Why Stephen Hawking's "Insane" Predictions From Last Year Are Still Valid (Part 2)

"Hmmm....I don't trust this guy with nuclear weapons any more than I'd trust Hitler!"

In Stephen Hawking's words, from the new BBC documentary: "Although the chance of a disaster on planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, becoming a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years,”

Note here that Hawking isn't referring to the "law of large numbers", i.e. where one finds an evening out of probability - say for ten thousands coin tosses reaching a ratio of 1 to 1 for heads to tails. He is rather referencing the probability that as time goes on the chance of a natural or man-made cluster fuck will occur.  The asteroids are going to keep coming , for example, for the next hundred, thousand or more years. It's only a matter of time before one with our name on it impacts, as it intersects our orbit.  By the same token as nuclear proliferation continues, it's only a matter of time before some nation with nukes feels threatened enough to use them, or pushes the "button" on entering a fray with a neighbor.

With that in mind, we now consider the other major extinction threats Hawking has proposed:


3) Nuclear Holocaust:

This extinction event is considered 3rd  in order but it is actually much more probable than a killer (Torino  9) asteroid strike, and certainly quicker than climate change as a major species snuffer.  Some latter day wonks have tried to put the spin on such a cataclysm that "only 300 to 500 million" will perish, but that's assuming no all out nuclear war. If the latter occurs, more than 10,000 nuclear warheads in the 500 kt to double megaton range will be released and even if 500 million survive the first strikes and blasts, the rest of us will be done in by the radiation.  And no, you won't survive living in an underground bunker unless you plan to stay there hundreds of years.   For all intents the planet will be a radioactive wasteland.

How will it start, or why? I already referenced in my previous post (Trump's grade for 2017) the words of 'Art of the Deal' ghost writer Michael T. Schwarz in the anthology 'The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump':

"His amygdala is repeatedly triggered...and his prefrontal cortex - the part of the brain that makes us capable of rationality and reflection - shuts down. He reacts rather than reflects - and damn the consequences.  This is what makes his access to the nuclear codes so dangerous and frightening."

It is truly frightening!  It means his brain is more wired to react on the reptile than the reflective level and it puts us all in peril. This is a character, literally, who believes HE is more important than all of humanity.

Political media specialist Ezra Klein, in an appearance on MSNBC last Friday night warned, in the context of why an urgent impeachment may be needed:

"We are in this strange position where we are running a nuclear hyper power. The President of the United States is the most dangerous job in the world. The president who is the wrong person....the extent of what can go wrong there....goes all the way over to nuclear holocaust - which could be launched more or less before breakfast. And this is the only job we can think of where incredibly poor performance cannot get you fired. There is something wrong in that.?"

Of course, Klein is absolutely correct because the lives of billions now hang in the balance, waiting to be snuffed out over one reckless decision by an unqualified loon with 7500 nuclear warheads at his disposal.

In the book, 'The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump' clinical psychologist  Michael J. Tansey informs us (p. 121):

"Although there are several areas in which DT's particular version of personality disorder is vital to understand, none is more compelling or terrifying than his control of the nuclear codes.  Surpassing the devastation of climate, health care, education, diplomacy, social services, freedom of speech, and liberty and justice for all, nothing is more incomprehensible than the now plausible prospect of an all -out nuclear war.

For all but the few remaining survivors who witnessed the atomic bombing of Japan and its aftermath we simply have nothing in our own experiences to imagine the instantaneous annihilation. Quite literally we are here one second and vaporized the next along with everyone and everything."

Let me pause here to interject that although none of us except the Japanese survivors have experienced an atomic attack, you can get a very good inkling of what happens to humans by watching it in this clip from the movie 'Threads', e.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrHoMSRZOS4

Tansey again (ibid.):

"Because of this very real existential threat, it is absolutely urgent that we comprehend the titanic differences between a president who is merely 'crazy like a fox' versus one I have termed crazy like crazy (possessing core grandiose and paranoid delusions disconnected from factual reality."

