Serious question: Is Stephen Hawking just fucking with us?

[Bucky]

http://www.tgdaily.com/space-features/49508-beware-alien-invaders-says-stephen-hawking">Beware alien invaders, says Stephen Hawking
EMMA WOOLLACOTT | Mon 26th Apr 2010

They say strangers are just friends you haven't met yet - but it's not a view Stephen Hawking shares. In a new documentary series for the Discovery channel, he suggests that we should be avoiding making contact with aliens at all costs.

{snip}

"One piece of advice that Professor Hawking doesn't mind sharing is the less-popular notion that it might be better if we kept our location a secret rather than being so anxious to make contact," says Discovery.

"Reaching out to the stars with our messages of curiosity and peace may only make it easier for an advanced alien mining operation to stake a claim on Earth. First contact would be a much better proposition if we can wait until we are on more equal terms."

Hawking compares making contact with alien species with Native Americans' first contact with Christopher Columbus - which didn't turn out brilliantly for the Native Americans.

"I imagine they might exist in massive ships... having used up all the resources from the planet below," Professor Hawking says.

"Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they could reach. If so, it makes sense for them to exploit each new planet for materials to build more spaceships so they could move on."

---

How'd this clown ever get labeled "brilliant"? What a load of rubbish. Man, if Roddenberry was still alive, he'd take that limey sourpuss apart with a baseball bat! If aliens were really alive and able to travel from planet to planet, they'd obviously be so superadvanced and eco friendly that they'd probably just come here to help us cure cancer & shit

[Tobin S.]

1. If aliens are anything like us I guess we could be in trouble if they found us

But I think the chances are that if life has evolved elsewhere in the universe that it would be so different that we likely would not have much use for each other, except for maybe making some biology experiments.

[Lucian]

2. I think Hawking was watching too much "Independence Day."

[RandomThoughts]

3. Yea I debunked this in an earlier thread.

First off for a race to survive tech advances it has to have compassion advances that keep it from destroying itself. As tech advances, spread of thought is faster, so snowballs and cascade reactions happen faster, and the power for one person to do change goes up, so it requiers more people of compassion to keep a bad person with a big megaphone from destroying the planet.

The other point that they would need resources totally disregards better tech. The simplist atomic assemblers would make resources not an issue, and there is a variety of ways to find near unlimited energy if multidimensionalism is used, which should be pretty close to warp or folding space tech level.


So I disagree with him, besides, we been sending radio signals out into space for years.



Imagine the linguistics needed to translate culture and language from a form like TV, LOL.

I thought Galaxy quest was a great movie.
LOL

Disclaimor before playing the clip. I disagree with the tenacles, and it has Rickman, named Alexander in the movie, and I just played a Die hard clip where he is the bad guy, and the rock monster is spaced, but it is a good movie and funny.

But this clip has a very touching moment from Rickman in it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drGlg0fWunQ


LOL its like an opposite day clip LOL And because I don't play the game.

[Bucky]

4. But it's odd Hawking isn't saying "maybe" to all this. It's like: Bam! They're gonna eat us. Period.

I think he's lost it.

[Deep13]

11. He is making it clear that it is a hypothetical.

He says "maybe" and "I imagine."

[TreasonousBastard]

8. You debunked Hawking? Wow! You must be sumpin' else.

[RandomThoughts]

17. Thank you for correcting my overstatement.

I offered a counter argument, that in my perception points out flaws in his statement, only based on the article posted, he may have a fuller argument.

I think he is making the more advanced versus less advanced leads to domination.


But he has the same mind frame that is woefully to spread around, that advancement is intelligence, not compassion. If you just change that mind frame, and can argue it, it changes the arguments.


And the argument for resources makes a low tech assumption.

[TreasonousBastard]

19. I think he has a sense of humor about all this. There has been this...

fascination with life elsewhere, not in itself a problem, but with it comes an assumption that meeting that life will be a joyful occurence. It may not be.

The only models of evolution or civilization we have are our own, which is largely eat or be eaten, and we humans have either deliberately or accidentally managed to decimate far too many species not immediately useful to us. Those useful to us we have enslaved and/or eaten. We haven't been terribly kind to our own species, either, although we often draw the line at eating each other.

It is a curious assumption that any life "out there" would follow some different path, so maybe we shouldn't be so anxious to meet it. Even if they are all sweetness and light, perhaps they have lessons to teach us that we don't want to hear.

(I was the Vogons, wasn't it, who destroyed Earth as one of the worst galactic pigstys?)

[redqueen]

20. No, I think it was just cause we were in the way. (nt)

[TreasonousBastard]

32. You're right- my occasionally faulty memory now says it was...

a cleaning crew that screwed up the schedule and came back 6,000 years early, leaving Simon Wagstaff to eternally explore the universe asking why we are born to suffer and die.

It's been years since I read either of them, so confusion is inevitable.

