Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking

[coloumb]

Do these "geniuses" have any thoughts of their own or just rip bits and pieces from sci-fi movies/books?

Of course we as a human race are going to go looking for "trouble" - it's what we've been doing since the beginning of time. We're curious and need to know everything about anything - we hate not knowing about the unknown - and thus why the human race is where it's at today and continues to search for the answers we crave to know.

We're not that far advanced with regards to the rest of the universe - we're like ants on an ant hill in the middle of a large field in the center of nowhere. When those ants learn to launch nukes and shoot laser beams from their frikken heads - that's when it's time to worry..

 

[Pollock]

Just think how much more advanced we would be if we were constantly at war with other States? Or, at least, cold war.



I don't argue that progress can only happen during war, but right now, our best progress is born out of such. The Cold War serves as a key example in recent progress.

You're seriously suggesting that war is economically and technologically beneficial?

 

[TridenT]

You're seriously suggesting that war is economically and technologically beneficial?

Yeah... really...

The US is in like 2 wars right now, right? And... I think we're in a recession still... Oh... :thumbsdown:

 

[El Guaraguao]

This thread makes me want to play Mass Effect 2.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I don't why intelligent people insist there is intelligent life elsewhere. We have a sample point of one, and it's pretty damned hard to say just what is necessary for a technologically advanced species to develop.

So Hawkings is playing the odds based on numbers alone. That's reasonable. Reasonable isn't certain.

That said, it's likely that any alien species will be just that. Attaching human emotions, ideas or morality would be unwise. They may be utterly incomprehensible to us regardless of sophistication, and that's most likely to be the case. Human minds and dolphins do not have much in common and we're from the same planet.

What then can be said to be truly "universal"? The drive for survival. If a species didn't have that basic instinct it would have lost out to competition. Darwin would apply everywhere.

They may or may not have "curiosity" as we know the sense of the word, but our planet would be quite rare in our galaxy compared to other worlds. If they come here it would be defined by their need. They might not even recognize us as intelligent any more than an ant using aphids would be seen as such by humans.

As far as travel goes, suppose they can live in suspended animation or perhaps may be immortal by our standards. What would a few thousand years be for creatures like that?

I think Hawkings is right. Obviously our diffuse radio emissions may be missed, but purposefully trying to reach such an intelligence? I think it unwise.

 

[Fritzo]

You're seriously suggesting that war is economically and technologically beneficial?

Are you kidding? Conflict gives people motivation to innovate. Most of our best achievements were accomplished due to technology developed for war.

 

[mjrpes3]

Why is it presumed that advanced alien lifeforms will be aggressive?

Our own sense of morality and empathy, once confined to just our immediate family, has over millennia extended as our intelligence and knowledge of the world has grown. Where once we only cared about the immediate groups we live with, we soon started caring about the cities we live in, the nation we live in, to finally the entire world.

Just in the last couple of decades, humanity has developed a remarkable appreciation for other cultures that we once though inferior. When it comes to animals and ecosystems, we have a high respect for them and understand their inherent value, and so we now fight to preserve them against human encroachment.

When you look at history, it is remarkable how far we have come when we aren't under the spell of a fascist dictator or bread and circuses. From a Darwinian perspective, one might even propose that societies with an educated and free populous that can coexist with others who are different, are more "fit" and therefore more likely to survive compared to dictatorships and fundamentalism.

Reality is obviously more complicated than this, and you could cite hundreds of exceptions to the thousands that are good. But if you agree there is this general trend towards acceptance of the value of other life, then this same principle would likely apply to intelligent, alien life.

 

[TridenT]

Are you kidding? Conflict gives people motivation to innovate. Most of our best achievements were accomplished due to technology developed for war.

:hmm: By your logic we should just put a gun to every scientist's family and tell them, "now... solve [world problem], or else [family member] gets it." And really kill the family member if they take too long. :hmm:

():awe::awe:

 

[Pollock]

Are you kidding? Conflict gives people motivation to innovate. Most of our best achievements were accomplished due to technology developed for war.

Conflict is not the only form of motivation. I would argue that most of humanity's best achievements and refinements were accomplished in environments completely unrelated to war. Discovery and harnessing of electricity, antiseptics, flight, automobiles, microprocessors, what have you.

Creating military products means that you are investing capital to create something that is ultimately destroyed and of use to no one (in addition to all of the other net destruction it causes). This also means that in order to produce this military product, you have effectively eliminated a potential consumer good of equal value.

