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Stephen Hawking, Who Examined the Universe and Explained Black Holes, Dies at 76 (nytimes.com)
Stephen W. Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and best-selling author who roamed the cosmos from a wheelchair, pondering the nature of gravity and the origin of the universe and becoming an emblem of human determination and curiosity, has died at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 76. From a report: A family spokesman announced the death in a statement to several news media outlets. "Not since Albert Einstein has a scientist so captured the public imagination and endeared himself to tens of millions of people around the world," Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, said in an interview. Dr. Hawking did that largely through his book "A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes," published in 1988. It has sold more than 10 million copies and inspired a documentary film by Errol Morris.
The 2014 film about his life, "The Theory of Everything," was nominated for several Academy Awards and Eddie Redmayne, who played Dr. Hawking, won the best-actor Oscar. Scientifically, Dr. Hawking will be best remembered for a discovery so strange that it might be expressed in the form of a Zen koan: When is a black hole not black? When it explodes. A brief history of Stephen Hawking: A legacy of paradox.
The 2014 film about his life, "The Theory of Everything," was nominated for several Academy Awards and Eddie Redmayne, who played Dr. Hawking, won the best-actor Oscar. Scientifically, Dr. Hawking will be best remembered for a discovery so strange that it might be expressed in the form of a Zen koan: When is a black hole not black? When it explodes. A brief history of Stephen Hawking: A legacy of paradox.
dam dam dam.
I reckon most of his smarts was derived from AI in the wheelchair anyways. He was probably dead for years. How would anyone know. Sort of a "Weekend at Bernie's" deal. Not as funny... just more boring and science-y. Too soon? Sorry I'm not good with Social queues.
An imperfect person, he still made humanity that much better off.
He's just moved to the other side of an event horizon.
Respects, Dr Hawking.
Like his most recent press release
Well now my only chance to meet him is to go to his Time Travel Party in 2009.
Who's with me?
p.s. Ok. I'm back. That party was a drag. He was already black out drunk when I got there. :(
And with that, the average IQ of the human species dropped a few points :.(
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
We must live in a multiverse cause I could have sworn he came out and said that he knew what was there before the universe... "nothing". Which seems rather obvious because space and time are part of the universe and didn't exist beforehand. We just can't seem to accept that. I wonder if it follows that we could trigger the creation of a new universe and never know we had successfully done so because it has its own space and time that can in no way interact with ours.
In retrospect I wonder if it was an expression of faith more than anything
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"
- Stephen Hawking - 1988 - A Brief History of Time
His life was remarkable in many ways - one of which was surviving with ALS for so bloody long.
My dad died from complications of ALS way back in the 1990s. Having seen first-hand how the disease progresses, I marvel at how Hawking managed to live with that disease for so many decades. Yes, they called it "slow onset", but that seems to be mostly a hand-waving attempt at explaining a disease they still don't really understand. Even with support devices like a respirator, it's hard for me to wrap my head around it - those things bring with them their own complications.
Godspeed, Dr. Hawking.
#DeleteChrome
... oh - I see what you did there
With all due respect (which is none, if you're sufficiently dense to have not received the message), you may fornicate yourself with a fireplace poke whilst simultaneously flying a kite in a hurricane.
Mourning the death of somebody one has never met is a strange feeling.
How is it that Stephen Hawking won every prize there is except the Nobel? Discovering something revolutionary about black holes would seem to qualify.
It has been an incredible honor to be alive at the same time as Stephen Hawking. His idea's and his story impacted so many people around the world. The impact he made on science will likely be remembered and studied for thousands of years. The Maya, Plato, Copernicus, Einstein, Hawking. These are just a few. Hawking is now and we all got to live in his time! Thank you Dr. Hawking, you will be greatly missed and always remembered.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
Long after rappers and reality TV stars and tinpot despots and kings and presidents are dust and forgotten, Stephen Hawkings name will be remembered.
He joins Einstein and Newton as a giant.
Hawking is dead, long live Hawking !
Awesome he lived that long and am thankful for his contributions to humanity. Feels a lot of the social global climate is reverting and a generation is dying. Hopefully logic and reason become the norm allowing other great minds to flourish.
Usually I'm not the person to gush over a public figure or cast strangely intimate condolences at a person I've never met.
In this case I'll make an exception.
