I'm sorry Stephen. I respect you but my knowledge of humanity says the opposite:

Playerslight: the opposite

He's right. First their was biological evolution. Then there was cultural evolution, where it was our group formation, interaction, and behaviour that changed (ie: When groups of people take on characteristics of an organism). Think of alliances as cellular formation, and Balkanization as cellular division.

The growth, division, and change of social order is based on our ability to communicate and transport. Our ability to communicate and transport more efficiently is based on transmitting ideas through time and space.

Even though we are not evolving biologically very quickly, we still evolve at the speed of ideas. Never before has the human brain been subjected to such a target-rich environment of thought and ideas. Our children's brains are literally being rewired to behave in a different way than their parents.

And as Hawking rightfully suggests, we are now at the point where our ideas have evolved to the point of permitting a fundamental shift in our underlying biology. We can adjust our biology to enhance or suppress our base reptilian instincts.

The question should not be "Should humans change their fundamental biology in order to match their social construct."

The bigger question is: Are we still humans after we do?

Their=They're. Stoopid preview.

I suppose I could have just said that we're running Civilization 5.0. However, we can now do a fundamental hardware upgrade to Human 2.0, which will be more compatible with Civilization 6.0.

unyon: Our children's brains are literally being rewired to behave in a different way than their parents.

I expect the Zombie Apocalypse to break out any minute now. There's your evolution.

not really news

we have been only going through the growing pains of the infancy of our new world for the last 100 or so years

It's no cooincidence that world wars soon followed the creation of nearly instant global comunication and industrialism.

although it sounds corny we truly are at the dawn of a new age for humanity - if we choose it -

Stephen Hawking is a physicist, not a biologist. He's a very smart man, and I hold him in the utmost respect, but he should stick to talking about his areas of expertise and let the biologists talk about evolution.

Dammit someone mentioned bioshock in the comments. I've been jonesing for that game for a while. I haven't played it in so long and now I must.

/hopefully the second one isn't a huge let down

we are far from evolution.

Healine should have been: Stephen Hawking says humans have entered a new stage of evolution, an intelligently redesigned stage

I think it's about time for us to massively evolve ourselves. Because at the moment we're still exactly the same species that speared mammoths and lived in caves in small tribes. We are nuclear-armed cavemen and that is scary.

On the cusp of making computers that can outhink us? Check.
Beginning to engineer better shells for our minds? Check.

Hot damn. Cyberpunk here we come.

No one says evolution is for the better. Evolution can be for the worse. Evolutuion is merely change over time. If we change ourselves into big-boobed, fuzzy-shoe wearing, housewives of orange county, we have evolved. Apes don't wear fuzzy shoes. We could just as easily evolve into a pokemon based society. No more cancer of the body. Lots more cancer of the mind. Penny wise, pound foolish?

VonAether: Stephen Hawking is a physicist, not a biologist. He's a very smart man, and I hold him in the utmost respect, but he should stick to talking about his areas of expertise and let the biologists talk about evolution.

I was going to call him an idiot attention whore who said nothing of consequence, but you phrased it much more better. It's like Jillian Michaels telling us her opinions on string theory.

Smart guy with Lou Gehrig's disease redefines "the fittest" in regards to survival of. Excellent example of rationalizing and intellectual compensation for short comings.

Good try, but not enough versus the coming singularity.

I think Hawking is onto something. We have developed our thinking/perceiving hardware to the point where overcoming what were once selection pressures is a cognitive and/or social problem rather than a mutation or adaptation problem. I don't think it would be unreasonable to look at this from the perspective that human evolution has at least started to change gears. As we develop our minds and machines, it's clear that evolution in the Darwinian sense will be supplanted our own genetic mucking about.

Should clarify: Oneday, out bodies will be redundant. My sweet, hard body :)

hay guys has anyone saw this really funnie movie call Idiocracy. It would be such a funnie addition too this thred

Playerslight: I'm sorry Stephen. I respect you but my knowledge of humanity says the opposite:

i call shenanigans on that. i think its fake. i dont believe the strip thats plugged into the extension cord is actually plugged into anything.

i cant believe someone with the intelligence to use foam flipflops to float the strip is dumb enough to do something like that.

plus the photographer who uploaded it must have thought it was amusing, and if so, they would have known that a hilarious and well-deserved death was sure to happen.

its still funny, but i think its a gag.

