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Stephen Hawking: Biggest Human Failing Is Aggression
hypnosec writes: Aggression is the human failing that celebrity scientist Stephen Hawking would most like to correct, as it holds the potential to destroy human civilization. Hawking expressed his views while escorting Adaeze Uyanwah — London's Official Guest of Honor — around London's Science Museum. Uyanwah asked Hawking what human shortcomings he would alter, and which virtues he would enhance if this was possible. He replied, "The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression. 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. A major nuclear war would be the end of civilization, and maybe the end of the human race."
Greedy sociopaths worldwide manipulate the aggressive en masse via the media, monetary reward and punishment systems, and if necessary, brute force to further their acquisitive nature, which has no end, and ultimately, no point.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
We have a stone age need to kill each other and seem to take great joy in this, but our intelligent brains have been able to come up with ways to expend great amounts of energy very rapidly.
This is a fatal combination.
Proof of the concept is how at least one Death Cult religion has adherents who actively agitate and attempt to grease the skids for their particular end of the world myth, and actually look forward to it. If that isn't batshit crazy and species eradicating, then nothing is.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Or what if testosterone levels in the developed world were reduced by almost 30% by using an insidious combination of phyto-estrogens, cholesterol-reducing statin drugs, plastic water bottles, ubiquitous soy, and birth control pills polluting recycled water.
Oh wait... We did that already.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
This dystopia is well played out in This Perfect Day
As usual someone has to have totalitarian complete control to implement this. Attempting to de-nature humans has historically led to revolt every time. Even the Chinese eunuchs banded together to manipulate politics and stage revolts.
You attempt to da-nature humans, and humans will return to the roots. Our roots are nomadic hunting/gathering and agrarian famsteading - these are families and small groups of humans free to do what they need to to get to the next day.
Its the pressure cooker of modern society and the denaturing of family and repression of human nature that causes real issues.
I think video games have given rise to a generation of people raised on their butts with fingers on the keyboard where they think they can play the role of God making decisions for humanity like to drug us all so we act proper.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Anti-vaxxers on slashdot? Don't they revoke your geek card for that?
People fail to see the endgame of a non-aggression principle as having any equitable position for the practitioner in the face of a world that does not comply with it.
If someone kills my wife, killing them back doesn't get my wife back. Indeed, it is theoretically possible that forgiving the killer actually does less harm to me than agitating for the murderer's destruction. It is also possible that a forgiven murderer reforms and becomes a model citizen.
But even if you could mathematically prove that was the case, good luck with trying to convince me that wife's loss of life and my own pain doesn't require some sort of vengeance. How would it be acceptable that someone could walk away scot free, or with just a slap on the hand?
Non-aggression also implies a courage that even some of the people who practice it don't understand. In the end, you have to be willing to accept that you can't make an attack to proactively stop a terrible outcome that you know is going to happen.
You see that dictator across the sea subjugating people, building missiles, and spreading rhetoric to prepare their people to come attack *you*. You know you could prevent or blunt their attack on you by hitting them first.
The destruction in a war happens to the defenders. The only time an aggressor takes real damage is when they are forced on the defensive themselves. Non-aggression means you're going to be fighting a just war, but you're going to be fighting it in the rubble of your own home.
That doesn't mean non-aggression is wrong, it just means that you really, really need to understand what the cost is for that theoretically superior outcome.
Man's biggest failure may be failing to stand up to aggression, but get RID of aggression? Not going to happen, and not a good thing if it did. Leaders are aggressive.
I don't know the meaning of aggression to you, but if we talk about the human being, and understand aggression as violence, so we can say that only bad leaders are aggressive.
Good leaders do not need to use aggression to maintain their position. Gandhi was a leader, but he was not aggressive (violent) in his actions.
Actually, a more accurate translation is "thou shalt not murder". In ancient Hebrew, killing (harag) and murder (ratzah) are different words, and the commandment uses the latter. See? Point proven!
Generally, I don't perceive aggressiveness as an inherently negative trait, just... a dangerous one, akin to dynamite. If used properly, aggressiveness can propel civilization forward in healthy competition. Use incorrectly, it can indeed destroy civilization.
One could argue that the United States' moon shot was extremely aggressive, as it was a direct counter to the Soviet's aggressive move into space ahead of us. Yet I'd guess most would argue that the space race ultimately ended up being a positive endeavor. Likewise, the modern trend of building a world's tallest skyscraper could be viewed as aggressive. They're built not out of logical economics, but a desire to proclaim a region's or company's technical and cultural prowess to the world. I feel this is also a positive channeling of human aggression as well. It pushes us to expand our technical horizons and take enormous risks.
Obviously, we all know what the downside of aggression is: anger, violence, rape, murder, war, genocide. But part of being blessed with intelligence means that we can make a conscious choice about how we direct our inner aggression, and work to improve ourselves by harnessing it. Societal influence is a very key component in helping shape a civilization, and as we raise our children, we teach them to channel their inherent aggression into positive activities that can benefit both themselves and others.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Go read the comments on YouTube for a day and tell me that you honestly think we should pay attention to everyone who wants to share their opinion. The nice thing about Hawking's position is that if he spouts too much half-baked bullshit, people will stop listening to him. Random Slashdot guy has no such limitation (or doesn't care about it).
We should certainly keep an open mind and I'm completely disgusted by unwarranted deference to the opinions of celebrities, but go and read the illiterate ramblings that the GP responded to. What is his argument against Hawking's claims? What valuable insight does his argument present?
There's only so much time in our lives; wasting it listening to morons would be tragic.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.