While physicist Stephen Hawking is optimistic about the future, he warned in an interview published Tuesday that, with the pace of technological advancement, humans must gain control over their aggressive instincts in order to survive.
The famed English scientist told The Times that the issue lies in the instincts humanity has honed to survive so far.
“Since civilization began, aggression has been useful inasmuch as it has definite survival advantages,” he told the British newspaper. “It is hard-wired into our genes by Darwinian evolution. Now, however, technology has advanced at such a pace that this aggression may destroy us all by nuclear or biological war. We need to control this inherited instinct by our logic and reason.”
He suggested that the creation of a world government might be necessary to ensure that humanity is addressing high-impact challenges, such as climate change and the rise of artificial intelligence.
“We need to be quicker to identify such threats and act before they get out of control. This might mean some form of world government,” Hawking said. “But that might become a tyranny.”
As a general rule, the history of our evolution is of mortality sculpting mankind, and the more mortality, the more adapted and sculpted the species became. As much as we may want peace and safety for all mankind, that is a prescription for the de-evolution of the species.
He is right about more than the tyranny though. Nuclear and Biological weapons do change the equation. I’ve long suspected the more individualistic, libertarian psychology that arises where r/K breaks down due to insufficient population density is where human kind will ultimately evolve to, once space travel is democratized.
While K’s wage wars and battle each other for control of homeworlds (periodically nuking and infecting each other into oblivion), and while societies that conquer post-scarcity devolve into Idiocracy-like dystopias, the libertarian individualists will spread out into space and live lives of exploration, colonization, and reproduction.
If technology allowed the universe to be mapped by autonomous drones, and the exploration to be planned and focused in worthwhile directions based on that data, there is no doubt what human psychology would leave the most impressive history of the species, when all was said and done.
You can fight these things, and whine and cry about them to no avail, or you can recognize the realities and go with them, hoping to make our species the most amazing exemplar possible. Personally, I want humankind to be great. If lots of liberals have to die for that, so be it.
Tell everyone about r/K Theory, because everyone needs to get the hell away from the rabbits
[…] Stephen Hawking Warns, Mankind Must Control Aggression […]
From my point of view, trying to be as K as possible isn’t about waging endless wars into oblivion. Its about peace. Peace through strength, and that involves some type of strong military. The optimal society would be some intersection of libertarian and conservative but, a limited government would still be needed. When I eat food, shoot a firearm, take a shower I expect a merchant not to have defrauded me with a product that could kill me, like poisoned food, overloaded powder or toxic water. That means I want laws, and a few regulations. But the US Federal system has gotten so big I’m paying taxes and have soybean/gmo food, gun regs and estrogen/PBA in my water. As an engineer I don’t have time to grow my own food, make my own guns and pump all my water from a well- even automation would require heavy infrastructure to maintain from the grid to maintenance. So what is the way forward? It’s not easy- there is alot of work to do. Conservatives have to be aggressive, very vocal, nationalistic and most importantly proud. Traditions are what made Western societies great, its time to return to those.
I check your blog daily and read most of what you write. I don’t comment often but I wanted to let you know that you’ve really been on a roll lately. I don’t always agree with your take 100%, but I can easily confirm 95% agreement. Your contributions to the movement are invaluable and appreciated. I have learned a lot thanks to you and do not take for granted your efforts in daily posting of this quality.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Given the fact he is trapped inside a living hell, don’t you think Stephen Hawking is incredibly bitter?
I suspect he has subconsciously internalized the idea that nobody should ever have to engage in physical combat or competition, and everyone’s goals should be to avoid that K-selected environment.
For all his supposed brilliance, Stephen Hawking is a total moral retard. People are not interchangeable cogs in some machine that can be cobbled together into some sort of one world nation state. The one surefire way to drive people into some sort of global total war is to try and force them into a one-world nation. If you want peace, better to leave everyone be, with their own nations.
He’s great within the world of invented physics that can’t be observed.
“I’ve long suspected the more individualistic, libertarian psychology that arises where r/K breaks down due to insufficient population density is where human kind will ultimately evolve to, once space travel is democratized.”
Interesting idea. An endless mouse utopia “exploit” period? I suspect limitations on the rate of artificial habitat creation would impose population density pressures even in space. And lacking FTL, all the resources in any given star system are eventually going to be claimed territory, so new-minted libertarians trying to move in to use them will face… problems.
Have you explored r/K breakdown previously? I don’t recall its mention, and peruse this blog relatively frequently.
Occasionally It has come up. Basically it is tough, to the extent individuals who live it are colonizing harsh lands and trying to survive a harsh reality that kills the weak, but it is less group oriented, since the land is not lush enough to support large population densities. I see space being like that. You will need to be able to use tech to carve out your niche, and maintain it to stay alive. So it will cull for ability, yet fighting, and supporting groups will be a needless risk, given the expansive space available.
Seems like the definition of the same steppe and desert lands that have thrown out raider bands and cultures since forever. The raiders tend to gravitate to the borders of the high density areas, and pounce. Thus the fat and comfortable city boys falling to the raiders, who become fat and comfortable city boys themselves after a few generations.
IOW, the predators, the wolves, will go where the prey, the rabbits, are.