9 ms·

The mind of God? The problem with deifying Stephen Hawking

48 points by miobrien 6y ago

Angostura 6y ago
The article doesn't really provide any evidence that he was 'deifyed' The opening section quotes an anecdote about Hawking referring to his chances of winning a Nobel: "Most doubtless saw this as an example of Hawking’s famous wit. But in truth it gives a clue to the physicist’s elusive character: shamelessly self-promoting to the point of arrogance, and heedless of what others might think." Or, more likely, given the context - he was actually being funny and poking fun at his own reputation, as it appears.
- ak_111 6y ago
  Actually it does, this is from one paragraph from the article (there are more examples, and probably more from the book that the article is a review of): "Hawking became “as much a brand as he was a person,” says Seife. Billionaire entrepreneurs traded on his name, from Yuri Milner to Richard Branson and Jeffrey Epstein (whose vanity conference on gravity in the Virgin Islands the physicist attended in 2006). In exchange, Hawking was taken on zero-gravity flights and invited to glitzy events and launches. This hawking of Hawking continues today: for a mere £19,000 you can buy a gold watch inlaid, like some medieval jewel-encrusted reliquary bearing a shard of Christ’s cross, with wooden disks “taken from the desk at which Hawking contemplated the mysteries of the universe.”
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Made into a brand is not the same as deifycation. Not just in the literal sense (Pharaohs and some Roman Emperors were actually deified, not Hawking), but also in the metaphorical sense. Hawkings just had a very striking visual presense and story which was easy to remember (alas, because of his health issues mainly), and so became a stand in for "famous scientist" the average Joe knew, and the press could use a a common interviewee, reference, etc, when talking about physics. Otherwise people (whether into science or not) didn't care that much about him, nor they had particular esteem for his various views (unlike e.g. with Einstein).
    - amelius 6y ago
      > Made into a brand is not the same as deification. For some brands it is. I can think of the "Jesus phone".
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >The article doesn't really provide any evidence that he was 'deifyed' Deified might be an extreme way of putting it but Mr. Hawking once attended my university to give what looked like a fairly ordinary physics lecture, and not only was the room full to a brim, three other rooms where the lecture was projected were, and people were sitting outside on the grass and watching it on a projector. If another physics professor of similar caliber had given the lecture I can tell you they would have had trouble to attract a few dozen people. He undoubtedly was a major celebrity, which I guess in our modern secular times is somewhat like deification. I mean at that time you wouldn't have been able to tell the uni campus apart from a new age cult event. There were people intently listening to the lecture who I know for a fact had not the slightest idea what he was even talking about and just soaking it in like if they were listening to some preacher reciting ancient scripture. This mystification of science which Hawking stood for always reminds me of a Ted Chiang short story: https://www.nature.com/articles/35014679 https://www.nature.com/articles/35014679
  - bostonsre 6y ago
    I think a large part of it was the sheer mental fortitude that he had to persevere in the face of incredible obstacles while at the same time continuing his scientific work. What he was able to do and accomplish given those challenges was absolutely awe inspiring. I can't imagine that there are many people in the world that would be able to break out of the mental prison that his body put him in and accomplish so much in spite of it.
    - andagainagain 6y ago
      Also he was pretty charasmatic. Not all scientists, even famous ones, are.
  - Angostura 6y ago
    He was a celebrity - he'd been on the Simpsons and Star Trek. People were curious to hear him speak. That doesn't mean he was deified, or was self aggrandising, or that he stood for the 'mystification of science' - whatever you mean by that.
  - 6y ago
beaconstudios 6y ago
Behold the three horsemen of scientism: Stephen Hawking, Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson! Consume your weekly science sermon from The Big Bang Theory and join the "I Fucking Love Science" worship group on Facebook! It's all very silly really, and clearly a projection of dogmatic belief in religious authority onto science as some kind of monolithic book of knowledge rather than the rickety, slowly-less-wrong process that it is.
- wait_a_minute 6y ago
  I'm of the view that certain celebrity atheists or skeptics exist just to poison the well for the benefit of the billionaire class. Poison religions by forcing a bigger debate between atheism and religions than anyone would otherwise care about, and you can stunt class consciousness and worker solidarity. Take a wild guess where class consciousness blossomed most throughout history!
  - beaconstudios 6y ago
    I'm more of the opinion that in circles where it's looked down upon to be religious, some of those instincts pop up in other areas. Very-atheist people end up worshipping at the altar of the science priests instead. Not everything is a bourgeois conspiracy to oppress the proletariat.
    - wait_a_minute 6y ago
