Transcription
Hawking has reached a point where he's like not human anymore. He's like an oracle. If he says something, the media just rushes to him to find out what he says, and then they report that. And you'll sort of have to believe it because he's touted as the smartest man in the world.
But what he said was just sort of culturally naive. "We need to be multiple species because the asteroid might come." Here's the problem. Here's the problem. You tell me if after this you don't just agree. Ask yourself, what is the relative cost in energy, effort, human capital, financial capital to ship a billion people to a terraformed Mars or to deflect the asteroid? To move a billion people to Mars or to invest heavily in biology so that you're ready to attack any virus that comes out, whatever that is? It's got to be easier than moving a billion people to another planet.
So that's my point. So what we should do is think about not moving people to another planet, but learning how to deflect an asteroid, get the best biology and chemistry going that there is, learn how to not have nuclear war, this sort of thing.