In Tansey's take Trump is "crazy like crazy".   A nuclear holocaust under Trump? This is likely to happen if the Dotard's minders are unable to control his worst, most degenerate impulses after he loses it - maybe in a twitter war with Kim Jong Un ("My nuclear button is bigger than yours, Kim!") Who knows?  Stephen Hawking, no fan of Trump's,  is also worried about this scenario and clearly the reason the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has advanced the nuclear holocaust clock by 30 seconds closer to midnight, i.e. because Trump is in control of the nuclear football.  Most ominously,  as recently as three months ago, Sen. Bob Corker warned that Trump’s rhetoric and threats, especially toward North Korea, could set the nation “on the path to World War III”.  

According to sources in the WH cited by journalist Gabe Sherman at the time, Trump grew so on edge he was  "just itching to launch World War III"  to burn all his critics one time as well as the putative enemy Kim Jong Un who he belittled as "little rocket man".

But this is the nature of an unhinged asshole who has no business running a dog pound or landfill much less run a country.   As conservative columnist George Will  ("Last Word", Dec, 29th) put it, "Donald Trump is incapable of sequential thought which in itself is very disturbing".

By "sequential thought" Will meant a person is capable of following a logical thread, of cause and effect, e.g. A -> B -> C etc.   By contrast to rigorous sequential thought, Dotard's mind wanders all over the place, "like a little drunken tweety bird scavenging in all directions for  crumbs" in the words of MSNBC anchor Joy Reid. 

As if to put an exclamation point on the whole issue, former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,  Admiral Michael Mullen, said over the weekend:

 "We are actually closer to a nuclear war with North Korea, in my view,  than we've ever been and I just don't see the opportunity to solve this diplomatically."

No nonsense words from a guy who ought to know.

4) Pandemic that kills most humans:

This may be a lot closer to realization than many believe thanks to the Trumpies recently allowing Bird flu research toward higher contagion. This thrust began in 2011 with a Dutch virologist -  Ron Fouchier  -accused of engineering a dangerous superflu . In 2011, Fouchier and his team at Erasmus Medical Center took the H5N1 flu virus and made it more contagious.

Back in April  the team published another study with more details on the exact genetic changes needed to do the trick. The H5N1 bird flu is known to have sickened 650 people worldwide, and of those, 386 died. 

Fouchier's work, plus some similar research from another lab, showed for the first time that the virus had the potential to change in a way that would make it a real pandemic threat. Only a few mutations were necessary to make the H5N1 bird flu spread through the air between ferrets, the lab stand-in for people.

Critics argued that the scientists had created a dangerous new superflu and they pushed for the recipe not to be openly published. They feared that others would repeat the work and either not adequately safeguard the virus or would deliberately release it. After a long debate about security versus scientific openness, the research findings did finally appear in a journal.

In April, in the journal Cell, Fouchier and his colleagues expand on that initial work. They identified five mutations that are sufficient to make H5N1 spread through the air between ferrets. Fouchier  wrote in one email:

"Two mutations enable improved binding of the H5N1 bird flu virus to cells in the upper respiratory tract of mammals. Another mutation increases the stability of the virus. The two remaining mutations enable the virus to replicate more efficiently."

Before Fouchier and his colleagues published the current work, it underwent multiple layers of review to assess the level of danger it might pose to the public. The team had to get an export license from the Dutch government that normally applies to technology that can be weaponized. The paper was also reviewed by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which funded the research.

Fouchier's justification is straight out of the sci-fi horror flicks where a deadly virus escapes a gov't lab and reduces humanity by the billions - as in one Outer Limits series of episodes from the 90s. According to him, the research is needed to see how a pandemic which spreads airborne mammal to mammal might be stopped. So, if we know how to spread it airborne we will know how to stop it. Amplifying further Fouchier wrote back in April:

"That does not mean that we have reached general consensus about the need to do this type of work, and how to do it safely.  But general consensus will be impossible to reach on any topic. We will keep the dialogues going with everyone, but at the same time need to continue this important line of work."

Not everyone agrees with that. "I still don't understand why such a risky approach must be taken," says microbiologist David Relman of Stanford University. "I'm discouraged."