[Deep13]

10. What if that compassion is reserved for their own species?

What if they evolve to a point where they do not consider mere biological critters to be worthy of compassion. After all, life can be seen as nothing more than a complex chemical reaction that affects certain kinds of rocky planets.

And what if the particulars of their biology do not involve compassion. It seems to me that compassion is an outgrowth of a long nurturing process offspring. What if they are like bugs who lay bizzillions of eggs and never give them a second thought?

[Bucky]

14. You're not describing a species inclined to rational thought

The weakness & vulnerability of humans, along with their low birth rates, made it necessary that they evolve compassion, cleverness, sneakiness, treachery, xenophobia, curiosity and cooperative impulses all in about equal strengths in order to survive and dominate their environment.

A species that lays billions of eggs is not going to be environmentally suited for evolving sensibilities, which lead to wits, which lead to reasoning, which leads to technology. A species whose survival strategy is based on laying bunches of eggs has no need for rational thought--rational thought would keep them from surviving as a species--ergo they don't develop sophisticated tool making and they don't get out into space.

[RandomThoughts]

22. I actually included that exact point in an earlier post.

If you make the argument of compassion, then the argument of larger compassion circles is easier, and xenophobic aliens would be less likely to explore.

There is the life for life argument, if the case is made that it is them or us, in the idea that we have something they need. But that is a long shot, since it would require some form of biological compatibility or environmental at least. And it also does not assume that a race that could travel would not have handled those problems, especially since solving those problems is a key component of a race not self destructing. It also excludes the possibility of positive interaction as a need.

The real argument is the one made in Star Trek IV and The Day The Earth Stood Still, where they think the earth would also belong to other species, that is the other side of the empathy circles argument, and more likely if you accept the higher compassion argument. Really big empathy circles that puts plants and animals on planet on equal value as people.



The bug argument.

You might not call it compassion, but the ability for a bug to form a hive requires the same thing, working together, caring for others in collective, and not fighting amongst one another. And intellect to create travel, pretty much assures the ability of self aware thought on those concepts, so they would think of other types of life.

your bug analogy actually is more the lack of value of life argument, but that argument includes self life. In your argument they would not see their own life more valuable then another also. Lack of compassion requires an imbalance of thoughts of self and thought of others. The egg laying bug that just dropped mass eggs, would also not have the self survival higher then the lack of concern for one larva or another.

The true collective is actually more compassionate to others, with less feelings of self first. hence the V where the top is the most people, and religions like Christianity and Buddhism, where it is important to care for others not just one self.

Basically the only real argument would be a single feeling of self within the collective without concept of others, which is extreme xenophobia, I think Voyager Star Trek put the extra dimensional things in that category. In that show it was so much that they could not handle other existence. That is an argument, but I really think that would result in borg like absorption into the collective. Mainly because they would have had to have had contact with some form of some thing that lives, plants or crystals or something, and from that recognize some external existence. And then deal with that existence, but their is an arrogance argument if they never had to develop any skill of dealing with anything but self.

An arrogance of self goes against that self surviving, unless it is the only thing in its existence or only one conscious. A single consciousness, you would have to think of as just one person. that is really interesting because concepts of other things would be really under developed at that point. But again it would seem that would lead to borg like actions, probably where those story lines come from.

[old mark]

5. Judging others by our human history, I'd say he is correct. We just might

meet the settlers looking to take the good land from the Indians, who is us...


m

[LeftyMom]

6. I think the point he's making is that the risks outweigh the benefits in is mind,

because the assumption that moral development parallels technological development and any advanced beings would be benevolent is inherently flawed.

As a practical matter, we've been sending signals that scream 'semi-intelligent life over here' out into space for the better part of a century, not as part of SETI but in routine communications like radio and TV, so his 'let's lay low and hope nobody notices us' approach wouldn't work anyhow. Even if we were to go to radio silence tomorrow somehow, we've already sent out plenty of evidence that we exist and taken that risk.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. Why not assume a superior species is looking for a food supply...

or worse?

Wasn't it Roddenberry who gave us Kingons, Romulons, and the Borg?

[Deep13]

9. Presumably evolution works the same way for aliens as it does for us.

That means that intelligent aliens are also likely to develop territorial and competative instincts. The same ambition that will push them to explore the universe may also push them to exploit it.

[AllenVanAllen]

29. This reminds me of a quote from the movie "Starman"

We are... interested in your species...You are a strange species, not like any other -- and you would be surprised how many there are. Intelligent but savage. - Starman

[KG]

12. i seriously doubt that in the vastness of the universe, lifeforms from different planets will ever

find each other.

that said, even if a visitor was benevolent, i would think a danger could lie at say the microbial/viral level. a disease neither life form would have a remedy for. something along the line of what happens in the novel 'war of the worlds'

[ChickMagic]

13. He's a theoretical physicist

This falls within the purview of the theoretical. However, I think he took Avatar as a documentary and didn't realize it was we who were mining Pandora.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

15. I think he's gone soft in the head.

He's been kind of screwy for years now.

