5 ms·

Stephen Hawking: "The Human Species Has Entered a New Stage of Evolution"

22 points by prat 17y ago

swombat 17y ago
I'm sure the original talk by Hawking was inspiring, but this summarised version reads like an edulcorated sci-fi dream, somewhere on par with "some day we'll all have flying cars". Sadly, all the substance seems to have been squeezed out of this one to leave only fairly trite and obvious ideas. Would be interesting to see a transcript or recording of the original talk.
kingkawn 17y ago
Human beings did not evolve from the apes.
- tnai 17y ago
  Yes, you're quite right. We are apes. (though that may also depend on your classification philosophy [1].) [1] http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/feedback/oct02.html http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/feedback/oct02.html
  - kingkawn 17y ago
    amen. Occasionally even well-intentioned writing suggests that humans are at a more advanced evolutionary stage than our sister species, even though we've all been doing it the same amount of time.
peregrine 17y ago
Please tell me if I am wrong or incorrect here but... How come someone like Hawking can make statements like this when he is not a evolutionary biologist? And how come people will take him seriously when he hasn't gained the ethos.
- tspiteri 17y ago
  Can it be because he is not talking about evolutionary biology? He is taking a wider view of human evolution.
  - jimbokun 17y ago
    To me, it is more of a metaphor stretched past its breaking point. Is reading books really just an extension of the process of biological evolution? To me, it seems a very different kind of thing, and conflating it with biological evolution confuses more than it clarifies.
- tnai 17y ago
  Argument from authority? Hawking's seems quite muddled but not all his remarks are entirely "out there" (see Pagel's "Human language as a culturally transmitted replicator", for example).
- fnid 17y ago
  I don't think you have to be an evolutionary biologist to understand it or find patterns in evolution across timescales. Hawking is a brilliant man and I'm sure he knows a lot of stuff outside physics.
jswinghammer 17y ago
His vision of modifying human behavior is pretty much the plot of "Brave New World". I'm not sure why this goal of forcefully improving the human race is so appealing to people. It seems strange to me to want other people to guide the direction of our species.
- jimbokun 17y ago
  Agreed. "Nevertheless, I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression." No stopping to ponder whether removing "aggression" from humans might have some unexpected negative consequences? I find this kind of technological utopianism troubling from the likes of Kurzweil, as well. The people who debate him tend to question the feasibility of the advances he predicts. But to me the more important question is whether some of these "advances", and their possible repercussions, are even desirable.
  - fnid 17y ago
    What if, like physics, each "improvement" to mankind has an equal and opposite negative impact on the world? If we think about benefit and harm, these are usually with respect to energy. It takes time to heal wounds, it takes more energy to overcome injury. Benefits, like the car for example, enable humans to expend less energy, but they take more from the environment. If we extrapolate that to the world around us, then for example, taking a prescription drug will have a corresponding negative impact on the environment. If what I suggest here is true, then any improvement we could make to human evolution is merely an illusion. Perhaps the improvements we do make are merely improvements, or perceived to be improvements, because we can't see the harm created somewhere else, like the destruction of landscape, deaths in mines, pollution, etc...
    - jimbokun 17y ago
      I suspect the truth is somewhere in between what you are saying and the utopians I was talking about.
- billybob 17y ago
JoeAltmaier 17y ago
The point of the article is made about books, which are an insignificant source of information. Average folks learn from books a little in school ( I remember returning many college textbooks unread), then never again. Its the media that matters. And its bitrate is orders of magnitude larger than books.
tokenadult 17y ago
There are very many other authors who talk about how most evolution (change) in human daily life now comes about mostly because of cultural innovation rather than because of new inherited characteristics in successive generations of Homo sapiens. Hawking has neither a special competence nor a special lack of competence to speak to this issue--anyone who knows basic facts about biological evolution and the development of human culture can make (and probably has made) the same observation. What's interesting here is Hawking's attempt to attach numbers to the rate of evolution (change) in genes and in cultural information. Plainly humans will develop the most in new directions as a result of cultural changes.
grellas 17y ago
Don't know the science involved but how does the evolution of life strictly out of impersonal forces over eons of time transmute into a process that somehow can be controlled by any species? In other words, if the very nature of being is purely and eternally impersonal (i.e., no deity or other overriding intelligent force as creator or overseer of creation), on what basis can this possibly change to the point where there emerges a controlling, purposeful force that suddenly overrides everything else in existence? Is there some form of science that attempts to describe how that change occurred or is it a philosophical assumption based on a worldview tied to evolution?
- billybob 17y ago
  If I understand you correctly, you're saying that if being is the result of chance, then so are our wills. So if evolution is the universe blindly programming creatures, then human-directed evolution is the universe blindly meta-programming, via our wills. In other words, destiny and purpose are illusions in a materialistic worldview. (How we manage to perceive them is another paradox.)
- ErrantX 17y ago
  The pithy response might be: because evolution itself has evolved.
kgroll 17y ago
It's kind of out there, but there's a related scene in the film `Waking Life'. "What is interesting here is that evolution now becomes an individually centered process, emanating from the needs and desires of the individual, and not an external process, a passive process where the individual is just at the whim of the collective. So, you produce a neo-human, okay, with a new individuality and a new consciousness. But that’s only the beginning of the evolutionary cycle because as the next cycle proceeds, the input is now this new intelligence. As intelligence piles on intelligence, as ability piles on ability, the speed changes. Until what? Until we reach a crescendo in a way could be imagined as an enormous instantaneous fulfillment of human, human and neo-human potential. It could be something totally different. It could be the amplification of the individual, the multiplication of individual existences. Parallel existences now with the individual no longer restricted by time and space." For the full excerpt and a clip: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/waklifeex/ http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/waklifeex/
thorsview 17y ago
This theory essentially what Ray Kurzweil has been preaching for years.
lsd5you 17y ago
Because the alternative - survival of the fittest - is incompatible with contemporary/democratic human values. In deed, and sometimes in thought, we pretend evolution does not apply to humans. The issue cannot just be avoided, in the long term there are 3 options: a) Design the next generation. b) Do nothing. Go backwards genetically. c) Create a reproductively unfair society based on fitness (hopefully not one which involves people dying off - but the alternative is preventing people who are not medically and financially independent from having children). I agree with your sentiment (and am a B or C)

