Disasters that never materialized

That’s the problem, it’s not like alcohol but they want to treat it the same. A field sobriety test is a better indicator of impairment than a test that shows levels marijuana use.

However, marijuana was legalized in Illinois on January 1, 2020 so while the research may show more crashes overall since the 90s, it doesn’t give any evidence that legalization has been a problem. After all, crashes went from 4% to 12% while marijuana was illegal in all the states listed.

On the contrary, Y2K did take place and cause a lot of problems. The trouble is there was a widespread misconception what it actually meant. Many people thought it was something likely to cause sudden widespread failures at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Actually, the failures happened but were spread out over several years.

The problem was that dates were represented with two digits. If a computer program needed to sort data by date it might put 00 at the start and 99 at the end.

Who told you that? The problem was being unable to distinguish between the year 1900 and 2000 or any two years with the last digits the same, in addition to 99 being used as for purposes other than a date. Having 99 show up after 00, meaning the year 1999 following 2000 was barely an issue in the midst of all the other problems.

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There were a myriad of problems that were possible from the use of 2 digit dates, not to mention date calculations that just did not work with any number of digits when dealing with leap years and DST issues. 00 coming before 99, which before the year 2000 was usually correct, was not at all the big issue.

What in my statement even implies that?

A non-existent comma after the word ‘apocalypse’.

Because pollution controls were implemented. At the time it really was a problem, trees were dying, I saw it happening.

And the Ozone Hole was a real thing too. But disaster was avoided by concerted efforts.

Recovery is projected to continue over the next century, and the ozone hole is expected to reach pre-1980 levels by around 2075

What odd version of English grammar are you using? Without the comma, the second clause is self-referential; with the comma, the last three words would reference the first clause. I think you have it backwards.

I am agreeing with you. That comma wasn’t there so Omar was ignoring the rules of grammar.

I remember working during the Y2K incident and listening to the radio as each part of the world was experiencing the New Year. I recall that Fiji and Borneo were around the first nations with mixed issues. As it got closer, it became obvious that our worst fears would be unrealized.

Topical one here - Birdflu Pandemic - it was expected to kill many millions, we had body bags sent to every prison in the UK to deal with the increased mortality and local village halls were identified for use as temporary morgues

Y2K was the best “doomsday” gimmick of all time. I’m sure some aging programmers got a nice retirement cushion as a result.

“I mean, who knows? Computers could launch Russia’s nuclear arsenal!”

My other favorite was watching right wing nutjobs hyperventilate over Obama’s tan suit and how he was “ZOMG! a communist, socialist, fascist dictator!!!”

Anyone remember the swine flu panic? Not the one in 2009, the one all the way back in 1976.

My husband was working on the LHC at the time and I remember him patiently explaining that wasn’t how science worked, at parties. It’s hard for laypeople to understand that high energy physics is almost entirely composed of extremely laboriously assembled experiments that fail.

Wasn’t there an experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratories that was supposed to be the end of Life, Universe and Life As We Know It?

But, really - that’s the way science should work!

I wonder if there’s a name for that fallacy. I guess you could call it a fallacy:

  1. Experts predict something bad will happen, unless we take steps to prevent it.
  2. We take steps to prevent the bad thing.
  3. Because we took steps to prevent it, the bad thing doesn’t happen.
  4. Because the bad thing didn’t happen, people assume the prediction was completely overblown and the effort to prevent the bad thing was unnecessary.

Actually that’s another “disaster” that never actually happened. I recall a lot of hand-wringing and anger out of the conservatives of my acquaintance when they were confronted with the prospect that we might have a Democrat-controlled Congress, and a BLACK Democrat President. Lots of predictions of dire happenings and terrible legislation, etc…

I recall hearing a lot of the same kind of thing in 2000 when Bush was elected. And in a sort of juxtaposition, I heard a lot of really rosy predictions for Bill Clinton’s first term.

None of which really came to pass- from the majority of the population’s standpoint it was business as usual in each case. Which really is the situation when almost every President is elected, regardless of party.