SPOLIERS SPOILERS SPOILERS! This post contains spoilers for the Netflix movie Don't Look Up.
I think the chance of the comet impacting Earth should have started at 70% when they first detected it, or even 30%. That would be more interesting and a better analogy to likely real-world scenarios. I would like to see what people do under a "probably the world won't end" scenario. In my mind, that the rational thing is still to throw everything we've got at it to stop it. A 30% chance of extinction is way way way way higher than we should be complacent about. But it would have allowed (the illusion of) a little more breathing room for the deniers.
Although I think it's mainly about climate change, I don't think we should consider it solely about that. It's also AI risk, pandemics, and every other existential threat. Even in non-existential threats, like COVID, the parallels of institutional failure are palpable in all cases. I don’t think there’s a 99% chance any of these will destroy humanity. But a 20% chance? A 5% chance? Maybe?
I thought the starship coda was kind of stupid. It was a movie mostly about incompetence, corruption, etc., but somehow the government and tech genius guy who are too incompetent to deflect the comet can successfully cryonically freeze people and build a spaceship that can find another habitable planet - all in six months. The movie tried to counter this with a "haha they would all get eaten by alien dinosaurs" but that's a weak way to finish.
Also, it unnecessarily created a huge plot hole - they could have waited a week in orbit and returned to Earth. If you think a week is too short, fine, they can wait for 100 years. Whatever. It's much easier than traveling for 20,000 years to another solar system.
I don't think everyone would die in the impact. Many would. Maybe most. But remember, some mammals lived through the asteroid impact (that's how we're here today) and they didn't have nuclear bunkers, canned food, or even spray cheese. It would end civilization as we know it, but wouldn't make humans extinct, which I think the movie implied, if only by not showing any survivors.
I think I liked all the contradictions. I'm curious how many were intentional. One reading of the film is that we should "trust the experts", but another reading is that the experts get completely bought and think they can change the system from the inside but can't, and we should absolutely not trust the expert. Remember the part where NASA said it wasn’t going to happen? Yeah, maybe there's a smart grad student somewhere who we really should trust, but how are you going to find her?
Some people will certainly finish the movie thinking the message is to "trust the experts". But then I ask you, why were there so many contradictions? Is it because the directors wanted to tell a more nuanced story? Or, in trying to tell a story with the moral of "trust the experts", they inadvertently created contradictions, precisely because as much as one might want "trust the experts" to be the takeaway, that lesson is entirely full of contradictions, so there's no other (realistic) way to tell it. Science isn't done by perfect people working at perfect institutions with perfect incentives.
I do think the director was hinting that "trust the experts" was supposed to be a/the takeaway, in part because it idolizes peer review. But in that case, the contradictions become even more interesting.
My favorite part was at the end when Leo says, "We really did have everything, didn't we? I mean, when you think about it." You could easily imagine a world that for one reason or another didn't have everything. Maybe it didn't have the raw materials that Earth has. Or it was Earth, but 1000 years ago before a space program existed. Heck, even 100 years ago. For a brief time in human history, we had the tools and knowledge to protect ourselves. 100 years ago they would have seen it at some point (not with 6 months of warning, but still some since they had telescopes) and wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. They would have just watched it, helplessly. But we really did have everything - the rocketry, the warning, everything to prevent this. The only thing that got in our way was ourselves. (You could argue that six months isn't actually enough time, and you might be right, but I'm kind of ignoring that because in the movie that was sufficient time to launch a mission - it's just that they canceled it).
I mentioned that it could be read as a COVID thing as well. We have all the vaccines we need. The efficacy was way higher than anyone was allowing themselves to hope for, and the side effects have been relatively minor. It’s been a far better vaccine than we had the right to expect. We have all the ships and planes and trains to distribute them. All the people to administer them. All the everything.
What would I do in this situation? Honestly, my trust in institutions is not that high right now, especially for completing something in a tight timeline, so I don't think I would go to NASA for help. In truth, if there were a situation like this, I would put my trust in Elon Musk and try to work on whatever it is he thinks is the best approach. I trust NASA sometimes, but a six-month turnaround for something like this? I'm going with Elon.