Stephen Hawking...Intelligent Design?

Question

So I got to surfing the web and wondered how Stephen Hawking's doing.

Same old same old, near as I can tell.
And I got to wondering, "Why?"
I am most certainly no expert on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (other than it's known as "Lou Gehrig's Disease," and Lou should've seen in coming), but it seems that most people who contract the condition die within a few years of diagnosis.
So what's the deal with Hawking?
For sure, he's been the beneficiary of tremendous advances in science and technology which allow him to continue with his largely-cerebral work, something that the "Iron Horse" couldn't take advantage of in the 1930s. But plenty of people have been stricken by the disease (disorder? syndrome?) and haven't survived months, much less the decades that Hawking keeps working his advancements (near as I can tell) in his specialty.

Near as I can tell, Hawking today is a carcass supporting a brain. Near as I can tell, that's what all of us are. The only difference is some of us carcasses are supposed to catch touchdowns and hit doubles into the gap and some of us carcasses are supposed to look sexy in front of a movie camera. Some of us carcasses are supposed to be able to type up stories that will captivate the human minds. But most of us carcasses are here only because of what happens in that meat brain between our ears. And Hawking becomes a role model.
If any of us who aspire to be professional story-tellers were reduced to communicating to the outside world the way Hawking has been so limited, would we tell better stories? Be more honest in our analysis? Smarter? More selfish? Have more insight?
There have been science-fiction postulations of a future world of human immortality that's reduced to a computer-like cogniscance of reality that transcends the weaknesses of the flesh. Is Hawking a prototype of what humanity will become?
Is he, in some strange misdirection of what we consider "human life," a prophet for what say, in a couple of thousand years, like those "prophets" of the Old Testament, et al humanity is destined to become?

Joe Myers
"I just got to wondering."

Usenet · Accepted Answer

There are a lot of people who, for all intents and purposes, are like Stephen Hawking. They drive to work, sit at a desk, drive home, and sit in front of the tube. On the weekends they sit and read, sit in the theater, sit in the sports stadium, sit in the restaurant. Their main variation is when they lie down and sleep.
Then there are other people who get so much joy from using their bodies that they'd never willingly become just a basket for their brain. It would take a catastrophe for the whole human race to willingly relinquish the use of the body.
Lois

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]There are a lot of people who, for all intents and purposes, are like Stephen Hawking. They drive to work, ... their brain. It would take a catastrophe for the whole human race to willingly relinquish the use of the body.[/nq]
So, you got something against robots? What are they going to do if we do their thinking and their moving about and doing things?

(Some people are just *so* selfish!)

RonB
"Son, could you hand me that soda, I... can't... quite... reach it."

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Is he, in some strange misdirection of what we consider "human life," a prophet for what say, in a ... "prophets" of the Old Testament, et al humanity is destined to become? Joe Myers "I just got to wondering."[/nq]
The easierst and probably most accurate answer to Hawking's endurance is "magic." But it also has to do with involvement. He is intensely involved with his work, and that, all by itself, can keep people going when facing incredible odds.
And then there's one other point to consider. More than any other living being on this planet, he knows how the universe works. So maybe he's tapped into something...? '-)
And he once worried about whether he had passed his Mensa admissions test... LOL!!!
Caroline

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Then there are other people who get so much joy from using their bodies that they'd never willingly become just a basket for their brain. blind[/nq]
You'll go blind doing that.
jaybee

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[nq:1]So I got to surfing the web and wondered how Stephen Hawking's doing.[/nq]
He aint playing MURDERBALL. www.murderballmovie.com
Oranse

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Is he, in some strange misdirection of what we consider ... destined to become? Joe Myers "I just got to wondering."[/nq]
[nq:1]The easierst and probably most accurate answer to Hawking's endurance is "magic." But it also has to do ... other living being on this planet, he knows how the universe works. So maybe he's tapped into something...? '-)[/nq]
Semi-regularly I check out James Randi's web site. I'm as big a skeptic as anyone and really admire Randi's work.
And, still, I wonder.
The so-called "Idiot Savant" phenomenon (I guess it's "autistic savant," these days for the sake of political correctness) defies skepticism. As tired as the cliché of blind people having super-attenuated other senses, there seems to be something that might support the theory that the autistic somehow are focused on one thing rather than having their brain powers disseminated on all things, as most of us are.
I'm well-convinced that most self-ordained "psychics" are bunk.