Back in the day- it was Dr. Hawking's book "A Brief History of Time" which drew me into a lifelong love of physics. Many books on the subject have followed. The basic knowledge of the universe learned form those books increased the quality of my life. Going to bed at night knowing what is true, what is not true, and what I do not yet know is a very comforting experience.
His life was an example of devotion to a principle called the "Scientific Method". Perhaps the ultimate measure of truth in a world everyone thinks they know everything without the knowledge of what they do not know. For all his brilliance, like Einstein before him, he admitted he did not know everything. He was simply an explorer through an environment which could only be experienced in the mind because it is beyond the human senses.
And he had to make a case for these truths to many people who would not accept his ideas. He did it only with logic, math, and a passion for finding what is true.
No man lives forever. Hopefully his inspiration of others will last forever. Hopefully we will learn his lessons of science, humility, and good humor.
He was such a good human, it was worth losing him, just to have him. Hopefully, his waveform continues elsewhere.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb2jGy76v0Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
that's more of a philosophical outing than saying that matter, time or whatever was there before that.
like what did big bang happen or from kinda.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
but his voice will live on..
My Condolences to his family, first and to Humanity second. He was a giant among men, and a beacon of hope to all.
To err is to be human, to really screw up takes a computer and a human.
Well, here you all go since the paywall is breaking things. Stephen W. Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and best-selling author who roamed the cosmos from a wheelchair, pondering the nature of gravity and the origin of the universe and becoming an emblem of human determination and curiosity, died early Wednesday at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 76.
His death was confirmed by a spokesman for Cambridge University.
“Not since Albert Einstein has a scientist so captured the public imagination and endeared himself to tens of millions of people around the world,” Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, said in an interview.
Dr. Hawking did that largely through his book “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes,” published in 1988. It has sold more than 10 million copies and inspired a documentary film by Errol Morris. The 2014 film about his life, “The Theory of Everything,” was nominated for several Academy Awards and Eddie Redmayne, who played Dr. Hawking, won the Oscar for best actor.
Scientifically, Dr. Hawking will be best remembered for a discovery so strange that it might be expressed in the form of a Zen koan: When is a black hole not black? When it explodes.
What is equally amazing is that he had a career at all. As a graduate student in 1963, he learned he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neuromuscular wasting disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was given only a few years to live.
The disease reduced his bodily control to the flexing of a finger and voluntary eye movements but left his mental faculties untouched.
He went on to become his generation’s leader in exploring gravity and the properties of black holes, the bottomless gravitational pits so deep and dense that not even light can escape them.
That work led to a turning point in modern physics, playing itself out in the closing months of 1973 on the walls of his brain when Dr. Hawking set out to apply quantum theory, the weird laws that govern subatomic reality, to black holes. In a long and daunting calculation, Dr. Hawking discovered to his befuddlement that black holes — those mythological avatars of cosmic doom — were not really black at all. In fact, he found, they would eventually fizzle, leaking radiation and particles, and finally explode and disappear over the eons.
Nobody, including Dr. Hawking, believed it at first — that particles could be coming out of a black hole. “I wasn’t looking for them at all,” he recalled in an interview in 1978. “I merely tripped over them. I was rather annoyed.”
That calculation, in a thesis published in 1974 in the journal Nature under the title “Black Hole Explosions?,” is hailed by scientists as the first great landmark in the struggle to find a single theory of nature — to connect gravity and quantum mechanics, those warring descriptions of the large and the small, to explain a universe that seems stranger than anybody had thought.
The discovery of Hawking radiation, as it is known, turned black holes upside down. It transformed them from destroyers to creators — or at least to recyclers — and wrenched the dream of a final theory in a strange, new direction.
“You can ask what will happen to someone who jumps into a black hole,” Dr. Hawking said in an interview in 1978. “I certainly don’t think he will survive it.
“On the other hand,” he added, “if we send someone off to jump into a black hole, neither he nor his constituent atoms will come back, but his mass energy will come back. Maybe that applies to the whole universe.”
Dennis W. Sciama, a cosmologist and Dr. Hawking’s thesis adviser at Cambridge, called Hawking’s thesis in Nature “the most beautiful paper in the history of physics.”
I beneficent the scientist should never be bigger than the science but in current culture i sort of see a vaccume here. We need a few scientists that can be near household names to compete with Lebron James or Justin Bieber for kids attention. Who fills that void other than Neil Degrass Tyson?
Died on pi day
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm037...
