Stephen Hawking: Space could prevent the disappearance of humanity by the colonisation of other plan
65 replies, posted
[url]http://www.cnet.com/news/stephen-hawking-humanity-has-to-stop-being-so-aggressive/[/url]
[QUOTE]While acting as a guide this week to a prize-winning American visitor -- 24-year-old teacher Adaeze Uyanwah from Palmdale, Calif. -- the famed physicist was asked which part of humanity he believes needs most work.
"[B]The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression.[/B]" There is rather a lot of it around. There always has been.
In many countries and businesses aggression is held up as the best (and even only) way of getting things done. Why merely lean in when you can lean over and just smack a rival in the mouth?
Hawking, though, mused: "[B]It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all.[/B]"
One problem is that scientists became so clever that they invented weapons of massive destruction.
"A major nuclear war would be the end of civilization, and maybe the end of the human race," said Hawking.
Hawking insisted that empathy is in desperately short supply. So much so that he suggested that saner, more intelligent humans might have to escape this planet altogether. Or all together.
"[B]I believe that the long term future of the human race must be space and that it represents an important life insurance for our future survival, as it could prevent the disappearance of humanity by colonizing other planets[/B]," he said.[/QUOTE]
"Eyes off the ghettos/Keep watching those space shuttles."
I mean he's right and all, but man is there some shit we gotta work out down here.
I got a plan: Legalize weed so people chill the fuck out with their aggressions, and then concentrate on rubbing our spaceport launch systems until we shoot our spermships onto other worlds to fertilize them with our next generation
[QUOTE=Impact1986;47186085]I got a plan: Legalize weed so people chill the fuck out with their aggressions, and then concentrate on rubbing our spaceport launch systems until we shoot our spermships onto other worlds to fertilize them with our next generation[/QUOTE]
legalize weed and give NASA all our money
I've never seen a more facepunchey response
nothing brings out pseudo-intellectuals like a nice big space circlejerk
This made me think what would happen if two planets went to war. The first one to nuke the other into dust wins?
This is so true, human aggression and humans volatile nature is a disease that infects our planet. The human ego and identification with it is something which causes so much pain and suffering for millions on this planet, including animals and wildlife.
the unconsciousness is in people all around us, maybe even in you. And until we all find peace and become aware of just how much our primal instincts control our lives we are never going to advance and save our planet and ourselves.
The next step in the evolution of the human race isn't a physical one, it's a mental one.
[QUOTE][B]Hawking insisted that empathy is in desperately short supply. So much so that he suggested that saner, more intelligent humans might have to escape this planet altogether. Or all together.[/B][/QUOTE]
i think hawking is cool and all, but it seems like what he is advocating is basically "save smart people, fuck everyone else".
I think its more "if people dont calm the fuck down some of us are going to have to bugger off before we all die"
[QUOTE=Wizards Court;47186176]i think hawking is cool and all, but it seems like what he is advocating is basically "save smart people, fuck everyone else".[/QUOTE]
"Might have to escape" can be interpreted in all sorts of ways, maybe he meant that they won't be able to accomplish goals past a certain level of complexity if held back by an aggressive majority or that they're flat-out a "dying breed" that's not gonna stick around for much longer at the current level of escalation.
Not that there seems to be any science quoted along with those excerpts either way. Not a whole lot of context there to make precise interpretations in general.
[QUOTE=Wizards Court;47186176]i think hawking is cool and all, but it seems like what he is advocating is basically "save smart people, fuck everyone else".[/QUOTE]
and evolutionarily speaking that is the correct choice to make. Nature gives exactly zero fucks about feels or personal context.
[QUOTE=evilweazel;47186091]legalize weed and give NASA all our money
I've never seen a more facepunchey response
nothing brings out pseudo-intellectuals like a nice big space circlejerk[/QUOTE]
That's more of a liberal internet forum response than it is just a Facepunch response.
hawking's a luminary scientist but he's a complete fucking narcissist and hypocrite as soon as his comments wander outside of his field of expertise, which he seems to do without any compunction whatsoever
last year he said "philosophy is a waste of time" and this year he's casually making enormous philosophical judgements about society, none of which have been particularly sage
[QUOTE=Wizards Court;47186176]i think hawking is cool and all, but it seems like what he is advocating is basically "save smart people, fuck everyone else".[/QUOTE]
And this is an unreasonable proposition... why?
[QUOTE=27X;47186255]and evolutionarily speaking that is the correct choice to make. Nature gives exactly zero fucks about feels or personal context.[/QUOTE]
But it makes people uncomfortable. That's the problem. Like Sir Attenborough's points on the necessity of population control make them uncomfortable too.
