If that's the takeaway you got from my posts, then I'm sorry I did a poor job communicating.

Yikes.

I didn't say that and I don't think that at all. You're very eloquent and I'm pretty sure you're more intelligent than I am, for instance. I read your posts (and RJ's and Jon's) whenever I feel like concentrating enough to read them properly.

I don't think Jon`C was trying to speak to your other points, Reid, but simply answering a question that Kroko had asked about Hawking's reputation.

Also... I don't mean to open up this discussion for further acrimony, but: wtf does this comic have to do with anything in this thread? Purely curious. I promise not to respond to anything you say, but maybe you will humor me.

The main thing I don’t understand or approve of is contempt for science advocacy. I know we’ve talked about this before but clearly it’s time to reiterate my point.

Genius doesn’t scale. There’s a limit to what one person can achieve within their own lifetime, regardless of how smart they are. An effective intelligent person doesn’t toil away on their own for decades, because that limits their impact on the world. They find ways of becoming force multipliers. They take on students, teach them what’s important, and point them at interesting problems. Eventually those students go on to teach their own students, and the cycle repeats. This is the whole purpose of the academy: it transforms constant impact into one that compounds.

That’s why, if an effective intelligent person is fortunate enough to capture the public’s attention, they have a duty to use it. Public science advocacy isn’t just about Twitter followers and book sales; it’s about political support, fundraising, student recruitment. The vast majority of the people who make decisions about your academic future have no clue what you’re talking about. You depend upon advocates who make the public believe that your field is worth funding, even though they don’t understand it and never will, even though the value of your work may not be realized until long after you’re dead (if ever). Researchers who sacrifice their time to advocate to the public deserve at least as much respect as researchers who sacrifice their time to teach students, and certainly deserve recognition for their rare communication skills and rarer willingness.

People who knew Stephen Hawking as a youth all said he was gregarious and outgoing. Maybe he wouldn’t have been as effective an advocate without his condition, but he would have engaged the public anyway. You can count on one hand the number of physicists with both a depth of brilliance and a willingness to engage with the public, and they’ve all been mentioned in the last two pages. Whether or not Stephen Hawking was healthy didn’t change the fact that he was one of those people.

As for criticizing these advocates for commenting outside of their area of expertise — so what? Everybody talks out of their asses, especially professors. Go ahead and criticize the uninformed opinions of Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Stephen Hawking, but don’t criticize them for doing literally the same thing you’ve done for the past 210 pages of this thread.

From when I said:



Many of these guys who do pop science try to offer opinions on other subjects: NDT, Lawrence Krauss, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Bill Nye. They're great when they're speaking in their field. Even if they were just off the cuff remarks, it wouldn't be so bad. But they should be more shy about making on the record statements about other fields.

Ah, I see. Well, needless to say, I disagree. And I think Jon`C just addressed this point pretty well. After all, they are just humans, and have opinions like you and me.

For example, is anybody really being hurt by Einstein's musings on theology? And how many people who take Einstein at his word on these points know much about the work of actual theologians, rather than just physicists who merely "play them on T.V."? Maybe Einstein will inspire people to read Spinoza, who knows?

Carl Sagan was a brilliant orator and writer. He had a real poetic sensibility that I expect is rare amongst scientists. At the very least, he had a way of expressing scientific truths that really captured my imagination. He made the world feel to me like a wonderful and mysterious place, and that the reward of curiosity would be to unlock secrets hidden in even the most mundane things. In some ways, I think Cosmos demonstrates that the same vast infinity that inspired awe in God in an earlier age can, in our own age, be found in age: it can be found in the overwhelming vastness of space and in the wonder of the material world's complexity.

I don't hold any contempt for science advocacy. None whatsoever.

I'm happy when Lawrence Krauss is doing this:



And not impressed when he's doing this:



I'm fine when Stephen Hawking is doing this:



And writing books to popularize physics, and not when he's saying this:

Stephen Hawking says A.I. could be 'worst event in the history of our civilization'




There's a difference between making dumb statements on and off the record.

And maybe Stephen Hawking is less (or more) eloquent than Carl Sagan. But again, who are we to tell him to stop from speaking his mind? I think sometimes we forget that brilliant scientists are real people just like us, with their own opinions and feelings. And I think to tell them to "shut up" about things outside their domain is to deny some of that humanity.

