Stephen Hawking: Idea Of Afterlife Is A ‘Fairy Tale’
From the archive: published Sep 25, 2013, 13 years ago. Details may have changed since.
Stephen Hawking said there is no such thing as an afterlife but that computers might one day create something close to it.
Speaking at a premiere of a documentary about his life, Hawking said that one day the brain could be inputted on a computer, essentially allowing part of a person to live forever.
“I think the brain is like a program in the mind, which is like a computer,” Hawking said at an appearance at the Cambridge Film Festival. “So it’s theoretically possible to copy the brain on to a computer and so provide a form of life after death.”
The idea is not unique to Stephen Hawking, who admitted that the idea is a long way from being put into practice. Futurist Ray Kurzweil has predicted that one day human thought will be able to be uploaded onto a computer, creating programs that would predict how a given person would react to a situation. So humans of the future could in theory consult a program that would show how dead economists would treat a given financial crisis.
But Hawking shared more controversial ideas, saying “the conventional afterlife is a fairy tale for people afraid of the dark.”
It is an idea he has shared before. In a 2011 interview, he expressed the same sentiment almost word-for-word.
“There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,” he said.
In his 2010 book Grand Design, Hawking argued against the existence of a creator, saying it was “not necessary to invoke God… to get the universe going.”
The documentary explores the early life of Stephen Hawking including his days as a student. It delves into his family life including his first marriage to wife Jane and how it fell apart.