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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."
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.
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.
The most dangerous of them all...
Required reading for internet skeptics
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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