Relman served on a government advisory committee that considered whether this research should be openly published. He questions whether these studies really will help give public health officials advance warning of the next emerging flu pandemic.

What's more recently distressing is the Trump administration has recently lifted a ban on making the flu more deadly. See e.g.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/kali-holloway/76827/u-s-government-lifts-ban-on-making-viruses-more-deadly-and-transmissible


Excerpt:

"The new National Institutes of Health policy reverses a 2014 Obama administration funding ban on gain-of-function research projects specifically involving all forms of the influenza virus, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The new rules would extend beyond those viruses, “apply[ing] to any pathogen that could potentially cause a pandemic,” according to the New York Times. “For example, they would apply to a request to create an Ebola virus transmissible through the air.”

The preceding information - which has been in the relevant journals (and some news sources) for at least the past 6 years- leave little doubt that we are at risk of a major superflu pandemic if things go south. And that can indeed happen because, well, mistakes can happen.  As occurred several years ago when CDC workers were exposed to anthrax and other viruses by accident.( In 2014, a laboratory mistake at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta potentially exposed a technician to the deadly Ebola virus. The technician was subsequently  monitored for signs of infection for 21 days, the incubation period of the disease. Fortunately, he was cleared, but things might not have worked out and may indeed, not work out if a jazzed up Avian flu virus is accidentally released.  Word of the  accident at CDC later provoked concern and disbelief from some safety experts. Dangerous samples of anthrax and flu were similarly mishandled at the C.D.C.)

If partial or total human extinction by way of viral pandemic does occur, you may be sure it will be because of lab mishandling or creation of a weaponized variation.

5) Artificial intelligence replacing humans altogether. 

This one is based on a comment Hawking made to WIRED magazine, e.g.:

"I fear that AI may replace humans altogether. If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that improves and replicates itself."

But, on discussing this with Alan Emtage (the creator of the original search engine, "Archie") in Barbados last April, he pooh-poohed it.  He said the vastly greater threat of AI is to human employment, and cited AI systems now displacing financial workers, and taking over most repetitive jobs. He asserted it's just a matter of time, "maybe ten years", before most retail human jobs are gone, as well as taxi drivers, bus drivers and other driving jobs - replaced by driverless, AI-directed vehicles.   The danger then isn't AI per se, but all those millions of idle humans with nothing to do and no paychecks coming in.  Look at the current violent riots in Iran over food prices and multiply that by about 1000 times in frequency and intensity on a global scale to see what we may be in for. 

"It's the perfect recipe for terror, civil unrest and even wars." according to Emtage.  His solution is to set up the UBI (universal basic income)  financial structure from now, and not wait until after the crisis erupts.

See also:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/american-scientists-controversially-recreate-deadly-spanish-flu-virus-9529707.html

A Nation On The Verge Of A Crackup? Not If We Get Rid Of Dotard ASAP

Most sentient citizens are now aware the state of our Union has descended to an inherently uncivil cesspool riven with crudity and coarseness - and no bottom appears to be in sight. One would have thought a presidential candidate who bragged about grabbing women's genitals was rock bottom - but no, we've passed through even more degrading lows, the latest disrespecting the widow of one of the fallen. 

The alarm has now reached into the Senate with Republicans who are as revolted by the downward drift as the rest of us. Let us agree then that one of the roles of a President is to project decorum and respect for this office, and from this office to the world - and to his fellow citizens. It is essentially from his example that the standards of the nation become manifest. If then the person in charge is deranged, unstable and disrespectful of anything and anyone - even those in his own party- we are at a major transition point.  That transition is indicative of a malignant cancer on the highest office which now must be removed for the good of the whole, the body politic.

This brings us to Barton Swaim's WSJ piece, 'A Country On The Verge Of A Crackup' (Oct. 20-21) making a kind of case that the pretender playing a president has the nation approaching a "crackup". He even quotes one genius who claims Trump is A-ok,  it's the nation that's losing it.  Trump is just carrying on like "normal" for his personality type.  If this is normality we are in dangerous waters indeed, or to quote the psychologist Steve Mason:  "One of the ways I know a guy is wacko is if he claims everyone else is crazy.".   Indeed.   So let's chuck that nonsense right away. This is not to say that-the deranged con man with his fingers near the nuclear codes and showing all the signs of a narcissist sociopath isn't having deleterious effects on the rest of us. But these angry reactions and yes, judgments,  are simply the expected reactions of normals to one who is profoundly abnormal - i.e. a mutant in their midst.

