Hawking Expecting To Make Full Recovery

explosivejared writes "Yesterday we discussed the medical scare that physicist Stephen Hawking was going through. Happily, his website has posted a succinct statement that he is being kept for observation, but he is comfortable and expecting a full recovery."

Comments

Full Recovery?

[dsginter]

Are any of us expected to make a full recovery?

Life is the leading cause of death, ya know.

Re:Full recovery?

[Qzukk]

So he's going to be up and out of that wheelchair in no time, eh?

The brain transplant went well.

Re:Full Recovery?

[chord.wav]

Are any of us expected to make a full recovery?

You are a sysadmin, right?

Re:Full Recovery?

[Dr Caleb]

"Life is the leading cause of death, ya know."

"Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily." François de La Rochefoucauld

I'm a physicist myself

[adpe]

... but I admire his skill when it comes to explaing the complicated stuff to the masses. Go Stephen!

Cannot be killed by conventional weapons

[damburger]

The man is a survivor, that is for sure. I saw him lecture a few months ago, and is still on form. He will still answer the dumbest questions from any snide creationist or just plain ignorant member of the public - even though it took him considerable effort to compose a response.

Re:Cannot be killed by conventional weapons

[damburger]

Well one of the questions was 'IF the universe is expanding, where is it expanding from' and the other was 'What happened before the big bang' (I paraphrase in both cases).

Both had a tone in their voice suggesting they had some uber-clever question with which to catch out probably the greatest living British mind, and both asked questions that could've been answered by myself or any of the about 50 people from the physics department who attended the lecture. It angered me, I must say.

Re:Cannot be killed by conventional weapons

[Bemopolis]

GP had it right. Snide evolutionists don't bother asking such questions of Hawking. Since he's, you know, not a biologist.

Re:Cannot be killed by conventional weapons

[DoofusOfDeath]

You didn't hear these people. Their questions were hostile, and pretty fucking dumb.

So maybe that particular talk brought out an especially dumb sample of Creationists.

Does this really tell us much about the general population of Creationists vs. the general population of non-Creationists? It's a pretty small sample.

Re:Cannot be killed by conventional weapons

[DragonWriter]

You do realize that there are snide believers in evolution, also...right?

So? If there weren't snide evolutionists asking questions at the event on which the description was based, the fact that they exist elsewhere is irrelevant. The use of a adjective along with a noun usually suggests that the adjective is adding additional information that is not implicit in the noun, and also usually does not mean that there are no instances where the same adjective would apply to other nouns, even ones that are semantically opposed to the one being used in the present sentence.

Just being a creationist doesn't make someone "snide".

If it did, the phrase "snide creationist" would be redundant, so the mere use of the phrase suggests, indeed, that the GP realizes that.

Not looking for an argument, by any means...just pointing that out.

...in a context in which it is completely irrelevant. If you aren't trolling, exactly what are you doing?

Re:Cannot be killed by conventional weapons

[The End Of Days]

Don't get upset with creationists for putting forth poor arguments. Encourage them to continue. It will only make them more irrelevant.

Re:Cannot be killed by conventional weapons

[publiclurker]

I'd say skilled is not a word usually used when referring to creationists. While they always try to use trickery and deceit, they are rarely skilled at it.

Re:Cannot be killed by conventional weapons

[JoshuaZ]

Well, this individual story might not tell us much but there's a lot of evidence that creationists are in general dumber and less educated than the general populace. (This is assuming that we define creationist to not mean "belief that God created the world" but rather almost any statement that makes more or less concrete claims about the role that God had in the universe). The GSS data is very strong in this regard, showing that there's a strong correlation between having a large vocabulary (which is a useful proxy for intelligence)and acceptance of evolution.http://www.halfsigma.com/2008/02/who-believes-in.html. Similar results occur when you look at SAT scores and IQ tests. In particular, Protestant denominations which are avowedly Young Earth Creationist have lower average SAT scores and IQ scores. See for example http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2008/05/biblical_literalism_or_low_iq.php which shows an extremely strong inverse correlations between the fraction of a denomination that ascribes to Biblical literalism and the IQ score (seriously, R^2 is around .86. You almost never get social science data that shows that strong a correlation).

