Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Scientist Stephen Hawking wants to find a way to convince people to stop voting for Trump, and to start listening to people like him again, to save the planet from climate change and national borders.
This is the most dangerous time for our planet
Stephen Hawking
We can’t go on ignoring inequality, because we have the means to destroy our world but not to escape it.
As a theoretical physicist based in Cambridge, I have lived my life in an extraordinarily privileged bubble. Cambridge is an unusual town, centred around one of the world’s great universities. Within that town, the scientific community that I became part of in my 20s is even more rarefied.
And within that scientific community, the small group of international theoretical physicists with whom I have spent my working life might sometimes be tempted to regard themselves as the pinnacle. In addition to this, with the celebrity that has come with my books, and the isolation imposed by my illness, I feel as though my ivory tower is getting taller.
So the recent apparent rejection of the elites in both America and Britain is surely aimed at me, as much as anyone. Whatever we might think about the decision by the British electorate to reject membership of the European Union and by the American public to embrace Donald Trump as their next president, there is no doubt in the minds of commentators that this was a cry of anger by people who felt they had been abandoned by their leaders.
…
What matters now, far more than the choices made by these two electorates, is how the elites react. Should we, in turn, reject these votes as outpourings of crude populism that fail to take account of the facts, and attempt to circumvent or circumscribe the choices that they represent? I would argue that this would be a terrible mistake.
The concerns underlying these votes about the economic consequences of globalisation and accelerating technological change are absolutely understandable. The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.
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The consequences of this are plain to see: the rural poor flock to cities, to shanty towns, driven by hope. And then often, finding that the Instagram nirvana is not available there, they seek it overseas, joining the ever greater numbers of economic migrants in search of a better life. These migrants in turn place new demands on the infrastructures and economies of the countries in which they arrive, undermining tolerance and further fuelling political populism.
For me, the really concerning aspect of this is that now, more than at any time in our history, our species needs to work together. We face awesome environmental challenges: climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans.
…
See, if we don’t start listening to our betters again, elite globalists like Stephen Hawking, we fools will destroy the world.
Funny he is someone who uses theory for a living commenting on others who use theory for a living .
The guy is a waste of time and grant money….. Black holes, dark matter, neutronium in Neutron stars… all untestable, unfalsifiable and non observable. Gravitational, Mathematical fudge factors for theoretical cosmological models that don’t work without them and will never lead to anything, because you cannot test it nor apply it nor use it. It’s not science. He’s not science.
We pay a lot of money to keep them in clover. We get fairy tales in return.
As he says, he’s living in a bubble. He look out more.
As he says, he’s living in a bubble. He should look out more.
Everyone.
Hold on. What articles are you reading compared to the one SH has at The GIGGLE.
It ends with…
‘We can do this, I am an enormous optimist for my species; but it will require the elites, from London to Harvard, from Cambridge to Hollywood, to learn the lessons of the past year. To learn above all a measure of humility.’
If it is Elitism on Steroids you want then we in Australia have a doozy going down at the moment.
Eric would you in particular or Brad at CN as well check this out as I am getting only partial info about the funding.
Search for Fabian Dattner. Homeward Bound. Antarctic Leadership and Science get together.
It involves about 77 Aussie women, and a few overseas people, of generally Scientific ilk, each paying (20,000 of the 30,000 to 35,000 US Cost) to hire a vessel and go to the Antarctic for 20 days or so and engage in leadership and sciency activities. Its web details are big whingy on this lack of female leadership in science and beyond.
Note that Its Auxiliary Support List has Madam Figueras and Franny Armstrong of 10:10 Splattergate fame (exploding heads of dissidents) as connected plus Jane Goodall and Dr Sylvia Earle, both attendees at Paris Cop 21. The travellers Scientific credentials are thick with either Climate or Sustainability.
So I am wondering if its Leadership and Science learning trumpeting isn’t just a masquerade to go there and parrot all the horror of Climate Armageddon. And return as Climate Heroines or should that be heroes now.
