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Hawking Says Scientific Progress Is Major Source of New Threats To Humanity
HughPickens.com writes: BBC reports that according to Stephen Hawking most of the threats humans now face come from advances in science and technology, including nuclear war, global warming and genetically-engineered viruses. "Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years," said Hawking in answer to a question during the BBC Reith Lectures. "By that time we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race. However, we will not establish self-sustaining colonies in space for at least the next hundred years, so we have to be very careful in this period."
During his lecture Hawking also answered a question on whether his synthesized electronic voice had shaped his personality, perhaps allowing the introvert to become an extrovert. Replying that he had never been called an introvert before, Hawking added: "Just because I spend a lot of time thinking doesn't mean I don't like parties and getting into trouble."
During his lecture Hawking also answered a question on whether his synthesized electronic voice had shaped his personality, perhaps allowing the introvert to become an extrovert. Replying that he had never been called an introvert before, Hawking added: "Just because I spend a lot of time thinking doesn't mean I don't like parties and getting into trouble."
It is your gene pool, even these are not your descendants. Helping your brother to have 4 children will contribute more to 'spreading' your gene pool than having 1 child yourself.
In any case, you should care more about your memes (not the internet kind) and these are hard to pass down if humanity goes extinct.
The guy is a brilliant theoretical physicist and a celebrity scientist, but this in no way makes him an authority in the social implications of scientific discovery.
Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years," said Hawking ...
Pretty sure "the planet" will be fine no matter. Humans on the other hand ... It would also be disappointing for the huge, wonderful variety of plants and animals that share this planet with us to suffer because of our carelessness or apathy.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
From the invention to the bow and arrow to the trebuchet (piling on the plague bodies as ammunition) to the first nuclear bomb. Why? Because humanity continually builds tools that extend our reach, to give us abilities beyond our natural and current technological abilities.
Still, I think we will end on the mundane, the species exhausting resources on earth, rather than an extraordinary bang. Bangs we can survive, and even thrive. The exhaustion, otoh, comes from lack of planning and foresight. If anything describes us as a species, it's lack of foresight into macroscopic matters amongst the crowd.
the planet and in extension the universe is better off without human.
The problem is that humans compete with other life forms for food, light, warmth, moisture, etc. But computers need none of those things, and do best in a cool, dry, dark environment. So we should migrate our consciousnesses to silicon. AI is not the problem, it is the solution.
While I agree with your first point, as to the second point, I'd say the break between weapon and action began centuries ago with the development of artillery. Drones are really just part of a long chain of innovations that started with the invention of gunpowder. In fact, there were many who felt that firearms and cannon were dishonorable weapons, and a battle should be fought man to man on a field of battle, sword matched to sword.
At any rate, that robots would become our warriors was foreseen decades ago, and every advance in remote probes; whether they be in space, on land or in deep water, has always been as much about developing weapons technology as it has been about exploration. That is the way of science, discoveries that can benefit humanity greatly can also all too often be used as weapons.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Help? Have you seen his wife?
However, science is generally logical enough to recognize that such uses of technology are counterproductive.
How long did it take to recognize that lead in gasoline was a bad idea? More seriously for existential risks like the sort under discussion, it doesn't take science collectively as a whole to do something stupid, just a handful of people might engineer a bad virus. Or a pollution problem could arise that is a collective action problem like climate change. The Fermi Paradox is a real problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox and one of the easiest explanations for it is that civilizations wipe themselves out with technology.
What if we aren't an intelligent species?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Really? And the Dems are not?
Please site where Republicans are more interested in collecting information and preventing dissenters than Democrats.
I guess you haven't heard of the Supreme Court case being discussed right now in which the unions (they're Democrats from what I've been told) have been oppressing their members and making arguments that suppression of dissent gives them the ability to do more "good". Sweet.