/i heard the GET A BRAIN MORANS guy was joking too.

syrynxx: I was going to call him an idiot attention whore who said nothing of consequence, but you phrased it much more better. It's like Jillian Michaels telling us her opinions on string theory.

So you WIMPed out?

NeuroticRocker: hay guys has anyone saw this really funnie movie call Idiocracy. It would be such a funnie addition too this thred

No time, 'batin.

VonAether: Stephen Hawking is a physicist, not a biologist. He's a very smart man, and I hold him in the utmost respect, but he should stick to talking about his areas of expertise and let the biologists talk about evolution.

Biology has little to do with human evolution anymore, at least in a forward direction. If anything, we're influencing biology to take us backwards by making sure everybody gets to breed regardless of what's wrong with them. The next phase of human evolution, moving forward at least, is all about ideas and information exchange. The only way we're going to get biology back in the saddle is by taking direct control of it, and we need to get a lot smarter before we can do that safely. Let Hawking say what he needs to say, we need all the geniuses we can muster if we're going to get through this.

unyon: He's right. First their was biological evolution. Then there was cultural evolution, where it was our group formation, interaction, and behaviour that changed (ie: When groups of people take on characteristics of an organism). Think of alliances as cellular formation, and Balkanization as cellular division.

The growth, division, and change of social order is based on our ability to communicate and transport. Our ability to communicate and transport more efficiently is based on transmitting ideas through time and space.

Even though we are not evolving biologically very quickly, we still evolve at the speed of ideas. Never before has the human brain been subjected to such a target-rich environment of thought and ideas. Our children's brains are literally being rewired to behave in a different way than their parents.

And as Hawking rightfully suggests, we are now at the point where our ideas have evolved to the point of permitting a fundamental shift in our underlying biology. We can adjust our biology to enhance or suppress our base reptilian instincts.

The question should not be "Should humans change their fundamental biology in order to match their social construct."

The bigger question is: Are we still humans after we do?

Sounds like philosophy. As we all know, philosophy is useless. Science has the answer to all questions.

WISHFUL THINKING wheelchair-boy.

Humans are about to enter their final phase of evolution,
which will include dehydration, starvation, cannibalism, tyranny and mutation.

You know who else was confined to a wheelchair?

mrEdude: WISHFUL THINKING wheelchair-boy.

Humans are about to enter their final phase of evolution,
which will include dehydration, starvation, cannibalism, tyranny and mutation.

Been hitting that Bukowski pretty hard there, buddy?

feanturi: Biology has little to do with human evolution anymore, at least in a forward direction. If anything, we're influencing biology to take us backwards by making sure everybody gets to breed regardless of what's wrong with them. The next phase of human evolution, moving forward at least, is all about ideas and information exchange. The only way we're going to get biology back in the saddle is by taking direct control of it, and we need to get a lot smarter before we can do that safely. Let Hawking say what he needs to say, we need all the geniuses we can muster if we're going to get through this.

That's funny. One of Fark's own molecular biologists claims otherwise. From another thread:

entropic_existence: George Burns: Haven't humans somehow halted or artificially altered the course of evolution?

Simply put? No, we haven't. This is a common misconception and you'll even see some biologists uttering it but it couldn't be further from the truth. Have we changed our fitness landscape with modern medicine and all that? Certainly. But there is still natural selection going on, we have just managed to alter those selective constraints. One could actually argue that because of modern medicine we now have more raw material for evolution in the human population. Genetic variants that would have been lethal 50 years ago (killed you before you reproduced) may not be now, this allows humans, as a population, to explore deeper "fitness valleys". Compensatory mutations may then turn these negative traits into net positives down the road, we really can't predict anything about the path evolution will take.