My main concern is what is the long term purpose of this Homeward Bound Campaign and where is all the extra funding coming from..I have titled this …Snow White and her 77 Sisters of Western Caucasian Princess Privilege Tour of The Antarctic…Schoolies On Ice Escapades for Lady Sciency Nerds. It is not a diversity festival for sure and certain! More like The Greens again.
If they can drum up all the massive dollars for such a campaign well and good but I want to know if the Taxpayers have coughed up a motza of dollars for what is actually a holiday of a lifetime for people who are already very, very well off by any standards.
Would really appreciate it if some bods with the know how to check this out do so.
Note that without Fossil Fuels (as all here will be shouting) this Project would have to take place in Fabian Dattner’s backyard.Those red jackets to ward off hypothermia? Do they have Fossil Fuel written all over them!
Apologies for taking the post a way off the proper track.
Already heard about this thanks Robbert, just waiting for them to do something interesting… 🙂
That would be Fabian Dattner who years ago featured on television commercials for her fathers fur trade business. The Fabian Datner whose father was a right wing MI5 agent and whose brother has views which are further right than those of Attila the Hun.
Ship of Fools Mk2
Look on the bright side – they might do a Shackleton and spend a couple of years stuck in the pack ice.
You’ve got to remember that Stephen Hawkings is totally helpless, there were once reports that he had been abused by one of his carers…my guess is that he dare not condemn the Warmist Hoax…otherwise next time he needs the bathroom…..
(black humour)
Ooops… sorry are you allowed to say ‘black’ humour these days?
..That’s “Melanin-rich” humour. Or “Other-colored”.
Ever heard of purple pheomelanins? People have more or less melanins you have. There’s nothing intrinsically funny it that. It can, in essentia, be a very non funny thing.
Start by googling Hermansky Pudlak
THING ONE:
Will artificial intelligence (AI) replace middle class jobs?
One of the most time consuming lawyer jobs is researching precedents. There is now an AI called ROSS which does that much more quickly than a human. link The result may be that we will need many fewer lawyers.
The worry about AI replacing jobs is justified. We’ll see what actually happens.
For years, people have been trying to replace teachers with computers. It hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen until there is some kind of game changing breakthrough. Could that happen? Eventually it will. How soon? A year, a decade, a century, longer? We don’t know.
THING TWO:
At least Dr. Hawking didn’t blame Donald Trump’s victory on racism. He’s right that the working people feel betrayed by the politicians. The Democrat party claims to represent working people. In fact, it stabs them in the back every time it gets a chance. link
I think one reason more teachers have not been replaced by Computers, or at least had their jobs made a lot easier by them, is that they have the strongest union in the world.
If someone had already found the magic formula to replace teachers with computers, it would have been done somewhere already and we’d know about it. It’s something we’ve been working on since the beginning of computers and it hasn’t panned out yet.
Computers can change how a teacher does his work but I can’t see any evidence that they actually make it much easier. Some individual things are, indeed, easier but having computers in the classroom also complicates things enormously. I think it’s a wash.
Once they do find a way to automate teachers out of existence, just watch their unions cease to matter. Remember the air traffic controllers? link
The big sticker in replacing human teachers with computers, is that they’re teaching human children. We’re social animals. Children will require a social milieu to properly learn.
Computers will augment human teachers. Computers will supplant human teachers when computers become human (or humans deteriorate into computers).
By the way, I’m not worried about AIs replacing human workers. That trend will signify the increasing wealth of our societies. In extremely wealthy societies, humans freed of drudge labor will turn to their personal creative outlets, and be paid for their expression. I see the likelihood of an explosion of creativity among humans free to pursue their innate talents.
“Children will require a social milieu to properly learn.”
Yes. it’s called a family. Teachers are a poor substitute.
Schools exist to indoctrinate kids to do what they’re told. That’s the last thing we need in a post-industrial world.