Again, please give sources.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Science may recognize it, but scientists rarely have a say in the actual application of new technologies. At that point we have to put our faith in our governments and commercial interests, and neither of these groups have proven all that reliable at using technology responsibly.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Humanity will be quite capable of exterminating itself in space as well. What is needed is a spiritual and religious revival where men actually fear the eternal consequences of their actions again. Religion will be what saves us from this because only religion can provide the eternal carrot and stick necessary to not only make most people behave, but incentivize them to regulate with civility those who won't in ways that endanger the public.
Advances in computing have enabled oppression that would have been unimaginable not even a few decades ago.
Yes, because slaves in ancient Egypt or early USA were not really 'oppressed'. Nobody was monitoring their tweets, nobody was invoking 'protection from terrorists' while bodypatting them before they boarded their business class flights for holiday trips, they haven't to copy with uncertainty of their routers having hardware embedded backdoors done by NSA and there was no risk of them being caught in the city because of CCTVs monitoring.
Every time I hear people claiming how bad contemporary freedoms are, I really wish them being sent to middle ages or earlier and put into non-ruling class shoes. Spending few years as serf, not being allowed to own anything, move more than few miles from your place of birth, reading anything except Bible (if you even knew how to read in first place) and having your relatives raped by local lord on the whim without any chances of going to the court would probably put things into perspective.
The problem is that there may not be enough time for that to happen on this planet as its useful life for supporting complex life is mostly over. That is, in 800 million years this planet will not be capable of sustaining multi-cellular life due to eventual loss of carbon dioxide. This will happen whether humans are here or not.
We've got a very stable period from a geology, astronomy (that is, no ongoing nearby nova or other event that makes space totally uninhabitable,) and climate perspective right now, so we may as well take advantage of it. Any future civilization might not have as good of a chance as we have now.
And every time I hear about people comparing "how good we have it now" to how bad it used to be, I really wish that they'd just admit that they've given up at being the best and that they've settled for "well, at least we're not North Korea".
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
To quote the late, great Bill Hicks, "We're a virus with shoes"
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
That's a HUGE assumption. Heck, picture a species virtually identical to us, except that they reproduce much more slowly. Their pharmaceutical and industrial revolutions would go VERY differently without the rapid population explosion we experienced as a result. In fact, we're seeing today that well-to-do nations tend to fall to roughly zero population growth (discounting immigration), so there's a fair chance their global population might stabilize at far below a billion, something easily sustainable without stressing the planet's carrying capacity, eliminating or at least greatly simplifying virtually all of the problems we've created for ourselves, from war, to pollution, global warming, etc.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Both introverts and extroverts like being around people and doing interesting things. The main difference between introverts and extroverts is the way they recharge. Introverts recharge by being alone while extroverts recharge by being with people. This is a general statement that applies to most people.
I really wish that they'd just admit that they've given up at being the best
We don't live in a fantasy world. There are many hard limits keeping us from getting that perfect society. Not least of which is that we're a bit far from perfect ourselves.
Could be lots of things :
- Genetically engineered airborne supervirus (think 12 Monkeys movie plot)
- Self replicating nano-bot swarm / grey goo
- Actual AI replacing humans
- Nukes
- New type of super-weapon (like a hydrogen bomb) that requires significantly less effect or difficult materials to create
This concept really isn't new; it's one of the ideas of why we haven't seen any evidence of life outside Earth (fermi paradox); that civilizations eventually destroy themselves via technology before they establish bases on other planets. Humans are certainly in that category right now; there's enough nukes out there in existence to do that. The point being made, is that scientific advancements will make it easier for a single individual to kill more other people (possibly wipe out the whole human race) than in any other point in history.
