RE: Hawkings: Khan is real!
October 16, 2018 at 11:58 am
(This post was last modified: October 16, 2018 at 12:14 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(October 16, 2018 at 5:49 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: But I guess my true grudge on Stephen Hawking about this is how much this problem is trifle compared to truly compressing problems for humanity like pollution and climate change. If anything people should press politicians to work on solving these problems. Not to mention that Hawking should have worked that smarter people, like him, have more important role in today's politics, because what does it mean to be smart scientists today? - Almost nothing.
Or another so called problem that Hawking and some other prominent people worry is AI. I mean really? Even today if there was some real war it would be brutal with devices like drones that the enemy would truly seem invisible and deadly.
I don’t agree this problem is trifling.
I think for people who care somewhat for the rest of humanity and it’s posterity, it is easier to focus a large scale predictably evolving problem that indisputable effects many and stress the social and economic system we have in place, such as pollution and climate change, and harder to to take preventive measures against black swan developments that may exhibit few clearly recognizable leading indicators or proof of its approach, but which subvert the ability of existing and hitherto somewhat reliable mode of operation of social and economy and replace it diversions and internal strife designed to enlarge the influence of a few at the gross expense of the many, such as 9/11, Brexit and trump.
I think Stephen Hawking is perceptive in his assessment that black swan events may in the long run excert a greater destructive influence on the course of human society than steady evolving stresses of pollution, climate change and population, and part of the challenge of establishing a regime able to deal in the long run with large scale predicable stresses is to prevent the development of unpredictable but destructive black swan events.
I find it particularly concerning that not only is the ascendant lunatic right wing fring in the US, which remains the leader driver of both basic and applied science, anti-science, but it is systematically seeking to remove basic science from the list general public good that needs to be promoted with public funding and made generally available as basis of common understanding of reality, and relegated it to privately funded gamble for private enrichment and advancement.