So no, all we have done is altered what is important and visible to natural selection through our ingenuity and shifted the emphasis of natural selection, not removed it from the picture.

Nurglitch: You know who else was confined to a wheelchair?

FDR.

Reverse Godwin?

/kidding
//"Mein Fueher, I can walk!"

mrEdude: WISHFUL THINKING wheelchair-boy.

Humans are about to enter their final phase of evolution,
which will include dehydration, starvation, cannibalism, tyranny and mutation.

basically what happens to people who are stuck in fallout video games?

Of course, the great majority of this information is garbage, and no use to any form of life.

Apparently, this man reads Fark quite often

Stephen Hawking's in my library...

We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid. Why then cannot we cut one code short here, and start another there? Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement?

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Dynamics of Mind

The genetic code does not, and cannot, specify the nature and position of every capillary in the body or every neuron in the brain. What it {can} do is describe the underlying fractal pattern which creates them.

Academician Prokhor Zakharov
"Nonlinear Genetics

Why do you insist that the human genetic code is "sacred" or "taboo"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter -we- are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Looking God in the Eye"

I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine, just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my dreams, the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness: dark, rigid, cold, alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving remains to be seen.

Commissioner Pravin Lal
"Man and Machine"

mrEdude: WISHFUL THINKING wheelchair-boy.

Humans are about to enter their final phase of evolution,
which will include dehydration, starvation, cannibalism, tyranny and mutation.

Then in the smoking ruins, warp drive will be invented to the sounds of Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride".

VonAether: That's funny. One of Fark's own molecular biologists claims otherwise. From another thread:

Thanks for saving me the time of having to come in and correct that dreck yet again. :) Its like the whole "cultural evolution replaced biological evolution in humans" argument. No, it really didn't. They act on two different levels, they both exist, they both are happening, and they influence one another. Same with Hawking's idea of the growth of human generated information, thats cultural evolution and it doesn't really supplant biological evolution.

Hell even if we do start rewriting our genomes and human culture becomes the largest force of selection on humanity it is still evolution at work. Its just... deviated in terms of mechanisms.

Geez, Eunuch Provocateur, I never did wind up reading any Bukowski for some reason, but I do credit the Blue Oyster Cult for Tyranny and Mutation.

/heads to library

Come on, you Stephen Hawking worshipers. Is it any coincidence that he is publicizing this the same week he and his estranged wife are going on trial for the brutal beating of their live-in nurse? This is not even to speak of the number of feral children Hawking has been keeping in hopes of coming up with ever more extreme theories of the origin of human language. Wake up, sheeple.

It's about time...

/hot like a genesis device detonation

LewDux: So you WIMPed out?

definitely not MACHO ;)

Enrico Pallazzo: Apparently, this man reads Fark quite often

Wouldn't it be hilarious if he, or someone of his ilk, did read Fark?

GaryPDX: I expect the Zombie Apocalypse to break out any minute now. There's your evolution.

everyday i secretly hope for the zombie apocalypse

MonkeyVegetables: GaryPDX: I expect the Zombie Apocalypse to break out any minute now. There's your evolution.

everyday i secretly hope for the zombie apocalypse

you and everyone who says "zombie apocalypse" probably lack the upper body strength and shotgun shells to survive the zombie apocalypse.

/myself included

xuanzhiyouxuan: MonkeyVegetables: GaryPDX: I expect the Zombie Apocalypse to break out any minute now. There's your evolution.

everyday i secretly hope for the zombie apocalypse

you and everyone who says "zombie apocalypse" probably lack the upper body strength and shotgun shells to survive the zombie apocalypse.

/myself included

You do realize that by the time you can use a shotgun, you are basically not going to survive the zombie apocalypse...

Fano: We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid. Why then cannot we cut one code short here, and start another there? Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement?

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Dynamics of Mind

The genetic code does not, and cannot, specify the nature and position of every capillary in the body or every neuron in the brain. What it {can} do is describe the underlying fractal pattern which creates them.