22 points by prat 17y ago

I'm sure the original talk by Hawking was inspiring, but this summarised version reads like an edulcorated sci-fi dream, somewhere on par with "some day we'll all have flying cars". Sadly, all the substance seems to have been squeezed out of this one to leave only fairly trite and obvious ideas. Would be interesting to see a transcript or recording of the original talk.

kingkawn 17y ago

Human beings did not evolve from the apes.

tnai 17y ago
Yes, you're quite right. We are apes. (though that may also depend on your classification philosophy [1].) [1] http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/feedback/oct02.html http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/feedback/oct02.html
- kingkawn 17y ago
  amen. Occasionally even well-intentioned writing suggests that humans are at a more advanced evolutionary stage than our sister species, even though we've all been doing it the same amount of time.

peregrine 17y ago

Please tell me if I am wrong or incorrect here but... How come someone like Hawking can make statements like this when he is not a evolutionary biologist? And how come people will take him seriously when he hasn't gained the ethos.

tspiteri 17y ago
Can it be because he is not talking about evolutionary biology? He is taking a wider view of human evolution.
- jimbokun 17y ago
  To me, it is more of a metaphor stretched past its breaking point. Is reading books really just an extension of the process of biological evolution? To me, it seems a very different kind of thing, and conflating it with biological evolution confuses more than it clarifies.
tnai 17y ago
Argument from authority? Hawking's seems quite muddled but not all his remarks are entirely "out there" (see Pagel's "Human language as a culturally transmitted replicator", for example).
fnid 17y ago
I don't think you have to be an evolutionary biologist to understand it or find patterns in evolution across timescales. Hawking is a brilliant man and I'm sure he knows a lot of stuff outside physics.

jswinghammer 17y ago

His vision of modifying human behavior is pretty much the plot of "Brave New World". I'm not sure why this goal of forcefully improving the human race is so appealing to people. It seems strange to me to want other people to guide the direction of our species.

