Okay, that’s a bit alarmist. But Stephen Hawking has generated a bit of buzz by pointing out that contact with an advanced alien civilization might not turn out well for us backward humans. In fact, we should just try to keep quiet and avoid being noticed.
“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,” he said.
Prof Hawking thinks that, rather than actively trying to communicate with extra-terrestrials, humans should do everything possible to avoid contact.
He explained: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”
To which I can only say: yeah. Sounds about right. If aliens were sufficiently enlightened to be utterly peace-loving and generous, it would be great to have back-and-forth contact with them. But it’s also possible that they would simply wipe us out — not necessarily in a Mars Attacks! kind of invasion, but almost without noticing (as we have done to countless species here on Earth already). So how do you judge the risk? (Dan Drezner gives the interplanetary-security perspective.)
It’s like the LHC doomsday scenarios, but for real — the sensible prior on “murderous aliens” is much higher than on “microscopic black hole eats the Earth.” Happily, a face-to-face chat seems unlikely anyway. Nothing wrong with listening in, on the unlikely chance that the aliens are broadcasting their communications randomly throughout the galaxy. Besides, a little advance warning wouldn’t hurt.
Update: I had forgotten that we had already discussed this a couple of years ago. Old bloggers tend to repeat themselves.
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A species that has the capability of interstellar travel has technology far greater than ours. Part of technology is destructive capability. As technology improves, the destructive capability of a single person increases and the cost decreases.
On our planet, a small handful of people have the destructive capability to destroy earth’s civilization. On a planet far more advanced w/ interstellar travel, it is likely that far more people have such power. A species which has survived development of technology where any member of the society can destroy their planet is one that has developed some sort of peace such that they have survived.
Any intelligent species that visits us will be far more peaceful than we are.
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the entire problem in the field, and I see it here too, is that people are projecting HUMANITY in the aliens… both for the bad and for the good!!!
the simple fact is: WE DONT KNOW aliens biology, evolutionary path, technology, logic, etc!!
thus, its PURE BULLSHIT to assume aliens wont harm us on purpose. Its also pure bullshit to assume aliens WILL harm us on purpose.
we simply DO NOT KNOW. Thus, we need to be careful.
“oh, but if aliens wanted, they have already catched our I Love Lucy or the Berlin Olympics”
Nonsense. David Brin gives a good argument against such simple minded assumption. Imagine throwing a rock in a lake, causing ripples. Now you get a laser pointer and flash it across the lake. WHICH ONE will probably be noticed? Thats tv signals against the METI program! METI flashed a laser pointer across the lake!
“Oh, but if aliens are advanced, they would have caught even the ripples”. Maybe, maybe not. Its illogical to assume aliens will SURELY see the ripples across the lake. So illogical that METI exists! If aliens will surely see the lakes across the lake, then why flash the laser pointer???????
Some of the people assuming aliens will necessarily be do-gooders and have already surpassed all their evolutionary needs are as naive as the xenophiles on the top of the Empire States Building in Independence Day… “oh, look at the bright light”…
Assuming otherwise is silly too. Although I think the scenario of aliens destroying us because of the resources ON EARTH is very implausible, the fact is that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.
AndrewS, your example is very naive and again, assumes that aliens are like humans. Aliens may have entirely different society structures. Between their own species, they may be completely bound by honor or family ties… and may have organized war like the greeks had “champions fighting each other to decide the fate of the war”. But when against other species they may be xenophones. Its just ONE example. They could be like ants. They may have eliminated all opposition in their planet, even if that cost them a nuclear winter. And the suriving gene line survived and expanded to cover the entire planet again and then to space. And they eliminate all other intelligent life forms.
People, stop assuming you know anything about how aliens may think. In the end, all your lines of thought are based on flawed logic that projects humanity into the aliens!
I STRONGLY suggest you all read David Brin´s article about the subject.
http://open.salon.com/blog/david_brin/2010/05/04/perspectives_on_seti_and_aliens
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