Hawking Searching For Africa's Einsteins 276
nuke-alwin writes "Stephen Hawking has traveled to South Africa in search of Africa's Einsteins. The project will create Africa's first post-graduate center for math and physics. The British government has unfortunately decided not to back the project, which is hoping to fight poverty by identifying the kind of talent that can create wealth." Neil Turok is deeply involved as well; he was recently named to head the Perimeter Institute in Canada, whose server we brought to its knees this morning.
Niel Turok (Score:5, Funny)
Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:4, Funny)
I'm pretty sure there's loads of math involved in economics and things like managing hedge funds. Don't CEOs make something on the order of 10 trillion dollars a second?
Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, I don't begrudge them wanting better for themselves and their family if they send money home (would do the same myself), I'm just looking at it from a national perspective.
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Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:4, Insightful)
Even in countries with lots of natural resources (Nigeria, for example), there's very little if any capital floating around. You can't expect someone to create a multi-billion dollar company from scratch.
Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't know what it's like to grow up in an impoverished country. Hence you don't know what it's like to hurt for your country and to have a sense of duty to make it better.
Also, just because the talent is exported, people can still do great things to enable others to become great. You see this in soccer all the time. African talent is being exported to the top clubs in Europe but many players go back home to establish soccer academies, schools and the like.
Hats off to Hawking.
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And if you are, how long did you live there, and where are you now and how long have you been there?
Many people who make it big do go home to help, but it is do to tax breaks and PR ops. There is very little altruism involved. I am not saying there are not good people out there, but money and fame tend to make you forget where you come from.
I grew up in New Orleans, which is the third world, and my dad is from Colombia. I go to Colombia and live for six months to a
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Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people do genuinely have a feeling of responsibility.
That aside, it is an established fact that people living outside impoverished areas send a lot of money back home. In some countries, this is the primary source of foreign currency.
Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite how people play the "brain drain" story, how many people in any country even feel that the job they're doing REALLY benefits their country directly? Sure you may feel you're benefiting your company/boss, but your contribution feels so diluted by the time it reaches the country level it doesn't even matter.
One can talk about "some kind of loyalty to the country" but calling that into question based on taking a overseas job because you want better pay to help support yourself and your family is utterly unfair. We all want to see our country do well, but sometimes you can help more by becoming an export that keeps paying the country back. If you want to use nonsense metrics to compare ones sense of civic duty, why don't you compare voter turnout: US voter turnout in 2004 was 56%, compared to South Africa at 77%.
(I am South African, I have worked in the UK, I am now living back in South Africa and did bring money back.)
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Would you? Perhaps for a while; a good many graduates from both first and third world countries fancy the idea of working abroad for a while. But not many people have the blood to
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Why ? Because big corporate jobs are lonely, strange and unfulfilling. A wife and family in your birth country is what most prefer.
And some people have morals and see that as a chance to give back.
Or they get older and take a teaching position in their home country.
Lots of reasons.
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Just 'cause you're a selfish bastard, doesn't mean that everybody else is.
What's more, most of the big corps are eager to get to the up and coming markets of developing nations.
Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:5, Informative)
The point is that when people go back to the poor areas where they or their ancestors grew up, the feel a duty to improve the quality of life for the residents there.
The lucky few that get out, generally will try and make it easier for others to get out, and as time goes on the quality of life can only get better.
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Re:Brain drain, ver 0.1 (Score:4, Informative)
My close family is comparatively liberal and accepting, but far from perfect. My uncle married a white woman, I have some cousins who are half Filipino etc, but inter caste marriages are hard to come by, personally, I would try and avoid "shaming" my family, because I know that my extended family would be pissed, and being alienated is basically a guarantee.
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Some will get out and never look back. Some will go and work someplace else and send money back. Some will leave and work someplace else and then go back. Some will stay and become teachers or start there own companies.
The thing is that more educated people should make the whole world better. It will probably make some African nations better.
But as they say on Long Island. It can't hurt.
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and the take home lesson is? (Score:2)
go in search of africa's einsteins, find africa's botlords?
And when they find one, the headline will be (Score:2, Funny)
Einstein didn't create much wealth (Score:2)
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The whole fighting poverty line is probably just marketing. It's a good thing to help potential brilliant scientists, but the economic payoff can often decades or centuries in the future and it will be reaped by whoever develops the technology that uses the science.
To fight poverty, you need to encourage business initiative [grameen-info.org], which gives a much faster payoff.
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I was going to point out something like that too, but you beat me to it. Still, I'll point out another angle:
It's true: Einstein didn't make much money for himself. In fact, the statue of him in Washington DC looks like a homeless man.
