Why Americans Have Inconsistent Perceptions of Science

A Harrison College 2nd year A-level student delivers a seminar on centripetal force to fellow students. Mathematical facility as well as high level scientific literacy are expected of every HC student before graduation.

A recent Denver Post article ('Americans' Views Of Scientists Complicated', Aug. 4, p. 6A) highlighted Americans' confusion over science, and scientific research.   The good news from the results of last Friday's Pew Research Center survey?  Well 86 percent of Americans say they trust scientists at least "a fair amount".  This  is up from 70 percent 3 years ago.

The bad news?  There is a split (between parties) reflecting the polarization across issues in the larger society.   For example, 79 percent of Democrats say that scientists should be active in policy debates compared to 43 percent of Republicans.  In terms of addressing a science -related policy problem (e.g. climate change, nuclear weapons) a majority of Democrats (54%)  see scientific experts as better at decision making than most people, including politicos.  Among Republicans only 34 % concur.  In other words,  to them Tucker Carlson's input on rising sea level may well be as sound as say, Bill Nye's.

According to the authors of the piece, the differences may be accounted for by how Republicans and Democrats view bias. In particular, the Republicans polled were more likely to say that scientists are just as susceptible to bias as other people.

But see, the difference is when a scientist seeks to make a claim or advance a new view of reality (theory) he needs to submit his work to a journal for peer review.  This peer review ensures quality control and that the bias  - if any - is a minimum.  To the claim that climate change deniers' papers are rejected - as made by one Intertel member some three years ago-  I pointed out in response:

"They are generally dismissed precisely because they lack the basics of scientific authority - including: proper data selection,  analysis, consistent interpretation of data, and appropriate mathematical techniques. Hence, their papers are tagged as the opposite of  authoritative science which is in fact  pseudo-science."

In effect, the claims of bias by the Right arise precisely because they can't accept that propaganda or non-evidentiary material - such as deniers create - isn't the same as science.

There is also the broader issue of why Republicans generally have the beliefs they do, apart from whether they are highly educated deniers like Roger Pilke, Jr.  These beliefs almost always assert severe doubts regarding the more controversial scientific findings, i.e. that rapidly increasing CO2 concentrations emphasize the need to cut carbon emissions.  So what makes Republicans more susceptible to asserting (by 64%) that scientists are susceptible to bias?

I'd argue it is because they are victims of agnotology, derived from the Greek 'agnosis' i.e.  the study of culturally constructed ignorance. We know this is achieved primarily by sowing the teeniest nugget of doubt in whatever claim is made (and as we know NO scientific theory is free of uncertainty).

Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor has correctly tied it to the trend of skeptic science sown deliberately and for political or economic ends.   Since Republicans - conservatives are more committed to economic and political imperatives - say over scientific ones - then it stands to reason they'd trust economists and politicians more than scientists. More importantly, they'd trust economic and political solutions much more than purely scientifically-based ones, say like drastically cutting carbon emissions.

This distrustful faction often have attained high educational credentials - say in psychology or economics, perhaps even physics -- but their lens of perception is distorted by economic, political obsession.  Hence they become convinced they can opine on issues outside their specialty fields -  like global warming - without doing any hard work or proper research..  Their opposition to solutions that potentially affect the economy is sufficient, so they believe they can simply bloviate from their armchairs  on what they  are convinced the science ought to be.  And the latter is generally in the guise of denier pseudo-science. (They also invoke the specious comeback that "Well, because the proponents -scientists can't put it into simple words" then it must be wrong or at least not compelling.)

This is probably why Cary Funk, director of science and society research at Pew,  described respondents' attitudes toward scientific experts as having "soft support".    That is, they aren't ready to wholeheartedly embrace actual scientific experts, and if the researcher' specialty veers into a "sensitive" area for the person (say affecting economic growth, higher stock valuations, 401(k) returns etc.)   there will be a  lot more skepticism and imputation of "bias".  Again, this is most prominent in environmental science and climate science.

There is also the mystifying leaning toward "practical practitioners" as opposed to researchers in pure science, say astrophysicists and cosmologists. Thus, overall people are more likely to trust "dieticians or physicians" more than say, Neal deGrasse Tyson or Stephen Hawking.   According to Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton who studies trust:

"Trusting a group or profession comes from thinking about what their intentions and motives are.  The motive of the research scientist can be murky.  But with a doctor you assume the motive is to help people."

