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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 q.kontinuum on Saturday July 25 2015, @07:56AM

    by q.kontinuum (532) on Saturday July 25 2015, @07:56AM (#213442) Journal

    I'm not cat-/dog-/whatever-hater (for large groups of "whatever"). Animals act on instinct and whenever they see a personal advantage. There is no real practical need for pet-cats to hone their hunting skills. For many dogs (as for a certain type of human), serving their master seems to be a personal advantage somehow.
    Human behaviour developed by an evolutionary process as well. Humans do not decide to be evil. Just like animals, most of us are what we are, looking for our advantage, sometime for the advantage of our group of people, sometimes for our individual advantage, some with more empathy, some with less. Even this empathy is not a feature we decide to have, but an effect of mirror neurons, which evolved because they gave a distinct advantage to group-survival and development.
    Very few of us really think about philosophy and take it really serious and consciously decide to try to make the world a better place based on such thoughts, but I doubt you could find any person outside action movies who consciously decides to make the world overall bad just for the sake of it. Even if you could, such people would be statistically insignificant.

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