 

[Fritzo]

:hmm: By your logic we should just put a gun to every scientist's family and tell them, "now... solve [world problem], or else [family member] gets it." And really kill the family member if they take too long. :hmm:

():awe::awe:

That's not too far off of what Germany did in WWII. We got jet engines and cruise missles out of it. After WWII, the world built on their technology to produce rockets for space travel, jet airliners, guideance systems, and countless other things we enjoy today.

War only helps an economy after the fact, and only an all-out war. Not this half assed stuff we're doing in the mid-east right now. Real wars have drafts, death counts in the 1000's, fronts, and so forth

 

[GagHalfrunt]

I don't why intelligent people insist there is intelligent life elsewhere. We have a sample point of one, and it's pretty damned hard to say just what is necessary for a technologically advanced species to develop.

Because intelligent people understand math. Even if the possibility of life evolving on a planet is a billion to one and even if the possibility of that life developing sentience is a billion to one and even if the sentient life only becomes technologically advanced one time in a billion there would still be too many technologically advanced species to count. The only thing preventing us from finding them and them from finding us is the distance.

 

[RapidSnail]

Because intelligent people understand math. Even if the possibility of life evolving on a planet is a billion to one and even if the possibility of that life developing sentience is a billion to one and even if the sentient life only becomes technologically advanced one time in a billion there would still be too many technologically advanced species to count. The only thing preventing us from finding them and them from finding us is the distance.

Sure, but until we actually find them, there may be other unseen factors that prevent life from developing so readily. I know the scientifically minded like to culture the possibilities of other life forms, but lets not jump the gun until we experimentally verify extraterrestrial existence. The scientific method should not make exception for idealism.

 

[mjrpes3]

Sure, but until we actually find them, there may be other unseen factors that prevent life from developing so readily. I know the scientifically minded like to culture the possibilities of other life forms, but lets not jump the gun until we experimentally verify extraterrestrial existence. The scientific method should not make exception for idealism.

No one is saying that extraterrestrial life is 100% certain as the scientific method would require. All we are saying is that it is all but certain.

 

[Juddog]

I have always felt that life is more robust than we give it credit for. People used to thin it would be impossible for life to flourish on the bottom of the ocean until we found forms of life that adapted to the thermal vents. There have been statements that say that even the comets which come close to Earth's atmosphere and pass it by may be containing life forms.

A close examination of fungus spores show that some are resilient enough to survive the cold and vacuum of outer space.

To me the chances of life existing outside of our planet is incredibly overwhelming. Furthermore the chance for intelligent life to develop is overwhelming as well, given all of the planets, solar systems, galaxies and even superclusters. If we look how far mankind has developed over the last two thousand years, things which we take for granted nowadays would be seen as a miracle to a human two thousand years ago. Nikola Tesla once believed that we were simply going about things the wrong way in terms of communicating with life outside of the Earth.

 

[JS80]

:hmm: By your logic we should just put a gun to every scientist's family and tell them, "now... solve [world problem], or else [family member] gets it." And really kill the family member if they take too long. :hmm:

():awe::awe:

Fruit Loops Savant this one.

 

[l0cke]

This thread makes me want to play Mass Effect 2.

Yep, time to play Mass Effect.

 

[destrekor]

Are you kidding? Conflict gives people motivation to innovate. Most of our best achievements were accomplished due to technology developed for war.

This.

- Medical improvements during WWI and WWII.

- RADAR developed for WWII.

- The Jet Engine

- this little concept called space exploration was made reality due to the Cold War (the threat of war and the competition to one up the other guy is the big key)

- The Internet (DARPA Net) - cold war

- Nuclear Technology. Yes, first for a bomb, but the research made nuclear reactors a possibility.

Just to name a few during the past century.

Would these have eventually happened? Well, quite likely. Eventually we figure things out just out of wild curiosity without intent, but the intent drives progress faster. Wild curiosity without intent is a far slower method for establishing progress.

Some people are just oblivious I guess.

Is war grand and just swell? No, it absolutely sucks. But first, the pacifist mentality got nobody anywhere. Don't ignore our species history and biological nature, or our ancestry. (if you want to play the "science is bullshit" card, feel free to exit stage left.)

But where we excel, what is the fundamental basis for our species, is problem solving. Conflict and/or competition in general, causes a horde of problems to rush to the surface, and don't we just have to solve them? That's what drives the species forward, solving the next problem.