Where I draw the line is where their opinions are hurting people. For example, Linux Pauling's celebrity led to a large number of people believing that they could take large amounts of vitamin C to cure the common cold, and the institute which bears his name has been spreading this highly speculative and unproven idea ever since.

What's the difference?

As far as I'm aware, Carl Sagan also stayed mostly within his field in his public statements. In my view, Carl Sagan's advocacy was perfect. I have nothing but respect for the advocacy he and Richard Feynman did, for instance. Even though I disagree with some Feynman's views, they weren't public-facing statements.

Actually, I think this goes back to a problem that you seem to have with people offering perspectives which happen to contradict an opinion you hold to be objectively true.

First of all, there's plenty to be concerned about with the proliferation of the various incarnations of so-called artificial intelligence. So Hawking is rightfully worried in a general sense, even if you think that by talking outside his domain of expertise, he is being blunt, metaphoric, or crude.

But even that aside, I think there's a big role for visionary people to speak their mind on subjects outside their expertise in ways that contradict the status quo. It doesn't matter how wrong the current generation might think they are, and so long as their perspective isn't hurting anyone in the present, getting it on the record-no matter how zany you may find it-is a massive service to humankind, should the experts ever change their mind to be more consistent with a person you may look down upon as a dilettante.

If you make a public-facing statement on a topic you're knowledgeable about, odds are you're going to help increase understanding of the topic. If you make a public-facing statement on a subject you're not knowledgeable about, odds are you're going to confuse the public, especially if the statement is at odds with other professional opinions and your audience doesn't know any better.

False knowledge can often be more damaging than no knowledge at all.

Sure they were. He went on T.V. and told people that brushing their teeth was a superstition, and this probably resulted in a bunch of people getting cavities. And he was rightly chastised for this by his collegue Murray Gell-Mann. But giving people cavities is a lot more harmful than telling people to consider a different point of view about God, or to view artificial intelligence with suspicion.

Now, if Hawking's remarks caused artificially intelligence funding to dry up, like what happened when Seymour Papert and Marvin Minsky published a book with a bunch of negative results about neural nets (and a bunch of hype around A.I. was obliterated and people lost their jobs when funding subsequently dried up), then we might be champing at the bit to get him to shut his claptrap.

How is he wrong? Commercial forays into deep learning have thus far been unremittingly awful, indisputably "new ways for the few to oppress the many" and a "great disruption to our economy". Sure, he's talking about strong AI, which we don't have yet, but some day we will. It's difficult to imagine strong AI emerging from the current economic environment being less evil or oppressive than Google's are today.

I don't think human general intelligence or consciousness is at any risk of being outmoded by computers, but you don't need to be all that smart to be a vicious and sadistic predator. Just ask a housecat.

See, this is where we disagree. I subscribe to Cunningham's law, which, if we generalize beyond the internet, says that there are no bad opinions, so long as they are intellectually stated and broach a topic that people might not have been previously interested in.

What you are proposing might be useful for individuals in the service of surviving harsh scrutiny, but the cost is too high. We shouldn't be telling people to shut up just because they might be wrong, no matter how famous they are.

I do not believe my views to be objectively true. There's a way in which Stephen Hawking could have warned us about A.I. in a professional manner. He could, for instance, referred to the Malicious AI Report, reflected the opinions of people relevant in the field and expressed that he shared their concerns. That's appropriate in my view: the difference being him showing respect towards other professionals and humility in his own understanding. Instead, the attention was drawn on him, bringing about headlines like these:

Stephen Hawking warned Artificial Intelligence could end human race

The public already misunderstands the collaborative nature of science and the degree of specialization even within a field. Public presentations like these fuel the idea that a physicist ought to know or have opinions on AI.

I'm not trying to blame Hawking entirely here, as half of the game belongs to the reporters who inevitably hound him about this stuff.

It's not about the correctness of his views.

There's a wide chasm between presenting a point of rhetoric to inspire experts to respond, and presenting a point of rhetoric as fact to reporters who will repeat that to an ignorant audience.

Suppose Steven Hawking caught wind of the critique you've outlined of his opinion on A.I., but didn't have the time, energy, or personal connections to refine his delivery to be more acceptable to you. In your opinion, would it be better if he simply said nothing at all?

Are you implying that experts don't read newspapers? And that they aren't capable of contacting Steven Hawking?

