I voiced already my opinion of and response to critics of Stephen Hawking’s recent talk regarding our need as a species to begin colonizing offworld locations, a move intended both to advance exploration of space as well as to act as at least minimum protection from human extinction. Responses from scientists and critical thinkers surprised me in that they failed to comprehend what Hawking was saying, they took him to task because they wrongly assumed he meant we should “cut and run” from the mess we’ve made here on Earth, and they surprisingly ignored their own mantras regarding open thinking and scientific advancement. They also miserably demonstrated a lack of reading comprehension and context interpretation. To say I was disappointed with them would be significantly understating it; I was appalled, shocked, and dismayed.
I’m happy to say I can now point to a scientist who (a) got it, (b) really knows Hawking, (c) understands the framework surrounding what he says and how he says it, and (d) actually read and comprehended the words. I’m also thrilled to point out this scientist is someone whose blog I only recently discovered: Steinn Sigurðsson of Dynamic of Cats. In his response and discussion, he uses his own expertise, as well as his familiarity with Hawking, to rebut what could only be considered impulsive and poorly thought arguments. To wit:
This is an interesting situation – Stephen is at the best of times terse.
He is unlikely to expound in detail on his rationalisation or start commenting in blogs.People who listen to him, and who are on the same page to begin with, tend to fill in the gap, under the assumption that he has made the full reasoned argument without expounding it – when I gave a talk to his group at DAMTP a few years ago, he asked a three word question that took me about 10 minutes to answer. I could have blown the question off as trivial, except I was pretty sure I knew exactly what he was getting at, and answered it as such (the question was “what about electrons” – the answer was a discussion in the time variability in mean free electron density in the solar wind, AND, a discussion of spontaneous charge fluctuations on the sensor).
Look, poppets, it’s a novel concept you should study: context and understanding. These things play into everything you read. Or at least they should. Sadly, those who generally practice and preach this concept fumbled the ball in this case, a mistake I was flabbergasted to see coming from those who are scientists, those who have worked within the scientific community for many years, and those who advocate critical, open thinking.
And then Steinn goes directly for the jugular in all of the empty arguments vomited thus far:
So… No, Hawking is not being ridicilous [sic]. At worst he is being pessimistic about the time scale for major potential catastrophes, and optimistic on feasible time scales.
Independent of the details, there clearly exist extinction threats to humanity, and global extinction threats. Some are self-inflicted, some are external.
On a long enough a time scale, a permanent off-planet presence is prudent.
On a longer time scale, progressively and in stages, this presence should be self-sustaining.
It is arguable that a modest economic effort to expedite this now is worthwhile.
Doing so is mostly orthogonal to both minimizing self-inflicted damage, and external threats on Earth.
And for the boneheads who immediately screamed “Biosphere!” and “Biosphere II!” as reasons this should not be attempted, again a demonstration of defeatist leanings rather than a true scientific mentality:
Habitats in space, and permanent off-planet ecosystems are exercises in engineering, to be done through external inputs, iteration and tweaking. No one seriously thinks it ought to be done by a miracle of single creation working perfectly from the beginning. The problems of Biosphere II or any one given exercise in self-containment are learning experiences in how to do it right, not illustrations of the inevitability of failure.
Again, I sincerely do not know how so many could misinterpret what Hawking said.