
Stephen Hawking: Aliens Exist, but Talking to them is too Dangerous - Alex3917
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece
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akkartik
_"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."_

Gahd, to hear Stephen Hawking regurgitating the most vapid of pop culture[1]
is extremely disappointing. I don't disagree with his point, and it's nice to
hear him say it, but come on, he's arguably the greatest physicist of our
time. Feed us some sort of argument on par with the Fermi paradox. Or at least
something more than just 'this could happen, or that could happen.' Failing
that, if you think us normals can't comprehend complexities, at least
regurgitate Greg Egan.

[1] ID4 <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629>

\---

Here's what I think. Despite the optimism of early sci-fi authors I see no
reason to assume any alien we meet will be friendly, or indeed anything but
ruthlessly self-centered. When we meet aliens we want to see them before they
see us. We want to find out where they live and never let them find out where
we live. This is a game of 'True names' on a cosmic scale, where our true name
is our location in space. To play this game you need to ante up with the
technology to spread your eggs far from the gravity well of origin. That's the
bare minimum.

To think in terms of 'single-cellular life, multi-cellular life, and
intelligence' does humanity's space program a huge disservice. It helps us
remain fat and complacent in the sense that we're at the top of the food
chain. Intelligence isn't a state to be reached; it is a continuance of
evolution. And there's an unknown number of rungs for us to climb to break out
of our niche, starting with basic space travel.

That's what I think; have at it. But at least it's more thought provoking than
Hawking.

~~~
Alex3917
I actually submitted this because I thought it was amusing how naive Hawking's
view was. Personally I think Terence McKenna's take on aliens is much more
likely to be correct, that if they exist they are probably 'not only queerer
than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.' His favorite example was
the idea of non-material non-local aliens made from pure information, likely
inspired by his DMT experience.

~~~
cianestro
True. We are tied to our few perceptive faculties, understanding, and what we
can measure from physical instruments. Science seems to be more open to the
idea of parallel realities and universes these days, which is good, even if it
isn't very pragmatic now. It is very likely inorganic life is the more
ubiquitous manifestation of intelligence simply because of all the energy
present, physical mass is the least common form. It is conceivable that
inorganic life coexists with organic life without either entity being
cognizant of the fact. Humans could even have the capacity to perceive such an
entity if there were a survival incentive to do so or if our conscious minds
were not so self-involved.

Personally, I think any civilization advanced enough to conduct interstellar
travel would be a cooperative life form (organic life that is). Is it a
coincidence that the most intelligent forms of life on earth are social and
cooperative? Really once you think about it, pretty much all war on earth was
rooted in not sharing resources, artificial boundaries, nationalism, religion,
and poor resource allocation (i.e. the price system). These are all solvable
problems that all to often get blamed on the "human nature," which I think is
a convenient excuse fabricated by our minds in a petty attempt to rationalize
our ages of suffering. Greed is environmental, not biological. Believe it or
not nomads are pretty resourceful and respectful to one another and the
environment; "modern" civilization seems to have an incentive to trade
accountability for convenience--never really living within our means (crappy
economies cut spending on space programs). We live on a small planet, and in
even smaller paradigms restricted by all the arbitrary lines we draw on stuff
we don't really understand for the sake of calling it our own. Exploring the
empty, silent void of space, if not good for anything else, should be a
humbling experience to truly discover how petty, yet fascinating our inner
space really is.

~~~
David
I was just thinking that cooperative behavior seems to have pretty good
survival value, at least for the life we can find. That, of course, says very
little about life we can't find, since we don't know how different things
might be. But it makes sense to me that a cooperative form, where different
members of the species can have different but complimentary roles, is likely
to be useful even in circumstances we can't predict. And once a species can
cooperate with itself, my belief is that it can cooperate with another. All it
takes is the insertion of a member of each species into the trust hierarchy of
the other species. (Of course, the possibility is far removed from the
realization.)

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jsz0
It seems to me we don't have anything too rare here on Earth. They fan find
their water, oxygen, nitrogen, etc much closer to home. Basically the same
reason you don't travel across the world for a cup of coffee. We could
potentially have a lot to gain from an advanced civilization -- specifically
information. It seems unlikely to me that faster than light travel is common
or economical even for aliens but maybe there's some chance of inter-galatic
quantum communication. Maybe a handy blueprint on how to teraform local
planets, cure diseases, efficiently produce endless amounts of energy, control
& repair our environment, harvest resources from local asteroids & moons,
track & divert foreign objects headed towards Earth, and so on.

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carbocation
Here he recapitulates the plot of 'Independence Day' with remarkable
precision, down to the roving band of aliens in giant ships that hop from
planet to planet, stripping each of its resources.