Or are you saying that the general public doesn't have access to the internet, so that Cunningham's law itself is misguided?

He wouldn't have to refine anything. Just don't speak to the press like he's the author of these ideas on AI. He could have held the same views, just present it as an understanding of the current publicly-facing research on the topic.

Suppose Stephen Hawking formulated his own opinion based on the world around him and extrapolated to a self-evident conclusion based on how corporations are already using AI

Wait, what?

I don't see what difference this would make! It's virtually the same thing. And it's not even like he said, "I'm a physicist, so all these other people who are experts on A.I. are wrong, so listen to me instead."

A closer candidate to what you're talking about might be Freeman Dyson's skepticism on climate science, which does get bandied about by anti-scientific people.

Unfortunately, we live in the modern world, where individuals are given the authority to reason for themselves about what is true. You should probably have more faith in the ability of others to scrutinize Dawkins and Krauss' public statements about religion and to decide for themselves how convincing it is. I don't understand this impulse to wish that entire "false" ways of thinking about the world didn't have a place in the public conversation and to censor them.

Also, you didn't answer the question. Why should Dawkins/Krauss be able to have and express opinions about religion privately, but not publicly? Is there even a difference anymore in the age of social media, where anyone can express an opinion about anything and have it be heard by a wide audience, even if it is an opinion about a topic that has nothing to do with what they happened to study at university?

Wait what? Now the problem is that he's too informed, but he isn't citing his sources?

It seems like Reid is trying pretty hard here to rationalize his knee jerk skepticism to science advocates (with poor rationalizations, I should add).

Why does everything reduce to a question of legal rights to you? You have ever legal right to gamble all of your life's savings in Vegas; I'm not trying to limit your freedoms if I suggest it's a bad idea. Same goes for these scientists. I don't think they should make those public comments. That doesn't mean I desire in any way to remove their ability to. A criticism can stand without the intention of creating a rule, policy, or acting in some way to carry out that criticism to a real-world policy.

Also, considering the observation that if you replace the words in this sentence to be about the physics rather than A.I., it basically describes the mentality of a theoretical physicist. So good luck getting him to shut up, since he's spent a lifetime learning how to think about the world in such conceptual and broad terms. About the only thing you might (possibly) fault him for is not being universally brilliant as Richard Feynman.

When did I say anything about legal rights?

You clearly see their speech as being damaging, and for that reason, you wish that they didn't do it. You should probably own what you're actually saying when you say that. In addition, I should add, your reasons for demanding censorship (even if its self-censorship) are obviously totally incoherent and contradictory, since you've both claimed the problem is that their remarks spread "false knowledge", yet at the same time you've said that the "incorrectness" of their remarks is not the problem. So which is it?

I'm pretty sure that by censor Eversor wasn't talking about armed guards or police, but rather overly critical people such as yourself who tend to stifle self-expression.

Also, since Eversor brought up the word damaging again, I propose the following distinction: when a public figure makes a less than perfect remark outside their expertise (or even within them), we would be right to chastise them for opening their mouth if their comments cause significant damage and little benefit. For example: Richard Feynman telling people not to brush their teeth.

According to the perspective informed by this distinction, I'm not sure you've done a very good job at explaining why Hawking's views are damaging.

Stephen Hawking was a science advocate and popularizer. In making those claims, he was reflecting accurate scientific opinions. The form he presented them in was a poor reflection of the scientific process. A person who wants to promote science well should not just tell the world scientific facts, but help them understand the process of science itself. The way Stephen Hawking spoke is misleading about how the process of science works.

That's the criticism I've been making. And I also have not advocated self-censorship, I commented that, if he's going to present the facts, he should present them differently.

But if he's unable to do the work to present his opinions in a way that survive your criticism, you would be happier if he would self-censor.

I would be happier if you would self-censor. I haven't said whether it would be better if Stephen Hawking made those claims or not. A criticism doesn't amount to a preference to stop a behavior altogether.

Yes. This is censorship. It has nothing to do with creating a rule or policy. Reid is envisioning a social norm where public intellectuals only speak if what they say is 'true' and 'conforms to expert opinion', because otherwise such a person proliferates falsehood that mislead an undiscerning public. Reid has made similar arguments about journalists in the past. Ironically, its an adolescent understanding of public discourse that reminds me of the iconoclastic (yet also deeply juvenile) atheism of the New Atheists.