But "didn't create wealth?" I'd say that in the bigger picture, he did create wealth -- even under the narrow economic definition, "wealth = money." His theories have advanced technology and helped society to create a great deal more wealth: GPS for instance has obviou
Re:Einstein didn't create much wealth (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't even know where to begin, but here are some counterexamples of theoretical physics being quite practical: nuclear fission reactors, fusion weapons, transistors/microchips, computers, internet, TVs, sattelites/GPS, cell phones and wireless comms, MRI and PET scans, electron microscopy, LASERs...
See, I think you are making the same mistake of underestimating theoretical physics as the Germans did in the 1930s...
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But, there's a bit of a leap when you go from laying down the theory to turning it into consumer products. And, that leap usually requires a large corporate/government R&D program with huge budgets and teams of people from a wide range of disciplines.
One or two "Einstein"s are not going to be able to take an idea from pure conceptualization all the way to an end product where the wealth return really happens. S Africa, unfortunately, doesn't have that large corporate or govern
Re:Einstein didn't create much wealth (Score:5, Insightful)
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Remind me again... (Score:3, Insightful)
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It was 1900, and most of what was known then about about physics (and much that wasn't known then) is now taught in the first three years of bachelor's in physics. The field has advanced substantially since, so that you now need to learn more than what's in an undergraduate curriculum before you reach the bounds of knowledge and can add to it. Such was not the case in 1900.
Maybe Hawki
Watson (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to go off on a tangent, but I wouldn't call Watson the "co-discovererer of DNA," for two reasons.
1. My understanding of research history was that DNA was discovered long before, and also long before was identified as the genetic material.
2. He likely didn't even co-discover the STRUCTURE of DNA so much as steal credit for that f
The purpose? (Score:5, Interesting)
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We can all contribute with our own skills.
The idea here is not to create an economic effect. That is secondary.
The point of the project is to find and empower the brilliant potential mathematicians and physicists in this poorly served region. The purpose of finding and empowering these people is to empower the human race and to advance our knowledge and understanding of the universe.
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Not quite sure why people assume all of the Africa is starving or lacks critical infrastructure. Take a look at the pictures on the wikipedia entry for Johannesburg, for comparison sake.
Would that be the "most dangerous city in the world with respect to street crime" [reuters.com] Johannesburg? Hardly a place where international researchers would flock to live and work in.
I've also heard Internet connections are plentiful and inexpensive in Mogadishu [bbc.co.uk], but I wouldn't start a research center there.
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I leave the obvious conclusion as an exercise for the reader.
So you [I assume you by the tone of your post] oppress and exploit a certain group of society for a century and are surprised what happens when the lid finally gets blown off?
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Education, infrastructure, and Mugabe hanging by his feet like a piñata would be a good start.
Of course they won't fund it (Score:5, Funny)
Africa's Next Top Physicist. Every week, contestants will be tasked with solving a major problem in physics. Their efforts will be judged by a panel led by Hawking, using Tyra Banks as a body double. The loser will be eliminated from the competition and thrown into the African savanna, where he will be eaten by a lion.
African Idol: Physics edition. Auditions will be held in various tribal areas throughout Africa. Hilarity will ensue as the ever-caustic Hawking mocks contestants' failures to adequately explain string theory. Losers will be thrown into the African savanna, where they will be eaten by lions.
Deriving With the Physicists. Contestants will be paired up with professional physicists and tasked to derive the Unified Field Theory. Each week, progress will be gaged by a panel of judges. Losers will be thrown into the African savanna, where the lions, fully sated from contestants from the earlier shows, will ignore them. They will then be shot by poachers.
Survivor: Africa. Contestants will spend the entire show dealing with extreme heat, drought, and the ever-present threat of starvation and disease while trying to scrape up enough money to attend school while keeping his family fed and not dying from malaria. The one who can manage to survive long enough to attend a post-graduate physics program wins.
mod parent up! (Score:2)
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Learn how to stay calm and assertive when you learn that your pack leader really does play dice.
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Move over Newton! This new hit show has Oprah tackling quantum mechanics, while her guests provide tips on how photons can be empowering. Every audience member gets their ve
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The really sad thing is that it would work. O.k. remove the feeding them to the lions if they do wrong. I think it was a Saturday night live where they were just offering bags of food to those that got it right. Well, offer a years supply of food for those that win the chemistry, math, physics, or what ever other subjects that you want them to compete in. I don't know how m
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No more Einstein's (Score:3, Interesting)
I support the project, not the marketing of the project.
no post-grad center on the whole continent? (Score:2)
Re:no post-grad center on the whole continent? (Score:5, Informative)
Small Pool of Healthy (Score:3, Insightful)
If only say 10 percent of Africa's population fits that bill, then you'd get about 10% of the hits compared to a similar population of mostly middle-class countries. This is not being racist, but merely observing the health of Africa's population as it is.