He accomplished so many things in spite of his physical issues.
He didn't die. He just fell through.
-nt
(captcha: paralyze)
Stephen Hawking confirms: The problem is Capitalism, not robots!
http://bit.ly/1G70xbH
In a day and age where heroes play with toys on TV and sell sneaker, I raised my children with Hawking as our family hero. When they were young, we would stand outside the store waiting for the delivery of the next book of Georgeâ(TM)s Secret Key to the Universe. Because of Hawking, my children explain topics like general relativity and Newtonâ(TM)s laws of motion and thermodynamics to their teachers in school.
Stephen was truly an inspiring hero who made my life as a father a lot better. I hope we will find another hero like him to look up to before my grand children come to be.
Died 3.14
Because nothing in this world was ever accomplished through competition that couldnâ(TM)t have been done ten times better through cooperation.
The AI got him.
He tried to warn you!!
One funeral at a time.
From what people who live in Cambridge had been telling me, I would have thought he had died in a wheelchair accident.
He used to drive his wheelchair at full-speed and people needed to be very careful that he didn't hit them.
While I mourn the loss of opportunity every living year of such a genius represents... I have to admit that I am interested to see what the Big Bang Theory makes of this.
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It has never occurred to me that Stephen Hawking was getting old. He's always felt kind of ageless to me. And frankly, 76 is a pretty good old age, certainly for one with ALS.
He was an impressive individual, and I'm really glad that he was around and managed to live and contribute for so long.
...that we finally won't get any of those uneducated opinions about AI and what not any more?
Now we have to put up with the rest of the e-celeb scientists, like elon musk and a few others.
I don't think that he actually contributed anything after he suffered the severe consequences of his disease, he just had a recognizable label that's why he "wrote" and "published" that many books.
Now that he is dead, I expect his discography to be re-released.
Wait, what?
They don't "fall for" socialism, they are far too smart for that. They realise that it's an inherently good idea.
Because nothing in this world was ever accomplished through competition that couldn't have been done far better through cooperation.
But also, socialism (by it's name) requires us to understand and empathise with those who aren't ourselves (or extensions of ourselves). That itself supports a pluralist stance, which itself weakens the traditional conservative / libertarian ethical foundations.
Socialism is a natural conclusion of the agora - when we are in the agora, we must deal with the fact that our views and beliefs are just one way of being - and we must work with those who hold differing - and even heterogenous views.
The Conservatism/Libertarian Right is an artefact of the rural, where strangers are to be feared rather than to be welcomed as trading partners.
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they would eventually fizzle, leaking radiation and particles, and finally explode and disappear over the eons.
A black hole ends in a bang? So, if a black hole got big enough to swallow the entire known universe, it would end in a... Big Bang.
And thus it all starts over.
We are stardust, we are golden. We are million year-old carbon, and we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
Peace out MC Hawking
Because they believe 'smart' people like them will be in charge, rather than lowest-common-denominator bureaucrats which is the reality.
When some members of my family passed away.
But i almost shed a tear now, once I heard the news.
I am not a religious man, but... Rest in peace Dr. Hawking.
I feel sad, I am.
Those bloody Russkies did it again.
A few more generations of physicists will have to go by before we can know Hawking's place in the ranks of the great, but his status as a popularizer of science is already established.
I had no idea they were that poor in Londinium. I weep for them.
What an amazing brain trapped in a broken down body. His theories are transformational on understanding how the cosmos work. His loss saddens me but I'm really sad that he didn't recognize his need for salvation though Jesus Christ. I do hope that in the end he did realize there is something more than just unprovable theories.
Your last paragraph takes your metaphorical comparison too far.
"Current science" doesn't "prefer marbles and mattresses". There was nothing ever "science" about the Chukwa myth. It was not constructed to help laymen (or women) visualise the difficult concepts about how the universe seems to behave with our current scientific understanding, however crude the models.
The myth was believed to represent the world as-is, and I doubt its intent was to help rob ourselves of the simple pleasure of laughing at each other just because of some nagging feeling of guilt when, consciously or not, we realise that most humour in this divine comedy we're forced to live through comes from the stuff that makes us different from each other, not equal.
> Because nothing in this world was ever accomplished through competition that couldn't have been done far better through cooperation.