Actually computers already can replace teachers. I know of a number of homeschool families that are computer based curriculum.
I read a science fiction story a few years back, in which all manual labor had been replaced by robots and automation.
In this story, personal worth was no longer measured on how much stuff you could accumulate, since everything was essentially free.
Personal worth was determined by competence, and competence was measured by the assessment of your peers.
Don’t know that it could actually work, but it was something worth thinking about. Especially since automation is here to stay and no amount of sabotage (read up on the root of the word) will stop it. So we’d better figure out how to deal with it.
My senior year in high school, I was required to take a course called Fundamentals of Punctuation. Class was taught by “Programmed Learning,” textbook named “English 2600.” I plowed through the whole thing the first week, handed zero-error worksheets to Mr. Hintz Friday half-way through the 55 minutes. He said not one word to me the whole week.
Last year an attractive young cocktail waitress asked me to do her College Algebra homework for her, on the Internet. Took me about three hours to do her semester’s work for her. Professor said not one word to me.
Traditional subjects can easily be taught by automated instruction. The problem is getting a grade distribution. And, yes, teacher’s unions bitterly oppose such methods.
You can indeed run automated courses. How much algebra did your waitress learn?
For engineering programs there is a requirement that students use knowledge in a context other than the one in which it was originally learned. (Could the student use the concepts learned in the context of an RLC circuit to analyze an automobile’s suspension; in other words, mass, spring, damper?) Machine learning is woefully inadequate for that.
The thing with automoation, is that it allows you to make things cheaper., the result is that less work is needed in order to afford the products that are now being made via automation. If government wasn’t working so hard to keep stuff expensive, the resulting drop in prices would be of benefit to everyone.
I admit with reluctance and rare candor, that Prof. Hawking is a *better* theoretical physicist than I.
Also a better shill.
I have a certain admiration for people like Stephen Hawking. He made a series of bets with physicists at Caltech, and iirc, lost them all. He proposed four laws of black holes, at least one of which turned out to be falsified by his own calculations. He p*ssed all over Higgs and tried to discredit him, only to have CERN prove that Higgs was right. He’s made a career out of mostly getting things wrong, and long ago ditched science for the worlds of mass media entertainment and political advocacy.
He’s in the same class as Bill Nye and Paul Erlich. He most likely surpasses both of them in celebrity as well as money earned. Gotta admire a guy achieving that from a wheel chair.
So according to Hawking time and the universe began with the supposed big bang …. cosmology, palmology, phrenology, astrology, …. legends in their own lunch boxes.
For all his intelligence (real or imagined) he hasn’t figured out that the greatest threat to both mankind and the environment is that seething mass of humanity gathering around his ivory tower. Arrogant academics should keep in mind we are first and foremost “social animals”. Black holes are not related to solutions of social problems.
A couple of thoughts.
1. He is right about living in a bubble. He has little idea how we avergae Joe Schlubbs get on.
2.”The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing”- does he fancy a job on a production line or is he OK to keep making use of the results of the hadron collider experiments, for example?
3. He did well at physics and should stick to it.
4. As far as I know, however, he has not yet produced a quantitative model of the climate and so I do not know what he is basing his predictions on.
5. He needs to reacquaint himself with the scientific method.
does he fancy a job on a production line or is he OK to keep making use of the results of the hadron collider experiments, for example?
Or, for another example, speech synthesizers operated by a single cheek muscle.
3. He did well at physics and should stick to it.
Er, theoretical physics
“So the recent apparent rejection of the elites in both America and Britain is surely aimed at me, as much as anyone.”
What an ego! Does Hawking really believe that when people think “elite,” the first thing they think of is Stephen Hawking? He must really live in a bubble.
A movie I saw showed him working on his early theory for years, finally publishing it and getting awards and recognition for it, and then eventually coming to the conclusion that it was wrong. How long will he cling to the theory of climate change before realizing it is wrong too?
