Contacting Aliens 'A Bad Idea', Warns Hawking

Aliens are very likely out there, according to eminent scientist Stephen Hawking - but we should keep quiet and hope they don't notice us.

In a new documentary for the Discovery Channel, the theoretical physicist warns against making contact with any extra-terrestrials.
Professor Hawking, who retired as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge last year, claims such space life would only abuse Earth's resources and move on.
"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet," he said.
"I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet.

"Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach."
"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."
The documentary, which begins on May 9, explores the British scientist's vision of the universe.
While most aliens were in all probability simple organisms such as microbes, Professor Hawking said it would only take a few intelligent ones to spell disaster for humans.
"To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," he explained.
"The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."


Anyone want to have their say ?

 

Isn't that just the plot to Independence Day?

 

Ye it is,

But I've always thought the Voyager probe was a bad idea.

 

This is already being discussed here:
http://trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=119798

 

Other than--apparently--every physicist who ever had their names in a newspaper?

Seriously: Stephen Hawking is very intelligent person, but he is--last time I checked--a physicist, not an anthropologist or an historian or even a biologist or anything else that imply any kind of knowledge whatsoever about what an alien civilization might develop into.

 

Well, according to the random specials I've been seeing on the History Channel the last few days, aliens have already been here and gave ancient humans levitation technology, so...I think we're safe.

The HISTORY Channel. History. That means it happened.

 

It's a bit of a 1950's idea. Maybe they would just want to explore. I think they would have resources enough of their own and enough technology.

It's a bit xenophobic.

 

Point taken, but I have my doubts that people with those credentials would be any better off making predictions.

Alien civilizations are by definition ALIEN. We have no frame of reference to guess at their beliefs, motivations, or psychology. NONE. Maybe they follow a religion that requires them to kill any other sentient beings they encounter because they developed alongside another sentient race that tried to kill them. Maybe they have no emotions at all. Maybe they would chose to worship us as gods, maybe they'd chose to keep us as pets, maybe they'd enslave us or ignore us all together. Maybe they'd want to eat us, or maybe they're just here to teach us how to cook. All this supposition about how they'd have to be peaceful because to get to space they'd have to have got over their own conflicts and learned to be peaceful is MORE bullshit. We don't know how their brains work, how their societies might be structured, how strong their drives for self preservation are, what their history is....

The only things we know for certain is that a sentient alien creature needs a way to transmit and receive ideas and perceive the world around them. They probably need a way to move around. The rest you can fill in the blanks.

Any time anyone claims they know how a fucking alien civilization and mind would behave better than someone else is bullshitting you. Their guess is as good as mine or yours or anyone else's. Yes, that includes Hawking's guess.

 

I used to assume that any civilization capable of crossing interstellar distances would be benevolent, or at worst indifferent. But I have been reconsidering lately.

One thing we have to remember is that being alien doesn't just mean that they look different, but they also think different - their minds are alien. Their concepts of ethics and morality could be completely different.

For example, in Peter F. Hamilton's science fiction novels Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, the human race encounters an alien race called the Primes. Their way of thinking is so different from ours that negotiation is impossible. The Primes simply see other life as competition that needs to be eliminated.

 

2012 folks, its going to be a seachange have no doubt, The Pope talked about aliens, now Stephen Hawkings, first contact is going to happen in two years.

 

I think it takes some effort and concentration to get off a planet. It takes a lot of technology and a lot of power and I don't think bug eyed monsters would come here to rape our women and impregnate them and enslave us.

I think the reason we haven't been contacted yet, is because we are so savage, still fighting wars and killing each other. Even Trekkies are, though some of them get it a bit more than others.

That recent attempt at communication, where an ADVERT was beamed into space ,at another system, made me laugh!

As if they would want to buy anything of us! Even the Ferengi would laugh!

 

Maybe they put all that effort in due to a religious prerogative that compels them to exterminate or convert all alien life.Maybe a species that views all other sentient life as competition, maybe their insanely xenophobic and become physically ill at the very thought of our existence. We have no idea.

Where did the notion that having technology = morality? The Third Reich was arguably the most technologically advanced culture on earth during WW2. Imagine they'd won the war, conquered the globe and eventually went out into the stars. How do you think a society with those attitudes would treat aliens of a similar or inferior technological level?

 

Since you're from the future why not just tell us what happens?

 

The constant factor in all games of life is survival.

If a species is unable to survive, or is reckless to the point of apparently not having the will to survive, then do we think that is an advanced species?

Even if an alien civilisation is based on ideologies -- lets say benevolent ideologies -- then they should know that those ideologies will not survive if they are physically defeated. Everything a species is and represents is tied to the survival and perpetuation of fragile material things.