[petronius]

16. Wasn't it Clarke who said that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?

I'd say the same thing applies here: genius of a particular level becomes indistinguishable from mindfuck.

However, I'd agree with Hawking that it's always better to know about them before they know about us (no matter who "them" is, or what scale of encounter you're talking about)...

[TZ]

18. too funny.

I can just hear this crowd going off on Einstein and his dipshit theory of relativity had message boards been around then. Come on. ANYBODY who thinks Stephen Hawking is dumb or crazy isn't paying attention. What would a theoretical physicist know about speculative science anyway! I love arrogant keyboard warriors..Wow, I don't understand what that guy says so it MUST BE STUPID!!
Internet disinformation highway strikes again.

[LeftyMom]

23. Americans are weird, we have a love/hate relationship with experts.

We can't do basic household tasks without watching HDTV to find out what kind of brushstrokes to do or what grain of sandpaper to use. But we know more about SETI than the world's foremost living theoretical physicist.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

25. Einstein's theory of relativity is actual science.

Hawking is no more qualified to speak on the motives of aliens than any of the rubes from the woo woo forum.

Why? Because it isn't science and hasn't got anything to do with theoretical physics.

[Bucky]

26. Do you honestly not recognize what he's describing? It's the plot from ID4.

If this isn't a hoax, then it's Hawking trying to pull a fast one. You don't have to be an "arrogant keyboard warrior" to see thru a goofy statement. You just have to not yield unquestioning acceptance whatever word come out from an authority figure.

[Kali]

31. don't understand what he says?

seems pretty easy to understand to me. And since it is in the realm of things NOBODY knows much about - I mean c'mon alien behavior/motivations? - then it seems reasonable there could be many views. Hawkings may be off the charts brilliant, but he really doesn't know anything more about this than anyone else. It's ALL speculation and projection.

It isn't saying Relativity is stupid, it would be more like disagreeing with Einstein's saying blonds have more fun.

[struggle4progress]

21. No reason to expect an external civilization with a slight technical advantage over us

would treat earthlings better than Attila and his pals treated their neighbors or better than the Europeans treated the Africans or the Indians or the Amerindians in the colonial period

But the universe is large and diffuse, and there's little reason to expect anybody -- hostile or friendly -- to be within easy reach

[Bucky]

28. Thank you. If we meet them here, then they won't have a "slight tech advantage"

But the far more probably scenario is that if any contact ever happens, it will come on the heels of a couple of centuries of painfully slow radio communications. We'll know who we're dealing with long long before we meet face to face.

[struggle4progress]

30. It's really impossible to know. The Hawaiian islands were populated

by people using technology more primitive than that of the Europeans whom later "discovered" them there, and so it is not unthinkable that somebody out there is probing space the same way, using relatively rudimentary technology. Somebody from our galactic neighborhood, who we don't know about, might presumably stumble onto us here, with technology not too much better than our own -- if one is willing to imagine organisms that can survive for time scales much much longer than our life times and is willing to assume they are very very lucky in their explorations and use energy rather efficiently. Based on what we know about physics, and the space near ours, this seems extremely unlikely, at best

[MrsBrady]

24. After taking 2 semesters of modern astronomy

in the last year....I'm no expert of course.

While to say it's impossible for there to be life elsewhere is stupid. It's possible. Were here.

And while it's questionable to even call ourselves intelligent...

The fact that we are even here now is a freaking miracle (real or matter of speaking). It's a precarious balance that we take for granted. Distance from the sun, seasons, axis tilt, human evolution, geological evolution, etc...

The likely hood of some other "advanced" civilization seems to me to be greatly less and less likely.
Since the "stuff" in the universe is all about the same age, some alien race would have had to have a couple of million years of development on us, due to better circumstances in their planetary evolution.
And also a better means of getting around and blocking all that radiation in deep space.

I'm not so much on the alien band wagon anymore. I'm not saying it's impossible.

Anyway, just my opinion. Doesn't change my love for Star Trek and Star Wars, but hey...they are stories. That's why it's called science FICTION.

[MilesColtrane]

27. Super advanced, yes, but not necessarily empathetic.

You are assuming human emotions and motivations in projecting the possible actions of alien races.

Maybe they are religious types who see species unlike themselves as abominations. Maybe they consider the state of our intelligence and civilization similarly to the way we think of insect colonies.

Hey, I kind of feel bad when I have to kill a mound of fire ants, but it doesn't stop me from doing what needs to be done to keep them out of my lawn and house.

[Sky Masterson]

33. I'm with the Hawking dude on this.

(I hate to buy in to the whole "You aint from around here boy?" Schtick.. but..) :hide:

[Electric Monk]

34. Not us, just you in particular.

:)