Academician Prokhor Zakharov
"Nonlinear Genetics

Why do you insist that the human genetic code is "sacred" or "taboo"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter -we- are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Looking God in the Eye"

I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine, just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my dreams, the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness: dark, rigid, cold, alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving remains to be seen.

Commissioner Pravin Lal
"Man and Machine"

You're going to make me boot windows just to play that game, you bastard.

shawn82: Fano: We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid. Why then cannot we cut one code short here, and start another there? Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement?

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Dynamics of Mind

The genetic code does not, and cannot, specify the nature and position of every capillary in the body or every neuron in the brain. What it {can} do is describe the underlying fractal pattern which creates them.

Academician Prokhor Zakharov
"Nonlinear Genetics

Why do you insist that the human genetic code is "sacred" or "taboo"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter -we- are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Looking God in the Eye"

I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine, just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my dreams, the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness: dark, rigid, cold, alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving remains to be seen.

Commissioner Pravin Lal
"Man and Machine"

You're going to make me boot windows just to play that game, you bastard.

Oddly enough I just got done playing it :O

Dr. Hawking is a true visionary. Genetic engineering is in its infancy, and will become phenomenally more refined over the coming decades and centuries. Currently, enormous disparities exist betweeen intellectual reality and the poseurs and poster-children for supposed "advanced" intellectual activities and culture. My pet peeve is to see "Professor" or "Doctor" So And So doing alumni rah-rah screaming and ranting while supporting the mouth-breathing head-butting imbeciles that make up the vast majority of collegiate football team players. There is an enormous disconnect when "intellectuals" get cheap, vicarious thrills by watching and rooting for primitive contact sports; sports that encourage and lionize those participants who do their best to hurt, maim, and otherwise create sanctioned mayhem by performing multiple and repeated criminal assaults under the guise and banner of "organized sport."

On a positive note, there are legions of intellectuals and persons of deep consideration who do not follow the head-butting herds. These persons of deeper contemplation will continue to slowly help in moving human beings forward towards a better future. An earlier poster had it right; we will move beyond the "reptile brain" aspect of our human nature at some point, and we will evolve into a species that understands innate cooperative behavior for the betterment of all. In time.

//what I wrote
///shiat

mrEdude: WISHFUL THINKING wheelchair-boy.

Humans are about to enter their final phase of evolution,
which will include dehydration, starvation, cannibalism, tyranny and mutation.

I don't know. Any species capable of producing someone who can play the bongos this well (new window) has a future.

/Richard Feynman
//Dude really likes orange juice
///Also 88MPH.

alaric3: Smart guy with Lou Gehrig's disease redefines "the fittest" in regards to survival of. Excellent example of rationalizing and intellectual compensation for short comings.

the short coming is in your hands

lantawa: Dr. Hawking is a true visionary. Genetic engineering is in its infancy, and will become phenomenally more refined over the coming decades and centuries. Currently, enormous disparities exist betweeen intellectual reality and the poseurs and poster-children for supposed "advanced" intellectual activities and culture. My pet peeve is to see "Professor" or "Doctor" So And So doing alumni rah-rah screaming and ranting while supporting the mouth-breathing head-butting imbeciles that make up the vast majority of collegiate football team players. There is an enormous disconnect when "intellectuals" get cheap, vicarious thrills by watching and rooting for primitive contact sports; sports that encourage and lionize those participants who do their best to hurt, maim, and otherwise create sanctioned mayhem by performing multiple and repeated criminal assaults under the guise and banner of "organized sport."

On a positive note, there are legions of intellectuals and persons of deep consideration who do not follow the head-butting herds. These persons of deeper contemplation will continue to slowly help in moving human beings forward towards a better future. An earlier poster had it right; we will move beyond the "reptile brain" aspect of our human nature at some point, and we will evolve into a species that understands innate cooperative behavior for the betterment of all. In time.

//what I wrote
///shiat

I honestly don't understand the sport of football (American). If I wanted to see some big, muscular men slapping eachother in the ass and rolling around in the mud, I'd download a gay porno.

I watch rugby. At least there, we get to see some ribs cracking!

