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BRIEF FUTURE OF TIME
Robot moonbat Stephen Hawking is in an inquisitive mood:
The famed British astrophysicist and best-selling author has turned to Yahoo Answers, a new feature in which anyone can pose a question for fellow Internet users to try to answer. By Friday afternoon, nearly 17,000 Yahoo Inc. users had responded to Hawking.
Hawking’s question: “In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?”
Easily, once we get rid of death-cult terrorists who enjoy flying jets into office buildings. In fact, even if the maniacs win, it’s likely they’ll hang around for at least ten decades before some imam or other decides that everyone is overdue at Big Mo’s Virgin Grotto in the Sky. Hawking is kind of stupid for a super-genius.
UPDATE. Paulris: “Hawking is British? I never noticed an accent.”
Online sex will take a big jump.
Not good. Really scares the cat when I do that.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 09 at 11:35 AM • permalinkStephen is a lovely fellow with the numbers, but he spends entirely too much time hanging around with actors, and it tends to aggravate the common ailment of scientists, lawyers and other specialists, which is to assume their expertise in one area automatically grants insight into others.
Dr. Hawking needs to refresh on the work of another doctor and scientist…
“Expertise is no shield against failure to see ahead. That’s why it was Thomas Watson, head of IBM, who predicted the world only needed 4 or 5 computers. That is about as wrong a prediction as it is possible to make, by a man who had every reason to be informed about what he was talking about. Not only did he fail to anticipate a trend, or a technology, he failed to understand the myriad uses to which a general purpose machine might be put. Similarly, Paul Erlich, a brilliant academic who has devoted his entire life to ecological issues, has been wrong in nearly all his major predictions. He was wrong about diminishing resources, he was wrong about the population explosion, and he was wrong that we would lose 50% of all species by the year 2000. He devoted his life to intensely felt issues, yet he has been spectacularly wrong…
Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia…”
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 09 at 12:04 PM • permalinkAll rightie, Richard McE., who is the other famous doctor and scientist you quoted? (I have my guess, but I’m not about to confirm the and suspicions that I’m…, well, stupid.)
I don’t know what it is that makes an expert in one field completely forget what it took to become an expert. Somehow, all those years studying, experimenting, work work work, to become a physicist translates into political and military expertise.
The doctor is Michael Crichton,MD. The professor, as named, Murray Gell-Mann.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 09 at 12:26 PM • permalinkOh, look, Addamo’s back for another hit and run - hit with a comment, then run when it gets shot down because he’s said something idiotic.
Hey, Addamo, you haven’t answered my questions in previous threads. Remember how you said the Canada-hating Islamic chick might have been pissed off about her boys being “framed”? She made those remarks in 2004 - how did an arrest in 2006 piss her off in 2004? And why do you think they’ve been framed? Why is it so hard for you to believe that people who espouse holy war and hate Canada might want to blow up Canadians?
Also, you stated that “nobody in Canada is paying attention to this story.” Yet a commenter in Canada informed us that media coverage and daily conversation was nothing but this story. So where did you get your information from?
You know what it’s called when people expose your bullshit and you say nothing, then wait in the weeds before you pop your head up again in another thread? Chickenshit.
Oh, and there was quite a revealing thread about your activities on Ant’s blog. My, my. When you’ve gotten too anti-semitic for Ant, you’ve really made a mark.
See you in a week on another thread, you chickenshit asshat.
#9 - Ushie, you beat me to it. Why do the majority of people have a sense of history that extends back two weeks?
It’s like those clowns in Pearl Jam singing about a “world-wide suicide”. What? They’re the same age as me. Surely they remember worrying about a full-scale nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union. At some point they must have heard in passing something about a “World War One” and a “World War Two”. How in God’s name can the present be considered anything but one of the most peaceful times in history? And let’s not get started on the environment - go back even fifty years and the US, at least, was filthy.
Dunces. No sense of history. None. Bunch of ignorant presentists.
Anger Stephen Hawking at your peril, puny meatsack!
Yeah, Dave S, I thought that Adumbo had been banished after his remarks on Ant’s blog came to light. He’s never allowed himself to really cut loose like that here, bad as he has been.