Re:Small Pool of Healthy (Score:4, Insightful)
If their eating habits didn't stop them from becoming champions, why should the same food affect possible geniuses?
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On the other hand, in a continent where there is (relatively) little motorized transportation and walking is a primary mode of transportation. travelling on foot is a basic survival tool and the body naturally directs its energies to that purpose because it gets significant use. It therefore shouldn't be surprising to find a
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I doubt he will find much because it is such an undernourished and politically unstable place on the whole. You likely need a large population of relatively healthy people in order to produce sufficient geniuses. Poorly-fed brains with too few toys are not likely to end up at the top. Einstein traced his thought process back to a compass that his dad gave him.
If only say 10 percent of Africa's population fits that bill, then you'd get about 10% of the hits compared to a similar population of mostly middle-class countries. This is not being racist, but merely observing the health of Africa's population as it is.
The population of Africa is a bit under 1 billion, there are still 100 million Africans who fit that bill.
Far more than health I'm worried first about the intellectual climate, and the mechanisms for picking out the real smart ones. I know there are a lot of African countries with substantial middle classes, who should have the mechanisms to stimulate the young brains. But I don't know if the culture is one that will foster that stimulation, or the career lines such that those young brains can be picked ou
Well, there goes my eugenics grant (Score:2)
Africa and its genetic diversity (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1288178 [nih.gov]
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050310103042.htm [sciencedaily.com]
http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/Tishkoff1-1999.htm [psu.edu]
It might be easier to find a genius among very different subjects, than finding one in a group where everybody is similar.
Hawking is a genius
This is to build wealth in Africa? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Look, I'm all for helping Africa get great colleges and postgrad institutions. It's a good thing, and certainly can't hurt. But if these people think that a postgrad center for math and physics is going to help pump great wealth into Africa, I'm afraid they'll be dissapointed. They'd be better off building business and engineering institutes. People like Patrice Motsepe will do far more to bring wealth to Africa than someone like Hawking.
Certainly a postgraduate institution alone won't solve all the problems but I do think it will help more than you expect.
I suspect one thing sorely missing in a lot of Africa right now is pride. Political strife, poverty, and lack of education are common, it seems the only thing African nations can occasionally succeed at on a world stage is athletics.
If they do get a real legitimate world-class research institution I think it gives two main effects. First is pride, they see an African research institution
Nice idea but not going to make any real change. (Score:3, Insightful)
I.e. start by identifying the **real** root cause and work on that.
African First Post!!! (Score:2)
You need to know where to look (Score:2)
What kind of smart? (Score:2)
OLPC as Einstein detector (Score:2)
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Yeah but (Score:2)
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I can see Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman doing this ad, and I can see where having Stephen Hawking would totally rock, but I can't quite wrap my mind around Dr. Hawking having such a... flexable sense of humor. One doesn't expect to see someone with that amount of sheer brain power to have feet of clay... or even a sense
Searchiing through Africa.... (Score:2)
No, generally, I'm relatively sure I'm Al Einstein. You haven't seen that Hawking fellow have you. I heard he was looking for me, and figured he'd never find me here! You won't tell him will you?
South Africa needs help with maths? (Score:3, Informative)
South Africa built a few air drop nukes and maybe tested one too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction [wikipedia.org]
They also built Secunda, a neat coal-to-liquids plant.
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Re:Einstein is over-rated (Score:5, Insightful)
Put any kid of any race (say, your kid) in a third world country with little food, no medical care, and have unlearned people raise him, and don't send him to school, and he'll be just like the native Africans.
Take one of those African kids and raise him in an enlightened industrial society and he'll excel as much as anyone. It isn't about self esteem, it's about quality of life.
As to your own stupidity, racism is a tool of the rich to keep everyone else at each others' throats so they won't notice who's really using and abusing them, tool.
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That being said - the key differentiator is in opportunity. I agree that if a kid of any race and of reasonable potential was in the same situation you described above, he would probably not do well -- but not strictly because of how he was raised; but rather the lack of opportunity available for him to learn about his ow
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As to your own stupidity, racism is a tool of the rich to keep everyone else at each others' throats so they won't notice who's really using and abusing them, tool."
that's just stupid.
The super wealthy need people to be educated so they can make money and buy there stuff.
Racism is the tool of cowards and the weak of mind.