But – who gets to determine who our “betters” are?
“A thousand pictures can be drawn from one word
Only who is the artist
We got to agree
A thousand miles can lead so many ways
Just to know who is driving
What a help it would be”
Hawking used to be worth listening to, like back in 1980s, but then he started rabbiting on about alien invasions and other claptrap. Since then I’ve had little time for his twittering. Now he’s joined forces with Brian Cox, another physicist I once respected. Both have lost their way. I suspect they know which side their bread is buttered on, ie., play the game or lose your air time. I suspect they know the BBC and the lamestream media will shut them down. Very sad.
I wonder. How many elephants does it take (supply of tusks) to build an ivory tower?
This article is a disappointment.
Hawking did not use any phrase close to “listening to our betters “.
His statements have been slightly misrepresented.
In this case, readers should read the source article instead of trusting Eric Worral’s interpretation.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/01/stephen-hawking-dangerous-time-planet-inequality
I read the full article to which you linked. Hawking makes it clear that he is one of the “elites” and without the guidance of him and the rest of the “elites”, humanity is doomed. Eric’s “listening to our betters” rather understates the man’s arrogance.
He’s no different than Paul Erlich. Repeatedly wrong, yet he somehow clings to his celebrity status while enriching himself and wailing away at the plight of the poor.
+ 1.
Mr. Hawking should learn from the words of Mr. George Carlin …
https://youtu.be/BB0aFPXr4n4
Eric knows his audience. He is also a ‘shit-stirrer’ which is a common Australian tradition.
I am confused. Whose opinions should I believe — those of Hawking or Madonna????
Oh! Wait! They have the same opinions!!!
Eugene WR Gallun
Leo, of course. The other two are has-beens.
Eugene,
Are you implying that Madonna is not just another dumb blonde? 🙂
I’ve heard of Hawking, but could someone please tell me what he has contributed to society and science other than theoretical “deep thought”.
He has created another God for people to fawn over. Himself.
Hardly a positive contribution !!
A legend in his own mind.
[as somebody once said]
I believe the technical term for the sum total of his contributions to the lot of humanity is “bupkis”.
But since he has been doing it for so long, it may now add all the way up to bupkis squared.
That’s the conclusion I had come to.
A load of unprovable and unproven conjecture
No wonder he accepts the AGW thought bubble.
Hawking supporters.. Give us something !!!
Mosh, Griff, Toneb and the other alarmist self-worriers……
come on.. surly you must have something
When I think about it, yeah, there is a void in a place of his actual contribution. Unlike Einstein, his deep thoughts were amended far too many times to stand for anything seriously scientific.
“Mosh, Griff, Toneb and the other alarmist self-worriers……
come on.. surly you must have something”
They don’t work on Sunday
There’s a clear divide in the way climate is viewed between the pragmatists who have worked in real-life occupations and theoretical ivory tower “thinkers”.
Hawkings is one of the few who had very little choice in the matter. And whilst it is predictable that he’s an alarmist, there’s very little he could have done about it.
Why predictable? He has a brain like everybody else. He prefers to follow MSM and refuses to think outside his own speciality, even though he has the capacity to do so. He deserves all the ridicule he gets.
“… theoretical ivory tower “thinkers”.
——————–
Sans spectacles, my first take was “theatrical” ivory tower..
Blessed subconscious mind.
Article not complete, thanks for sharing the source. The conclusion reads:” We can do this, I am an enormous optimist for my species; but it will require the elites, from London to Harvard, from Cambridge to Hollywood, to learn the lessons of the past year. To learn above all a measure of humility.”
“to learn the lessons of the past year”
That could be good or that could be bad. It depends on what kind of lesson Hawking is talking about learning. Does he think the Elites should figure out how to keep running things, or does he mean the Elites should bow to the will of the People?
The human race will survive if the Ivory Tower Elites bow to the practical People. The Elites wouldn’t do it voluntarily. Now they are going to do it involuntarily. They should get used to it, and all of us will get along better.