One thing to keep in mind is that this doesn't necessarily mean that this doesn't necessarily imply that evolution is more likely to be correct or that the smart people are paying more attention to the evidence. Razib Khan, who put together the quick little analysis linked to above about IQ and Biblical literalism, has suggested (can't find link right now unfortunately) that smart people are more likely to believe ideas from other smart people and that this accounts for some of the strong correlation between intelligence and acceptance of evolution.

Re:Cannot be killed by conventional weapons

[tecnico.hitos]

I don't know... I always thought "what happened before the Big Bang" is a good question. I am still expecting a convincing answer.

I have heard that there was no time "before the Big Bang" because timespace is a single thing, but that only makes me wonder what triggered time or how matter could exist outside space, since there was no time.

Then, I get an explanation about how particles appear and disapear, coming and going from "somewhere else" (sorry, I don't remember the right term) without an apparent reason and how this happens all the time, but was particulary important when the matter was concentrated in one point.

This doesn't seem very rudimentary for me, I feel that I'm lacking information. Like: where exactly does the particles come from and if the particle appearing/disappearing happens in such small scale, how did the massively dense universe get formed.

...even google failed me.

Re:Cannot be killed by conventional weapons

[Raenex]

The common answer by scientists is quite unconvincing, and what it really amounts to is "sorry, can't explain it, the equations don't go back any further". A year or two ago I saw a Hawking video (covered on Slashdot) where he actually addressed this question as part of the presentation, and he gave the answer as a joke along the lines that God created Hell for people who asked such questions.

Rushing to Death

[pleappleappleap]

But still, there's not reason to help death on its rounds...

I, for one, am glad Professor Hawking is expected to recover.

They finally checked on him

[jbeaupre]

Until then, it was 50-50. But as soon as the doctors observed him, the state of his health collapsed to one state: full recovery.

Re:They finally checked on him

[idontgno]

Actually, Hawking's observed photon trace virtualized into a Hawking-antiHawking pair. AntiHawking fell into a black hole, and we're recovering Hawking.

Re:They finally checked on him

[Chris Burke]

AntiHawking fell into a black hole, and we're recovering Hawking.

Wait a minute... Stephen Hawking didn't used to have a goatee... We saved the wrong one!

Obviously he will recover

[wowbagger]

Obviously Dr. Hawking will recover - he has not yet found a full Grand Unified Theory integrating quantum mechanics and gravity. That's the deal he made with Death - he gets to have that theory published before he dies.

A much better gambit than challenging The Grim Reaper to chess. Or Twister, even.

-------
Seriously - get well soon sir, and keep on thinking free.

Re:Obviously he will recover

[daveime]

I GET 100% OF EVERYTHING.

Ok, two things

[Weaselmancer]

Comfortable and expecting to make a full recovery --- As comfortable as a dying man can be I'm sure. Makes me wonder why he'd even want to recover.

First thing - we're all dying. Right now. Sure, Mr. Hawking has a name for what he's dying from and you don't (yet), but mortality is pretty much a constant. Just because your fate hasn't been given a label yet doesn't mean you don't have one. You do, just like everyone else. Including Mr. Hawking. I hope you're "as comfortable" as you can be too.

Second thing. Any sick person wants to recover. And that means you too. I guarantee if you were in a similar state you'd want to live just as much as...well, as anyone else. There's more to life than being able to walk around the block. There's art, music, science, math, and a host of other things you don't need a functioning body to enjoy.

My best friend from college has crippling MS. He's wheelchair bound. And he's one of the craziest and most fun people I've ever known. And at the time had an astonishingly hot girlfriend.

Life has far bigger parameters than you imply.

Good!

[spaceyhackerlady]

I'm glad to hear it.

These things are relative, of course: Professor Hawking's "good health" is a serious illness by most usual standards. He's not a young man, either.

Nevertheless, I wish him well.

...laura

Living, is a very dangerous activity . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

. . . no one has been able to survive it yet.