RIP Stephen Hawking

Sad news tonight where I live. I know he was a materialist by nature and a lot of us here don't agree with him on things, but it's neither here nor there now. Definitely doesn't defeat what he did help discover for mankind going forward. Brilliant man. 

Kind of feel like I'm writing a eulogy here but oh well. Haven't said much about him before so I'll do it now

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=w...7q&ampcf=1

Perhaps it is too soon but I am not sure that sadness is necessarily the reaction I should be feeling. I am bound to wonder how he feels now, after decades of immobility and suffering, to be free to move at will and free of pain and discomfort. Of course, I am imposing my own expectations that he has indeed survived the transition we call death but I would be a hypocrite not to have those expectations after a lifetime of arguing in favour of them even if the man himself believed otherwise.

So, my most respectful wish for him today is that he has, at last, made the ultimate discovery: that he was wrong.

I will miss his -increasingly bat-shit insane- warnings about the impending end of the world.

I will miss his -increasingly bat-shit insane- warnings about the impending end of the world.

Yes, the dire warnings of aliens and the "simulation" stopping were definitely comedy gold

Edit: to answer malf's point, it's the materialist quasi Matrix interpretation of "simulation" I find laughable. To think we have any good reason to think it's eternally driven by some alien/future human force like a cruel experiment is just laughable.

Perhaps it is too soon but I am not sure that sadness is necessarily the reaction I should be feeling. I am bound to wonder how he feels now, after decades of immobility and suffering, to be free to move at will and free of pain and discomfort. Of course, I am imposing my own expectations that he has indeed survived the transition we call death but I would be a hypocrite not to have those expectations after a lifetime of arguing in favour of them even if the man himself believed otherwise.

So, my most respectful wish for him today is that he has, at last, made the ultimate discovery: that he was wrong.

Happened to be thinking that myself. I think he has learned in death that a lot of people were wrong, not just himself.

Yes, the dire warnings of aliens and the "simulation" stopping were definitely comedy gold

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Happened to be thinking that myself. I think he has learned in death that a lot of people were wrong, not just himself.

I'm not sure one can call out the simulation hypothesis as "comedy gold" and then imply that his disembodied essence is floating around in another realm with a new found sense of humility.

I'm not sure one can call out the simulation hypothesis as "comedy gold" and then imply that his disembodied essence is floating around in another realm with a new found sense of humility.

I'm not on board with the comedy comments and I can assure you that my original comment had nothing to do with schadenfreude. I was merely imagining what it might be like to suddenly become aware of your continued existence without the encumbrances of a dysfunctional body. I can only imagine that it would be pure joy regardless of his prior beliefs. 

I'm not sure one can call out the simulation hypothesis as "comedy gold" and then imply that his disembodied essence is floating around in another realm with a new found sense of humility.

Allow me to elaborate a little, because I guess I didn't. It's not necessarily the idea of reality being a simulation that I'm finding funny. Far from it. However, the idea that this simulation is being run by aliens like some science project that will be getting the plug here any minute now is funny to me. Hawking's conception of simulation is what is funny to me. 

Elon Musk is even worse. Hes so sure of it that he put the odds of us NOT being in an alien run simulation being as outrageous as 1 in a billion or something along those lines! 

I believe we are in a simulation in a vague sense. I'm just not sure it's Hawking and co's idea of it. In fact every thing I've learned here and elsewhere tells me it's definitely not as meaningless and random as they make it out to be. There's definitely something more to it all then just it being the after thought of something eternal in my opinion

A couple of things are for sure.  If we DON'T survive death we won't know that we didn't survive it.  All bets will be off, all talk about life eternal, simulations, God, alien cultures and involvement etc. meaningless, just so much jibber-jabber.
 
If we DO survive death we may get to find out how wrong / how right our ideas were.  Exactly similar for nobodies like myself as it is for somebodies like Stephen Hawking. 

A couple of things are for sure.  If we DON'T survive death we won't know that we didn't survive it.  All bets will be off, all talk about life eternal, simulations, God, alien cultures and involvement etc. meaningless, just so much jibber-jabber.
 
If we DO survive death we may get to find out how wrong / how right our ideas were.  Exactly similar for nobodies like myself as it is for somebodies like Stephen Hawking. 

Why include aliens?