Yes, but that assumption could be wrong.   The physician may only be that in order to pay off his/her student loan debt more expeditiously. Say as opposed to being a biology teacher, the actual calling.   There may be little interest in actual "helping" but more in making money off your visit.  Let's also bear in mind most physicians aren't their own persons but operate under the auspices of some business or corporate entity - say Centura Health - that dictates their patient flow, time allotted for each and so on.   So the belief in any 'help" may well be a total illusion.

At the same time, the lack of trust in a pure researcher because his motive is "murky" is rather laughable.  In fact, it usually isn't the research  or its motive that is "murky" but the respondent's understanding of it.   But the more disturbing aspect as revealed in the Denver Post piece is the caricature of the research scientist (often derived from the characters in "The Big Bang Theory') ensconced in too many brains of ordinary folk. As we learn:

"Shows such as the Big Bang Theory partially explains why experts who do research are seen as 'capable of immoral conduct'.    Essentially, the study found that this attitude is less about thinking that scientists are bad people and more about seeing them as being so robot-like that no one could possibly know their motives."

Which is mind boggling.   But at least Ms. Fiske did get to the central point:

"I think part of what's going on here is that the more people know the more they trust."

I touched on some of this in my July 26th post when I pointed out why so many ordinary folk exhibit impatience with theoretical physics and its researchers such as  portrayed ( e.g. by the characters "Sheldon" and "Leonard")  on the Big Bang Theory. E.g.

"Most of the public - even those who read Scientific American- probably halted their math courses at Calculus, if they even took that.  And from what I've read in a few education journals, barely 1 in 1000 Americans ever see the inside of a physics lab in connection with a college level General Physics course.   So it is little wonder there is an existing impatience with theoretical physics and its "gibberish" equations and material"

Anyone who's even seen a few episodes of BBT would have noted how the two fictional Caltech physicists peppered their boards with equations (which by the way are vetted by actual physicists in string theory etc for correctness).  And since higher mathematics is the language of most theoretical physics, and most Americans probably didn't get past intermediate algebra,  it makes sense they'd find the motives of pure physicists murky - because their own math ability is murky!

 As is their basic understanding of science.  The authors of the Denver Post piece argue much of the trust gap can be breached provided "scientists post candid stories of themselves doing scientific work".  In other words, provide a personal insight or perspective into their research. But let's face it that only goes so far. Getting an insight into a scientist's personal life and approach to his or her work will not actually open the doors to understanding that work.   That major step requires a commitment to learning and reading about it, as opposed to squandering time on Instagram or Twitter or playing video games. In other words, the choice to understand scientific research - including theoretical - rests with the choices of Americans themselves.  Will they now finally really READ Neal deGrasse Tyson's 'Astrophysics for People In a Hurry' or Stephen Hawking's 'A Brief History Of Time' or will they go back to some superficial distraction on TV or a streaming service?

Only by making this leap will they be able to put "two plus two"   together. That is, graduating to the appreciation that pure theoretical work can lead directly to practical, technological manifestations. Thus, without the very abstract general theory of relativity your GPS navigation system wouldn't work. Without the abstract ideas of quantum mechanics we wouldn't have lasers and solid state electronics.

At issue then is basic scientific literacy which, alas, too many of our countrymen lack.  Demonstrating that literacy would, at the very least, mean passing a basic physics test, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/10/basic-physics-test.html

Achieving that would at least show that citizens possess enough scientific competence to intelligently comment on major contentious issues of our time - whether global warming/climate change, or aspects of current defense spending-  such as the advisability of replacing our nuclear arsenal.   Or, making nuclear energy a component of any viable 'Green New Deal'.

In addition, a  more uniform competence across multiple scientific disciplines would arguably close the gaps between Democrats and Republicans, especially in terms of whether scientists have the right to contribute to policy discussion, decisions.

The takeaway? Americans have inconsistent perceptions of the worth of scientific work  (and motives of researchers)  because they have inconsistent scientific backgrounds and knowledge themselves.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/07/sad-state-of-us-high-school-physics.html

And:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/11/are-american-students-really-math.html

Basic Cosmic Brane Theory Revisited

We now revisit basic ideas concerning branes, brane theory.

By way of recapping some of the earlier material I've written on branes, I note the following:

a) The p= 1 brane is a string.

b) The p = 2 brane is a surface or mem-brane.


The basic principle concerning p-branes is one articulated by Stephen Hawking in his book, 'Universe in a Nutshell' (p. 54), that is, there exists no special preference for opting or choosing one type of p-brane over any other. In other words, a kind of "p-brane democracy' inheres, in which all p-branes are equal.