The People know what they want and what they are doing, evidenced by their votes. And now that Trump is in, the Peoples’ hold on power will only increase, and Elite power will decrease, although they will fight it every step of the way. But, they fought it every step of the way this time, and they lost, and their position is even weaker now.
Elites from…Cambridge… Wadhams, anyone?
Cecile,
I didn’t know that there were any elites living in Hollywood. While many of them think that being attractive and being able to memorize the lines in a script somehow give them special insights on politics and science, I’m afraid that they a legends only in their own minds. They are confusing being rich with being intelligent.
“climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans”
Almost amazing to think that someone supposedly as intelligent as this man could talk such crap. I wonder if he has actually studied any raw data or just believes his intellectual mates
I wonder, given the advanced state of his disease, if he is simply a prop being exploited by his handlers.
Hunter asks: “I wonder … if he is simply a prop being exploited by his handlers.”
I’ve shared that opinion myself or many years. I’ve never understood the media worship the man seems to attract to begin with since he’s never made a significant contribution to his field. He made what reputation he has popularizing some subjects in theoretical physics, a job he isn’t even all that good at when compared to men like Ilya Prigogine.
Hawking has no way to communicate without assistance. he’s completely dependent on his “staff” for everything, which guarantees co-operation. I’m convinced he’s a media creation used as a puppet to lend credibility that same media gave him. A fake in other words.
It’s impossible to take his pronouncements as something an educated scientist would say or write.
I have thought this is possible for years now.
Who would know?
He cannot speak.
Hawking, you may be bright is your little and in practical terms unimportant field, but in the real world you are an ignorant an undereducated academic. If you want people to listen then you cannot tell them the case is proved. You have to prove it over and over again in the face of the most hard line questioning available. You cannot expect intelligent and practical people to accept that first testing people to believe in a case where the judge jury prosecuting council are all pre tested to have found the case proven and any defence is disallowed because they are not qualified since they have not passed an exam to say the case is proven makes any sense at all.
You must allow engineers who are far more qualified than any mere untrained academic to examine and verify that every single measurement station will stand up to quality control standards appropriate to the sort of spending that is demanded based on the science. That means it must be done not just to average commercial but to life critical standards as they is what is claimed to be the consequence. As it stands the enclosures themselves for sub degree accuracy do not pass the quality control standards demanded by a major pound chain in the UK when verifying their product’s quality. More so when you add in the way that the clean air acts and the changes in paint used have each altered the temperature characteristics of the Stephenson screen to a greater extent than the claimed warming.
Add to that the failure to compare the top quartile and the bottom quartile of the changes and prove there is no regional or localised cause for the variation makes it all so suspect it is not longer science it is pure guesswork.
The Ivory Tower crowd are some of the most abusive around. Look how they treat kids in America. They tell them everyone needs to get an education in science. Yes, science is the way to improve the world and achieve personal greatness.
But they don’t tell you that over half of all college graduates in science can’t find a job doing science as a career. They don’t tell you they are bringing in over 1 million foreign students to fill the same positions. If you decide to ignore the lack of jobs and pursue advanced science training, they don’t tell you there are more than 5 applicants for every available slot. They don’t tell you that over 800,000 graduate school and training positions are given to foreigners while Americans are displaced. They don’t tell you that if you get in your salary is set by the Ivory Tower crowd at the NIH and NSF, and that even with a college degree you will only be paid $11 per hour, with no retirement benefits, no overtime, no 401k, no COLA, and zero job security. If you ignore that an graduate with a PhD, your salary is again set by the Ivory Tower crowd at the NIH and NSF, at only $18 per hour, again with no overtime, no retirement, and zero job security. If you complete postdoctoral training, you have a 6% chance of landing a tenure track faculty position. If you re-up for another postdoc with no overtime, no retirement, and no job security, you get another 6% chance of landing a tenure track faculty position.