But I'm skeptical enough of my own prejudice to admit the possibility that somehow, some way, they may have a modicum of ability to see or perceive stuff that most of us overlook.
Hawking's situation is remarkable in that his ALS took away from him almost nothing that's important to his being. Technology supplants his inability to talk and write and move. The only thing that's really important to him is to think. Virtually every other person afflicted with ALS focuses on what they're losing; Hawking has been almost liberated by the meaninglessness of his body's incapacity.
If you believe that the human is the highest form of life, it's got to be based on the meat brain between our ears.
The cheetah is faster, the gorilla is stronger, the giraffe is taller. All we've got in the competition is an opposable thumb and a brain made of meat that might be able to figure out what it's all about. (And, to be honest, the raccoon has almost as good a thumb.)
Ya think?
[nq:1]And he once worried about whether he had passed his Mensa admissions test... LOL!!![/nq]
Joe Myers
"The people of Mensa are stupid."

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Near as I can tell, Hawking today is a carcass supporting a brain. Near as I can tell, that's what ... "prophets" of the Old Testament, et al humanity is destined to become? Joe Myers "I just got to wondering."[/nq]
Heavy *** to consider, and very eloquently put in writing...

Usenet · Answer

What I find fascinating is the "holographic" (for want of a better word) way that Hawking thinks. I've been an admirer of Hawking for a long time and even had a girlfriend in El Paso who had studied with him and whom I pumped for information, so don't ask me about my information sources because I can't remember (I absorb pertinent information and drop the rest along the road). Hawking thinks dimensionally in pictures the way an artist would.

He sees a black hole in his mind, same with the universe, or an atom, or whatever he's working on. Although he knows full well how to state things in the language of mathermatics, he doesn't do his primary abstract thinking that way. If my understanding is fairly on the mark, you might even say he thinks in movies. Or at least that's what I heard somewhere along the way.

I do recall hearing another cosmologist talk about the way Hawking thinks, and he said Hawking is the only scientist he knows of who thinks that way. That others, himself included, have to do their deep cosmological thinking in front of a blackboard, or with pen and paper, because they write out their line of logic in the language of mathematics, much the same way that we, as writers, write out compound sentences, then read back to see if we've stayed on track. I found the whole concept fascinating, because graphic arts was my "first language," and that's very much the way I think.
As for Hawking's staying power, we are hardly at the edge of learning what kinds of "self direction" the brain is capable of. I recently read/heard that our body is even capable of changing things about us at the chromosomal level. Then some research facility spent a fortune (probably government funds) developing a deep sea diver video game for children who have extremely painful conditions to see whether "distraction" is a valid way to manage pain.

And of course it is. I could have told them that for free! As I age, I'm beginning to realize that most older people die of ostracism because society denies them so much, including the right to contribute, so they just wither up and cease to be. In Hawking's case, he is nestled in a cradle of nurturers who don't dispute his validity as a thinking person. That's a critical survival factor for those who are ill or aging..
[nq:1]If you believe that the human is the highest form of life, it's got to be based on the meat brain between our ears.[/nq]
Actually, I don't believe the human is the highest form of life. I think the universe is. '-)
[nq:2]And he once worried about whether he had passed his Mensa admissions test... LOL!!![/nq]
[nq:1]Joe Myers "The people of Mensa are stupid."[/nq]
Oh, I don't know. The annual membership in Mensa (requires an IQ in the 98th percentile or higher) is forty, fifty bucks. The annual membership in Triple Nine Society (requires IQ in the 99.9th percentile or above) is only ten bucks if you don't insist on a hard copy of their journal. Now, Mensa has to at least be smarter when it comes to generating income.

Usenet · Answer

I've found that most genius physicists not only have the capacity to understand the complexities of the universe in which we live, but also to mystically control their own fate to some extent.
But then maybe I've just been watching too many old Twilight Zone reruns.
[nq:1]So I got to surfing the web and wondered how Stephen Hawking's doing. Same old same old, near as I ... that most people who contract the condition die within a few years of diagnosis. So what's the deal with Hawking?[/nq]
snip

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I've found that most genius physicists not only have the capacity to understand the complexities of the universe in which we live, but also to mystically control their own fate to some extent.[/nq]
ummm... Then why isn't Richard Feynman still alive? Bummer! But your "genius physicists" has me smiling. How many physicists have you known or heard of who aren't geniuses? "Genius" IQ starts around 140. I doubt there are many working physicists with IQs below that. But I'm not counting high school physics teachers as physicists either. '-)

Caroline

Stephen Hawking...Intelligent Design?

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