not a good example of a debacle. We spent a huge amount of money and time upgrading old systems and validating clock rollover problems with legacy systems that would have costs millions to replace.

The reason the economy did not crash was people worked for years examining code and fixing the Y2K problems that were found.

I suggest a new term: Self-defeating prophecy (contrast with self fulfilling). Y2K disaster predictions were a self defeating prophecy; fear of the prophecy led to largely successful amelioration.

[Edit: It has been pointed out to me that this usage is establised; However I had never heard it before.]
 
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  • #10
PAllen said:
I suggest a new term: Self-defeating prophecy (contrast with self fulfilling). Y2K disaster predictions were a self defeating prophecy; fear of the prophecy led to largely successful amelioration.

[Edit: It has been pointed out to me that this usage is establised; However I had never heard it before.]

What usage? Do you mean the term, "self defeating prophecy"?
 
  • #11
zoobyshoe said:
What usage? Do you mean the term, "self defeating prophecy"?

Yes, "self defeating prophecy" turns out to established usage, and Y2K is a cited example. I guess it is a pretty obvious leap from "self fulfilling prophecy".
 
  • #12
Jonah was supposed to warn the people of Nineveh to reform or the city would be destroyed. He warned the people as instructed. They reformed. The city was not destroyed. He felt that he had been made a fool.
 
  • #13
Self-defeating prophecy (contrast with self fulfilling). Y2K disaster predictions were a self defeating prophecy; fear of the prophecy led to largely successful amelioration.
Isn't that true for anything that would happen but doesn't because precautions were taken?
 
  • #14
leroyjenkens said:
Isn't that true for anything that would happen but doesn't because precautions were taken?

Yes, but there are also predictions where the act of predition makes them much more likely to come true. For example, a big name investor predicts stock x will go up or down. Whatever they predict is likely to happen because of the buy / sell actions of followers of the prediction. In the Y2K case, it was not obvious whether amelioration would succeed - some prognosticators were near certain of disaster up until the end.
 
  • #15
leroyjenkens said:
Isn't that true for anything that would happen but doesn't because precautions were taken?
Only if the precautions were taken as the result of a prophesy.
 
  • #16
Y2K was not a prophesy, it was a piece of good advice. Check your mission critical software. It got hyped in the press, and that was a bad thing. But it would be foolish to reject all future good advice for that reason.
 
  • #17
PAllen said:
Yes, but there are also predictions where the act of predition makes them much more likely to come true. For example, a big name investor predicts stock x will go up or down. Whatever they predict is likely to happen because of the buy / sell actions of followers of the prediction. In the Y2K case, it was not obvious whether amelioration would succeed - some prognosticators were near certain of disaster up until the end.

A prediction about an event happening making that event more likely to come true would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we're talking about a self-defeating prophecy, like the Y2K example that was given, then was it true that the hype surrounding it caused the experts to stop half-assing it and get to work?
 
  • #18
leroyjenkens said:
A prediction about an event happening making that event more likely to come true would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we're talking about a self-defeating prophecy, like the Y2K example that was given, then was it true that the hype surrounding it caused the experts to stop half-assing it and get to work?

I would say yes. That is the way I experienced it in the industry - the hype did help motivate efforts to prevent it.
 
  • #19
leroyjenkens said:
A prediction about an event happening making that event more likely to come true would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we're talking about a self-defeating prophecy, like the Y2K example that was given, then was it true that the hype surrounding it caused the experts to stop half-assing it and get to work?

Yes, this is a sad example of what happened when the bug wasn't fixed properly.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/sep/14/martinwainwright
 
  • #20
Another related crisis was the GPS rollover in 1999 due to the way satellite keep track of time in weeks and secs in a week.

The fear was that GPS would fail and planes would crash...

Here some details on how programmers would get tricked by the complexity:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2869
 
  • #21
I hear that in 2015 Hollywood finally completely runs out of ideas so possibly that will be the next end of the world scam.
 
  • #22
Containment said:
I hear that in 2015 Hollywood finally completely runs out of ideas so possibly that will be the next end of the world scam.
:rofl: Might be true...
 
  • #23
On Y2K, I was visiting my mother in the Lower 48, but I had gone to a friends nearby in the state. The friend was staying in a kind of half house (never asked why, when we were younger his mom and dad were always drunk, so he had a rough childhood). But it was this program where couples could take in troubled youth. This was a Christian couple and I remember playing/singing a song on the guitar for them (Nights in White Satin). They were strangely emotional about it (apparently it was one of their shared songs).

