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Fear the rich?
YouTube screenshot/ZDNet
Stephen Hawking wasn’t always an optimist in his latter years.
He feared aliens might hate us. He worried that we were wrecking our environment so much that we’d have to leave Earth within 100 years. He had a strong suspicion that President Trump would turn our planet into Venus.
But in Brief Answers to Brief Questions, a collection of his articles and essays to be published on Tuesday, he offered an even greater — and perhaps more immediate — fear.
As excerpts in the UK’s Sunday Times reveal, the famed physicist and general media star worried about humans using genetic engineering to turn themselves into “superhumans.”
“I am sure that during this century people will discover how to modify both intelligence and instincts such as aggression,” he says.
Hawking acknowledges that laws will be passed to control genetic engineering. But you know the problems with this world. Some people, often those with a lot of money, find laws little more than a nuisance.