Update: In fact he said following: “Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next 1,000 or 10,000 years,” and it is still unclear.
To me it doesn’t seem unclear but the claim seem uncertainty attached to it.
It looks like that Hawking said the following: One of the 2 statements are true with equal probability:
A) extinction date is randomly chosen from interval (0, 1000)
B) extinction date is randomly chosen from interval (0, 10 000)
It is a little bit complex but correct way to express x-risks expectation.
And CNN interpreted it as extinction will happen after 1000, which is not following from what he said, as it completely excludes (0, 1000) variant, which has 55 per cent probability in Hawking claim. It looks like CNN thought that Hawking said: extinction date will be between (1000, 10 000). So after 1000 years from now we should prepare to it.
To me it doesn’t seem unclear but the claim seem uncertainty attached to it.
It looks like that Hawking said the following: One of the 2 statements are true with equal probability:
A) extinction date is randomly chosen from interval (0, 1000)
B) extinction date is randomly chosen from interval (0, 10 000)
It is a little bit complex but correct way to express x-risks expectation.
And CNN interpreted it as extinction will happen after 1000, which is not following from what he said, as it completely excludes (0, 1000) variant, which has 55 per cent probability in Hawking claim. It looks like CNN thought that Hawking said: extinction date will be between (1000, 10 000). So after 1000 years from now we should prepare to it.