New Scientist has a nice, short interview with Stephen Hawking on the occasion of his turning 70.
What do you think most about during the day?
Women. They are a complete mystery.
Stephen Hawking says:
I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.
The only slight difference I have with this view is that there is some spark of identity (for lack of a better word) in me that I don’t think exists in a computer. That is, there’s something that makes me see out of my own eyes rather than someone else’s (or out of a computer’s eyes). I can’t even be sure that other people have it, though I assume they do.
Of course, without my brain, such a thing wouldn’t amount to much.
When Sawyer asked if there was a way to reconcile religion and science, Hawking said, “There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.”
Stephen Hawking thinks making contact with an alien race might be a bad deal for humans. His logic is impeccable: what if they’re like us?
He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”