      Having been a very-atheist person in the past, I'd argue that the cult of personality of the new-atheist horsemen like Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, etc, was more of a draw than science itself. Because at the end of the day, science doesn't make claims that are relevant to any educated or experienced theist's worldview. I would have wanted science to be on my side because it'd justify hatred of people's religions, which is a really immature worldview in retrospect but definitely an outcome from immersing myself in new-atheist drivel. Whereas these days I fully accept the contention that science and religions really do coexist. Where the bourgeois and proletariat come into play, is when I look at the stark differences between someone like MLK and Kenneth Copeland. I'd not expect any MLK type to emerge from a theology like Kenneth Copeland's. And we know that the billionaire class does attempt to distort information on all kinds of things if those things are giving them immense power. I'm reminded of how they did that with climate change for 50 years and various nutritional debates over the years. And many other things. The intention being to poison the public discourse long enough that they can exploit more. Does this mean there was a concentrated effort to poison atheist v religion discussion as well? I've never been privy to conversations at that echelon of wealth so I can only point out that the results speak for themselves even if the results were never the goal. But personally if I hated humanity and wanted to keep my power to exploit, I'd do whatever it takes to make sure there's other interpretations of Christianity besides MLK's for example.
mannykannot 6y ago
Hawking spent over five decades surfing on a wave of technology that just barely held back a disease that could have buried him at any time. If self-promotion helped him stay on that wave, I don't begrudge one bit of it. After all, it's not like he was selling a bill of goods: he delivered.
- bostonsre 6y ago
  What technology helped him stay alive for so long? Everything I've heard about it before said that they didn't understand why/how he was able to.
  - mannykannot 6y ago
    It's not just about staying alive, it's also a matter of being able to communicate and to participate in the informal but important network of people working on difficult problems. I also feel that medical technology has advanced in staving off the secondary- and side-effects of ALS, including cognitive decline, even though it cannot prevent or cure it. And if, in the end, it actually made no difference, I don't feel that would be relevant to my attitude to how Hawking lived his life.
Igelau 6y ago
Maybe I'm jaded from stories I've heard of academics behaving badly. Scientists have been sniping at each other inside and across their disciplines longer than there's been science. I didn't assume he was any different and I don't know why anyone would. Maybe he capitalized on the brand a bit more than others, but I can't find a standard to hold him to. How can I say how I'd act in his shoes when I would fight to my last breath just to not be in his shoes? Maybe we do need "to judge" as the reviewer says, but I don't have the stomach for it. I guess it's "thanks and good job" to the people who do? The editor dropped the ball by not titling the review "Hawking Hawking Hawking". I also got a pop-over to subscribe, which puts us at "Hawking Hawking Hawking Hawking".
abhinav22 6y ago
Did he actually discover anything of worth or was most of his items refuted or unproven? I don’t know him well but don’t rate him highly
- joshu 6y ago
  hawking radiation?
  - abhinav22 6y ago
    Has it been proven? I read online and while it seems impressive (and increased my estimation of him), I didn’t see concrete proof of it being proven or disproven
    - bawolff 6y ago
      This isn't my field, and i cant talk to the specifics, but i think that's the wrong question. The important thing is did it move the field forward? Did it get us closer to the "Truth" of the universe. There's a certain sense that newtonian mechanics isn't "true" (with relativity and what not), but its still obviously an important contribution. P.s. this is physics not math. You don't prove things of the natural world, you check if they are the best explanation of emperical observation. This is very different from proving sonething in the math sense.
      - abhinav22 6y ago
        Thanks - that’s the right perspective, I agree. The question you phrased is better and more appropriate
    - coldtea 6y ago
      Yes, it has been proven. Also, while it's good that you admit your bias, "don't think highly of him" while you don't even know the basics of his field (never mind of his career), it's nonetheless a bias. I don't think he (or, well, his legacy) should be striving to prove something to you, rather the opposite. You should be striving to evaluate it if you want to have an opinion about it (even if it's a negative one after the evaluation), as opposed to randomly have opinions and feelings about it.
asymptosis 6y ago
> A Brief History of Time secured his celebrity. That it famously went unread, or unfinished, by many of its purchasers would for any other science communicator be a sign of failure. The book was like a Latin liturgy, filled with terms like the readership only half-understood. It played into the unhelpful notion that science is really hard and only for super-humans like him. Lol, I must have been such a freak of a kid. I found this book in the library when I was 11yo and read it in a couple of weeks. Couldn't do it these days. We didn't have internet back then.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >The book was like a Latin liturgy, filled with terms like the readership only half-understood. Neither more nor less that 99% of other science books for the general public (aside from the ones aimed at kids).