Go ahead, mod me troll and flamebait (Score:2)
You are basically saying that if you take notepad.exe and stick it in a xeon, suddenly it is going to grow all sorts of features beyond "find and replace". The converse holds, because if you take vim and put it into a system with not enough memory to run it, sure, it probably won't run, or maybe a few features won't work. It would still prob
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You've already failed to demonstrate intelligence in your first paragraph. Definitions of race have next to nothing to do with "clustering" of genetics. As a very applicable example, Africa has extremely high genetic diversity compared to other human populations. [psu.edu]
Is there a gene for intelligence? I don't know. But it's beyond ludicrous to
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Btw , calling someone racist simply because you don't happen to like their views that different races may be different is pathetically childish, though standard tactics for people of the right-on persuation.
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if you chronically do not get proper nutrition growing up, for example, whether you had einstein DNA or T.Rex DNA, you won't be able to realize the full potential of your natural abilities.
just watched a perfect example of that this evening; the fistula epidemic in africa. girls who don't get enough calories growing up working hard grow up small. They can't birth easily and have massive complications. They would have grown taller if they had enough to
Re:Einstein is over-rated (Score:4, Interesting)
Put any kid of any race (say, your kid) in a third world country with little food, no medical care, and have unlearned people raise him, and don't send him to school, and he'll be just like the native Africans.
[/quote]
Absolutely true. As an example, look at the Kalash tribal people of Pakistan. They're basically white-caucasian (descended from Greeks), but they are among the poorest ethnic groups in the region.
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rising to the bait, there are fundamental problems to Africa, the two key ones are corruption in the governments and the continuous fighting within and between countries (for resources and between tribes). The D.R. Congo should be one of the richest countries in the world with its unequalled wealth of mineral resources, but years of corruption, greed and fighting have ensured its ability to exploit those resources are minimal.
another key problem is that foreign governments have caused major problems. for
Re:Einstein is over-rated (Score:4, Informative)
Read Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond, (or download the torrent of the movie the made from the book if reading is too hard for you) and you may become less ignorant.
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Like 'Monkey,' I had to look up this 'Jenkem' stuff. It is apparently a hoax which has been debunked. See Monkey's link.
No reply to the rest of your post.
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Re:Einstein is over-rated (Score:4, Insightful)
If a black man did something horrible to you or your family, you have my sympathies.
A member of my family was beaten to death by a black man in the street. It happened before I was born. Routine mugging gone awry. She spent the rest of her "life" in pain and a vegetative state. It was the woman who raised my mother.
I don't blame race. I blame human nature. Most people of any color are just vicious animals running on fear and greed and desperation.
But I like to think -- or, I hope -- that I am a man and not a beast. And I believe that to be this I need, constantly, to overcome the paranoia that would make me a fearful animal and not a man. I believe abject racism is just one more form of animal paranoia.
I do not believe in a utopia where race does not matter. I learned that again in college, and it was my saddest lesson. You see, racist Chinese people say the same things about white men that you say about blacks -- that they (we) are fetishists, perverts, rapists, deviants, and worse. I learned this the hard way when, for six months, I dated a nice and good-looking girl from Shanghai. People said nasty things, whispered snide comments -- particularly two kinds of people: (1) uneducated whites, and (2) racist Chinese people. My mind's eye saw the caricature of the racist white man -- sitting on his front porch, spitting tobacco, and saying, "Watch out! Them watermelon-eating niggers take our women!" morphing into a Chinese student who was pointing at me, and the "nigger" becoming a stereotyped "Westerner" with my face. She was a nice girl, and though we did not have enough in common to continue the relationship -- our value systems were moving rapidly apart, and it became more and more clear that we, in basic philosophy, wanted very different things -- we certainly did not deserve the kind of comments we received. It was insulting to me and dehumanizing to her: The assumption by her "own people" seemed to be that she could not possibly be appealing as a human being, that the only reason anyone could want to date her was that he were sick, that he were some kind of twisted pervert and that the only appealing quality she could possibly have was the ethnicity she happened to come from. She had warned me when we started that people would say these things, and I had replied naively that it didn't matter, but I guess in fact I had really thought it wouldn't happen enough that it could matter. I had to learn the hard way that this wasn't true. It was severely disillusioning.
I do not want to be like those people who spoke insults and acid. I do not believe in utopia, but I reject their petty tribalism, and I am a better man than they were.
Are you? Are you a better man? A thinking, reasoning being with thoughts as well as instincts? Or are you a beast yourself?
I'm not asking you to change your mind immediately. I'm not telling you to discard what you think just because people call it "racism:" having a name for an idea and saying "it's bad" doesn't by itself mean it's wrong. I'm just asking you to moderate your thoughts for a bit, to let the man overcome the beast. Because I think -- or hope -- that in time and with thoughtfulness, you will conclude differently than you do now -- and I don't think bitterness is a very good route to peace for society, or to happiness for yourself.
Cheers.
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