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.
…
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.
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I seriously doubt Stephen Hawking can actually communicate at this level anymore, and hasn’t been able for some time. His “statements” are really coming from his handlers, whoever they are.
I haven’t read every reply in this thread, but surely somebody has noticed that Hawking is saying that his extreme isolationism from what is going on in the world makes him an expert on what is going on in the world.
Huh?
There’s so much wrong about this letter that I have doubts it was actually written by Hawking.
I’ve gotta say, after reading and re-reading Hawking’s words, that his ramblings are those of an old, possibly senile fool. He’s babbling, only to conclude that “our species needs to work together”. Huh? One can only suppose that he’s hinting at some sort of World Government, with the “elites” (like Hawking) in charge. Or something. Who knows? Does Hawking even know what he’s going on about? I doubt it.
Be very skeptical when the left offers to “work together” or that we are “stronger together” what they really mean is that the left will get to work forcing their opponents to submit to the lefts demands. There is no compromise from the left, no working together. Only FORWARD!
If this is really what he thinks, he seems to have replaced the scientific method with a massive dose of virtue signaling. If you really want to stop fossil fuel use (which probably wont stop climate change, BTW), then be elite enough to get that controlled fusion thing going!
TRUMP Mission #1: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, a despicable deplorable thumb in the eye of the establishment and elites. Now it’s Schadenfreude time!. Pwsssst! Ahh. The pause that refreshes.
Stephen Hawking is hardly an authority on these matters. To be honest he is more famous for his book and his disability as much as anything else. There are other excellent theoretical physicists who hardly get a mention. He hasn’t won a Nobel Prize for example.
I’d argue that Trump at this stage, having answered a phone call, is more deserving of a Nobel Prize than Obama ever was.
If Hawking radiation be discovered while he’s still alive, he would probably merit a Nobel, at least in the eyes of its Scandinavian socialist awarders.
However, he got the idea for “Hawking” radiation from a Mexican-American-Israeli and two Russian physicists.
Up to three people can share a Nobel, so maybe the committee would split it. The hyphenated American is still alive. Dunno about the Russians.
Just checked. The Belarussian Zeldovich is dead, but the Russian is still alive. Guess I should have said Soviet rather than Russian. Hawking visited them in 1973, when I was also back in the USSR.
Yes, I heard the Israeli fellow worked it out first. It is hard to ignore the brilliance of Jewish scientists.
Jester,
The late (as I now know) Zeldovich was also Jewish. It was he and his then grad student Starobinsky who also gave Hawking the idea, along with Mexican-American-Israeli Bekenstein.
The mathematical calculations for Hawking radiation were done by his then grad student Don Page, an American-Canadian Evangelical Christian.
If a Nobel were to awarded while all were alive, only three of the four physicists Hawking, Starobinsky, Bekenstein and Page could receive it, according to the Prize rules.
This article brings this quote to mind:
I’d rather be governed by the first one hundred names in the telephone book than the Harvard faculty – William F. Buckley
That goes for Cambridge faculty too.
US will meet emissions targets regardless of Trump’s policies – Al Gore
Former presidential candidate says ‘it’s too early to write off’ Trump
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20161204/world/us-will-meet-emissions-targets-regardless-of-trumps-policies-al-gore.632885
US greenhouse gas emissions are likely to fall irrespective of the pro-coal policies of President-elect Donald Trump, who may still surprise the world by embracing global action to limit climate change, former vice president Al Gore said.
Gore, a climate activist who will lead a 24-hour televised marathon on December 5-6 about global efforts to limit rising temperatures, told Reuters that companies and US states would cut emissions despite Trump’s doubts that warming is man-made.
“Business alone, along with states, will almost guarantee that we meet the reduction targets (set by US President Barack Obama) regardless of the policies the new president ends up adopting,” Gore said in a phone interview.
Sorry, Stephen, but much as I admire your work and the truly heroic courage in putting up with (and standing up to) your illness, once you step outside your own area of expertise your opinion is no better that that of any other intelligent person.
The ivory tower, in which by your own admission you have spent your entire adult life, is almost as much a closed community as a Trappist monastery, the fundamental difference being that while monks take vows that include Obedience, which almost by definition implies humility, academics are the flip side of that coin with something close to a vow of Arrogance.
While monks “feed off” each others’ humility, academics feed off each others’ conviction of their own importance and their own superiority until they become convinced that on any subject their views are inevitably right and their pronouncements to be treated as the wisdom of Solomon.
For no other group in society is the advice “you should get out more” relevant.
