Criticizing Stephen Hawking

Renown astrophysicist Stephen Hawking appeared on the Larry King Now show June 2016, and was interviewed by the esteemed long-time journalist.

In the interview, among the comments Hawking made was that “We certainly have not become less greedy or less stupid. The population has grown by half a billion since our last meeting, with no end in sight. At this rate, it will be eleven billion by 2100.”

News of the interview was covered by USA Today, and subsequently by The Intellectualist website, both which focused upon Professor Hawking‘s remark as referenced above.

This is worth noting:
The article quoted Hawking as saying, “We certainly have not become less greedy or less stupid. The population has grown by half a billion since our last meeting, with no end in sight. At this rate, it will be eleven billion by 2100.”

Why did he join two distinctly different ideas with population growth? The two character flaws have nothing to do with population growth.

Further, neither the character flaw of “greed” nor that of “stupid” are related. They are independent of each other, and are independent of population growth.

Could it be, that surreptitiously, there is an unspoken agenda of state-mandated contraception – perhaps as there is in China? Is he advocating Selective Breeding in humanity, perhaps through DNA manipulation?

He failed in his attempt to associate “greed” and “stupid” with population growth.

He is a brilliant physicist, to be certain. But he said something phenomenally stupid.

However, if on the other hand he had taken a sarcastic approach and mentioned the so-called Darwin Awards (an Internet-based faux “award” which is given to those whose stupid acts claim the lives of the participants), it might have been different.

Or, even if he had attempted to made a better connection vis-à-vis to the logical corollary, that if nothing is done to allay stupidity, the current reproduction rate will overtake the world, it might have been better.

But, he did not.

Another factor he fails to account for is the ratio between the “stupid” and “greed”[y], and those whom are of average intelligence, those whom are gifted, the brilliant, utterly brilliant, and those whom are pure-fuching-genius.

Fortunately, statistics does tell us something about that.

Statistics tells us that there are as many pure-fuching-genius as there are “stupid” and “greed”[y].

In the Standard Normal Distribution, 95% of all observed items in a group will be between two standard deviations from the mean. To translate and put it in context of his comment, what that says is that the exceedingly vast majority (95%) of people are NOT “greedy” or “stupid,” nor are they pure-fuching-genius like him.

I write that with more than a tinge of sarcasm, of course, because the simple fact of the matter is this:
He made a fool’s mistake, and did not cite facts, figures, or scientific data to support his assertion.

It is, if you will, a sophomoric mistake, one that we would expect from a school boy, not from a man whom is allegedly as brilliant – or even pure-fuching-genius – as he is purported to be.

His remarks are an new entry into the Fail Blog.