Stephen Hawking warned of future

[HONDO74]

Stephen Hawking warned of future 'superhumans' threatening the end of humanity
https://www.businessinsider.com/stephen ... ty-2018-10

Just days after Hawking's final academic paper was published online, the world-famous physicist is back in the spotlight for a different reason: a stark, controversial prediction of a future that threatens the end of the human race as we know it.

Stephen Hawking warns that AI, ‘superhumans’ could wipe humanity in posthumous book
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 645963002/

There is no God and there are forms of intelligent life out there: Stephen Hawking's final book reveals his answers to the 'big questions'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech ... tions.html

'We are each free to believe what we want, and it's my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God,' he said, according to The Telegraph.

'No one created the universe and no one directors out fate. This leads me to a profound realisation: there is probably no heaven and afterlife either. I think belief in the afterlife is just wishful thinking.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

If there isn't, then we don't know , and we will never know , so it doesn't matter to labor over it now.

Simply, have fun, behave, be kind, and hope for the best, if you wanna, and hope that when you die you do so with your pants still up.

[chuck]

The genetic mapping is far from complete. They are still working on how/why genes are expressed or suppressed. Studies of genetically identical twins are still on going to determine why they aren't truly "identical" (aka Xerox copies). I suspect the first attempts at human manipulation will probably produce more Frankenstein monsters than Khan Noonien Singhs.

I'm more concerned about AI breaking out of the lab and doing things we might not like. More along the lines of "Colossus, the Forbin project" or "The Machine"/Samaritan as portrayed in Person of Interest.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

The genetic mapping is far from complete. They are still working on how/why genes are expressed or suppressed. Studies of genetically identical twins are still on going to determine why they aren't truly "identical" (aka Xerox copies). I suspect the first attempts at human manipulation will probably produce more Frankenstein monsters than Khan Noonien Singhs.

The mapping is far more complete than the understanding of how the machinery actually works -- having the genome in hand that would solve all problems was oversold hype. All that they have learned from having the genome in hand is that they really don't know very much after all.

1st attempts at human manipulation have already happened to correct genetic disease flaws. We're already on that slippery slope. Suspect that it's being very seriously studied and manipulated in China now for many years.

I'm more concerned about AI breaking out of the lab and doing things we might not like. More along the lines of "Colossus, the Forbin project" or "The Machine"/Samaritan as portrayed in Person of Interest.

Less worried about that and what we have today as AI is a very long way away from a self-aware machine consciousness.

[HONDO74]

1st attempts at human manipulation have already happened to correct genetic disease flaws. We're already on that slippery slope. Suspect that it's being very seriously studied and manipulated in China now for many years.

Looks like that is from the Sci-Fi movie "Gattaca"
Gattaca
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca

The film presents a biopunk vision of a future society driven by eugenics where potential children are conceived through genetic selection to ensure they possess the best hereditary traits of their parents. The film centers on Vincent Freeman, played by Hawke, who was conceived outside the eugenics program and struggles to overcome genetic discrimination to realize his dream of traveling into space.

Is this what "Hawking's was predicting ?

[MurphOnMillerAve]

My understanding is that there are several businesses in NYC where a prospective parent/couple can go to select (and pay for) the pedigree of the children they would like to "construct" (my word for it) making selections among the available and stored eggs and sperm, available according to : eye color; race; hair color and texture; intelligence, athleticism and artistic skills of the parents, as well as their educational background, etc.)

[Rufus T. Firefly]

My understanding is that there are several businesses in NYC where a prospective parent/couple can go to select (and pay for) the pedigree of the children they would like to "construct" (my word for it) making selections among the available and stored eggs and sperm, available according to : eye color; race; hair color and texture; intelligence of the parents, as well as their educational background, etc.)

Yes, and in other places in the world, but it's far from an exact science or like shopping for the nicest tomato at the grocery store.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

My understanding is that there are several businesses in NYC where a prospective parent/couple can go to select (and pay for) the pedigree of the children they would like to "construct" (my word for it) making selections among the available and stored eggs and sperm, available according to : eye color; race; hair color and texture; intelligence of the parents, as well as their educational background, etc.)

Yes, and in other places in the world, but it's far from an exact science or like shopping for the nicest tomato at the grocery store.

You have me chuckling = stomach a-rollin' , with that one, Rufus. Pretty funny. indeed.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

My understanding is that there are several businesses in NYC where a prospective parent/couple can go to select (and pay for) the pedigree of the children they would like to "construct" (my word for it) making selections among the available and stored eggs and sperm, available according to : eye color; race; hair color and texture; intelligence of the parents, as well as their educational background, etc.)

Yes, and in other places in the world, but it's far from an exact science or like shopping for the nicest tomato at the grocery store.

You have me chuckling = stomach a-rollin' , with that one, Rufus. Pretty funny. indeed.

While perhaps amusing, it is at all too many levels just the level of mentality involved by all too many potential parents.

[HONDO74]

Not too many years ago.....

Aryan super race
The most well-known super race concept is the Nazi idea that proposed to create an Aryan master race by applying coercive eugenics to what the Nazis referred to as the Nordic Aryan race.

Homo Galactica
The Neo-Nazi David Myatt advocated in the early 1990s that after the Western Imperium, a proposed future autocratic state governing all the areas inhabited by the Aryan race, is established, and the birth rate of the Aryan race is brought up from its present level of about 1.6 to a replacement rate of 2.1, that then a new super-race called Homo Galactica should be created by genetic engineering from the most perfect Aryans, which by then will have themselves been improved through genetic enhancement. This new super race would be genetically engineered to have super brains, super senses, and more delicate hands to be able to travel in starships, which would be sent out to colonize the entire Milky Way Galaxy with the descendants of Aryans.

[chuck]

Aryan's were the Persians. They had a very advanced civilization and they expanded to the east and to the west. There is nothing to back up the alleged ties to the Norse.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

...
While perhaps amusing, it is at all too many levels just the level of mentality involved by all too many potential parents.

I believe there is even a modern term for them = "Designer Babies."

[Rufus T. Firefly]

...
While perhaps amusing, it is at all too many levels just the level of mentality involved by all too many potential parents.

I believe there is even a modern term for them = "Designer Babies."

Yes, and been around for a long time earlier associated with shopping for sperm / egg donors to create that "special" child. Now it's about tinkering with the genes.....

[chuck]

Rufus said

Less worried about that and what we have today as AI is a very long way away from a self-aware machine consciousness.

I don't know that it needs to be self aware to be dangerous. It just needs to be able to manipulate the environment directly and then be given ambiguous instructions or instructions/parameters that may not be fully understood by the parties issuing them. Parents do this with young children all the time. aka I didn't mean for you to do that!

[HONDO74]

Aryan's were the Persians. They had a very advanced civilization and they expanded to the east and to the west. There is nothing to back up the alleged ties to the Norse.

Drawing on misinterpreted references in the Rig Veda by Western scholars in the 19th century, the term "Aryan" was adopted as a racial category through the works of Arthur de Gobineau, whose ideology of race was based on an idea of blonde northern European "Aryans" who had migrated across the world and founded all major civilizations, before being degraded through racial mixing with local populations. Through the works of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Gobineau's ideas later influenced the Nazi racial ideology which saw "Aryan peoples" as innately superior to other putative racial groups.