SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Essays reveal Stephen Hawking predicted race of 'superhumans'
The late physicist and author Prof Stephen Hawking has caused controversy by suggesting a new race of superhumans could develop from wealthy people choosing to edit their and their children's DNA. Hawking, the author of A Brief History of Time, who died in March, made the predictions in a collection of articles and essays.
[...] In Brief Answers to the Big Questions, Hawking's final thoughts on the universe, the physicist suggested wealthy people would soon be able to choose to edit genetic makeup to create superhumans with enhanced memory, disease resistance, intelligence and longevity. Hawking raised the prospect that breakthroughs in genetics will make it attractive for people to try to improve themselves, with implications for "unimproved humans". "Once such superhumans appear, there will be significant political problems with unimproved humans, who won't be able to compete," he wrote. "Presumably, they will die out, or become unimportant. Instead, there will be a race of self-designing beings who are improving at an ever-increasing rate."
Stephen Hawking's last paper on black holes is now online
Stephen Hawking never stopped trying to unravel the mysteries surrounding black holes -- in fact, he was still working to solve one of them shortly before his death. Now, his last research paper on the subject is finally available online through pre-publication website arXiv, thanks to his co-authors from Cambridge and Harvard. It's entitled Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair, and it tackles the black hole paradox. According to Hawking's co-author Malcolm Perry, the paradox "is perhaps the most puzzling problem in fundamental theoretical physics today" and was the center of the late physicist's life for decades.
Black Holes and Soft Hair: why Stephen Hawking's Final Work is Important:
[Black holes] have a temperature and produce thermal radiation. The formula for this temperature, universally known as the Hawking temperature, is inscribed on the memorial to Stephen's life in Westminster Abbey. Any object that has a temperature also has an entropy. The entropy is a measure of how many different ways an object could be made from its microscopic ingredients and still look the same. So, for a particular piece of red hot metal, it would be the number of ways the atoms that make it up could be arranged so as to look like the lump of metal you were observing. Stephen's formula for the temperature of a black hole allowed him to find the entropy of a black hole.
The problem then was: how did this entropy arise? Since all black holes appear to be the same, the origin of the entropy was at the centre of the information paradox.
What we have done recently is to discover a gap in the mathematics that led to the idea that black holes are totally bald. In 2016, Stephen, Andy and I found that black holes have an infinite collection of what we call "soft hair". This discovery allows us to question the idea that black holes lead to a breakdown in the laws of physics.
Stephen kept working with us up to the end of his life, and we have now published a paper that describes our current thoughts on the matter. In this paper, we describe a way of calculating the entropy of black holes. The entropy is basically a quantitative measure of what one knows about a black hole apart from its mass or spin.
So if black holes have soft hair, is it possible to give them a hair cut?
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @07:14AM (1 child)
you can have gene editing without eugenics.
my understanding is that eugenics refers to "select for breeding only those with desirable properties".
gene editing could simply mean "some people get to select the desirable offspring (i.e. choose the best egg-sperm combination)".
my interpretation of the summary is that Hawking predicts rich people will use gene editing, while the rest of humanity continues as usual; if the offspring of rich people continue with gene editing, then it is simply a matter of a social group choosing to breed within itself. I think this is mostly true now, as well, except that if they have gene editing capabilities then separation into a subspecies and then a different species is likely to occur faster.
it's not eugenics until regular people are forbidden to breed.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 17 2018, @03:08PM
Don't know who modded you flamebait - I think that was unfair. I think that you are being obtuse, but that doesn't rate a flamebait.
Now, let us think a moment. The filthy rich don't really need a lot of physical ability. Sure, they'll select for looks, or maybe for smarts, but they can BUY all of the physical ability they'll ever need. In fact, being a muscular rich man could be unattractive to other rich people. Why have muscle, when you can buy it so cheaply?
So, who, and what get's modified, to be stronger, faster, more enduring? Those who are just outside of the ruling class. And, maybe some middle class. There are your ubermensch. More muscle, less flab, no disease. Put them up on the auction block, let's have a look at their teeth, that little bitch has no hips, she can't be bred . . .
We had a discussion about that universal income business just the other day. Gotta keep the livestock fed, right? If the wealthy are feeding them and housing them, the wealthy can use them however they like. You too, YES YOU!! can have the finest gene editing for your children. Just sign these papers, signing over your child's first 40 years in bond servitude, and we'll fix your baby up.