He has really made himself into a hateful creature, hasn’t he? I’m often amazed at the way people expose themselves to the public the way they do. It is a sort of “flashing” of the mind instead of the genitals, and infinitely more obscene. Isn’t it pathetic that such is all one has to show to the world?
Of course, sitting and spewing hate all over the interweb is easy. It requires no thought; all you need do is vomit back the bile you’ve ingested from others in a sort of Pavlovian response to key words.
Dave S. — Or worse, he’ll go phaser on your ass…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 09 at 01:14 PM • permalinkHmm… did I go all quantum-indeterminate on that link HTML?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 09 at 01:15 PM • permalinkGuess not. Hey, Andrea? HAS anyone ever done a full-thread-length link yet? Because I keep getting told I need to be more goal oriented…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 09 at 01:16 PM • permalinkYes, welcome back to AddamsFamily, however briefly. Dave S., he also still hasn’t thanked me for the Quebekker lessons I gave him when he said he was in Montreal. Hostie!
And the relevations / quotes from the Ant thread really do show AddamsFamily to be a nasty, hate filled piece of work.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 07 09 at 02:07 PM • permalinkStephen Hawking is a brilliant astrophysicist and technological futurist.
His understanding of the human experience, however, is heavily flawed, as may be indicated by the rather questionable quality of his two marriage selections so far.
(For bonus points, his first wife was asked why she married a man who was expected to die in three years, she said because she thought the world would’ve been destroyed by atomic weapons before that time. Guess that didn’t work out, so he dumped her for his hot young nurse, or some such.)
Reportedly, his wife once got mad at him, threw him out of a wheelchair, and left him on the lawn to bake to death on a hot summer day. So, don’t get me wrong, he’d be an awesome guy to meet, but hearing him complain about how *human civilization* is dysfunctional might have more credibility if he were able to provide us some sort of example regarding successful human relations.
Posted by Aaron - Freewill on 2006 07 09 at 06:48 PM • permalinkRinardman — You can tell by the way he holds his pinky when he types…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 09 at 08:41 PM • permalinkI am of the opinion that if we attempt to determine our precise “location” in the current geopolitical landscape, we are prevented from simultaneously calculating the likely direction of political events in the near future.
Instead, I offer this quantum of humour, which in all probability, will be enjoyed by approximately half who read it:
Schroedinger, Erwin! Professor of physics!
Wrote daring equations! Confounded his critics!
(Not bad, eh? Don’t worry. This part of the verse
Starts off pretty good, but it gets a lot worse.)
Win saw that the theory that Newton’d invented
By Einstein’s discov’ries had been badly dented.
What now? wailed his colleagues. Said Erwin, “Don’t panic,
No grease monkey I, but a quantum mechanic.
Consider electrons. Now, these teeny articles
Are sometimes like waves, and then sometimes like particles.
If that’s not confusing, the nuclear dance
Of electrons and suchlike is governed by chance!
No sweat, though—my theory permits us to judge
Where some of ‘em is and the rest of ‘em was.”
Not everyone bought this. It threatened to wreck
The comforting linkage of cause and effect.
E’en Einstein had doubts, and so Schroedinger tried
To tell him what quantum mechanics implied.
Said Win to Al, “Brother, suppose we’ve a cat,
And inside a tube we have put that cat at—
Along with a solitaire deck and some Fritos,
A bottle of Night Train, a couple mosquitoes
(Or something else rhyming) and, oh, if you got ‘em,
One vial prussic acid, one decaying ottom
Or atom—whatever—but when it emits,
A trigger device blasts the vial into bits
Which snuffs our poor kitty. The odds of this crime
Are 50 to 50 per hour each time.
The cylinder’s sealed. The hour’s passed away. Is
Our pussy still purring—or pushing up daisies?
Now, you’d say the cat either lives or it don’t
But quantum mechanics is stubborn and won’t.
Statistically speaking, the cat (goes the joke),
Is half a cat breathing and half a cat croaked.
