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posted by martyb on Friday July 24 2015, @03:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the To-Serve-Man dept.

Since at least 2010, Hawking has spoken publicly about his fears that an advanced alien civilization would have no problem wiping out the human race the way a human might wipe out a colony of ants. At the media event announcing the new project, he noted that human beings have a terrible history of mistreating, and even massacring, other human cultures that are less technologically advanced — why would an alien civilization be any different?

And yet, it seems Hawking's desire to know if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe trumps his fears. Today (July 20), he was part of a public announcement for a new initiative called Breakthrough Listen, which organizers said will be the most powerful search ever initiated for signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
...
  Jill Tarter, former director of the Center for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) also has expressed opinions about alien civilizations that are in stark contrast to Hawking's.

"While Sir Stephen Hawking warned that alien life might try to conquer or colonize Earth, I respectfully disagree," Tarter said in a statement in 2012. "If aliens were to come here, it would be simply to explore. Considering the age of the universe, we probably wouldn't be their first extraterrestrial encounter, either.

"If aliens were able to visit Earth, that would mean they would have technological capabilities sophisticated enough not to need slaves, food or other planets," she added.

So, who's right, Jill Tarter, or Stephen Hawking? Will advanced aliens have no need of human popplers, or will survivors of the Centauran Human Harvest & BBQ of 2057 call this moment, "Pulling a Hawking?"

See also our earlier stories: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100 Million "Breakthrough Listen" SETI Project and More Warnings of an AI Doomsday — This Time From Stephen Hawking.


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  • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday July 24 2015, @11:36AM

    by theluggage (1797) on Friday July 24 2015, @11:36AM (#213103)

    Lifeform doesn't develop empathetic and cooperative traits, but does manage to develop communication, society, technology, pursuit of science, space programs, and interstellar travel (after a long gap following the first space programs). Lifeform then threatens humanity. It doesn't seem likely.

    I can think of a lifeform that has so far developed communication, society, technology, pursuit of science, space programs... largely thanks to a wealthy faction of society that feels a need to build nuclear missiles. Ok, so we've only dropped two atom bombs on actual people, so far. How inhibited do you think we'd be about using them against someone else's biosphere, especially if the "someone else" looked like walking lobsters or motile slime moulds?

    The real saving grace is that interstellar travel looks like it is hard: the only way we can conceive of doing it at the moment would be some sort of "generation ship" - which [i]would[/i] require a species that could live together cooperatively, in cramped situations, with strictly limited resources for long periods. You'd have to be good at sustainable living, plundering other worlds for resources is unattractive if you can't bring the spoils home, and the same technology lets you build a Dyson cloud of space habitats to fully exploit your own solar system without the massive effort of going interstellar. That does count against the sort of Ponzi-scheme viral colonisation that is the basis for the Fermi Paradox. It doesn't, however, stop the species being raging xenophobes with no empathy for anything that doesn't look cute.

    Of course, all it takes is someone to emerge from their lab and shout "Woo Hoo! I've discovered a practical Much Faster Than Light drive!" and races like ours could be spewing out into the galaxy, ready or not. Fortunately (perhaps), current mainstream physics rules out FTL - perhaps we should hope that current mainstream physics is right, keep working towards those space habitats and settle for a nice game of generational correspondence chess with any ETs we contact.

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