- jakecopp 6y ago
  Me too! I convinced the librarian to fetch it from the high school library when I was in primary school. From memory it wasn't too hard of a read.
  - asymptosis 6y ago
    > From memory it wasn't too hard of a read. Yeah, I'm surprised to hear now that the book is notorious for sitting on shelves while never being read. It didn't need a degree, it just needed some patience and imagination.
  - Maursault 6y ago
    > From memory it wasn't too hard of a read. When considered among others in its genre, neither did it stand out. With rare exception, all of the "science for the public" books seem to be written at a 12 year old reading level (exceptions I know of are The Tao of Physics (requiring a slighting higher reading level) and especially Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (does anyone understand this!?))
- wrycoder 6y ago
bawolff 6y ago
I really don't think hawking is deified. A celebrity, sure. My list of diefied physicists would probably more be einstein and maybe feynman
yongjik 6y ago
Chip away at cosmological problems in your lab for decades, and you're an ivory tower scientist with no understanding of the world. Talk to the masses and popularize what you are working on, and you're an idol deified by hawkers. Well, can't please everyone.
- MomoXenosaga 6y ago
  Einstein got a lot of criticism about his celebrity status but IMO if you can be a celebrity and still perform at the top of your science you're not doing anything wrong. Some people just have more than one talent.
  - racl101 6y ago
    To be fair, Einstein changed the world by coming up with two or more hugely revolutionary theories before the age of 40. He became a celebrity after General Relativity. If he hadn't done extra thing after GR and just sat around eating cake all day, he still would've been a fucking legend. On par with Newton. He deserved his celebrity status and it detracts nothing away from his status as a top notch scientist.
yigitcakar 6y ago
Hawking wasn't deified, he was a celebrity and anybody who accomplished what he had under his health conditions would be a celebrity anyway. His story was about succeeding in a field against all odds, not giving up and being positive. We love that kind of story. Amongst the physicists, Einstein is deified as the epitome of human intellect. He is perceived as such because he had the ability to explain extremely complex subjects with layman's terms. But even Einstein would have been just a minor celebrity if he wasn't a jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany. We can observe that his popularity was a project because Einstein didn't have the character of a showman. I bet if Feynman fled the Nazis and came to USA, we would have a real deity!
wombatmobile 6y ago
> But I was struck by how unusual it was for a scientist to state publicly that their work warranted a Nobel. Did he say he wanted a Nobel? To me it sounded like he made a joke. > “People have searched for mini black holes… but have so far not found any,” he intoned with his trademark voice synthesiser. “This is a pity, because if they had I would have got a Nobel Prize.” It shows a certain lack of context awareness to mark a guy down for vanity when he's spent most of his adult life in a wheel chair living a life that exists only in the mental sphere, with no prospects for physical release ever until the day he dies.
- RichardCA 6y ago
  I feel like the author of the article completely misapprehended what Hawking meant. We give Einstein credit because his theories met the benchmarks of prediction and testability. For example General Relativity made a prediction about the orbit of Mercury that gave a more precise answer then Isaac Newton. The issue with Hawking (based on my understanding as an enthusiastic novice) is that Hawking Radiation can't be measured because it would be necessary to find Black Holes that are significantly less than 1 Solar Mass, and such things don't exist in our Universe as far as we know. And this in turn is why Hawking Radiation can't be tested. But, it's also true that Einstein never won a Nobel for SR or GR.
harshreality 6y ago
The most interesting hypothesis, bordering on conspiracy theory, I've heard about Hawking recently is that by 2000 or shortly after, his communication bandwidth was so low that it's impossible to know if virtually all his more complex communication, lectures, etc. were scripted by those in his inner circle. Suggesting that famous people traded on his name may not go far enough. Was Hawking, post-~2000, merely a vehicle through which his inner circle of students/collaborators/children got access to an audience? Who had access to his voice synthesizer, and could it could be overridden remotely? Hardly anything he said would have been "live" other than simple yes/no answers or, in less formal contexts where people would wait for them, short phrases. His talks were certainly not live communication; they were pre-written (raising the question, by whom?) even if nobody was using him as a puppet in realtime. At what point did any of it, any of his interactions, stop being live or genuine? Who would know about and reveal any unethical behavior, especially if it meant revealing their own abuse of access to gain an audience for their own work or interests?
- wrycoder 6y ago
  Before he got his sophisticated voice synth, he would communicate an answer to an associate, who would make the reply. As the years went on, the answers got increasingly long, compared to Hawking’s communication. I got the impression Hawking was saying something like, “Give them #43.”
mensetmanusman 6y ago
I have never heard of anyone deifying Stephen Hawking...