jimbokun 17y ago
Agreed. "Nevertheless, I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression." No stopping to ponder whether removing "aggression" from humans might have some unexpected negative consequences? I find this kind of technological utopianism troubling from the likes of Kurzweil, as well. The people who debate him tend to question the feasibility of the advances he predicts. But to me the more important question is whether some of these "advances", and their possible repercussions, are even desirable.
- fnid 17y ago
  What if, like physics, each "improvement" to mankind has an equal and opposite negative impact on the world? If we think about benefit and harm, these are usually with respect to energy. It takes time to heal wounds, it takes more energy to overcome injury. Benefits, like the car for example, enable humans to expend less energy, but they take more from the environment. If we extrapolate that to the world around us, then for example, taking a prescription drug will have a corresponding negative impact on the environment. If what I suggest here is true, then any improvement we could make to human evolution is merely an illusion. Perhaps the improvements we do make are merely improvements, or perceived to be improvements, because we can't see the harm created somewhere else, like the destruction of landscape, deaths in mines, pollution, etc...
  - jimbokun 17y ago
    I suspect the truth is somewhere in between what you are saying and the utopians I was talking about.
billybob 17y ago

JoeAltmaier 17y ago

The point of the article is made about books, which are an insignificant source of information. Average folks learn from books a little in school ( I remember returning many college textbooks unread), then never again. Its the media that matters. And its bitrate is orders of magnitude larger than books.

tokenadult 17y ago

There are very many other authors who talk about how most evolution (change) in human daily life now comes about mostly because of cultural innovation rather than because of new inherited characteristics in successive generations of Homo sapiens. Hawking has neither a special competence nor a special lack of competence to speak to this issue--anyone who knows basic facts about biological evolution and the development of human culture can make (and probably has made) the same observation. What's interesting here is Hawking's attempt to attach numbers to the rate of evolution (change) in genes and in cultural information. Plainly humans will develop the most in new directions as a result of cultural changes.

grellas 17y ago

Don't know the science involved but how does the evolution of life strictly out of impersonal forces over eons of time transmute into a process that somehow can be controlled by any species? In other words, if the very nature of being is purely and eternally impersonal (i.e., no deity or other overriding intelligent force as creator or overseer of creation), on what basis can this possibly change to the point where there emerges a controlling, purposeful force that suddenly overrides everything else in existence? Is there some form of science that attempts to describe how that change occurred or is it a philosophical assumption based on a worldview tied to evolution?

billybob 17y ago
If I understand you correctly, you're saying that if being is the result of chance, then so are our wills. So if evolution is the universe blindly programming creatures, then human-directed evolution is the universe blindly meta-programming, via our wills. In other words, destiny and purpose are illusions in a materialistic worldview. (How we manage to perceive them is another paradox.)
ErrantX 17y ago
The pithy response might be: because evolution itself has evolved.

kgroll 17y ago

It's kind of out there, but there's a related scene in the film `Waking Life'. "What is interesting here is that evolution now becomes an individually centered process, emanating from the needs and desires of the individual, and not an external process, a passive process where the individual is just at the whim of the collective. So, you produce a neo-human, okay, with a new individuality and a new consciousness. But that’s only the beginning of the evolutionary cycle because as the next cycle proceeds, the input is now this new intelligence. As intelligence piles on intelligence, as ability piles on ability, the speed changes. Until what? Until we reach a crescendo in a way could be imagined as an enormous instantaneous fulfillment of human, human and neo-human potential. It could be something totally different. It could be the amplification of the individual, the multiplication of individual existences. Parallel existences now with the individual no longer restricted by time and space." For the full excerpt and a clip: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/waklifeex/ http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/waklifeex/

thorsview 17y ago

This theory essentially what Ray Kurzweil has been preaching for years.

lsd5you 17y ago

Because the alternative - survival of the fittest - is incompatible with contemporary/democratic human values. In deed, and sometimes in thought, we pretend evolution does not apply to humans. The issue cannot just be avoided, in the long term there are 3 options: a) Design the next generation. b) Do nothing. Go backwards genetically. c) Create a reproductively unfair society based on fitness (hopefully not one which involves people dying off - but the alternative is preventing people who are not medically and financially independent from having children). I agree with your sentiment (and am a B or C)