As Hawking also observed (ibid.), all p-branes can be found as solutions of supergravity theories in 10 or 11 dimensions. More importantly, p-branes are peculiar to the low energy limit of superstring theory, with the energy density of the nongravitational fields confined to some p-dimensional subspace of the 9 space dimensions in the theory.

A special class of p-branes in string theory are called D -branes. Roughly speaking, a D -brane is a p-brane where the ends of open strings are localized on the brane. A D -brane is like a collective excitation of strings. All these objects took a long time to be discovered in string theory, because they are buried deep in the mathematics of T-duality.

A much energized use of branes has been in providing descriptions for force interactions and emergence at different scales. For example, in a solution with electric charge, if the energy density in the electromagnetic field was distributed along a line in spacetime, this one-dimensional line would be considered a p-brane with p=1. A two-dimensional interaction would encompass p=2 branes.

Most all of this is now subsumed under what is called "M-Theory". Technically speaking, M theory is the unknown eleven-dimensional theory whose low energy limit is the supergravity theory in eleven dimensions briefly noted above. However, many people have taken to also using M theory to label the unknown theory believed to be the fundamental theory from which the known superstring theories emerge as special limits.

In M -theory, there are also extended objects, but they are called M -branes rather than D -branes. One class of the M -branes in this theory has two space dimensions, and this is called an M2 -brane. Despite this, we still often opt to use D-branes. Why? Mainly practicality! D-branes provide a link between algebraic and differential geometry which is quite natural. Any device or mathematical agent which can provide such a link will be invoked, because of the levels of difficulty in these two mathematical areas.

Now, in the cosmic case we can focus on the diagram shown which shows a simplified 4-step process in the origin of the cosmos based via colliding D-branes. One of these is identical with our own known universe and is designated (A) and another 'shadow' brane exists in close proximity. The proximate brane, as Hawking has noted (op. cit.,p. 183) prevents gravity from spreading too far into extra space dimensions. (He also notes that experiments so far haven't detected branes separated by less than a few mm. )

Now, in phase (2) the two branes are pulled closer by an interbrane force and develop tiny quantized "wrinkles" (which can be thought of as the rudimentary 'seeds' of future galaxies). In phase (3) the branes are actually undergoing a collision and the graphic depicted is meant to show a two-dimensional portrayal of a multi-dimensional encounter. In this collision, an enormous amount of energy is released which is interpreted as 'the Big Bang'.

By phase (4) the branes have separated and stretch and smooth out as they do so (note - galaxies or what will become such, are shown in the image). Also, the cosmos will be seen to be expanding as we see it today. Eventually, of course, the two branes are pulled back again and another collision is induced, and so another Big Bang. This is why the model based upon these interacting branes is called a "cyclic" or "Big Bounce" model. Further, in this model, the universe not only existed before the Big Bang (as a 'known universe brane') but retains the memory of what went before.

More to the point, if brane dynamics governs the recycling of Big Bangs, then it may not even matter what the cosmic density itself is in our own universe - say attaining a density such that all the matter re-collapses (unlikely given the universe's expansion seems to be accelerating). But if the action of a shadow brane is ultimately responsible for recycling the issue is essentially moot or out of our knowledge domain, in terms of definitely knowing that the universe will re-collapse or not!

Thus, even if our own cosmic energy density, r <   r (c), the critical density needed for re-collapse, the interaction of a nearby "shadow" brane in an inter-brane collision may still provide it!

Physics Is A "Troubled Field"? Not As Much as Biomedical Research And Psychology

Image of  artificial CME successfully produced in laboratory experiment in 2016. Is physics a "troubled field"?  Only in the opinions of those who know little or nothing about it.

I confess I was rather mystified on reading the recent reviews of two books by physics superstars: Stephen Hawking ('Brief Answers to the Big Questions') and Martin Rees ('On the Future').    These appeared under the banner 'Serious Doubt On Serious Earth' in the WSJ Review section (p. C12, Oct. 20-21) by John Horgan.  

Horgan, after giving reasonable reviews of each book, then writes:

"Hawking and Mr. Rees recognize science's declining status. They call for better science education to lure more young people into science." 

 Then quoting Hawking:

"The low esteem in which science and scientists are held is having serious consequences."

True, but only in some fields - not all. Case in point, Horgan goes on to note:

 "Both authors fail to mention science's wounds are at least partially self-inflicted. In 2005, statistician John Ioannidis presented evidence that 'most published research findings are wrong'"


Now that is flat out false, and leads the unwary reader to believe all the sciences are publishing error- prone research. In fact,  Joannidis - a meta -researcher- was focused almost exclusively on the credibility of medical research.   