Can he express that as a testable hypothesis?
Hawking’s stature as a physicist is good, but not that of Einstein. When Einstein was offered a prominent position in politics (the Presidency of the new State of Israel), he respectfully declined because he knew he was not right for the job. Hawking seems to be trying to make himself politically prominent.
At least he recognizes that he lives in an ivory tower.
What he fails to recognize is that the ‘equality’ he thinks we should all have is a birthright for which we all must fight, not a blessing handed down from on high by those deluded enough to believe they know what’s best for everybody else, without knowing everybody else. We secure that birthright by rejecting the social engineering efforts of those who egotistically think of themselves as our betters.
He confuses smart and smarts. How quaint.
In immediately post-Brexit Britain we were treated to the vision of these ‘elite’ academics temporarily shedding their virtue-reflecting politically correct skins to reveal the revolting creatures within. How they howled about ‘this is what you get when you let ignorant peasants vote!’. They know that only they have the intellect to be trusted with the vote and it’s merely an unfortunate quirk of deomocracy that vile populism is allowed to thwart the wishes of the self-elected elite. My revulsion for leftist infested academia is fast approaching an event horizon.
Mr. Hawking’s list of concerns only has one legitimate item in it: ‘the decimation of other species’ . I don’t see the others as even a tiny, tiny, tiny issue well into the future.
IMO modern humanity has not caused the extinction of ten percent of the species with which it has shared the planet for some 200,000 years. It did contribute to wiping out the Pleistocene megafauna, but while massive, they weren’t a large share of total species diversity, counting only multicellular organisms, ie plants, fungi and animals.
Can someone hit the mute button.
Read one of his books. Not much impressed by unprovable theories of multiple dimensions, etc. Does not believe in intelligent design or God in spite of the obviously fine tuned physics required for the very existence of our universe but does believe in AGW. One needs to consider at least the possibility that the answer is more than unprovable statistical chance including the possibility of an unprovable Planner. But then AGW is unproven as well while he believes it is proven. Read a couple of books on Einstein. There is no possible logical comparison of the two individuals.
On the Assumption of Design (2003) Theology and Science 2(1), 109-130.
Abstract: “The assumption of design of the universe is examined from a scientific perspective. The claims of William Dembski and of Michael Behe are unscientific because they are a-theoretic. The argument from order or from utility are shown to be indeterminate, circular, to rest on psychological as opposed to factual certainty, or to be insupportable as regards humans but possibly not bacteria, respectively. The argument from the special intelligibility of the universe specifically to human science does not survive comparison with the capacities of other organisms. Finally, the argument from the unlikelihood of physical constants is vitiated by modern cosmogonic theory and recrudesces the God-of-the-gaps.“
Jim,
The God hypothesis is completely untestable by falsifiable predictions made upon it, hence not scientific. Multiple universe theory (including higher dimensions) does make testable predictions, and some evidence, as yet not very convincing, for it has been observed. So it is scientific.
ID is likewise anti-scientific and furthermore easily shown false. Not a shred of evidence supports the conjecture and all the evidence in the world is against it.
Plus, just punting by calling some structure irreducibly complex (IC) runs counter to the whole scientific enterprise, which is to try to understand, via the scientific method, how nature works. The evolution of microbial flagella, considered IC by Behe, has in fact been elucidated by his colleagues interested in science rather than religion. He really missed the boat on that one, besides being publicly humiliated at trial in the Dover case.
Whether we are just very lucky to live in a universe with laws that allow the development of elements higher than hydrogen, stars, planets and life, or an infinite number of universes exist, so ours necessarily does, science can’t currently answer conclusively. But we can say without doubt that the God hypothesis is at best unscientific, since, as noted, it can’t be tested experimentally.
Also “proof” isn’t really the standard in science, as in math. The test in science is falsifiability and confirmation. And repeatability of results.
Pat and Chimp,
Your opinions have been noted.
Jim G1
Since there were two anti-Intelligent Design comments above….
this is only for BALANCE and is NOT to continue the discussion of the theory of Intelligent Design. This is solely to simply present, without further comment, the counter-argument for anyone interested in an excellent video lecture about it.
Dr. Stephen Meyer, “Signature in the Cell” (2011)
(youtube)
Caveat: there are already TWO very able anti-Intelligent Design comments above, one quite lengthy and one with a link to a lengthy document. This counter-balancing comment (along with Jim G1’s brief remark), I hope, is the end of the discussion on this thread. If others keep adding to the anti-ID side, it will create a situation where we who see the logic and evidence for ID as compelling will feel a reply would only be fair play.