The jobs are flooded by foreigners, and the politicians who urged you to make science your career now say that we need the best and brightest from all around the world, so keep the planetary floodgates open at all levels, from college to grad school to postdoc training, to private industry.
In China they pay a graduate student $50 per month, they pay a new PhD $100 per month. This is the Ivory Tower’s idea of equity and fairness, a global Thunderdome style market where a handful of elites lord over millions of science serfs.
Brutal but accurate. Thanks. I have very close family members stuck in the Academic plantation system. What is interesting is how self policing the Academic plantation system is.
Graduate students kick off at about $400 a month in China. It’s not that bad. Cost of living is lower in China. They can move up to about $1000 a month in 18 months or so. I work in a university here. I keep in touch with my ex-students. I’ve been doing it for about 12 years. I would check my sources of information if I were you.
So 200 hours a month, that comes to 2$/hr Alex. $10 is 2000/month. Source of info is not faulty.
I was commenting on the last paragraph:
‘In China they pay a graduate student $50 per month, they pay a new PhD $100 per month. ‘
My source of information was from an article about ‘Science in China’ that came out in 2009. Perhaps they have instituted some modest reforms since then. However you have to admit that even placing American students in direct global competition with people making a tiny fraction of the salary will necessary suppress US wages.
More galling is that the lions share of the money funding these US graduate programs and labs come directly from US taxpayers. Do you think China has Americans beating down the door to get $2 per hour? No, and if an American applied they would be told the positions were reserved for native Chinese students. They understand the benefits of educating their own, unlike America.
KTM
I wasn’t actually disagreeing with your comment I don’t know enough about the ustasian education system and prospects for graduates to comment. I was just, in a kindly fashion, suggesting that you might update your information. China is a very complex place (it’s why I like it here). Most westerners make great assumptions based on MSM, Chinese and global.
You make valid points, especially around immigrants (in this case legal ones) being used to suppress wages of citizens. Your figures are somewhat out of date but in any case, students need to figure out what the actual situation is accordingly and take some responsibility for their own career paths. Relying upon what the “elites” tell them is troublesome.
KTM – any references for these numbers? They could be very useful.
Found the article I was thinking of.
Science in China: 30 years on. Cell. 2008 Aug 8;134(3):375-7. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2008.07.035.
“Some scientists in China, however, worry that this program will further deprive domestic faculty of talented graduate students. “I am puzzled by this program. The best undergrads can go abroad on their own, without government help,” Rao says. “Funds should be better used to support graduate students in China whose pay is too low.” Soon after their return to China last year, Yi Rao and Yigong Shi drafted a letter and gathered signatures of more than 50 professors, calling on the government to raise stipends for domestic graduate students, the majority of whom receive less than $50/month, lower than the urban minimum wage. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has agreed to the suggestion, and government ministries are believed to be discussing detailed plans for its implementation.
The shortage of talented graduate students is compounded by an acute shortage of postdocs. “The biggest problem for top scientists who have returned is the lack of postdocs,” says Zhinan Yin, an immunologist recently recruited from Yale University to be Dean of the School of Life Sciences at Nankai University in Tianjin. The standard salary for postdocs in China is about $300/month. Even though they may supplement base pay with grants, compared with compensation in the US (and coupled with the desire of domestic PhDs to gain research experience abroad), “the US is clearly at an advantage,” notes Yin. Xiongli Yang of Fudan University agrees, “All the PhDs I train go abroad to do postdocs.” To address the problem “China must increase postdoc pay drastically,” emphasizes Yin.”
Less than $50 per month for grad students, even lower than the Chinese minimum wage. $300 for postdocs, so not -quite- as bad as I remembered.
There are no betters amongst humans. Rather what can be advanced are policies that actually work to improve affairs instead of reducing the overall wealth that has allowed us to escape the brutal shortness of life that has been mankind’s lot for much of his existence.
What you get when intellect and intelligence part ways.