Posted on 03/08/2017 10:25:37 PM PST by Olog-hai
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.” …
(Excerpt) Read more at krmg.com ...
And a single world government would be a single point of failure, and a high-value target of corruption.
"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?" ~ Frederic Bastiat
But it's worse than that: A monopolist of law making, law enforcement and judging of the law cannot normally be forced to do what you want. It may, or may not, care for the sick, the poor, the weak and the helpless. It may decide to leave them to die...or worse. The fact you advocate its existence for a particular reason, or the fact that the charter that creates it specifies some prime directive it must follow has as much force and effect as the promises of politicians prior to elections. In other words, none at all:
“The man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, ‘Limit yourself’; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian.” ~ Rothbard
“I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks — no form of government can render us secure.” ~ James Madison
"If men are good, you don’t need government; if men are evil or ambivalent, you don’t dare have one." ~ Robert LeFevre
Statism is a logical fallacy, because it is the self-contradictory belief that monopoly power can be its own preventative, the belief that it is logically valid to attempt to prevent the violation of the rights of individuals by establishing an institution with the monopoly power to violate the rights of individuals, and the belief that it is ethically valid to assert that any person or group of people has superior moral authority to any other person or group of people.
The truth is that one cannot achieve liberal ends using the state, because the state is inherently anti-liberal:
Politicians, bureaucrats and leaders will compete for positions of high authority in the government bureaucracy that idealists believe must exist in order for their ideal society to become reality. But what kind of people have the best chance of winning any such power struggles--whether military, political or bureaucratic?
High-minded idealists are always at a severe disadvantage in such power struggles. People who intend only to help others are not likely to be the best at using and retaining governmental power--their very idealism, if sincere, prevents them from using the strategies and tactics mostly likely to win.
So the most ruthless people tend to succeed at wielding coercive power, and kind-hearted people invariably find themselves at a disadvantage in making practical, effective and implementable decisions on how to most effectively use the power of the state.
"When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating." ~ Frederic Bastiat
Hierarchical power structures can have only one result: giving effective ownership to the rich and powerful, and denying it to everyone else. The state is a single point of failure, and a high-value target of corruption. Rich, powerful and evil people will _always_ end up in control of it. *Always.*
The ruling class advocates and supports the state because they know this. They use the state for its ability to grant immunity, monopoly, special privilege and legitimacy.
*Iron law of oligarchy:* "sociological thesis according to which all organizations, including those committed to democratic ideals and practices, will inevitably succumb to rule by an elite few (an oligarchy). The iron law of oligarchy contends that organizational democracy is an oxymoron. Although elite control makes internal democracy unsustainable, it is also said to shape the long-term development of all organizations—including the rhetorically most radical—in a conservative direction.
Robert Michels spelled out the iron law of oligarchy in the first decade of the 20th century in Political Parties, a brilliant comparative study of European socialist parties that drew extensively on his own experiences in the German Socialist Party. Influenced by Max Weber’s analysis of bureaucracy as well as by Vilfredo Pareto’s and Gaetano Mosca’s theories of elite rule, Michels argued that organizational oligarchy resulted, most fundamentally, from the imperatives of modern organization: competent leadership, centralized authority, and the division of tasks within a professional bureaucracy. These organizational imperatives necessarily gave rise to a caste of leaders whose superior knowledge, skills, and status, when combined with their hierarchical control of key organizational resources such as internal communication and training, would allow them to dominate the broader membership and to domesticate dissenting groups. Michels supplemented this institutional analysis of internal power consolidation with psychological arguments drawn from Gustave Le Bon’s crowd theory. From this perspective, Michels particularly emphasized the idea that elite domination also flowed from the way rank-and-file members craved guidance by and worshipped their leaders. Michels insisted that the chasm separating elite leaders from rank-and-file members would also steer organizations toward strategic moderation, as key organizational decisions would ultimately be taken more in accordance with leaders’ self-serving priorities of organizational survival and stability than with members’ preferences and demands." ~ Encyclopedia Britannica
Steven has an apt surname. It seems he's always hawking one leftist pipe dream or another.
He's a perfect dupe of the new world order.
“But that might become a tyranny.”...
There’s some sign of life in his brain.
I dislike the guy very much.
He was a piece of sh## to his first wife and says Jesus is “a fairy tale for those who are afraid of the dark”
I’m not afraid of the dark, and I believe.
You pompous overrated ###.
and he’s survived for a suspiciously long time with a disease that would have long since taken anyone else to his maker
When do the aliens get here that want to peacefully coexist with us aggressively tyrannical, self annihilating, instinctively stupid and lazy bunch of folks like us?
Stick to physics, Stevie. “People must change to suit my vision of a better future” is a social policy with a lengthy, consistent, and bloody record of failure. Figure out how to manage what we are instead. You could even call such a plan a Constitution or something.
Problem with that is, as John Adams said, the US Constitution “is made only for a moral and religious people; it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”, whereas Hawking sees the human race only in Darwinian terms of viciousness overruling any other quality and so would not even understand something like the US Constitution and how it would function if applied.
Think anyone’s got footage of him suddenly leaving his confinement and making himself a cup of tea?
Einstein said that he was not sure what weaponry would be used in the next World War but that the one after it would be fought with sticks and stones.
I guess that's another way of saying that he's the Shaun "Talcum X" King of the disabled world.
Nobody would be around to fight another one after a global nuclear conflict. Hence the need for a Savior to step in.
He should stick to physics and skip all other topics
Yeah well, you're not PARALYZED FOR LIFE either, are you?
Have a heart! ... or else, what's the use of believing? Kno'm sayin' ?
He may have been correct in the sense that a moral people would be the only kind to be able to maintain it long term; one look at the grotesque body of law that currently burdens the country in contravention to the Constitution's clear language would (and does) make strong men pale, and would prove his point. Nevertheless, so far as we maintain a vestige of morality and yes, religion, we may manage to hang on by our fingernails. It looks like a pretty close-run thing at the moment, I'll grant you.
Where did it seem I didn’t have a heart.
I have headaches 24/7 for over 10 years now. Not headaches like most people get, headaches that for the first five years made me think of killing myself from the pain.
Brain injury headaches.
And a million other symptoms many would rather die than have.
I don’t expect people to not judge me on other things before that.
Go judge someone else.
And mind your business next time.
What a childish reply you made.
And i’m not from the hood.
kno’m saying? Are you from the hood?
The trend toward representative government had accelerated tremendously after the revolutions of 1848. Russia, Prussia, Austro-Hungary, Turkey, and several of the new Balkan states were all undergoing that transition after their own fashions when WWI blew up. Afterward, they all were scrambling for any kind of stable government to fill the vacuum. I never got the sense that Wilson appreciated that he wasn't dealing with aristocracy anymore. Maybe he was too sick to recognize it. Maybe he just didn't want to.
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