Janice,
If you want to try to defend the garbage of ID, please do so in your own words. This drivel has no place on a science blog.
Of course it’s up to our host, but IMO no pack of lies about ID should be allowed here. If the “Slayers” are disallowed, whose arguments at least are based upon science, then anti-scientific ID-supporting comments should certainly not be permitted, since there is no scientific basis whatsoever for creationism.
Every creationist comment on this blog only provides ammunition for climate alarmists who, rightly it appears, charge skeptics with anti-scientific opinions about the incontrovertible fact of evolution.
ID isn’t science. It’s false religion.
Janice,
Since my reply is in moderation, just let me add that there is no logic or evidence supporting ID. It is a matter of federal law in the US that ID is not science. It’s rightly against the law to teach it in public schools as science. For the good and sufficient reason that it isn’t. It’s a pack of lies, old creationist vinegar in new bottles.
A federal court ruled to this effect based upon the testimony of the originator of ID and his leading supporters and that of the world’s top biologists, geologists, paleontologists, anthropologists and scientists working in every relevant discipline.
You can read here for yourself the Christian, Republican judge’s basis for finding ID to be religion, not science:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District/4:Whether_ID_Is_Science
You can also read all the testimony in the case, in which the hatcher of ID, Behe, was forced to admit under cross examination that evolution is a fact. His side was also hilariously humiliated when it was shown that their ID text was copied directly from a creationist text previously declared unconstitutional to use in public schools, again based upon the testimony of real scientists, not the paid liars of the Discovery Institute.
ID can be taught in religion courses, but not as science. Because it manifestly is not.
Readers,
Please note the (to me) bizarre attempt to get Mr. Watts to literally ban any comments that display any skepticism whatsoever about Evolution, on the grounds that climate alarmists will somehow convince . . some clan of influential “elite” imbeciles or other, that if any commenters holds a given opinion, all hold that same given opinion;
“Every creationist comment on this blog only provides ammunition for climate alarmists who, rightly it appears, charge skeptics with anti-scientific opinions about the incontrovertible fact of evolution.”
Why, one wonders, would anyone care what someone so stupid as to believe that if one skeptic has doubts about this or that idea, they all must? Such people would have to grotesquely ignorant about humans to believe such a thing, it seems to me, anyway . .
And, what happened to skepticism being an intrinsic part of scientific thinking? How could it be “anti-scientific” to have less than absolute/unquestioning faith in this particular theory . . yet be “anti-scientific” to have absolute/unquestioning faith in other theories? WTF is so special about this theory, that the whole scientific approach must be turned on it’s head to . . protect it from any challenge?
It’s an utterly useless theory, in the material world sense, as far as I can tell. No patents, inventions or technologies depend on or stem from it . . it’s just a philosophical/world-view thing. It’s great for justifying domination by a few “elites” over the rest of the species, no doubt, and the elimination of undesirables of various sorts, but not much else, it seems to me.
Hi Janice 🙂 The important thing is that, personal beliefs aside, we all share approximately 100% of the same humane values.
We just arrive at them from different starting points. They all come down to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We all share this, can live together amicably, and give our loyalty to the society that recognizes our freedom and individual worth.
All the rest is just frosting.
JohnKnight
December 5, 2016 at 1:58 pm
That’s not what I said at all. Discuss the fact of evolution all you want, but not the preposterous lies of creationism and ID.
Sadly, the criticism of CACA spewers that its opponents also d@ny the fact of evolution is one of their few valid claims.
Creationism/ID is not science. It’s not even unscientific. It’s anti-science, without any basis whatsoever in objective reality.
JohnKnight, “[Evolution is] an utterly useless theory, in the material world sense, as far as I can tell. No patents, inventions or technologies depend on or stem from it . . it’s just a philosophical/world-view thing.”
All of medical technology depends on Evolutionary Theory, John. Evolutionary Theory organizes how researchers think about the biology of medical testing and medical advances, tells them where to look for research direction (such as in the genetic basis of diseases and cures), and how and why medical systems work (or don’t work).
All of plant breeding, genetic modification of plants, and all of chemical/biological weed control, depend on Evolutionary Theory.
The overwhelming success of sexually reproducing animals over parthenogenetic reproducers is explicable only within Evolutionary Theory.
All of the appearances and disappearances of species over Geological time are inexplicable except in light of Evolutionary Theory. The genetic similarity of apes and humans is a mystery apart from Evolutionary theory.