~~~
hernan7
Which would suggest that when it comes to reasoning about the true mysteries
of the universe, being Stephen Hawking doesn't give you much advantage over
being Roland Emmerich.

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Dove
Strangers exist, but talking to them is too dangerous. Any person you talk to
is likely to be self-centered and care nothing about your welfare; they'd love
to just take your house, your car, whatever cash you've got on you. And you
know, a lot of them can _kill_ you outright. You wouldn't believe how easy it
is.

So the best policy is to not talk to strangers. Ever. Don't look at them.
Don't let them see you. Don't let them know your name. And for God's sake
don't let them know where you live.

In fact, you know what the very safest thing to do is, when you meet a
stranger? Kill them first.

\-------------

There's no reason to expect any given alien race to be murderous. Quote the
opposite, there's every reason to expect them to be rare. Like murderous
humans or murderous rogue states, they tend to die quickly because everyone
finds the behavior so intolerable.

~~~
xenthral
> "Like murderous humans or murderous rogue states, they tend to die quickly
> because everyone finds the behavior so intolerable."

I'm not sure this makes any sense at all. What if they view us as we view
chickens? They could come to our planet and see an exotic and splendid buffet
on display for their enjoyment.

Om nom nom.

You could make the case that a lot of other species here on earth are very
smart. But they're more delicious than smart for us.

I think us humans are neat, I may be biased :)

Maybe aliens would be terribly unimpressed.

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AngryParsley
I'm not worried about aliens. I think the chances of spacefaring life evolving
on a given planet are so small that all aliens are outside our light cone. If
aliens did exist in our light cone, we would see some evidence of them shaping
the universe into structures they value. From what we can tell so far, all
those stars are shining on lifeless planets. If we saw infrared leakage from
Dyson spheres everywhere, or radio/microwave/whatever signals broadcast for
primitive beings, or anything else like that, I would assign much higher
probability to aliens existing.

Actually, if aliens were around, we would probably never have existed. Our
solar system is made up of resources that can be used to make whatever it is
aliens want to make. The fact that the earth has sat around for 4.5 billion
years without being consumed by Von Neumann machines is pretty good evidence
against aliens.

On the flip side, if I discovered aliens I would destroy them immediately.
Their values would most likely be completely different from ours. The risk to
humanity would too great to allow them to exist freely.

Edit: Tangentially-related short story:
[http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/13-TheBalticWarCD/TheBalt...](http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/13-TheBalticWarCD/TheBalticWarCD/The%20World%20Turned%20Upside%20Down/0743498747__13.htm)

~~~
dhimes
_On the flip side, if I discovered aliens I would destroy them immediately_

Apparently Hawking feels that they would do likewise.

------
andreyf
Considering the only example of life we've seen is all of these species that
co-evolved on earth, I think it's a little too ealy to understand what "life"
even means, no? After all, it might be that there are many more variations of
evolutionary paths than there are probabilities of one getting this far...

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chmike
This point of view makes much more sense than the one of skeptics. However I
believe that there is a huge technological barrier to interstellar and
interplanetary travels which provides a natural protection. Overcomming this
barrier implies mastering energy source and many other aspects to the point, I
expect, that colonizing a planet like Christophe Columbus discovery initiated
would not make any sense. A civilization would most probably build a huge
vessel providing it the optimal conditions for its long term subsistance with
the required mobility to avoid whatever obstacle it could meet. We, on earth,
can't do that and are exposed to a collision that will be very difficult to
avoid. Another reason, I beleive, is that the most important value is
scientific and technologic knowledge which yields the ability to develop the
capacity to defend one self and to control its own destiny. There is no need
to colonize a planet or kill everybody to get this. Though I agree that there
is a risk and the longer we can stay away from it, the better. The
repression/inhibition (refoulement) agressively and arrogantly promoted by
skeptics is the worst strategy to adopt. We should try to face it, understand
it, and learn whatever we can from it. I also beleive that there is a good
chance that UFOs are manifestations of ET visits.

