Stephen Hawking calls for empathy

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http://news.yahoo.com/stephen-hawking-f ... 50453.html

Stephen Hawking calls for empathy

Since empathy is simply not going to happen, it was the second part of his call that has a better chance of saving the human species and that is space exploration.

A clearly unempathetic intelligent species may have many benefits over the combination of the extremes and middle ground that we tend to gravitate towards, though.

At least someone's got their head screwed on right in this world. Sometimes I think nobody does.

Maybe he should call for a ban on football/soccer. Because how anyone can claim that is a sociable family orientated sport these days is beyond me....

I agree with him about aggression.
I see aggression as an emergent intelligence that was necessary for life and evolution as we know it, but is destined for self destruction.

Imagine a bacteria culture growing in a petri dish. At some point the resources are gone.

I have been studying different variants of the aggression logic.
Unfortunately, what we have today are mostly the most aggressive of the aggressive variants, and that's basically due to the time factor involved and entropy.
The logic that operates faster generally takes the day.
The more laid back forms of aggression logic fade into niches (hiding), disappear, or are used for fuel by the faster forms.

My intuition tells me that the answer may be in anti-entropy.
A look at some highly specialized species such as orchids shows them to be using an extremely mild form of aggression logic, - that we would actually call non-aggressive. They manage to exist hidden away from competition in niches of the environment (very specialized). But, and here's the kicker, very small changes in the environment will destroy them.
Basically, to survive or thrive without destructive aggression requires the environment to be non-destructive, or "stable".
Environmental stability is how we get "stratified stability" in the evolution of life.
A species actually stays the same for a while before morphing into something else.
It is pressure from a changing environment that dictates the morphing.

So in conclusion, we MUST create stable environments for ourselves in order to survive. The idea of going out into space is probably the only way that we can do this.
I am all for it!

For almost as long as I can remember I have been saying these exact words: "we have got to get off of this planet".

Problems with all that :
- when used too much "empathy", for what-ever-agenda's sake, becomes the (s)word to eliminate the initial understanding of it, as we must be aware that its values are defined by the consensus of the desirered acting-upon the (in appropriate-ways acted-out) feelings.
- same old, it's easily usuable against the less-influental by the more social-compatible.

- SH really mounts up in having opions where he shouldn't, being a completely dependant existance, how free can you possibly be ?
-so elimination aggression from the newspeak now, (I really see him performing the religious-bigbrother-programming here (again)), agression in itself is nature's nature, one of the words/ determinations of duality that's about life, renewal by destruction, nothing new can be born if nothing ever will go, decline, fall, destruct, etc.

On seahawks sunday spend a day at my house with 35 other people all together for one common purpose with a passion for their team and you'll understand. Sports can bring people together more than just the drunk fights you see at games.

Anyways, I agree with Mr. Hawking. It's easy for him to say though because he is incapable of being aggressive, not to take anything away from it. A better way of looking at it would be to say, we should remove man's desire to make others feel inferior.

This really makes your entire argument suspect. You seem to be saying that Stephen Hawking should not have opinions because he is disabled and requires care, and that's just BS.



If you'd read what he said, he addressed the fact that aggression has been pro-survival. He simply also made the observation that it does not currently serve as "pro-survival" under current conditions, nor is it conducive to humanity's continuation as a species.

Also, the use of 1984isms makes it seem like you're not really trying to construct an argument, and just using jargon to create the illusion of one.

I don't watch games. And I did say soccer/football with the intention of making it clear I was not referring to American Football or whatever you call it across the pond. But obviously I wasn't clear enough
And no, I will never understand herd mentality or this ego-driven need to prove oneself through a game. (a need to make another feel inferior is a different story alltogether).

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/02/2 ... I520150220
http://www.theguardian.com/football/201 ... ound-world
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_hooliganism

He's entitled to have opinions, but in some regards he's missing some rl experience, imho.
Just like the pope who recently also demands for more empathy... really ?? And just like we go to a celibatair guy in a dress to get advice on reproduction ?

Yep, it's not so true as you would believe. Cohabitation and coorporation have had greater influence on humanity as we know it, than is accredited in the narratif of the latest conquerer.
It's make believe, that fits the construct of "Idea of Progress"

"To the minds of most people the desirable outcome of human development would be a condition of society in which all the inhabitants of the planet would enjoy a perfectly happy existence....It cannot be proved that the unknown destination towards which man is advancing is desirable. The movement may be Progress, or it may be in an undesirable direction and therefore not Progress..... The Progress of humanity belongs to the same order of ideas as Providence or personal immortality. It is true or it is false, and like them it cannot be proved either true or false. Belief in it is an act of faith".

I think Stephen Hawking is in an excellent position to comment on the lack or presence of compassion in modern society. He's probably had more than his fair share of naysayers saying that his disability (and consequent dependency) means he shouldn't have opinions or do his research or write his books.

Also, unlike the pope, he hasn't taken actions that indicate that he believes compassion is only good for some people, so the comparison is meaningless.

If your argument is that his disability means he shouldn't have an opinion or that his opinion isn't meaningful, then that damages your own argument.

Also, he's implying that aggression is a failing rather than a feature (a feature that can be good and bad, not just one or the other).

Aggression is connected to the advancement of humankind, through competitions to wars.

Space travel is directly linked to WW2 rocketry, for example. Not that rocketry didn't exist before that, or aspirations of space travel, but the industrial might and aggressive policies of WW2 led to rockets that were powerful enough (German V-2), which eventually led to the Apollo missions.

You could say it would have happened anyway, and it probably would have, but the quickness? Nope, that's due to aggression.

Many times the best way to correctly analyze a situation/system is from a frame of reference that is outside, and not embedded within.

This does not make one smarter, but it does greatly increase the range of conditionals that one applies in their thinking.
Being embedded usually limits the range of conditionals due to bias or schemas.


The aggression absolutely sped up the development in technology. That's not in question. It happened.
The point is that doesn't HAVE to be the only way, and I think that's what he's saying.
We can do better.
We can create drive and incentive without the need to kill each other more efficiently.

The resistance to this aggression based drive started back in WWII with many scientists withdrawing from their work and contributions towards advances in chemical and nuclear weapons. Many others had deep regrets after seeing how their work was used, and swore to never participate again.

As an example, Leo Szilard tried to keep his information about chain reactions from the hands of the governments.

I wanted to add that in some disciplines of thinking, particularly in theoretical systems, it can be proven to an extent that our present course of aggression driven society cannot continue for much longer and will result in some sort of collapse or annihilation. It has to do with the exponential nature of how the system feeds itself vs the time interval between collapses, Feigenbaum's constant, and systems that produce chaos.
Of course, as with any of the disciplines of thinking, or sciences, there's always a point where some level of faith is involved.



The real trap is that the logic of aggression is recursive.
Trying to artificially engineer around it would not be an easy task.