Evolutionary Theory is far from useless. Apart from science, it is at the bottom of a huge technological enterprise.
Thank you, Janice. Very interesting presentation.
It’s like this:
AGW Theory: I can’t think of another reason, so it must be CO2
ID Theory: I can’t think of another reason, so it must be god.
Pat,
That’s it in a nutshell.
Both fantasies are anti-scientific because they refuse even to look for the actual explanations of natural phenomena.
ID, ie creationism, is less scientific than wiccan or voodoo, since sympathetic magic can at least give patients false hope.
ID is anti-scientific for, among a host of other good reasons, it can’t and doesn’t make falsifiable predictions.
Its only “prediction” is that there should be “irreducibly complex” structures. But of course there aren’t. The pathetic attempts of Behe to find such structures only put on full display how lame is ID.
Steven Hawking’s comments are quite reasonable – I don’t think the characterisation of his article is fair.
From what I know of the sort of people in university administration in the UK, if he spoke up as a climate skeptic they could well retaliate against Hawking with physical abuse.
I suspect your are right. There is no other position he could take without being ostracized within academia. OTOH, he could grow a set of balls.
…and I thought this guy was supposed to be “smart”.
Hawking, like so many of his peers, is simply out of his depth when he begins to opine about matters moral, political and economic. He mentions living in a bubble, but doesn’t see the downside to being so cloistered. What he writes here could have been written by a high school senior. Hawking should be ashamed. I tuned him out a long time ago on matters outside his immediate specialty. On such matters his mind is as pedestrian as they come (think Obama or the Pope, when they leave the reservation).
The many commenters are being too hard on Hawking. He got the most important part right. It must be difficult for him to write at all and some exaggeration to make his point is understandable.
“….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.
I think your headline is extremely misleading and most replies have focused on your misrepresentation not what he actually wrote.
He starts by saying that the elites have become disconnect from the bulk of society, he acknowledges that some of them are over-rewarded and goes on to write “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.”
Granted he is unclear on how to bring society back together and he is deluded enough to think that climate change is a threat. However, he does recognise there are problems with the self proclaimed elites and that the rest of society has reasons to be unhappy.
Noticed the same thing, in Hawkings defence, he is not talking to us taxpayers, he is addressing his fellow inmates.
The message has to be intelligible to the listener or communication is impossible.
This guy is a self publicist, must be running low on dosh.
Proof positive that education at an elite university means next to nothing. I wonder how much his alma mater charges their students these days to indoctrinate them with transparent, pathetic nonsense?
Hawkings is secure in his point of view, that of the intellectual elite . . . they know best, let them rule. Plato would be proud. But long ago we decided we should all be treated equally, the weak and the strong, the rich and the poor, the smart and the dumb, the elite and the hoi polloi. Moreover we came up with a way to implement that idea, the democratic representative republic. People would all have the liberty to run their own lives but for questions concerning groups of people we would elect representatives, every man getting a vote. So we have cities, counties, states and the nation as a whole each with their own locally elected and/or appointed (by duly elected officials) people to run things at that level. It has worked marvelously for going on three hundred years. Not that people have not tried to seize power and assume dictatorial power even at the highest levels but you can only do that by using force (virtually impossible with police and military composed of patriotic citizens) or by a ruse in which someone or some group of people convince everyone else to voluntarily give up their freedom for some greater good. Man made global warming (ACGW) is the current ruse. The scientific evidence for it or any damage warming might do is non-existent and yet intellectual elites (Hawkings) treat it as though there is absolute proof of it. Mere people have to accept it (hey, scientists say it’s so) and politicians instinctively know this is their ticket to much greater power so they jump on it. Ah, but there’s the democratic representative republic thing still in place and we’ve just witnessed a rejection of the whole ‘Do As We Say’ scheme together with all its quirks. That plus an impending very cold winter is like to knock ACGW into a cocked hat. Score one for the Constitution, reality and the native common sense of the common man.
John G,
You said, “…democratic representative republic…”
I think it would be more accurate to say a Constitutional Republic where the representative legislators and Electoral College members are elected democratically.
I need to correct what I said: The Electoral College members are directed democratically by the electorate on how to vote for the president. Thus, like the legislators, they are representatives for the People’s will.
I agree my phrase is a bit redundant and I’m leaving it to the reader to conclude the argument is based on the U.S. Constitution. I could have just said that we don’t do things based on appeal to authority no matter how august that authority might be but then I wouldn’t have been able to make a speech.