When we went out to light fireworks for the turn of the century, they stayed inside with the lights low. When we came back, they seemed forlorn, and not near as interactive as they had been. My friend kind of guided me back outside and I asked "What was up with them" (I hadn't even thought about Y2K). He replied (in a disparaging tone) that they were depressed because God hadn't come down on a chariot and taken them away and ended the sinful world.
 
  • #24
Jimmy Snyder said:
Jonah was supposed to warn the people of Nineveh to reform or the city would be destroyed. He warned the people as instructed. They reformed. The city was not destroyed. He felt that he had been made a fool.

Don't you hate it when that happens? And people think this prophecy thing is so easy. Why can't I have an apocalypse once, just once? Is that really too much to ask?
 
  • #25
leroyjenkens said:
A prediction about an event happening making that event more likely to come true would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we're talking about a self-defeating prophecy, like the Y2K example that was given, then was it true that the hype surrounding it caused the experts to stop half-assing it and get to work?


Self-defeating? How about self-aborting prophecy?
 
  • #26
jedishrfu said:
Another related crisis was the GPS rollover in 1999 due to the way satellite keep track of time in weeks and secs in a week.

The fear was that GPS would fail and planes would crash...

Here some details on how programmers would get tricked by the complexity:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2869

Only the planes with the autoland feature. But plane's navigation systems certainly could have gotten completely lost, forcing pilots to revert to the standard triangulating their position from radio signals from known locations. But, people with old enough GPS receivers certainly did have to replace them or run into problems.

That leap second is a lot worse problem. Inserting an extra second, manually, whenever the IERS determines it's necessary (i.e. - no regular pattern), is a nightmare problem for programs that actually need that date/time to be correct - especially if the program is being installed into a device that will sit in some remote location with no human interaction for years.
 
  • #27
I hope not, because Y2K was actually real.
Yes. In the sense that code/metadata used 2-digit years. We worked extensively on the problem, also.

We had 30 utility companies to support - 80% of rural New Mexico, parts of Texas, Idaho, Wyoming, etc.

I was not claiming Y2K was some sort of weirdo prophesy, but rather how people got wrapped around the axle on it. That lady who bought a generator was a programmer.
And should have known better.

The "prophesy" part of it was that all of our data infrastructure would cease to function.
Life as we know it would fall apart. Electric generation would stop, gas would no longer flow from wellheads. Literally. The list of this kind of baloney was long and completely wrong.

Everybody in the software industry was on it. We started in 1998. We found two bugs, in payroll. Nothing in scada or any other control system that could affect resource regulation. The assertions of problems were off by orders of magnitude. So are the current assertions of disaster.

It seems to be an affliction, especially in the US,

However it is not yet 11:11am MST. (per Evo) :)
 
  • #28
Looks like the disaster-mongers are still winning hearts and minds:

http://www.khou.com/news/Apocalypse-predictions-mount-tourists-seek-refuge-in-tiny-Turkish-town-184282561.html [Broken]

I guess this town is immune - SIRINCE, Turkey, is said to be where Mary, mother of Jesus, ascended to heaven.
 
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1. Will the world end on December 21, 2012 according to scientists?

No, according to scientific evidence and research, there is no indication that the world will end on December 21, 2012 in Sirince, Turkey or anywhere else. This date has been widely speculated and sensationalized, but it holds no scientific validity.

2. Is there any scientific basis for the belief that the world will end in Sirince, Turkey on December 21, 2012?

No, there is no scientific basis for this belief. The idea of the world ending on this date originated from a misinterpretation of the Mayan calendar, which does not predict the end of the world, but rather the end of a cycle and the beginning of a new one.

3. Are there any natural disasters or events predicted to occur in Sirince, Turkey on December 21, 2012?

No, there are no predicted natural disasters or events specific to Sirince, Turkey on December 21, 2012. Any potential natural disasters would be a result of normal, unpredictable geological or meteorological phenomena, not related to the date itself.

4. Has any scientific research been conducted on the possibility of the world ending in Sirince, Turkey on December 21, 2012?

Yes, scientists have thoroughly studied and debunked the idea of the world ending on December 21, 2012. Multiple studies and research have been conducted, all concluding that there is no scientific evidence to support this belief.

5. Are there any precautions or preparations that should be taken for the supposed end of the world in Sirince, Turkey on December 21, 2012?

No, there is no need for any special precautions or preparations for this date. It is important to trust in scientific evidence and not fall for sensationalized beliefs. The world will continue to exist after December 21, 2012, just as it has for billions of years.

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