/above poster is either a troll, or a loony.
//possibly both
///certainly doesn't understand the "intellectuals," he claims to support as well as he should.
////or any human being for that matter.
/go cry in a corner pasty, misanthropic stick boy.
//just because the jocks beat you up in school, doesn't mean that arguing on the internet will solve anything.
///damn, slashies are fun.
/I want some orange juice.

Holy shiat. Didn't I just bring this up yesterday?? And didn't all you same people say I was batshiat crazy? Now because Hawking says it, it's right. Sure, what do I have to do for credibility???? Get a terminal nerve eating illness???

/oh, i need a PHD and a few books published? And prove a few hypotheses? In physics????
//Nevermind.
///Math is hard.

VonAether: feanturi: Biology has little to do with human evolution anymore, at least in a forward direction. If anything, we're influencing biology to take us backwards by making sure everybody gets to breed regardless of what's wrong with them. The next phase of human evolution, moving forward at least, is all about ideas and information exchange. The only way we're going to get biology back in the saddle is by taking direct control of it, and we need to get a lot smarter before we can do that safely. Let Hawking say what he needs to say, we need all the geniuses we can muster if we're going to get through this.

That's funny. One of Fark's own molecular biologists claims otherwise. From another thread:

entropic_existence: George Burns: Haven't humans somehow halted or artificially altered the course of evolution?

Simply put? No, we haven't. This is a common misconception and you'll even see some biologists uttering it but it couldn't be further from the truth. Have we changed our fitness landscape with modern medicine and all that? Certainly. But there is still natural selection going on, we have just managed to alter those selective constraints. One could actually argue that because of modern medicine we now have more raw material for evolution in the human population. Genetic variants that would have been lethal 50 years ago (killed you before you reproduced) may not be now, this allows humans, as a population, to explore deeper "fitness valleys". Compensatory mutations may then turn these negative traits into net positives down the road, we really can't predict anything about the path evolution will take.

So no, all we have done is altered what is important and visible to natural selection through our ingenuity and shifted the emphasis of natural selection, not removed it from the picture.

Thank You, Von. I take back every mean thing I never said about your mother.

syrynxx: VonAether: Stephen Hawking is a physicist, not a biologist. He's a very smart man, and I hold him in the utmost respect, but he should stick to talking about his areas of expertise and let the biologists talk about evolution.

I was going to call him an idiot attention whore who said nothing of consequence, but you phrased it much more better. It's like Jillian Michaels telling us her opinions on string theory.

Well, some guys just know how to write good.

So many green arrows for me this thread!

Thank you to syrynxx and jso2897, and you're welcome to entropic_existence and GeorgeBurns.

e_e, you, ninjakirby, abb3w and the rest of the PERC are responsible for my present interest and subsequent extensive (layman's) knowledge of evolution. Thank you for caring.

GeorgeBurns:
Holy shiat. Didn't I just bring this up yesterday??

Yes.

And didn't all you same people say I was batshiat crazy?

No.

(Not all of us.)

Daienden: I watch rugby. At least there, we get to see some ribs cracking!

First RTFA. I'm spot on with assessment of disparities regarding a huge number of our supposed academic "leaders."

//you be the troll

Here ya go:

entropic_existence: Its just... deviated in terms of mechanisms.

A seriously novel sense of "mutation". (Some might claim it's also selection, but I think in the long run the final mechanism for that stays the same.)

lantawa: Daienden: I watch rugby. At least there, we get to see some ribs cracking!

First RTFA. I'm spot on with assessment of disparities regarding a huge number of our supposed academic "leaders."

//you be the troll

Here ya go:

... I did RTFA, but your post had absolutely nothing to do with the article. You were bemoaning the fact that some of the smartest people in the world enjoy sports.

And, yes, I am a dick, but you were one first when you decided to through a hissy-fit because people enjoy getting drunk and cheering on sports teams. What's wrong with that, exactly? Why is a scientist automatically a "poseur," because they enjoy football (both versions)? You act as though it's a sin that these people aren't doing something "intellectual," with every waking second of their lives.