48 points by miobrien 6y ago

The article doesn't really provide any evidence that he was 'deifyed' The opening section quotes an anecdote about Hawking referring to his chances of winning a Nobel: "Most doubtless saw this as an example of Hawking’s famous wit. But in truth it gives a clue to the physicist’s elusive character: shamelessly self-promoting to the point of arrogance, and heedless of what others might think." Or, more likely, given the context - he was actually being funny and poking fun at his own reputation, as it appears.

ak_111 6y ago
Actually it does, this is from one paragraph from the article (there are more examples, and probably more from the book that the article is a review of): "Hawking became “as much a brand as he was a person,” says Seife. Billionaire entrepreneurs traded on his name, from Yuri Milner to Richard Branson and Jeffrey Epstein (whose vanity conference on gravity in the Virgin Islands the physicist attended in 2006). In exchange, Hawking was taken on zero-gravity flights and invited to glitzy events and launches. This hawking of Hawking continues today: for a mere £19,000 you can buy a gold watch inlaid, like some medieval jewel-encrusted reliquary bearing a shard of Christ’s cross, with wooden disks “taken from the desk at which Hawking contemplated the mysteries of the universe.”
- coldtea 6y ago
  Made into a brand is not the same as deifycation. Not just in the literal sense (Pharaohs and some Roman Emperors were actually deified, not Hawking), but also in the metaphorical sense. Hawkings just had a very striking visual presense and story which was easy to remember (alas, because of his health issues mainly), and so became a stand in for "famous scientist" the average Joe knew, and the press could use a a common interviewee, reference, etc, when talking about physics. Otherwise people (whether into science or not) didn't care that much about him, nor they had particular esteem for his various views (unlike e.g. with Einstein).
  - amelius 6y ago
    > Made into a brand is not the same as deification. For some brands it is. I can think of the "Jesus phone".
Barrin92 6y ago
>The article doesn't really provide any evidence that he was 'deifyed' Deified might be an extreme way of putting it but Mr. Hawking once attended my university to give what looked like a fairly ordinary physics lecture, and not only was the room full to a brim, three other rooms where the lecture was projected were, and people were sitting outside on the grass and watching it on a projector. If another physics professor of similar caliber had given the lecture I can tell you they would have had trouble to attract a few dozen people. He undoubtedly was a major celebrity, which I guess in our modern secular times is somewhat like deification. I mean at that time you wouldn't have been able to tell the uni campus apart from a new age cult event. There were people intently listening to the lecture who I know for a fact had not the slightest idea what he was even talking about and just soaking it in like if they were listening to some preacher reciting ancient scripture. This mystification of science which Hawking stood for always reminds me of a Ted Chiang short story: https://www.nature.com/articles/35014679 https://www.nature.com/articles/35014679
- bostonsre 6y ago
  I think a large part of it was the sheer mental fortitude that he had to persevere in the face of incredible obstacles while at the same time continuing his scientific work. What he was able to do and accomplish given those challenges was absolutely awe inspiring. I can't imagine that there are many people in the world that would be able to break out of the mental prison that his body put him in and accomplish so much in spite of it.