As long as we have a concept of individuality (meaning not a hive mind), there's a risk that some individuals will trigger the downfall of civilization as we know it, and kill all humans (fulfilling the wishes of Bender Rodriguez). This is especially true with the current social and political situations we have now. Whether it's a nutty eco-terrorist looking to wipe out all humans to return to a "natural" state, or a religious fanatic hoping to trigger the apocalypse, or just someone mentally ill - scientific progress will continue to increase the likeliness for a single individual (or a handful) to wipe out humanity. Pretty sure that was the point
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
First of all, in Total War, there are no innocents. The US Civil War, where Total War was essentially invented, demonstrated that in modern warfare, every member of society becomes a part of the war machine.
As to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the Allies caused just as many death with conventional bombs. People concentrate on the nuclear devices dropped on those two cities, but don't seem to be aware of the massive conventional bombings of Japanese targets, in particular Tokyo, where somewhere between 75,000 and 200,000 people died.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Velcro?
We don't live in a fantasy world, but there is no reason that we should stop trying to improve our world, just because it is a lot better than 100 years ago.
What are these hard limits you speak of? I don't know any, is there a reason we cannot evolve to be perfect. Will we ever get to a perfect world (whatever that is, I don't even have a definition of that) probably not, should we stop trying to improve our lives, just because we can't attain perfection, NO.
I agree with grandparent, that complaining technology has made our lives worse is a bit over the top. But that doesn't mean we should stop discussing it, and being careful that our rights are not eroded by it.
As a side note I personally wouldn't like to live in a world where the are no problems, everything get all that they want, how boring, what would you have to live for. That would not be my definition of a perfect world.
No one is saying that these things are worse than shackle-and-chain slavery.
We're just a bit concerned that after all this awesome forward progress, we seem to be setting up all of the pieces to slide back and then be locked in.
If you can't see how this can be used against the things we take for granted in the west then you are blind.
It's not that it's bad now, but when you need a data mined facebook to login to a Govt. website and all financial transactions are under the Govt. eye and the Gov't. is militarizing it's domestic "peace officers" and start going after people based on flawed heuristics and corruption is rampant and we've been throwing our civil liberties down the shitter for a decade and a half chasing some phantom menace and within 100 miles of a coast is a border inspection zone, and they force your company to surviell for them and if they find a problem with you it gets addressed in a FISA court and they want it all automated...
Well I'm just glad i was born in the last generation that could get chemistry sets, and not end up on no fly lists and have my assets.
How will "the people" overthrow an oppressive regime that will have a drone drop "collateral damage" onto a citizen with out any oversight. How? It's like all the foundations of a dystopia. we're not there yet, but damn, I can't believe how much we've lost in the past decade.
It's not about how bad it -is- it's about what we're setting it up for when we strip out all the ideals that have made the west, and America, what they are currently. The best place for a hard working person to show up and have a shot at a decent life.
The thing is when you look past the clickbait, it's actually a reasonable opinion not on the dangers of technology, but on the dangers of trying to keep our current social models without adapting to or acknowledging disruptive technology.
for example, the "OMG Hawkins fears skynet" was just clickbait for "Hawkins is worried that if we don't do anything about current inequality trends, most of humanity will be treated as disposable garbage when automation renders human labour obsolete"
The most dangerous of them all...
Required reading for internet skeptics
Technology has not made our lives worse, but it hasn't necessarily made them better. Longer, perhaps, but longer does not always mean better.
A lot depends on what you value and your perception of the world. There are people living today who would commit suicide over having to live at a 19th Century level, let alone a 10th Century level of technology or culture. However, as we know, millions and billions of people lived in those periods over time, the great majority of which did not kill themselves.
There is nothing that describes how science does not necessarily improve our lives like the term "first world problems". People live and die, and feel miserable about not having things that 99.99999% of humans have never had or even known existed.
Ultimately, your attitude and ability to maintain perspective is probably your best chance at really feeling happy in this world. There *are* marvels and wonders out there, but we're so used to them, that you probably need to study history to really understand how good we have it.
Maxim 24: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a big gun.