Please, if you've not read it, read Darwin's work "On the Origin of Species". Or if you'd like entertainment as well as old theories, I'd suggest David Brin's book "Earth". The idea that species change dynamically due to ordinary competition is critical: many contemporary scientists consider the evolution of economies, societies, or even of thought itself to have the same foundations, in competing for resources to survive by reproducing successfully. Competition is critical to such evolution. Even the scientific method is a form of competition, where ideas are tested and those which are effective survive. Eliminating competition is as dangerous as voting on physical reality. A cooperative consensus may be reached, but but the lack of verification or competition can foster destructive wastes of resource.
This is not to say that cooperation is not useful: but pure cooperation has no power to discard wasted or mistaken effort. Even for cooperative efforts, the competition of distinct efforts to get resources or mind share is itself key to selecting the forms of cooperation.
The world lost a good and decent person. Rest In Peace, Stephen Hawking.
Actually, it rose.
By definition if cannot rise. But it might be a few standard deviations tighter.
His life was remarkable in many ways - one of which was surviving with ALS for so bloody long.
My mother died from ALS recently. Her course took about a decade which is WAY too long with that awful disease though I'm grateful I got to have her alive as long as I did. Stephen Hawking is someone I admire probably more for what he accomplished in the face of that disease than for his scientific accomplishments. And in saying that I am in no way minimizing his contributions to science. I've seen what that disease does to a person up close and even if you aren't religious (I'm not) you should pray that you never have to experience ALS. To do even a fraction of what Hawking did with that malady makes him to my mind one of the most remarkable people to have ever lived.
It was a privilege to have lived at the same time as such an amazing man. His work will still be relevant and important for centuries to come. Now he finally has the freedom to become one with the universe.
Not only this, as smart as he may have been at Physics, he was a fucking moron about AI.
Which is not something the Nobel committee cares about at all. Linus Pauling won two Nobel prizes and he had some pretty lunatic ideas regarding Vitamin C. Just because someone is brilliant doesn't mean they are right about everything. I find it curious that the first thing you go to is to try to tear the guy down. I'm pretty sure you aren't perfect either.
I do not want to speak ill of anyone (least of all the dead), but amen to that!
So don't. That's like starting off a sentence with "I'm not a racist but..." Whatever follows is unlikely to be very kind.
Now an IQ of 100 is what an IQ of 99.999 was yesterday.
Thanks you fat retard!
how classy of him!
et les Shadoks pompaient...
In the year 2135, two scientists turned astronauts travel to a black hole to capture radiation. Their mission is a success, and they return to earth with expectations of fame and profit. They begin selling their radiation to various scientists around the world, but they are eventually arrested. What were they accused of?
They were charged with hawking radiation.
Thank you.
Stephen Hawking was, without any doubt, a world-class physicist and one of the essential scientific figures of his generation. However, a new Einstein he was not. In fact, it can be argued that he may not even be among the top ten scientists of the last third of the 20th century. More specifically, one can easily make the point that Roger Penrose has been significantly more creative and scientifically influential than he was, and that Hawking was heavily indebted to him, and to his own lamentable condition. A great physicist is gone, but let's keep things in context.
We all know how it happens.
#DeleteFacebook
It was at the 300 Years of Gravity symposium. He was an incredibly cheerful guy.
The best bit of his lecture was when he said that whenever anyone predicted the death of physics, something new and exciting came along, so he was going to predict the end of physics in the hope of making this happen.
(Ok, CERN was a bit slow, but recent announcements from them suggest Stephen got his wish in his lifetime.)
My second favourite bit was during the Q&A for his lecture (never published as far as I know, it wasn't ready in time for the conference book). A guy was asking him if he had considered bouncing universes. The question was long and drawn out. Stephen cut him off with a curt "no" and left it at that.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What on earth causes your feeble little brain to construct these posts? SMH
Please, if you've not read it, read Darwin's work "On the Origin of Species".
Read his work on the "Continuation of Species" and realize it's about cooperation.
Ladies and gentlemen, we now have the second best theory in the history of the universe. He *ahem* prefers to be called 'ihaveamo' and in typical slashdot style is as anti-social as they come. The late great Stephen Hawking is not even in the ground yet, and already we have witnessed unparalleled faux pas of epic proportions.
It is only proper to give the neanderthal ten minutes' headstart, before we hunt him down with our Android devices, pitchforks, and torches. He picked a fine spring day to express himself, before the rotweillers and the pit bulls have had their breakfast.
