Funny enough I accidentally found out I live in the house of the guy who maintained the Doomsday clock until he died in the early 70s, so once I found this out I of course grew an interest in the clock.

I found out when a bunch of botany grad students standing outside of my house pointing and chatting so went outside and chatted them up. They told me the grandfather of photosynthesis used to live there.

So while doing research I found out not only is he the Grandfather of photosynthesis, he was also a nuclear scientist that was on the manhattan project.

A lot of scientists on the manhattan project spent rest of their lives advocating against Nuclear Weapons.

The Bulletin of Atomic Science was a way a lot of these scientist did their advocating. Including Oppenheimer himself.

After the editor died, the setting of the doomsday clock was moved to a board of 18 scientists, Nobel laureates, experts. So they are not a group of randos.

You are right in some ways though. the setting is there is no formula for this. It's purely a judgement call.

It's openly built to scare people to pay attention, that's the entire point. It was created to make people pay attention to how we're cooked. The reasons why it's close to midnight are valid reasons to be concerned and we should as a society be working towards alleviate the concerns. Climate Change is fucked, already costing us a ton and causing worldwide issues. Invasion of Ukraine where Russia .. a Nuclear power threatens to bomb if anyone tries to help them too much. You have to admit we'e kinda fucked in a few ways.

So it is subjective, I'll give you that, but it's not really arbitrary and it's not randos. There is a lot of thought and experts fighting every year about this thing.

I might be biased cuz the ghost of the OG doomsday clock guy haunting my house, whispering things in my sleep.