During war, the problem/question is often: how do we kill more effectively?
But the answer is not simply a new way to kill, it's also a problem for someone else. It could be argued the most important strides have been made in the goal of defense, and for recovery, and in many cases that would be accurate.

We are also a species which often fails, but we learn quite well from failure. I argue failure, if anything, is most important. War could easily be argued as a result of failure, somewhere somehow.

Our most landmark moments of social progress, immediately follow war. One could argue war was the necessary spark that illuminated the issue, featuring it as an actual problem that would have to be solved.

Does it always work out that way? Of course not... look at Africa.
Sometimes it also takes an insanely long amount of time to get a concept through our skulls. Grand, massive wars often help bring the pot to an overflowing boil, which after the mess is brought back under control (war itself), the cleanup of the mess that resulted can then get underway. Sometimes the lingering stains and then made obvious, and in the process of cleaning the new mess, you decide to take the time to try and clear up old stains. Maybe this time you have better tools to do so, or at previous times you just ignored it.

 

[Homerboy]

Wow, the hyper-arrogant, know-it-all Britisher finally accepts the fact that there is a good possibility of extraterrestrial life, and intelligent life too!

If you people used what you have inside your skulls, assuming you do have something in there, you would know that it is a mathematical certainty for extraterrestrial life to exist; even intelligent life. <snip>....

Wow.

 

[So]

You're seriously suggesting that war is economically and technologically beneficial?

So long as it's fought on someone else's territory and with relatively low casualties to your side? I think you could actually make a case. Not for the world as a whole but for the nation doing the fighting.

 

[Jeff7]

My take on stuff like our broadcasting of EM data into space:
Imagine a naive mouse on a grassy plain, which didn't know of the existence of hawks. It decides to start singing loudly while wearing a bright orange leaf as a vest.
It's instantly targeted, and eaten.

It's just natural selection - civilizations which decide that "shut the hell up" is the best way to live, those are the ones which survive to greater technological prowess. Those which announce their presence are picked off quickly, and are thus weeded out of the galactic gene pool.

 

[Chaotic42]

I don't why intelligent people insist there is intelligent life elsewhere. We have a sample point of one, and it's pretty damned hard to say just what is necessary for a technologically advanced species to develop.

So Hawkings is playing the odds based on numbers alone. That's reasonable. Reasonable isn't certain.

Wikipedia says that the number of stars in the observable universe is 9e21. If one out of every billion stars has a planet capable of evolving a species which can reach space, and one out of every billion of those actually produces such a species, the probablility of there being at least one such species is almost 100%.

 

[FelixDeCat]

They came in peace!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsXnK0ouTL8&feature=related

 

[reallyscrued]

My take on stuff like our broadcasting of EM data into space:
Imagine a naive mouse on a grassy plain, which didn't know of the existence of hawks. It decides to start singing loudly while wearing a bright orange leaf as a vest.
It's instantly targeted, and eaten.

It's just natural selection - civilizations which decide that "shut the hell up" is the best way to live, those are the ones which survive to greater technological prowess. Those which announce their presence are picked off quickly, and are thus weeded out of the galactic gene pool.

Your take is stupid. You are comparing natural selection, to the food chain, to interstellar communication? The hawk is a predator, the mouse is the prey. The hawk needs the mouse to survive. Even if the mouse does not sing, the mouse will be targeted, and may be eaten.

There is nothing to suggest that aliens out there are on the search for us, then again, there is nothing to suggest aliens out there aren't. We just don't know. Speculating is dumb unless you play it by the numbers, and that's what Hawking has done.

Furthermore, there is nothing to suggest that aliens will have a desire to destroy us just because on Earth, humans behave in the manner where the more technologically advanced civilization eradicates the other. But then again, there is nothing to suggest aliens will have desires at all, there is nothing to suggest aliens will be biological, maybe they will be mechanical. There is nothing to suggest they will be mortal, that will be doubly weird.

"An organism that can't be killed won't think killing is right or wrong, it simply wouldn't have a concept of it." -Sphere.

Let's just all go back to playing video games and watching Science Fiction movies. Going to watch the Abyss for the first time tonight. you are all welcome to join me.

 

[BlackTigers]

theres a show on discovery right now about this.

you get to listen to the speak and spell!

 

[Fritzo]

Hawking's show is on right now on Discovery Channel.