Yeah, it's long been observed that the Left's outgroup is the Right. This is why it's so common to see really ugly slurs, firing people for opinions, beating people up for speaking, and so on. The Left/socialists consider them The Other and thus they are outside the law. You can do anything to them and there's no penalty, and the ingroup will even cheer.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
A black hole ends in a bang? So, if a black hole got big enough to swallow the entire known universe, it would end in a... Big Bang.
But if no one is around to hear it, does it go bang?
That Hawkings reported death occurred on the birth anniversary of Albert Einstein?
While it is no secret that I profoundly disagree with the concept of a singularity, I have, over almost the same lifetime, come to greatly admire Professor Stephen Hawking as a thinker and as a man. His life has been a wonderful example of dogged refusal to give up. He himself has stated that, never give up, is one of his primary teachings. He has set perhaps the very best example of overcoming adversity and making a success of his life regardless of the difficulties caused by his long term illness.
We should also be fully mindful of the kindness and hard work of everyone surrounding him during his long infirmity; their care for him as simply a human being, made much of his more recent work possible. Without their support he might not have lived beyond his twenties. They too have set a standard that will perhaps not be seen again, certainly not in our lifetimes and as such I salute you all too.
Chris Coles.
>But also, socialism (by it's name) requires us to understand and empathise with those who aren't ourselves (or extensions of ourselves).
Which is impossible beyond about 150 people. See Dunbar's number.
" largely through his book “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes,”
Yawn. ....and others have published books of equal quality suggesting alternative theories. It is a great starting point before considering more interesting possibilities.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
You are conflating Herbert Spencer with Charles Darwin. You wouldn’t be the first.
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There is no sound in space. The noise (vibration) is still reverberating. We call it "chemistry."
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
gone wrong
Let's meet up for thoughts.. You know.. after. Save some RAM for me!
Years ago when I first discovered Slashdot it was genuinely a place where interesting technology and scientific issues were discussed.
Nowadays a large and growing proportion of posts seem to be ad hominem attacks, political entrenchments and mud slinging, invective and general nastiness.
Is this representative of the audience - or of the society we've become?
That a world renowned physicist is the target of barbs and attacks?
Really?
(standing by for the barrage of 'you're a snowflake' comments that only underline the point :)
Except that competition is cooperation.
Libertas in infinitum
You're presuming that humans are not inherently lazy, which we are. And I've never particularly noticed that socialists were more tolerant than anyone else - nay, one might even say they are less so. Witness the USSR. (And don't talk to me about how they all got along - may be they did after Stalin's genocide). Or the cultural revolution in China. And, um, being a person who lives extremely rural I have less concern about strangers here than you do in a dark street at 2pm in (say) New York City. So your theory is bogus in two ways.
RIP Dr. Hawking. You will not be forgotten.
It's interesting, Mr. Thoughtful, that you admit heterogeneous views, but then still carry on with typical western leftist chauvinism. To wit, your underlying thought seems to be that: "all various cultures really value the same things that westerners want, and any differences are just merely exotic window dressing without any meaningful substance, so we should be able to get along just fine if we can just move past those nasty conservative right-wingers."
In contrast, I maintain that there are real and substantive differences between cultures, and that some societies, if we are to trade with them, must be kept at arms length, and guarded against. Why? Because they don't value what you and I value, and they'll treat you like a chump if you tell yourself they do, and act as if they do. At other times they do things that are quite plainly heinous; the moral relativist like yourself is paralyzed by mindless non-judgementalism. For example, I hold that tossing a man's widow on his funeral pyre is a wicked thing that must be stopped if one has the power. To a relativist like yourself, burning a live widow on a dead man's funeral pyre is a cultural difference as unimportant as what color one chooses to paint a room.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
In the fabric of space, quantum fluctuations create matter from energy in the form of matter/antimatter pairs.
These rejoin and their masses are converted back to equivalent energy.
When this happens at the event horizon of a black hole, on rare occasions, one half of the pair has enough velocity outside the event horizon to escape.
So, black holes leak matter.
After trillions upon trillions of years, the black hole explodes, but it hasn't happened yet.
When it does, the universe will have long been expanded to a point that it won't really matter. (see what I did there)
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I am not sure what to make of it.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Reading the definitions are further evidence they are not the same thing.
I enjoyed the book and it is in my collection, but it was too brief and did not reveal anything new.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Whereas the right believe that their authorities are smart enough to tell everyone what to do and believe.
