[haswell]

> If on the other hand we are in scenario 1, where there is a long history of people falling prey to apocalypticism, then that means any new doomsday claims are also more likely to be a result of apocalypticism.

If you're blindly evaluating the likelihood of any random claim without context, sure.

But like the boy who cried wolf, there is a potential scenario where the likelihood that it's not true has no bearing on what actually happens.

Arguably, claims about doomsday made now by highly educated people are more interesting than claims made 100/1000/10000 years ago. Over time, the growing collective knowledge of humanity increases and with it, the plausibility of those claims because of our increasing ability to accurately predict outcomes based on our models of the world.

e.g. after the introduction of nuclear weapons, a claim about the potentially apocalyptic impact of war is far more plausible than it would have been prior.

Similarly, we can now estimate the risk of passing comets/asteroids, and if we identify one that's on a collision course, we know that our technology makes it worth taking that risk more seriously than someone making a prediction in an era before we could possible know such things.