  For example, former Republican Sen. Gordon Humphreys take on Dotard is spot on, e.g.

http://crooksandliars.com/2017/10/former-nh-gop-senator-gordon-humphrey-we


When Humphreys depicted Dotard as "so reckless, careless and cruel in the conduct of his office as to be vile and corrupting of the American system." - he was describing an anomaly- not something normal or merely a variant of style.  Let's get that straight once and for all that we are  not parsing any "style" here because grabbing pussies and disrespecting the family of the fallen is not style in any normal society's lexicon.  Only a degraded society, an uncivilized and uncivil one, would refer to Trump's "style".

Let us also emphasize one time, as Sen. Jeff Flake did yesterday, that calling out a twitter troll pretender who isn't qualified to run a toxic dump is not a "crack up" reaction. As Sen. Flake clearly stated:

"We must never allow ourselves to lapse into thinking that that is just the way things are now. We must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal.  Reckless, outrageous, and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as ‘telling it like it is’ when it is actually just reckless, outrageous, and undignified.”

Sen. Flake added that such behavior was “dangerous to our democracy” and projected not strength but a “corruption of the spirit”. He then asked his colleagues: “When the next generation asks us: ‘Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you speak up? What are we going to say?’

Is Sen. Flake's reaction to the filth and swine vermin occupying the Oval Office a sign of paranoia or over the top nutso? No, his reaction to a clearly malevolent and unfit, unstable goon shows the Republic still possesses citizens of sane perception and the moral mettle to call out the obvious when they see it.  That includes Sens. Bob Corker and John McCain who have also called out the  resident turd who pretends to be a leader but can't craft a more comprehensive thought than 140 characters allows.

Hence the new book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists And Mental Health Experts Assess A President, edited by Bandy X. Lee, is worth a read.  She is part of the "Duty To War" movement of mental health professionals who - like Jeff Flake - see this disgraceful bastard con man as the danger he is, as he assaults all traditions and institutions while polarizing the nation into a state of near civil war.

As Dr. Lee explains: "The public trust is violated if the profession fails in its duty to alert the public when a person who holds the power of life and death over us all shows signs of clear, dangerous mental impairment."

And contrary to Swaim's take, i.e. that it's  "delusional to believe you're warning Americans" when "so many believed our political culture needed a shock" - nothing in the remarks of Sen. Flake's or former Sen. Humphreys is disproven. Those deranged imps who voted Dotard in for that "system shock"  reason also need to be put on the psychiatrist's couch. Or to quote my psychologist niece, "They're all fuckin' nuts!" Indeed!  But that subset of "nuts" who inserted this  "hyperactive agitator" into office are not the whole nation, They were only a minor faction of its voters -roughly 46 % - and less than 22% of the proportion of all eligible voters.

And the vileness of Dotard, as Sen. Gordon Humphreys noted, surely goes far beyond Swaim's claim that he "sometimes says things that are obviously untrue, or flatly contradict his own previous statement". No, this happens all the time.  Consider his bald faced compulsive lies about Obama wiretapping him, then barely a week ago the phone call to LaDavid Johnson's widow Myeisha and how he disrespected her - not even knowing her husband's name and then saying "he knew what he signed up for" - then denying it. It took John Kelly to get up and  confirm Dotard's words, though in a hyperbolic manner, while savagely attacking a black congresswoman.

Swaim also makes a big deal out of the book's authors "differing in their diagnoses" but as Shayl pointed out to me, that's "natural because many diagnoses overlap" . Also, many disorders can exist simultaneously. For example, borderline personality disorder can exist along side schizoid personality disorder, as psychologist Judith Cauwels pointed out in her book, 'The Borderline Personality'. These pathologies then are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  Hence, two seemingly different diagnoses might be given for the same mental malady, especially for a detached, approximate diagnosis.