Now, because you specifically mentioned contact sports, I assume that you have nothing against chess, am I correct? Now, Being good at chess requires a keen mind, you have to know the rules, know what each piece is capable of doing, and account for every possible movement that your opponent could make. Now, you could also just as easily apply those specifications to any sport, such as boxing (or chess-boxing the strangest thing to come out of Sweden), or even Football. Playing football recquires you to not only know the rules, but to know the details of specific plays, and to know the appropriate course of action to take in response to actions made by your opponent. The same basic formula can be applied to pretty much everything humanity has ever done.

You lament the fact that people get "cheap, vicarious thrills," from watching sports, but why does it even matter? If these people are doing good work inside the lab, why do you care from where or what they get their jollies? If they were showing up to work drunk, or randomly pulling off their coats and yelling "Go Packers," I would understand (I would also question what they're doing in a lab in the first place), but it's evident that this type of thing is not a common occurence, so why does it matter what these people do in their free time? Would you care if they were avid target-shooters or rock-climbers or hang-gliders? Would you object to these "Poseurs," if they practiced fencing instead? You seem pretty upset against watching sports specifically, and I don't know why, nor do you provide any particular reason.

LewDux: So you WIMPed out?

Maybe it's late, but I genuinely laughed over that.

This article is just incoherent, and if it follows Hawking's actual train of thought, then that implies that he's incoherent. I got a few things from that article:

1) In the 1800s, when books were printed manually, there weren't very many of them. Now that Oprah can make 10 million housewives buy a book just by recommending it, there are too many books for anyone to read in their lifetime.

Thank you, Captain Obvious! It's called population growth. According to Wikipedia, the world population in 1900, not just English-speaking, was less than a million people. There were probably more people than that in downtown Chicago tonight watching the fireworks.

2) "But we are now entering a new phase, of what Hawking calls "self designed evolution,"

No, dumbass, we are not. If anything, we have entered into a phase of devolution. Because of advances in medicine and technology, humans with defective genes are breeding where they would have failed to do so a few centuries ago, either by dying young or being incapable of supporting a family. Stupid people who are good-looking have stupid children who are good-looking (see Paris Hilton; just like her mom). Intelligent and wealthy men breed with eye candy instead of with intelligent women, leading to Idiocracy.

If intelligent men intentionally bred with intelligent women specifically to produce intelligent offspring, then we would be in a new stage of evolution. Instead, as the Onion has foretold, (^), the mouth-breathers are out-breeding intelligent people by 2:1.

syrynxx: No, dumbass, we are not. If anything, we have entered into a phase of devolution. Because of advances in medicine and technology, humans with defective genes are breeding where they would have failed to do so a few centuries ago, either by dying young or being incapable of supporting a family

I think you're missing the point Hawking is trying to make. It's not that our genetic code is getting better, but that humanity has developed new methods to propagate information through space and time. This is a function of the written word and civilization. You can think the same thoughts as Socrates as a result. Our species can build of all those worthy in past generations as a result.

The urge to share information that prompts you to type in this forum and share information is thus akin to the urge to fark.

/Boump-chicka-waw-wah

Apparently, Hawking's talking about downloading our brains into computers. Immortality would certainly help Humans make a turn for the better, in the long-run anyway.

With luck, our generation may be the last to die. If we're extra, super-duper lucky, it'll be the Boomers who take that spot. Probably won't happen, but hey, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Oh, and Syrynxx, A few stick figures want to have a word with you. Link (new window)

GeorgeBurns: Holy shiat. Didn't I just bring this up yesterday?? And didn't all you same people say I was batshiat crazy? Now because Hawking says it, it's right. Sure, what do I have to do for credibility???? Get a terminal nerve eating illness???

We said you were wrong in the same sense that Hawking is wrong (as I pointed out above) with regards to the biology end of things. The human capacity to transmit information non-genetically is an outgrowth of our biological evolution, it doesn't supplant it. We are still subject to evolution, we have merely shifted the fitness landscape.