 In effect, his investigations found that much of what biomedical researchers concluded in  their published studies was often misleading, exaggerated or flat wrong. These included studies related to the prescription of antibiotics or blood pressure meds, treatments for back pain, surgery recommended for heart conditions, and advice concerning consumption of fiber and more or less meat.   See e.g.

Dr. John Ioannidis Exposes the Bad Science of Colleagues - The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies.../308269/

The "crisis in replication" as he refers to it is also rampant in psychology. Thus, three years ago in a NY Times report ('Psychology's Fears Confirmed: Rechecked Studies Don't Add Up')   we learned of multiple failures in that discipline including (according to author Benedict Carey):

- A top social psychologist was caught fabricating data, leading to more than 50 retracted papers

- A top journal published a study supporting the existence of ESP that was widely criticized

- The journal Science pulled a paper on the effect of gay canvassers on voters' behavior because of faked data concerns. 

Added to that one also learned (in the same piece)  of a painstaking yearlong effort to reproduce 100 studies published in three leading psychology journals, finding more than half couldn't be validated. According to author Carey (ibid.):

"The vetted studies were considered part of the core knowledge by which psychologist understand the dynamics of personality, relationships, learning and memory"

Note at no point does physics or  its subdisciplines enter into any of this. The beauty of physics is, in fact, its robust quantitative basis which often provides a rigorous cross check on the experiments or observations. (Nearly all of them tied to quantitative models.) Because it isn't merely the outcome of one or more experiments that must be considered, but also the governing quantitative and theoretical dynamic. How can a model be expressed in consistent, quantitative form that gives body to the interpretation of the experimental data? If that quantitative model is defective, then more than likely the whole experimental set up is as well.   So given nearly every physics publication is quantitatively based then there are inherent checks on the model and the capacity for replication.

Take as an example, the astounding replication in the laboratory of an artificial  coronal mass ejection (see top image).  This marked the first time ever solar researchers successfully generated an artificial coronal mass ejection in the laboratory as part of a plasma experiment. The researchers, Ha and Bellan, used a plasma gun in concert with an artificial strapping field to create their own flux ropes in their lab and from these CME-eruptions inside a vacuum chamber.  The strapping field itself  (that field which secures or holds back any emerging flux ropes) had to be carefully computed so that it decayed as a precise function of height. The reason is that the pair needed to generate the most likely instability - called the "torus instability". One self-consistent geometry is shown below as proposed by proposed by DeMoulin and Titov.

Assume then the detailed toroidal structure is initially in equilibrium, what happens to trigger the torus instability? Well, according to one variation proposed by Yuhong Fan, the configuration becomes unstable to an expansion  D R, when the toroidal radius R attains a critical dimension relative to the separation of the charges +q and -q.

Specifically, one will be looking at the decline of the potential field   B _q  with R and when it becomes critically deep.   This is evaluated using a decay index with torus instability occurring when the condition holds:

n = - d ln B _q   / d ln R > 1.5

In respect of their CME -generating experiment, Ha and Bellan would likely have taken these considerations into account to a suitable scale to create their strapping magnetic field that decays with increasing altitude.

The point here is that the replication basis of the model as well as the demonstration could easily be checked for self-consistency and adherence to the physical principles. 

Incredibly, despite this, we are informed by Horgan :

"But physics, which should serve as the bedrock of science, is in some respects the most troubled field of all. ...Over the last few decades it has become increasingly disconnected from empiircal evidence."

He then makes the mistake of citing the "proponents of string and multiverse"  conjectures - which of course grab most of the highlights in the corporate press.   But what about the Parker Solar Probe launched Aug. 12 which will provide us new and hitherto imagery and insights into the dynamic nature of our nearest star?  He doesn't mention that space mission at all. Nor the fantastic discoveries of hundreds of exoplanets by the Kepler telescope.

Nor the recent huge success of the Cassini -Huygens mission to Saturn.

Cassini-Huygens changed the game when it found complex hydrocarbons on Saturn’s ocean moons, hinted at hydrothermal vents on Enceladus, and revealed a cycle of liquid methane on Titan. The bottom line is, ocean worlds encapsulated by ice are now more propitious targets in the broader search for life beyond Earth.

