yawn. the huge numbers throughout history who died in conflicts between competing value systems would disagree that their hypothesis is wrong.
If you mean to imply that THE END OF THE WORLD can be interpreted as being a personal phenomenon - as suicidal Bokononists believe - I think you will find that is not what many DOOM-mongers are actually saying. Many of them are actually talking about THE END OF THE WORLD. Or in some cases, the whole universe. Really.
This is our monthly thread for collecting arbitrarily contrived scenarios in which somebody gets tortured for 3^^^^^3 years, or an infinite number of people experience an infinite amount of sorrow, or a baby gets eaten by a shark, etc. and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions. As everyone knows, this is the most rational and non-obnoxious way to think about incentives and disincentives.