Legendary physicist Stephen Hawking lived for decades with the prospect of death hanging over his head, but unlike the rest of us, he never worried about what's next. Hawking, who died at 76, spoke candidly in a 2011 Guardian interview about what he believes happens when people die. He told the Guardian that while he "wasn't afraid of death," he was in no hurry to die. "I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail," he said. "There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark." It should come as no surprise that Hawking was not religious. In Hawking's 2010 book, The Grand Design, Hawking said a creator is "not necessary" in the narrative of how the world was created. The 76-year-old was confined to a wheelchair by a form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, a neurological disease that impacts movement. He communicated via a speech synthesizer. Hawking was diagnosed with ALS at 21. For years, Hawking has warned that humankind faces extinction from a slew of threats ranging from climate change to destruction from nuclear war and genetically engineered viruses. Hawking recently estimated that humans have 100 years left on Earth — if we’re lucky. Ken, this may belong in the religion or philosophy area but he was a scientist
He may be right - he may be wrong On the point of 'extinction' I feel he is right. Everyone wants a piece of the action for their own personal goals, never content and that will lead to extinction
He said that the only hope for the survival of the human race is to find another hospitable planet and settle there. OK. But even supposing that humans could develop the technology needed for interplanetary travel and find a planet that would support human life; that planet would have certainly developed life forms of it's own. What would we do with them? Kill them and take over their planet? There would likely be viruses and bacteria that would be fatal to humans but harmless to the natives. As in "War of the Worlds." I recommend that we take care of the one we have.
Don't forget this tidbit: https://geneticliteracyproject.org/...ed-superhumans-threaten-the-rest-of-humanity/ https://www.theguardian.com/science...t-it-really-means-to-rewrite-the-code-of-life
I think that gene editing would be a great thing. I hope they do get it perfected. Think how much human suffering it could prevent.
As with most brilliant people I have met, Hawking, Einstein and others seem to look at the world we abide upon as though they were / are continually observing things through the wrong end of a telescope. Instead of seeing the grandeur of this world, they only peruse small parcels of it and make their determinations from those parts to hypothesize about the whole. From the first viewing of a solar eclipse to the use of the atomic bomb until now and climate change, the world and human kind has been diagnosed with certain destruction and death on multiple occasions with naught to show for the prediction. I for one, will stick to the words of the greatest prophet the world has ever seen: “Even the angels know not when”.
The most brilliant and insightful scientists will say this about humankind's limited time on Earth: "Don't worry about it!" Hal