  - andagainagain 6y ago
    Also he was pretty charasmatic. Not all scientists, even famous ones, are.
- Angostura 6y ago
  He was a celebrity - he'd been on the Simpsons and Star Trek. People were curious to hear him speak. That doesn't mean he was deified, or was self aggrandising, or that he stood for the 'mystification of science' - whatever you mean by that.
- 6y ago

beaconstudios 6y ago

Behold the three horsemen of scientism: Stephen Hawking, Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson! Consume your weekly science sermon from The Big Bang Theory and join the "I Fucking Love Science" worship group on Facebook! It's all very silly really, and clearly a projection of dogmatic belief in religious authority onto science as some kind of monolithic book of knowledge rather than the rickety, slowly-less-wrong process that it is.

wait_a_minute 6y ago
I'm of the view that certain celebrity atheists or skeptics exist just to poison the well for the benefit of the billionaire class. Poison religions by forcing a bigger debate between atheism and religions than anyone would otherwise care about, and you can stunt class consciousness and worker solidarity. Take a wild guess where class consciousness blossomed most throughout history!
- beaconstudios 6y ago
  I'm more of the opinion that in circles where it's looked down upon to be religious, some of those instincts pop up in other areas. Very-atheist people end up worshipping at the altar of the science priests instead. Not everything is a bourgeois conspiracy to oppress the proletariat.
  - wait_a_minute 6y ago
    Having been a very-atheist person in the past, I'd argue that the cult of personality of the new-atheist horsemen like Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, etc, was more of a draw than science itself. Because at the end of the day, science doesn't make claims that are relevant to any educated or experienced theist's worldview. I would have wanted science to be on my side because it'd justify hatred of people's religions, which is a really immature worldview in retrospect but definitely an outcome from immersing myself in new-atheist drivel. Whereas these days I fully accept the contention that science and religions really do coexist. Where the bourgeois and proletariat come into play, is when I look at the stark differences between someone like MLK and Kenneth Copeland. I'd not expect any MLK type to emerge from a theology like Kenneth Copeland's. And we know that the billionaire class does attempt to distort information on all kinds of things if those things are giving them immense power. I'm reminded of how they did that with climate change for 50 years and various nutritional debates over the years. And many other things. The intention being to poison the public discourse long enough that they can exploit more. Does this mean there was a concentrated effort to poison atheist v religion discussion as well? I've never been privy to conversations at that echelon of wealth so I can only point out that the results speak for themselves even if the results were never the goal. But personally if I hated humanity and wanted to keep my power to exploit, I'd do whatever it takes to make sure there's other interpretations of Christianity besides MLK's for example.

mannykannot 6y ago

Hawking spent over five decades surfing on a wave of technology that just barely held back a disease that could have buried him at any time. If self-promotion helped him stay on that wave, I don't begrudge one bit of it. After all, it's not like he was selling a bill of goods: he delivered.