If Horgan would have also taken the time and trouble to peruse recent issues of Physics Today he'd have born witness to dozens of new,  empirically validated discoveries, which seldom make the news like string theory or multiverse conjectures.  These have included:

'Isotope Measurements Help Pin Down The Ancient Rise Of Oxygen' (June, p. 16)

'First direct views of attosecond electron-nuclear coupling' (p. 17)

QED experiment detects two distinct photons simultaneously resonant with an optical cavity  (and with one of two electronic transitions of the same atom)  (August, p. 14)

'Use of Xenon isotopes to track volatile recycling in Earth's mantle' (October, p. 14)

'Acoustic metasurface creates quiet locations in a room' (August, p. 18)

Granted, none of these are especially 'sexy'  or exotic but all give the lie to Horgan's claim that physics has somehow become unmoored from empirical evidence.  The error made by Horgan? Focusing too much on the attention -headline grabbing stuff as opposed to the more prosaic but equally important findings.

Because of this selective attention he also commits the logical error of fallacy of composition:  attributing to the whole a characteristic or property that only applies to a part. Hence, concluding erroneously all of physics is somehow "troubled" because he perceives certain deficiencies in two exotic areas.  (Which he also egregiously describes as "modern physics" when string theory and multiverse concepts are only a part, and a very speculative part at that.)

Never mind, Horgan's 'Debby Downer' take, there is plenty in modern science- and certainly in physics-  to enlist and attract the best minds, and fuel their continued curiosity. 

In Memoriam: Stephen Hawking

Perhaps the greatest cosmologist ever - Stephen Hawking - died  at 76.

Stephen Hawking, one of the the brightest stars in the firmament of science, whose insights into modern cosmology inspired millions, has died aged 76.  Hawking's family released a statement in the early hours of Wednesday morning confirming his death at his home in Cambridge.

Hawking’s children, Lucy, Robert and Tim said in a statement: “We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today.He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humor inspired people across the world."

Adding:

“He once said: ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.’ We will miss him for ever.”

Well all of us will miss him, especially those of us who have written books that promoted his ideas, such as the 'boundary free cosmos" as well as imaginary time.  Indeed, anyone who'e been involved in astronomy at any level - even if they haven't read his ground breaking book, 'A Brief History of Time.   This was the work, not some abstract theoretical paper, that rocketed him to fame.  . 

Published for the first time in 1988, the title made the Guinness Book of Records after it stayed on the London Sunday Times bestsellers list for an unprecedented 237 weeks. It sold 10 million copies and was translated into 40 different languages. 

In 1974 Hawking drew on quantum theory to declare that stellar black holes - i.e. collapsed from large mass stars- were not the only type. There should also be "mini" or quantum scale  holes capable of emitting heat and eventually popping out of existence. For normal black holes, the process is not a fast one,  taking longer than the age of the universe for a black hole to terminate.. But near the ends of their lives, mini-black holes release heat at a spectacular rate, eventually exploding with the energy of a million one-megaton hydrogen bombs. Miniature black holes dot the universe, Hawking said, each as heavy as a billion tonnes, but no larger than a proton.

His proposal that black holes radiate heat stirred up one of the most passionate debates in modern cosmology. Hawking argued that if a black hole could evaporate into a bath of radiation, all the information that fell inside over its lifetime would be lost forever. It contradicted one of the most basic laws of quantum mechanics, and plenty of physicists disagreed.

More recently, Prof. Hawking achieved even more popular renown in the Oscar-nominated movie,  The Theory of Everything, in which Brit Eddie Redmayne played the lead role and won Best Actor Oscar. Hawking also appeared on The Simpsons and played poker with Einstein and Newton on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He  also delivered  memorable put-downs of  the insufferable geekazoid,  Sheldon Cooper, on The Big Bang Theory.

While it is true that Prof. Hawking never won a Nobel Prize, that should not diminish the respect and gratitude those of us who've worked in space science, astronomy or cosmology have for him. In that regard, I leave readers with the following links to previous posts I've written to do with Stephen's various forays:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/09/stephen-hawking-blows-minds-with.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-could-universe-originate-from.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/09/yes-universe-created-itself-from.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/11/stephen-hawkings-simple-explanation-for.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/12/hawking-warns-of-rise-of-machines.html

https://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/09/is-stephen-hawking-serious-about-god.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/12/why-stephen-hawkings-insane-predictions.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/01/why-stephen-hawkings-insane-predictions.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/04/hawkings-alien-speculations-dont-take.html

 See also this interesting Hawking lecture on 'how to escape from a black hole':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_d7O9JGo_s

We will surely miss your wit and intellect, Professor Hawking!

See also:

Stephen Hawking: A physicist's appreciation

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