Back in the 1970s, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist named William Shockley created quite a stir when he suggested that certain races (i.e., black people) were “genetically inferior” to whites and Asians, and that in order for the human race to have any chance of “improving” itself, people with IQs lower than 100 should submit to voluntary sterilization. Other than that, nothing he said was particularly controversial.
What made Shockley’s pronouncements so outrageous, besides their obvious inflammatory nature, was their provenance. After all, this wasn’t some hack, ex-Navy science fiction writer like L. Ron Hubbard introducing a new, screwball religion (“Scientology”) to the masses. This was a brilliant scientist talking. Shockley won the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics, and now he was going on record with a profoundly radical and transformative theory. It was big news.
Of course, what followed was predictable. His fellow scientists pointed out that, while Shockley may have been a “genius” when it came to semiconductors and transistors, he was woefully unprepared and unqualified to speak on the topic of genetics. Indeed, he was so far outside his element, his so-called “findings” were embarrassing. Which brings us to Stephen Hawking, the world’s favorite theoretical physicist.
Fearing that the Earth will one day be destroyed by a colliding asteroid, or by widespread epidemics, or by over-population, or the cumulative effects of…