bostonsre 6y ago
What technology helped him stay alive for so long? Everything I've heard about it before said that they didn't understand why/how he was able to.
- mannykannot 6y ago
  It's not just about staying alive, it's also a matter of being able to communicate and to participate in the informal but important network of people working on difficult problems. I also feel that medical technology has advanced in staving off the secondary- and side-effects of ALS, including cognitive decline, even though it cannot prevent or cure it. And if, in the end, it actually made no difference, I don't feel that would be relevant to my attitude to how Hawking lived his life.

Igelau 6y ago

Maybe I'm jaded from stories I've heard of academics behaving badly. Scientists have been sniping at each other inside and across their disciplines longer than there's been science. I didn't assume he was any different and I don't know why anyone would. Maybe he capitalized on the brand a bit more than others, but I can't find a standard to hold him to. How can I say how I'd act in his shoes when I would fight to my last breath just to not be in his shoes? Maybe we do need "to judge" as the reviewer says, but I don't have the stomach for it. I guess it's "thanks and good job" to the people who do? The editor dropped the ball by not titling the review "Hawking Hawking Hawking". I also got a pop-over to subscribe, which puts us at "Hawking Hawking Hawking Hawking".

abhinav22 6y ago

Did he actually discover anything of worth or was most of his items refuted or unproven? I don’t know him well but don’t rate him highly

joshu 6y ago
hawking radiation?
- abhinav22 6y ago
  Has it been proven? I read online and while it seems impressive (and increased my estimation of him), I didn’t see concrete proof of it being proven or disproven
  - bawolff 6y ago
    This isn't my field, and i cant talk to the specifics, but i think that's the wrong question. The important thing is did it move the field forward? Did it get us closer to the "Truth" of the universe. There's a certain sense that newtonian mechanics isn't "true" (with relativity and what not), but its still obviously an important contribution. P.s. this is physics not math. You don't prove things of the natural world, you check if they are the best explanation of emperical observation. This is very different from proving sonething in the math sense.
    - abhinav22 6y ago
      Thanks - that’s the right perspective, I agree. The question you phrased is better and more appropriate
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Yes, it has been proven. Also, while it's good that you admit your bias, "don't think highly of him" while you don't even know the basics of his field (never mind of his career), it's nonetheless a bias. I don't think he (or, well, his legacy) should be striving to prove something to you, rather the opposite. You should be striving to evaluate it if you want to have an opinion about it (even if it's a negative one after the evaluation), as opposed to randomly have opinions and feelings about it.

asymptosis 6y ago

> A Brief History of Time secured his celebrity. That it famously went unread, or unfinished, by many of its purchasers would for any other science communicator be a sign of failure. The book was like a Latin liturgy, filled with terms like the readership only half-understood. It played into the unhelpful notion that science is really hard and only for super-humans like him. Lol, I must have been such a freak of a kid. I found this book in the library when I was 11yo and read it in a couple of weeks. Couldn't do it these days. We didn't have internet back then.

coldtea 6y ago
>The book was like a Latin liturgy, filled with terms like the readership only half-understood. Neither more nor less that 99% of other science books for the general public (aside from the ones aimed at kids).
jakecopp 6y ago
Me too! I convinced the librarian to fetch it from the high school library when I was in primary school. From memory it wasn't too hard of a read.
- asymptosis 6y ago
  > From memory it wasn't too hard of a read. Yeah, I'm surprised to hear now that the book is notorious for sitting on shelves while never being read. It didn't need a degree, it just needed some patience and imagination.
- Maursault 6y ago
  > From memory it wasn't too hard of a read. When considered among others in its genre, neither did it stand out. With rare exception, all of the "science for the public" books seem to be written at a 12 year old reading level (exceptions I know of are The Tao of Physics (requiring a slighting higher reading level) and especially Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (does anyone understand this!?))
wrycoder 6y ago

bawolff 6y ago

I really don't think hawking is deified. A celebrity, sure. My list of diefied physicists would probably more be einstein and maybe feynman

yongjik 6y ago

Chip away at cosmological problems in your lab for decades, and you're an ivory tower scientist with no understanding of the world. Talk to the masses and popularize what you are working on, and you're an idol deified by hawkers. Well, can't please everyone.