That's a HUGE assumption. Heck, picture a species virtually identical to us, except that they reproduce much more slowly. Their pharmaceutical and industrial revolutions would go VERY differently without the rapid population explosion we experienced as a result. In fact, we're seeing today that well-to-do nations tend to fall to roughly zero population growth (discounting immigration), so there's a fair chance their global population might stabilize at far below a billion, something easily sustainable without stressing the planet's carrying capacity, eliminating or at least greatly simplifying virtually all of the problems we've created for ourselves, from war, to pollution, global warming, etc.
The industrial revolution might play out even more differently that what you are imagining. Our rapid growth is one of the things that spurred the industrial revolution. A longer life cycle would make cultural changes much slower. Also, without a high demand on resources, it becomes unnecessary. Look at the native americans. They had plenty of resources for a small population and therefore didn't progress to the large seafaring boats necessary to get more resources from afar (among other things). We might not have arose at all as resource scarcity is responsible for the growth of intelligence. Even if we would have made it to the industrial revolution, with a small population it becomes much more difficult to fund billion dollar projects like the space program as it's harder to skim that much money off the top. Basically, although there are disadvantages of a large population, there are also certain advantages like the ability of everyone to donate $1 and have enough money to fund huge enterprises as well as other indirect advantages like forcing innovation in order to survive.
Rather than directly answer your question, I'll address a side issue. The quest for perfection tends to generate very bad political movements. In an effort to end drunkenness, prohibitionists made many aspects of alcohol illegal, resulting in increased drunkenness and criminal organizations that have never been eradicated. The quest for human perfection was one excuse for the killing sprees of both Stalin and Hitler.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Good luck with that, never going to happen within several generations.
Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk think it will happen much sooner than that. However, for some reason, they see it as a bad thing.
Whoa. Like, dude.
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But what if being intelligent enough to realize you aren't an intelligent species makes you an intelligent species?
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The guy is a brilliant theoretical physicist and a celebrity scientist, but this in no way makes him an authority in the social implications of scientific discovery.
Oh, I don't know. I'm sure keen to find out his picks for The Oscars.
Galantai proposes an alternative to the Kardashev scale that focuses on survival of the species. The short version is that if we can survive the destruction of the planet we are at one level, survive solar system destruction at least another level up, without detailing the kinds of events that would make multiple star systems unlivable - there are levels above that. These are links to the Galantai scale stuff: http://www.centauri-dreams.org... http://mono.eik.bme.hu/~galant...
yes and of course
6. If violence wasnâ(TM)t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
8. Mockery and derision have their place. Usually, it's on the far side of the airlock.
12. A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head.
14. "Mad Science" means never stopping to ask "what's the worst thing that could happen?"
Why is it so important to preserve the human race? We keep wiping ourselves out: many great civilizations have perished because all the available land was used up for food. Now we are able to make our whole planet uninhabitable for ourselves, and quote a long way on our way to doing exactly that. We are unsustainable and we should therefore die out. And besides, after you're dead, what does it matter to you what happens to humanity?
-- Cheers!
We are better off than 100 years ago, but are we better off than 50 years ago?
Depends on definition of 'we'. I think, that, weighted by population, world is a lot better than 50 years ago. Enough to look at China - while it has its great firewall right now and monitors its citizen lives extensively, I still don't think it in any way compares with Cultural Revolution times in terms of 'oppression'.
Same for Eastern block - life under USSR directorate was a lot more oppressing that what is happening right now.
If we focus on Western countries in particular (so limiting ourselves to 20% or so of the world)... maybe you are right - I don't know about the living history enough, being raised in Eastern block. I still think that many people would consider mandatory conscription to fight in Vietnam War quite bad and 'oppressing' today.
I suppose that rather than reaching 100 or 50 years in the past, we should settle on 20 or 25 years. I would agree that period of 1989(end of cold war)-2001(WTC attack) is probably 'golden age' for freedom and things are going downhill from there. But I would consider these 12 years more as a statistical fluke rather than a rule...