Then there is the beef:  'How do they know what is going on if they don't actually have him in for analysis?' This is ridiculous too.  If I see some mangy, orange-haired character slogging down  Uintah Street grabbing pussies every step of the way as he calls out nonsense and then threatens bystanders with tweets I don't need to get him on a psych couch to know he's "fuckin' nuts", as Shayl puts it.  You just have to look at his behavior and what he says, including the twitter taunts at a guy with his own missile arsenal - Kim Jong Un.

In the case of Trump there isn't a coherent, sane or rational element in his being. Neither is there any element of basic decency or civility, hence his lying reaction to the widow of  warrior LaDavid Johnson.  Donald Dotard's a total misfit and a loser besides. Read Naomi Klein's most recent book, 'NO Is Not Enough', to see how this asshole really made his riches. Hint: It was all about classic con-man deals and rip offs - like using half baked seminars on real estate and then calling the random set "Trump University".

Another point Swaim misses is that the extremes of behavior or thought are not necessary to deem a person unfit or unstable.  As Gordon Humphreys makes clear,  one needn't be absolutely stark raving mad to pose a threat. One really only needs an agitated, chaotic personality occupying the highest office and with access to the nuclear codes. Also one, as WSJ's Gerald Seib pointed out in his piece two days ago, who's become so unpredictable nothing he says can be trusted, so governance itself is undermined.  This is what Sen. Flake meant by "dangerous to democracy."

Recall also barely two weeks ago Sen. Corker warned that Trump’s rhetoric and threats, especially toward North Korea, could set the nation “on the path to World War III”.  This followed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson  calling Trump a “fucking moron” and considering resigning.

In a separate interview with CNN yesterday , Sen. Corker went even further, stating of the president: “I don’t know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard and debases our country in that way but he does.”

Coupled with Flake’s scathing remarks on the Senate floor, the growing list of Republicans sounding the alarm over Trump’s presidency marks a potential watershed moment within the party.  That watershed moment has long since arrived in the rest of the nation where we contend that the removal of his piece of trash from office is now the highest priority. (Curiously, Sen. Flake said in a CBS interview this morning the 25th amendment "wouldn't work" to remove Trump, but I beg to differ - as do many hundreds of others including Constitutional and legal scholars like Richard Painter.)

There are also darker sentiments expressed, especially by average blokes on media forums. To quote one commenter on a political forum in The Financial Times after word spread about Gabe Sherman's piece regarding White House staff fearing Trump might make a "rush for the nuclear football":  "Why hasn't the CIA offed him yet when they took out JFK for much less?"

A more sober and powerful take is provided in the following passage from Michael Gerson's WaPo piece ('Republicans, It's Time To Panic') . It puts our situation in the most cogent perspective:

"It is no longer possible to safely ignore the leaked cries for help coming from within the administration. They reveal a president raging against enemies, obsessed by slights, deeply uninformed and incurious, unable to focus, and subject to destructive whims. A main task of the chief of staff seems to be to shield him from dinner guests and telephone calls that might set him off on a foolish or dangerous tangent. Much of the White House senior staff seems bound, not by loyalty to the president, but by a duty to protect the nation from the president. Trump, in turn, is reported to have said: “I hate everyone in the White House.” And also, presumably, in the State Department, headed by a secretary of state who apparently regards his boss as a “moron.”

Adding:

"The security of our country — and potentially the lives of millions of people abroad — depends on Trump being someone else entirely. It depends on the president being some wise, strategic, restrained leader he has never been.

The time for whispered criticisms and quiet snickering is over. The time for panic and decision is upon us. The thin line of sane, responsible advisers at the White House — such as Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — could break at any moment. Already, Trump’s protests of eternal love for Kelly are a bad sign for the general’s future. The American government now has a dangerous fragility at its very center. Its welfare is as thin as an eggshell — perhaps as thin as Donald Trump’s skin. "

One hopes more Repubs see it and also read the recent book on Dotard's mental state. The sooner they remove this bag of filth from office the better for us all.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-feffer/75884/the-crack-up-donald-trump-and-the-fourth-great-shattering