MomoXenosaga 6y ago
Einstein got a lot of criticism about his celebrity status but IMO if you can be a celebrity and still perform at the top of your science you're not doing anything wrong. Some people just have more than one talent.
- racl101 6y ago
  To be fair, Einstein changed the world by coming up with two or more hugely revolutionary theories before the age of 40. He became a celebrity after General Relativity. If he hadn't done extra thing after GR and just sat around eating cake all day, he still would've been a fucking legend. On par with Newton. He deserved his celebrity status and it detracts nothing away from his status as a top notch scientist.

yigitcakar 6y ago

Hawking wasn't deified, he was a celebrity and anybody who accomplished what he had under his health conditions would be a celebrity anyway. His story was about succeeding in a field against all odds, not giving up and being positive. We love that kind of story. Amongst the physicists, Einstein is deified as the epitome of human intellect. He is perceived as such because he had the ability to explain extremely complex subjects with layman's terms. But even Einstein would have been just a minor celebrity if he wasn't a jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany. We can observe that his popularity was a project because Einstein didn't have the character of a showman. I bet if Feynman fled the Nazis and came to USA, we would have a real deity!

wombatmobile 6y ago

> But I was struck by how unusual it was for a scientist to state publicly that their work warranted a Nobel. Did he say he wanted a Nobel? To me it sounded like he made a joke. > “People have searched for mini black holes… but have so far not found any,” he intoned with his trademark voice synthesiser. “This is a pity, because if they had I would have got a Nobel Prize.” It shows a certain lack of context awareness to mark a guy down for vanity when he's spent most of his adult life in a wheel chair living a life that exists only in the mental sphere, with no prospects for physical release ever until the day he dies.

RichardCA 6y ago
I feel like the author of the article completely misapprehended what Hawking meant. We give Einstein credit because his theories met the benchmarks of prediction and testability. For example General Relativity made a prediction about the orbit of Mercury that gave a more precise answer then Isaac Newton. The issue with Hawking (based on my understanding as an enthusiastic novice) is that Hawking Radiation can't be measured because it would be necessary to find Black Holes that are significantly less than 1 Solar Mass, and such things don't exist in our Universe as far as we know. And this in turn is why Hawking Radiation can't be tested. But, it's also true that Einstein never won a Nobel for SR or GR.

harshreality 6y ago

The most interesting hypothesis, bordering on conspiracy theory, I've heard about Hawking recently is that by 2000 or shortly after, his communication bandwidth was so low that it's impossible to know if virtually all his more complex communication, lectures, etc. were scripted by those in his inner circle. Suggesting that famous people traded on his name may not go far enough. Was Hawking, post-~2000, merely a vehicle through which his inner circle of students/collaborators/children got access to an audience? Who had access to his voice synthesizer, and could it could be overridden remotely? Hardly anything he said would have been "live" other than simple yes/no answers or, in less formal contexts where people would wait for them, short phrases. His talks were certainly not live communication; they were pre-written (raising the question, by whom?) even if nobody was using him as a puppet in realtime. At what point did any of it, any of his interactions, stop being live or genuine? Who would know about and reveal any unethical behavior, especially if it meant revealing their own abuse of access to gain an audience for their own work or interests?

wrycoder 6y ago
Before he got his sophisticated voice synth, he would communicate an answer to an associate, who would make the reply. As the years went on, the answers got increasingly long, compared to Hawking’s communication. I got the impression Hawking was saying something like, “Give them #43.”

mensetmanusman 6y ago

I have never heard of anyone deifying Stephen Hawking...