To some this may seem a ridiculous split,
But quantum mechanics must answer, “Tough @#&!
We may not know much, but one thing’s fo’ sho’:
There’s things in the cosmos that we cannot know.
Shine light on electrons—you’ll cause them to swerve.
The act of observing disturbs the observed—
Which ruins your test. But then if there’s no testing
To see if a particle’s moving or resting
Why try to conjecture? Pure useless endeavor!
We know probability—certainty, never.’
The effect of this notion? I very much fear
‘Twill make doubtful all things that were formerly clear.
Till soon the cat doctors will say in reports,
“We’ve just flipped a coin and we’ve learned he’s a corpse.”’
So saith Herr Erwin. Quoth Albert, “You’re nuts.
God doesn’t play dice with the universe, putz.
I’ll prove it!” he said, and the Lord knows he tried—
In vain—until fin’ly he more or less died.
Win spoke at the funeral: “Listen, dear friends,
Sweet Al was my buddy. I must make amends.
Though he doubted my theory, I’ll say of this saint:
Ten-to-one he’s in heaven—but five bucks says he ain’t.”Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 07 09 at 08:41 PM • permalinkHawking is kind of stupid for a super-genius.
On the same subject, the naiviety of genius, an excellent feature by Imre S in today’s The Australian on fellow travellers:
A conference at Melbourne University last week on Australian visitors to the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the ‘40s gathered more information and analysis on Australian political pilgrims than has existed before.
Hundreds of examples discussed at the conference conform to the model of Street’s wide-eyed admiration for her helpful Soviet interpreters. Although most of the pilgrims’ accounts read like the work of those who participated, no doubt far too willingly, in their own deception, at their edges they shade into falsehood and propaganda.
Fellow traveller’s tales. Manning Clark was one of the worst yet he is still adored in Australian academia. At the conference his now-elderly daughter exposes him for a fool.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 07 09 at 09:03 PM • permalinkI am of the opinion that if we attempt to determine our precise “location” in the current geopolitical landscape, we are prevented from simultaneously calculating the likely direction of political events in the near future.
What’s crazy is that this makes perfect sense.
Posted by Aaron - Freewill on 2006 07 09 at 09:13 PM • permalinkHawking is British? I never noticed an accent.
I thought he was Texan.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 07 09 at 09:35 PM • permalink#9 Addamo. No, the real problem is those crazies who might GET the A-bomb, do you see?
As a commentator said about China’s gross irresponsibility to the whole world, how can they dither around when China could soon see four countries with the A-bomb on their borders -North Korea, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
And the only country they are responsible for and should invade is the hell-hole of North Korea, but they love its ‘stability’.
Well, they knew about under Mao, didn’t they, yet backed Pol Pot!But it doesn’t have WMD, so it’s OK by Addamo…
#37 - Ah yes, the good old days, when you could put a cat in a box with a radioactive atom and no one gave a toss. PETA has put an end to all that. You wouldn’t even consider it in a gedanken experiment these days. Science has suffered.
Went to one of Hawking’s seminars in London in the early 80’s. Something about black hole thermal radiation emission, now named not surprisingly, Hawking radiation. Bit of a disappointment. It was before his synthetic voice thingy, so he just sat in a wheelchair and grunted occasionally whilst a post-doc gave the lecture.
So between two very distinguished theoretical physicists (albeit in non-climatology fields), Hawking is a global warmer and Freeman Dyson is sceptical, perhaps more of the alarmism and motives, rather than the science. It doesn’t prove anything either way.
Posted by Whale Spinor on 2006 07 10 at 12:49 AM • permalinkIn a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?”
Quite easily, don’t think about the question asked and therefore we’ll forget about it and live survive another 100 years.
How we survive/the quality of life is another question.
questioned once about his lack of an accent, hawking flew into a now-infamous rage. “DON’T. BE. DISSIN. ME., CRACKA. I. WILL. CUT. YO. BISH. ARSE.”
cooler heads prevailed before the razor-sharp steel flashed!
Posted by jimmy quest on 2006 07 10 at 03:08 AM • permalink
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Hawking is British? I never noticed an accent.