[QUOTE=27X;47186255]and evolutionarily speaking that is the correct choice to make. Nature gives exactly zero fucks about feels or personal context.[/QUOTE]
Nature nor evolution are something that feel anything though. Evolution is just a self-regulating system based on simple logic, random mutations of genetics either hinder or help you live.
We're not nature nor are we evolution, we're humanity and to justify ethically questionable actions or theories on the basis of them, is inane.
[editline]21st February 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=Govna;47186293]And this is an unreasonable proposition... why?[/QUOTE]
First, what do you define as smart. Now secondly, we're beginning to define the value of human life and that some people are more valuable than others.
I won't even get into the fact of how abusable and malleable this could be either.
[QUOTE=27X;47186255]and evolutionarily speaking that is the correct choice to make. Nature gives exactly zero fucks about feels or personal context.[/QUOTE]
because scientists don't have enough folks accusing them of living in ivory towers already, nevermind that this mindset is somewhat dangerous to have.
Isn't that kind of a given? Eventually Earth won't be able to sustain us, I figured it wouldn't take an astrophysicist to tell us.
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;47186300]Isn't that kind of a given? Eventually Earth won't be able to sustain us, I figured it wouldn't take an astrophysicist to tell us.[/QUOTE]
You'd be surprised at the sheer number of people who have a hard time grasping that our world isn't static.
[QUOTE=doommarine23;47186294]Nature nor evolution are something that feel anything though. Evolution is just a self-regulating system based on simple logic, random mutations of genetics either hinder or help you live.
We're not nature nor are we evolution, we're humanity and to justify ethically questionable actions or theories on the basis of them, is inane.
[editline]21st February 2015[/editline]
First, what do you define as smart. Now secondly, we're beginning to define the value of human life and that some people are more valuable than others.
I won't even get into the fact of how abusable and malleable this could be either.[/QUOTE]
You can't exclude the possibility that in the future when we have sufficient technology to send a shitton of people in space at once to populate other worlds, some people may have to choose who of the billions of individuals who are alive at this point in time gets to leave and who gets to stay.
The idea that we may have to leave people behind on a shitty crumpled overpopulated piece of trash is horrifying but it may come down to this depending on how badly shit turns out.
[QUOTE=Rapscallion92;47186310]You'd be surprised at the sheer number of people who have a hard time grasping that our world isn't static.[/QUOTE]
This can hardly be a big surprise considering how many people still believe in god as their ultimate savior, or ghosts, or other pseudoscientific stuff. And how many people just don't care about space, thinking that it's just a waste of money.
[QUOTE=antianan;47186435]This can hardly be a big surprise considering how many people still believe in god as their ultimate savior, or ghosts, or other pseudoscientific stuff. And how many people just don't care about space, thinking that it's just a waste of money.[/QUOTE]
People are free to believe in gods and deities on the basis that we have absolutely no proof that such a thing does, or does not exist. Scientific empirical evidence points toward gods not existing, but it's always a possibility that something out there is big enough to contort the laws of physics around itself and effectively act as a deity.
And to be honest if we did get the proof of a god existing and we'd have the ability to scientifically explain its power as a deity I'd be really fucking hyped.
[quote]Hawking, though, mused: "It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all."[/quote]
It's quite extraordinary that he does not realise (based on solid empirical evidence) that we live in probably the least violent time in human history.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;47186460]People are free to believe in gods and deities on the basis that we have absolutely no proof that such a thing does, or does not exist. Scientific empirical evidence points toward gods not existing, but it's always a possibility that something out there is big enough to contort the laws of physics around itself and effectively act as a deity.
And to be honest if we did get the proof of a god existing and we'd have the ability to scientifically explain its power as a deity I'd be really fucking hyped.[/QUOTE]
I'm not saying it's bad to believe in god. But I bet there is a lot of people who would just say like "nah, what space threat? Just believe, pray and he will save us if necessary, and everything will be fine".
[QUOTE=doommarine23;47186294]First, what do you define as smart. Now secondly, we're beginning to define the value of human life and that some people are more valuable than others.
I won't even get into the fact of how abusable and malleable this could be either.[/QUOTE]
Well, first off, what system do you want to use to measure intelligence? We have many things we could base it off of, from basic performance evaluations that account for what a person has actually achieved with their lives to standardized tests and scales for both children and adults.
Second, maybe you haven't realized this yet, but we are not all equal to each other. Some people can be judged better than others and are judged better than others. Some people are more intelligent than others, some have more physical prowess than others do, some are more successful socially, financially, and so on than others are, sexually... etc.
