Incredible primitive declarations from Stephen Hawkins.

I wonder if he really said this, hope not.

The paragraph where he says "cranks and weirdoes" is incredible painfull to read and totally unexpected from him.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/primit...henhawkingsays

Tariq Malik
Senior Editor
SPACE.com Mon Apr 21, 8:31 PM ET

Alien life may well exist in a primitive form somewhere in our corner of the galaxy, famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said Monday. (...)

"While there may be primitive life in our region of the galaxy, there don't seem to be any advanced intelligent beings," said Hawking during a lecture as part of a series commemorating NASA's 50th anniversary this year. (...)

"We don't appear to have been visited by aliens," Hawking said, adding that he discounts reports of UFOs. "Why would they only appear to cranks and weirdoes?" (...)

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"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination." - Albert Einstein

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/au..._einstein.html

And your conspiracy theory is...?

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Good question.

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Banned By Nancy Lieder

I'm glad he hasn't lost his sense of humor:Just think!

To put it another way, why do people who claim to be abducted by UFOs:

1) Tend to have varying stories as to what the aliens look like, and what they do, while simultaneously having their appearance match recent science fiction...

2) Tend to be average redneck types -- very rarely do you see a scientist (unless he's being misquoted somewhere) as talking about being abducted or having intimate contact of the Third Kind. They don't, say, abduct the President, his staff, or astronauts and scientists very often -- they seem more to abduct people that are desperate for seeming special in their otherwise average everyday lives.

3) Why do aliens mutilate cattle anyways? They came several light years and visit our planet, to use their rayguns on cows?

Stephen Hawkins just uses fewer words than I do.

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"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -- Thomas Paine

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. -- Heinlein

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -- Isaac Asimov

A perfectly valid declaration. What else are UFO seers? Nothing but cranks and weirdos, imo.

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"Shut up and calculate" R. Feynman

I'm pretty sure he said it, and I'm glad he did - he's right, IMO.

Yup - the guy's right. It's nut cases who tend to say they've been probed, abducted etc. Never someone who's lucid, intelligent, and knows how to use a camera properly

Doug

If you ask me, though, the people that are really disgraceful or shameful aren't Hawkins OR the people that go on about being abducted. It's the "therapists" that get them into groups to "share their experiences" and hypnotherapists that attempt to implant memories and convince people to go further and further into their delusion... as long as you pay them hundreds of dollars per session... that really are the shameful and painful ones.

Some people were going to those sessions for years of their life, that were interviewed on Penn and Teller's BS.

I'd break one of the rules in this forum if I said what I really felt of them. Let's just say I'd compare them with a certain swamp-related creature...

__________________
"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -- Thomas Paine

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. -- Heinlein

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -- Isaac Asimov

...they seem more to abduct people that are desperate for seeming special in their otherwise average everyday lives.

As long as we're painting with very large brushes, I'll add a swath. I think longing for the extraordinary is indeed a significant motivator. In the wake of every UFO incident surface schools of claimants, many with demonstrably improbable stories, all of whom seem to seek their 15 minutes of fame. In another thread last month we discussed the Roswell also-rans: the people who seem to have glommed onto the myth at a late stage and progressively escalate their alleged involvement until they become salient.

Penn and Teller did an excellent job of flushing out the attention-seeking component of the paranormal in their Bigfoot episode. After staging some hoaxed Bigfoot video, they posted it to the web along with anonymous contact information. One of the most revealing messages they received was from someone acting in the role of a promotor who dangled offers of paid appearances and licensing deals for their materials, promising that he would be the one to deliver the sweetest offer.

Many of the rank and file true believers seem completely oblivious to the industry of the paranormal. From UFOs to conspiracies to trumped-up tails of the strange, there is a whole sector of commerce involved in dishing up these inventions in order to pander to the gullible. And while the players in this industry present carefully-crafted images of honest conscientious researchers simply looking for the truth (often under extreme persecution from the mainstream), the more accurate picture is far more mercenary.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Yes. +1

Yes. +2

Yes. +3

You earn high score! You win game!

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"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -- Thomas Paine

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. -- Heinlein

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -- Isaac Asimov

The paragraph where he says "cranks and weirdoes" is incredible painfull to read and totally unexpected from him.

Not at all painful for me. Having met and worked with Prof. Hawking on his Fate of the Universe program some years ago, I can say that such remarks are entirely within his character. He has a wry sense of humor and very little tolerance for pretense.

While there may be some honorable claimaints among the abductee and visitee camps, they are entirely drowned out by the attention-seekers whose stories at best lack any verifiable credibility, and at worst are provably fabricated. If the UFO enthusiasts want any sort of favorable attention from the scientific community, they must eschew the rampant showmanship that is so painfully evident in their ranks.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Rest assured: he did not say it.

But he might well have entered it into his computer and had it say it for him.

It's probably slightly recycled material. He communicated about the same for any mystery-light pilots being time-travelers, as reported by PBS, aired in 1999. PBS Nova Time Travel transcript:

Professor Hawking (official website) likely gets a healthy share of unbelievable missives from cranks and weirdos, so he probably has a studied knowledge of who gets all the visits from the speculative beings.

By the way, Orion437, have you figured out what the conspiracy is yet, and who is conspiring, and what your evidence is? Maybe we could address your topic better if we knew the context, why you placed it in this section.

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Bottom line is money! The ufo magazine
industry was chugging along in the sixties
but went into decline for a while. Now it has
been cranked up again.

And not just for magazines but for television programs. It seems all the "geek" channels are now stepping firmly into the sensationalist camp with UFO-related programs.

But the danger in painting with that wide a brush is where someone then argues that the lack of any apparent pecuniary motive ought to establish credibility. As soon as we say, "They're all in it for the money," someone says, "What about Bill? He's obviously not making any money from it. Therefore he must be sincere." Maybe he's not making money; but it's still likely that Bill enjoys all the attention he gets from making his claims, and that may be what motivates him.

We have to be careful not to facilitate erroneous lines of reasoning that try to establish credibility indirectly by means of pretending to eliminate all other motivations except to tell the truth. "Of course Bill's telling the truth; what reason would he have to lie?" Because people pay more attention to liars.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

And even then, I could potentially show you a really earnest, really honest man that never tells a lie, and doesn't desire fame... but his experiences are primarily either delusions, or simply a false conclusion from sleep paralysis, without him knowing what sleep paralysis actually is.

Of course painting with a broad brush invites problems, but at the same time, Hawkins is talking about the majority of people that push these theories. To talk about the majority, you must necessarily paint with a broad brush.

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"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -- Thomas Paine

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. -- Heinlein

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -- Isaac Asimov

Of course we wouldn't necessarily classify honest sleep paralytics under cranks and weirdos. That would be an example of an honorable abductee story, which is to say that it's someone who had a legitimate experience and reports the observations fairly and honestly, although with perhaps a questionable interpretation. But that type gets drowned out by the farfetched, fantastic stories from people who knowingly lie or embellish their stories. Those are the people to whom I believe Prof. Hawking refers.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Hawking. Not Hawkins. (pet peeve of mine)

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Banned By Nancy Lieder

This week there were some strange lights sighted over Phoenix, Arizona. This got a lot of media attention. There was talk about UFOs. Then a man confessed that he had tied road flares to helium balloons, lit the flares, and let them float into the air. When things like this happen, I can see why people like Stephen Hawking "discount" UFO reports.