I often think that life beyond ones home planet would just be nature on grander order of magnitude. Humanity may rule on earth, but sailing through the galaxy would be as a minnow in a vast ocean. We could run into nothing. We could run into sharks.

 

There is a great deal more evidence and reason to believe that Hawking is right than there ever has been to support or defend Roddenberry's grandiose and utopian notion that if life similar to ourselves exists those creatures would cooperate with us.

 

Please direct us to where such evidence can be found. I find it rather difficult that given the size of the Milky Way alone an intelligent species, capable of traveling such large distances, would need/want/desire to wipe us out.

Seriously -- the Earth is the only place with resources

 

On the contrary, Hawking's position is based on a few flawed assumptions:

1. Intelligent life elsewhere in the universe will have biology compatible with our ecosystem.
2. Earth has resources that can't be found elsewhere.
3. An intelligent species capable of traveling between stars would find it more expedient to enslave/exterminate the rare pocket of intelligent life they come across rather than solve their resource problems technologically.

Say they do come to Earth for resources. What is it they could possibly need that they can't find elsewhere, even in our own solar system? Liquid water? Free oxygen/nitrogen/carbon dioxide? Items 1 and 2 are closely linked: if what they require to survive are the same things we require, then their biology is compatible with our atmosphere and they can't easily find similar conditions elsewhere. Those are some pretty big leaps, in my opinion.

Point 3 is a criticism often leveled at ID4, but can apply to any alien invasion story where the ETs show up to plunder Earth. If you're smart enough to traverse the gulf between stars, why aren't you smart enough to solve your resource problems?

I don't discount that aliens we encounter might be hostile, but I find it difficult to believe they would want something as mundane as our planetary resources. Religious fervor or just plain warmongering/eliminating the competition make a hell of a lot more sense.

 

I don't buy resources either, it would be easier to farm their own (or our) asteroid belt and Oort cloud for natural elements and water. Unless that resource is us for some unknown reason, though I'm not aware of any natural chemical we produce that couldn't be replicated through sufficiently advanced technology.

But the "aliens that advanced wouldn't X" line of thinking is crap. We simply have no idea what their morality or motivations would be or if they would be hostile to us or not.

Maybe they'd have no interest in exterminating us, maybe they'd just quarantine our planet and shut off our electricity permanently. Maybe they'd introduce a virus into our population that makes us stupid and servile and unthreatening.

The constant reference to alien contact as a parallel to the Spaniards in South America or the British in Africa and over resources is a pretty stupid one. They're alien beings! Like I said we have NO idea what their cultural or ethical or moral motivations would be. There doesn't have to be anything reasonable or practical about their behaviour either, humans behave irrationally all the time, for example.

And there is no evidence for or against Hawking's claims. However, it seems to be a statement made to refute Carl Sagan's claim that advanced beings couldn't logically want to harm us, given that they'd obviously avoided killing themselves to progress to the point that they've attained space travel. There's nothing logical about that assessment at all, but it's often held up as some kind of statement of truth. Sagan was no more or less qualified to comment on the issue than Hawking is.

The only other sentient being in the galaxy might be a planet-covering gestalt consciousness in goo-form that absorbs solar power for sustenance and wiped out the competing species on its own planet a million years ago. It's decided that it wants to reach out and cover other planets because it feels cramped, so it spends a thousand years figuring out space travel, takes a piece of itself and sends it out into the cosmos. One lands here and proceeds to try to kill everything because that's just what it does. It doesn't even have a frame of reference that indicates it could or even should communicate directly with the local indigenousness life forms because it has never encountered beings other than itself. It's really as smart as a thousand people put together but to us it just behaves like a bacteria or fungus or something. Maybe we don't make contact with the intelligence, maybe we just contact its technology and that ends up badly. Or maybe they're like the aliens from Babylon 5 or THGTTG, moving about the universe without even noticing we're here or we get eliminated in order to make a galactic highway. Maybe they're like the Necromongers from Riddick, conquering or exterminating anyone who doesn't join them out of religious beliefs.

We're way too used to thinking about aliens who are like humans with human problems but with ridges on their noses.

edit: We also take for granted that they'd have to be so much further ahead of us technologically and morally in order to travel in space. I have no way of knowing, but maybe we're just fifty or a hundred years (less?) away from making the scientific breakthroughs necessary for practical space travel. Are we going to be perfect beings in 100 years? 500 years? Are the aliens we meet going to be representative of their entire species? Maybe they're peaceful as a while, but what if we meet the alien equivalent of Al Queda?

 

Exactly. Everyone needs to stop the fanboy fanwanky line of thought when it comes to possible sentient extra-terrestrial life.

 

I'm thinking Hawking has an iTunes season pass for V.