Fact is, if this species is ever backed into a corner and fighting for its survival, which is going to happen to us someday eventually, we're going to have to come up with some kind of a game plan to continue the existence of our species by moving it off this planet somewhere else. And it's probably going to require us to make unethical, immoral judgement calls that are going to exclude people and indirectly allow them to die.
Or we'll just do nothing except debate the philosophy of this crap until it's too late, we'll die out, and that will be the end of the matter.
Personally though, I'd rather we go Hawking's route and understand the bigger picture here and see to it that the best and brightest our species has to offer are sent out into the universe away from whatever we've been reduced to by that time, so I could at least then spend the rest of my existence satisfied in the knowledge that the survival of humanity is guaranteed in some way or another; hopefully, remaining in a high quality.
when discussing something like "the survival of the human race", you cannot view it through the normal lenses of morality and ethicality and come up with any viable solutions. unless there is a major technological breakthrough, it will be impossible to get everyone off this planet. at that point, a person who knows what they are doing [I]will[/I] be more valuable than someone who does not. a thousand charity workers, business leaders, children, and artists will most likely not be as valuable as someone who studied for a large portion of their life ways to produce food in a colony setting, or someone who has the proper education and training to be able to repair things in the colony.
the amount of people who would be colonists would very likely be very limited, with each person needing to provide a benefit to the colony. i cannot see there being much room for people who have none of the education required to ride along. it could very well be a fatal mistake to bring along an average joe over someone who can provide a benefit, and if you truly believe that you are colonizing for the survival of the human race, that is not a chance worth taking.
[QUOTE=Deng;47186463]It's quite extraordinary that he does not realise (based on solid empirical evidence) that we live in probably the least violent time in human history.[/QUOTE]
I dunno man. I'd like to see the numbers. History is quite violent
say you are on a sinking ship, and can pick 3 people to jump in a life raft and live on a deserted island, and the survival of at least one person from the boat of is utmost importance. you could pick one of the dozens of families of 3, all upstanding, generous, and downright good people, or you could pick an experienced survival expert, a doctor with emergency training, and a botanist. which would be the most viable option?
It would be utterly amazing to see a human colony on another world started within my lifetime.
[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;47186616]say you are on a sinking ship, and can pick 3 people to jump in a life raft and live on a deserted island, and the survival of at least one person from the boat of is utmost importance. you could pick one of the dozens of families of 3, all upstanding, generous, and downright good people, or you could pick an experienced survival expert, a doctor with emergency training, and a botanist. which would be the most viable option?[/QUOTE]
If I was on a sinking ship I'd be doing everything in my power to ensure more people end up surviving.
[QUOTE=Govna;47186293]And this is an unreasonable proposition... why?
But it makes people uncomfortable. That's the problem. Like Sir Attenborough's points on the necessity of population control make them uncomfortable too.[/QUOTE]
Overpopulating the planet's ability to feed, clothe, and shelter with a mean quality of life will make everyone fatally uncomfortable. Our level of technological progression isn't keeping up as it is, much less in an "ideal" scenario.
Secondly people are goddamn greedy, even if we did reach that kind of sustainability, do you [i]really[/i] think it would be shared equally and fairly?
Prolly not.
[QUOTE=27X;47186830]Overpopulating the planet's ability to feed, clothe, and shelter with a mean quality of life will make everyone fatally uncomfortable. Our level of technological progression isn't keeping up as it is, much less in an "ideal" scenario.
Secondly people are goddamn greedy, even if we did reach that kind of sustainability, do you [i]really[/i] think it would be shared equally and fairly?
Prolly not.[/QUOTE]
And these are the big reasons why I've said before here that I don't think we're going to survive in the long term. We've already got tons of problems, have more coming up on the near horizon with just climate change alone, and nothing's really being done to fight it. Fight it effectively, anyway. We're not all in the same boat about it, hell we've still got people denying the science to it. We're just too incapable of working together.
We're just a really incompetent species at realizing what needs to be done and actually sitting down to get what needs to be done... done. We can't even control our emotions and urges enough to make so much as a decent initial effort-- greed, pleasure, etc.
I don't know what will become of us in the end though. Nobody does for certain. Maybe we'll make a strong comeback and get our shit together.
In the end, we either will or we won't; we will either survive or we will die. The painful thing to me is just how utterly indifferent the universe will be to our death and disappearance, let alone the fact that we even existed in the first place. Our insignificance is something I think we should try to understand and appreciate more so we can begin to grasp the importance of improving and ensuring the survival our species. It helps us put ourselves into context, tells us where we, as individuals and as a species, fit into the universe in the grand scheme of things. It spells out pretty clearly that we have to look out for ourselves, or else we're not going to be around for long.
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