Who knows for sure - perhaps Mathis is an agent "chosen in order to misdirect you from the truth".
Funny, alkemhst, in the same paper MM addresses your question:
Some will say, “What about you? How do we know you aren't another posted guru, planted to
misdirect us?” Well, I'm not famous, am I? I am not on TV, am I? I am not promoted by some studio or consortium or publisher or think-tank. No one is sending you here: if you got to these pages you got here on your own, probably by lucking out in a websearch.
BTW I found the whole paper
http://mileswmathis.com/guru.pdf to be very interesting and to some degree illuminating – for my own progress in the work.
To the Hawking replacement, I am not convinced. Why? Chiefly, the alleged motive by the Physics PTB (to keep him as a "poster boy" distraction) is IMO a weak one. I can think of easier and less risky ways to accomplish the same goal.
Second, as alkhemst remarks, MM apparently cherry-picked the pictures on which he based his "conspiracy theory".
So, based on my familiarity with MM's work, here is my opinion.
MM has many talents, one is painting. He is a keen observer. To produce something like this
http://mileswmathis.com/cameo.html requires among other things a sharp and well-trained eye.
As seen with his other gifts and talents, he likes to show them, sometimes even to "show off". Call it vanity if you will.
So, he happened to notice discrepancies between two of Hawking's pictures (discrepancies which apparently nobody else had noticed before), analyzed them closer and, ignoring several other plausible explanations, went straight to the replacement theory.
IMO to him, the right or wrong of his replacement theory takes second seat, and he explicitly tells us so.
A similar case is his John Lennon Lives! conjecture, where he compares teeth, moles, ears and what else and comes to a (to me) questionable conclusion.
My moral of the story, I keep my admiration for MM's talents: sharp mind, keen observer, impeccable articulation, rebellious attitude (
the babies), but throw out Hawking (
the dirty bathwater).
.A