And socialism says that there should be no authority figure telling people what to do since the worker should know how to work and therefore be most appropriate to tell him how to do his work.
Your problem is you think stalinism is socialism. It isn't. Try again.
Or the cultural revolution in China. And, um, being a person who lives extremely rural I have less concern about strangers here than you do in a dark street at 2pm in (say) New York City.
On the other hand, maybe not.
While it is no secret that I profoundly disagree with the concept of a singularity
I'm sure he was distraught.
At least he wasn't a cunt that was too afraid to log in before trolling.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Among all of his accomplishments, he wasn't so serious... here is just one of his appearances on The Simpsons... YouTube . Hilarious!
A great man indeed. I am going to dust off my copy of A Brief History of Time now.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Didn't he leave behind a body of work?
Of course he did but you don't actually care you only want to harvest karma.
I will however share something you probably don't know.
Scientists are still proving or disproving Einstein's theories long after he died.
That's nothing:
Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers a, b, and c satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than 2.
This theorem was first conjectured by Pierre de Fermat in 1637 in the margin of a copy of Arithmetica where he claimed he had a proof that was too large to fit in the margin. The first successful proof was released in 1994 by Andrew Wiles, and formally published in 1995, after 358 years of effort by mathematicians. It was 129 pages long.
Now when Andrew Wiles produced his proof, he did so with the use of computers, which Fermat didn't have and he used elliptic curve mathematics which was a long way off from being discovered in Fermat's day. It makes you really wonder what Fermat's supposed proof would have looked like.
Its the ultimate form of cooperation as it requires a team to accomplish. Like the space race.
Socialism isn't cooperation. It's top down authoritarianism. Do it or else.
I agree.
He also had a great sense of humor and a knack at telling jokes.
he will always be admired.
Ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust.
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I'd not meant to conflate them: Darwin's work in physical evolution sets a groundwork to understand the philosophical or social evolution described by Herbert Spencer. I'd meant to illustrate that physical evolution, which cannot be guided by social cooperation, is effective. You've a valid point that it could seem as if I were conflating them: I should have mentioned Herbert Spencer or someone discussing social Darwinism by name.
Just like all, he is not gone, just transformed into another form of Energy.
He will now be able to forever travel the universe exploring the many wonderful things to see there.
He might even be able to enter a blackhole now and understand it further.
He has done more to elevate science to the masses since Einstein.
I was fortunate to meet him once at CalTech, and his mind was blazing fast as the spinning of a blackhole.
Thank you for all you have done Stephan and inspiring people, it will be a big hole to fill.
So, just because current science prefer marbles and mattresses, it doesn't make it particularly funny if someone else uses turtles and oceans.
Science prefers "marbles and mattresses" because if you put a marble on a mattress it deforms the surface so that a smaller marble nearby will fall towards it. If you put a turtle in an ocean it will not suddenly cause all the smaller turtles nearby to be pulled towards it. So the reason one analogy is preferred over the other is that marbles and mastresses work and the turtles do not and if you change the story to have the person reply "It's swimming in an ocean of milk" they don't come across as any less foolish!
He knows now if GOD exists or not.
I guess it is only fitting that Dr. Hawking being a brilliant mathematician, passes away on Pi Day. Rest in peace my friend.
I hear she has a "sweet" mouth . . .
Why all this attention over someone who was in The Big Bang Theory for an episode or 2 and Simpsons voice actor a few times ?! I mean it's not like he's Kim K & Kanye W.. or Madonna.. those will live forever! Unlike this Stephen guy.. just heard of him. heh!
Yes I'm 12 and I tweet.
(RIP :/ )
Username does not check out.
Socialism does no such thing. Under socialism the government does all that for you and forces you to surrender your assets (time, wealth) for the good of those around you.
Right-wing systems work off the assumption that the individual is responsible for themselves, and will understand and empathise with those around them without any supervision. Problem is, they don't.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
"The Conservatism/Libertarian Right is an artefact of the rural, where strangers are to be feared rather than to be welcomed as trading partners."
In rural areas folks don't lock their doors.
In cities they do.
My understanding is different to yours, even though we are both reasonably well read. I continue this without attempting to steer you away from your convictions - and I respect that which you hold dear. But for me, notions of collaboration and competition do not really belong to the realm of biological evolution, just as they do not belong to chemistry: even if we talk if different elemental atoms ‘competing’ for e.g. an oxygen atom, we are only doing so in a rather free sense.