The point about humans approaching the point of being able to control their own genomes, he has a point about. Hawking is a smart farking guy but he isn't a biologist.

syrynxx:

Thank you, Captain Obvious! It's called population growth. According to Wikipedia, the world population in 1900, not just English-speaking, was less than a million people. There were probably more people than that in downtown Chicago tonight watching the fireworks.


Fail!!!!!
I think you're referring to this link? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
Estimates for the human population in 1900 is somewhere around 1.6 Billion. The last time the world population was around a million is thought to be around 10,000 BC.

feanturi: Biology has little to do with human evolution anymore, at least in a forward direction.

Implies evolution has a "forward" direction.

From the article:

"Other qualities, such as intelligence, are probably controlled by a large number of genes. It will be much more difficult to find them, and work out the relations between them. Nevertheless, I am sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence, and instincts like aggression."

Hey Daienden. I specifically said "contact sports."

Additionally:

FTFA: Other qualities, such as intelligence, are probably controlled by a large number of genes. It will be much more difficult to find them,

I guess he's been on Fark already.

imfallen_angel: FTFA: Other qualities, such as intelligence, are probably controlled by a large number of genes. It will be much more difficult to find them,

I guess he's been on Fark already.

Well...glad I just took an extra dose of Farkitol. Should get me through the day. Happy Fourth...

Denial_of_Death: Nurglitch: You know who else was confined to a wheelchair?

FDR.

Reverse Godwin?

/kidding
//"Mein Fueher, I can walk!"

It was supposed to be a reference to Davros. I, for one, will welcome being encapsulated in my own Dalek shell.

Kome [TotalFark] 2009-07-03 06:33:54 PM
"Stephen Hawking's in my library..."

You'd better let him out.

Kome: Stephen Hawking's in my library...

really...What about Fermi? (pops)

Kome: Stephen Hawking's in my library...

Pray tell, might you be conversant in JavaScript, as well as Klingon?

chaoswolf: On the cusp of making computers that can outhink us? Check.
Beginning to engineer better shells for our minds? Check.

Hot damn. Cyberpunk here we come.

I'd say the latter is far more likely than the former. We are not "on the cusp" of AI. The more AI is studied the more distant it gets, because it's really, really hard, and the more we study the more difficulty we discover. Our brains are computers, but they have an entirely different architecture from computers.

Now, we're on the cusp of another ridiculous explosion of computer technology, with the advent of quantum computing in the next decade or two, but I think AI is a rather long way off. Longer than fusion. And maybe completely impossible.

That really sucks too.

syrynxx: LewDux: So you WIMPed out?

Maybe it's late, but I genuinely laughed over that.

This article is just incoherent, and if it follows Hawking's actual train of thought, then that implies that he's incoherent. I got a few things from that article:

1) In the 1800s, when books were printed manually, there weren't very many of them. Now that Oprah can make 10 million housewives buy a book just by recommending it, there are too many books for anyone to read in their lifetime.

Thank you, Captain Obvious! It's called population growth. According to Wikipedia, the world population in 1900, not just English-speaking, was less than a million people. There were probably more people than that in downtown Chicago tonight watching the fireworks.

2) "But we are now entering a new phase, of what Hawking calls "self designed evolution,"

No, dumbass, we are not. If anything, we have entered into a phase of devolution. Because of advances in medicine and technology, humans with defective genes are breeding where they would have failed to do so a few centuries ago, either by dying young or being incapable of supporting a family. Stupid people who are good-looking have stupid children who are good-looking (see Paris Hilton; just like her mom). Intelligent and wealthy men breed with eye candy instead of with intelligent women, leading to Idiocracy.

If intelligent men intentionally bred with intelligent women specifically to produce intelligent offspring, then we would be in a new stage of evolution. Instead, as the Onion has foretold, (^), the mouth-breathers are out-breeding intelligent people by 2:1.

Ahh, I just KNEW Fark would give me an opportunity to post this:


/BTW, there is no such thing as devolution

RemyDuron: /BTW, there is no such thing as devolution

And did Mr. Hawking ask for God's input on this?

God's very tight-lipped. He doesn't want to accidentally create a Babel Fish scenario.