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joubert
I agree that if they reach us first, we're probably borked. However, if we
reach _them_ first, we are logically more advanced, so we should really really
try to reach them first.

~~~
echaozh
If you can only reach them via radio, while they can reach you by starships,
you're doomed all the same, being the first to reach the other side.

The problem is, they may have already been reached by us, it's just that we
don't know yet.

~~~
joubert
I meant: physically.

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sev
_The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing
hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be
the only planet where life has evolved._ <\-- from the article

Contact's Script: (the movie, 1997)

Young Ellie: Dad, do you think there's people on other planets?

Ted Arroway: I don't know, Sparks. But I guess I'd say if it is just us...
seems like an awful waste of space.

------
vaksel
Yes aliens exist but chances of them coming to earth any time soon are slim.
The universe is huge, there are probably billions of worlds with aliens who
are hundreds, thousands and millions of years ahead of us technologically.

And the reason we haven't see them?

Well there are a few things I can think of:

1\. Maybe faster than light travel is hard to do. Sure it's nice to dream of
it in science fiction...but how hard is it in reality? Not only do you have to
figure out how to travel faster than 671,000,000 miles per second. But then
you have to figure out how to build a shield system that has the energy to
take abuse of millions bits of space debris hammering at it every millisecond.

2\. Even if the aliens had light speed, and hyperspace...you have to ask
yourself who would be there to hear us? It's only been ~80 years since the
first TV broadcasts....so there are probably only a few hundred stars that the
signal reached so far(out of trillions)...and we have no idea about signal
distortion...who knows maybe 3 light years from earth, the tv signal can't be
discerned from the universe's background noise? Even a thousand years from
now, even if the signal remains just as strong as it is on earth, the signal
would still only cover an insignificantly tiny portion of the universe.

3\. Even if they heard us, if they have light speed, they probably know of
thousands other races, making us nothing special....they might get around to
sending us a research mission...a few years from now, when the university that
found us gets the funding to send interns on a space trip. And if they don't
have light speed, it'll take them another 500-1000 years to get here.

Frankly the way I view it, is that on galactic scale we are in the
boonies...if there is any big alien empire, it exists near galactic center,
where there are hundreds of stars within a small distance.

~~~
lutorm
It's not clear that the galactic center is a good place for life to evolve.
The higher stellar density also means more supernova explosions, and there's
also the black hole at the center which likely from time to time was a very
bright source of x-ray and ultraviolet radiation.

------
etherael
The Killing Star by Charles R. Pellegrino makes a very compelling argument
that if aliens do exist, we are probably royally screwed.

Can we honestly say that evaluated from the outside as a species, we are not
pretty close to a threatening, violent, virulent plague? I think our only hope
is that the ET's are both extremely benevolent _and_ too powerful to consider
us anything approaching a credible threat. But the scenario outlined in the
book about relativistic kinetic kill weapons being a great equaliser speaks to
a dark future in the event that we ever attain the necessary technology to be
such a threat.

Hopefully by then our historical track record won't look quite so psychotic.

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chasingsparks
Actual source is a discovery channel special airing tomorrow.

<http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/stephen-hawking/>

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jaybol
I don't think they are all that mean. I mean, they stuck Billy Pilgrim in with
Montana Wildhack, so they at least seem like they will help a brother get
laid.

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RyanMcGreal
>I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources
from their home planet.

We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.

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ck2
Finding Earth in the universe would be like finding a specific single grain of
sand on Miami beach.

~~~
grandalf
That's true, but life is only the ability to replicate and does not
necessarily have anything to do with any particular element or substrate.
Intelligent life could be totally unlike anything we think of as life, and
could even exist inside the sun.

~~~
colah
_We_ might ourselves be a resources. A novel life form.

~~~
goatforce5
We'll make great pets!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpkmtweNQ-U>

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zackattack
If they've developed to the point of constructing interplanetary space ships I
doubt that they'd need Earth for its energy/resources. To consider this is to
float in a flawed paradigm. They've probably developed some neat ways to
rechannel energy that our human organs just haven't enabled us to perceive.

~~~
hugh3
The only thing I can think of that they might want Earth for is the planet
itself. It's a pretty nice, temperate, life-sustaining planet, and any species
which evolved on a planet like it might find living here a lot more pleasant
than living on an interstellar starship.

~~~
crazydiamond
If they've been living on a spaceship for many generations, the thought of
living on a planet may be quite repugnant to them.

The original mission may have been to find a hospitable planet, but
generations later the travelers just prefer their spaceship. Maybe that's
their "home" now.

