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Hawking Says Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution
movesguy sends us to The Daily Galaxy for comments by Stephen Hawking about how humans are evolving in a different way than any species before us. Quoting:
"'At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information. I think it is legitimate to take a broader view, and include externally transmitted information, as well as DNA, in the evolution of the human race,' Hawking said. In the last ten thousand years the human species has been in what Hawking calls, 'an external transmission phase,' where the internal record of information, handed down to succeeding generations in DNA, has not changed significantly. 'But the external record, in books, and other long lasting forms of storage,' Hawking says, 'has grown enormously. Some people would use the term evolution only for the internally transmitted genetic material, and would object to it being applied to information handed down externally. But I think that is too narrow a view. We are more than just our genes.'"
Hawkins is right about the external store.... But the real change is when we began to code processes for computers. The interesting thing about books isn't that they exist, but that we can read something from 2000 years ago and continue processes defined by such texts.
The interesting thing about programs isn't that they exist external (like books), but that a machine reads something defined external to itself, perhaps from another country or time, and executes the processes defined by such tasks.
In the latter case, no HUMAN was required. We successfully built a mechanism by which processes can be defined and propagated without direct human involvement (other than supplying the computer, and putting it in touch with the software).
Suddenly I can have access to processes meticulously defined and tested by others without having to read a book or study or practice. I just load up a program and execute.
We have not only externalized the genetic store, as it were, but also the role of the organism in executing the processes.
I have noticed that Liberals will always make double-standard excuses for the most egregious behaviors of their favored cultural demographics, i.e. anyone who is not male and European, and come down with the most sanctimonious outrage on similar behaviors by those who are unfavored. Europeans arrive in the New World and displace indigenous populations? Miserable, terrible, horrible Europeans, how could you have done such a thing? Indigenous Aztec populations subject tens of thousand of war prisoners to grisly death to appease the Sun God? It's a unique and attractive form of cultural and religious expression that is equally valuable to any of the creations of the Old World - but you just wouldn't understand.
Let me get this straight .... you claim to be a scientist ... and then claim that the scientific method is junk?
Awesome. That's like your dentist saying "you know, I really have no idea what I'm doing here ... but let me go get my pliers".
Who put Hawking in charge of the obvious?