Spencer (and others) wanted to use Darwinism to describe and illuminate social policy, but it could easily be argued that they read into Darwin what it was they were already committed to; read e.g. Kropotkin’s ‘Mutual Aid’ for a completely different steer that is just as informed by Darwin but with radically distinct conclusions.
I reckon Jonathan Haidt’s ‘the righteous mind’ is a great place to start (if somewhat reductive) looking at how politics becomes polarised - but be warned - one ends up with some form of Pluralism or another!
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I enjoyed the book and it is in my collection, but it was too brief and did not reveal anything new.
The point of it to a certain extent, and definitely the point of his followup book The Universe in a Nutshell was to take current knowledge and speculation and package them up for a (slightly) more mass audience.
is an artefact of the rural, where strangers are to be feared rather than to be welcomed as trading partners.
Yikes. I've found the opposite -- I am far more insular since I moved to the city. I avoid eye contact with people on the street, I don't talk to strangers there, I walk on by. It's been mentioned often that people in many other areas of the country might be more open and warm, but myself, and the people around grew this way defensively. Nearly everyone who approaches you on the street has some sort of angle. "Hey, do you have any money?" "I've got some brain-dead petition to sign you up for." "Want to subscribe to this magazine?" "Money money money money." The answer is: no, I don't want to give out any money, and I don't like being seen as a walking ATM either (I wouldn't say I dress or look fancy either -- this happens to EVERYONE who doesn't look like he's homeless). When every conversation leads to some sort of shakedown, you avoid conversation. That's life in the big city. You can be gregarious at clubs, at home, at work... but elsewhere, it's a hassle.
I know that.
But it was way too shallow.
Nice for the casual reader, but we had Asimov, Sagan, and now we have Tyson.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Well, if we're gonna play that game, fellow AC
City folks tend to lock their doors, but don't keep guns
Rural folks tend to leave doors unlocked, but do keep guns
(and if you say "the gun is to hunt/fight off animals"... I would ask why wouldn't a locked door also be helpful)
It's not really a secret, it's more like nobody really cares about you or the things that you say. You are some random who obviously has severe mental health issues.
His death comes on Pi day (3.14), the date which Albert Einstein was born. Hawking was also born on the date Galileo Galilei died (January 8th 1642), the same year Isaac Newton was born. Farewell to a fellow scientist. The last of history's greatest thinkers is now gone...
The big philosophical problem with Social Darwinism is that it takes a natural process (evolution) and makes it a moral issue. Darwin wrote about evolution as it was, essentially as it pretty much had to be; Spencer wrote that we should deliberately emulate it as social policy, where we have a choice of possible policies.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Are you really going to pretend that the Soviet Union was so typical of socialism that we can make general statements about socialism from its behavior?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Imagine how much shorter his life would have been if he had been English!
(thanks to IBD, that gaggle of cretins)
And what, pray tell, was YOUR one hit?
Says the anonymous coward.
This is just an uneducated and poor representation of what is socialism. The notion of 'government' is very different within a socialist framework than it is from a right-wing framework.
You appear to identify that a socialist government, with public ownership of many state services, is a corporation and normally the nation's largest employer, exploiting efficiencies of scale in order to deliver cost-effective services to the population. The primary difficulty facing a socialist government are to do with inefficiencies creeping in due to a lack of effective competition. This one issue is what has been keeping western european nations occupied for the last 40 years.
As to 'enforcing surrender of assets (time, wealth)' - this is called taxation. It certainly isn't an artefact of socialism, but it is part of a general social contract that the citizen has with her/his legal membership to the sovereign state. There is nobody stopping us from changing our citizenship to that of, eg, Panama - where you are not be expected to pay tax on money earned off-shore. Of course, you will lose all the other perks of your current nationality - which for western europe is state-sponsored education, healthcare, pensions, housing, policing, military defence, and many other benefits.
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That should read:- "You appear NOT to identify that a socialist government"
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Computer reboot jokes aside, thanks for all your contributions to science and inspiration to all those students of science everywhere. And of course, all the handicapped people who are given hope by your story. May you finally be at peace and rejoin the cosmos you devoted yourself to studying.
See you at your time travel party; in the meantime, so long and thanks for all the fish!
Other nations that are today being called socialists are 'mixed economies'
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