Stephen Hawking: Aliens Exist, but Talking to them is too Dangerous

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece

by Alex3917 • 16 years ago

52 41 16 years ago

timesonline.co.uk

jaybol• 16 years ago

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.

joubert2• 16 years ago

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.

hy3lxs• 16 years ago

It's an expected value thing. If the event is catastrophic enough (the Ur-Quan notice our radio signals and enslave humanity, or global warming destroys the ecosystem and we all die) then we should try to avoid it, even if the likelihood is very small.

gojomo• 16 years ago

Aren't there positive outlier possibilities, as well?

Perhaps only contact will offer hope of asteroid or gamma ray burst defense, or escaping Earth before destroying ourselves.

echaozh• 16 years ago

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.

joubert2• 16 years ago

I meant: physically.

andreyf• 16 years ago

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...

akkartik3• 16 years ago

"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• 16 years ago

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.

akkartik3• 16 years ago

I upvoted the submission. I upvote anything that gets over a hundred words out of me.

Two of my favorite explanations for the fermi paradox:

a) The space of possible ways to perceive the universe is far larger than we can imagine. If this is true, the good scenario is that we never see each other. The bad scenario is that they can perceive us, but we can't perceive them. ('Perceive' could mean 'detect', or 'have an optimized visual cortex to recognize'.)

b) They turn inward: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1224741

But I suspect the most likely reason is just that they've all learned to be silent. Not because there's an uber-predator, but just because that's the nash equilibrium.

cianestro• 16 years ago

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.

grandalf2• 16 years ago

So refreshing to read about McKenna's take. I recall in college astronomy learning about the Drake equation and finding many of coefficients needlessly restrictive. I wrote off astronomy because of that.

hugh32• 16 years ago

My theory: Stephen Hawking lost the last of his movement about eighteen months ago. Rather than put themselves out of a job (a completely paralyzed Hawking would only need one nurse) his entourage have been running his chair via remote control ever since. This is why he's given up talking about relativistic quantum mechanics and started talking about little green men.

akkartik3• 16 years ago

A more serious possibility: Hawking's just not aware of Independence Day. It's so hard to read books and watch movies that he just isn't aware of pop culture in the last 20 years. So he's coming up with ideas without being aware of 'related work'.

This is a profoundly saddening prospect, but I'm probably wrong.

nazgulnarsil• 16 years ago

is he regurgitating crap or is he trying to make the most simplistic negative scenario possible so as to draw the attention of people who might not otherwise follow? mitigating existential risk requires quite a bit of talking down to policy makers and purse-string holders who do not understand statistics, game theory, etc.

chmike2• 16 years ago

Comment on "Feed us some sort of argument on par with the Fermi paradox."

The only paradox in Fermi's paradox is the unjustified exclusion of UFOs as signs of ET existence and visit of earth.

carbocation• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.

keefe• 16 years ago

don't you keep up with current events? He's recapitulating the plot of V....

chasingsparks• 16 years ago

Actual source is a discovery channel special airing tomorrow.

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

jsz0• 16 years ago

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.

zackattack• 16 years ago

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.

hugh32• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.

ck2• 16 years ago

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

grandalf2• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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

AngryParsley• 16 years ago

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...

dhimes• 16 years ago

On the flip side, if I discovered aliens I would destroy them immediately

Apparently Hawking feels that they would do likewise.

RyanMcGreal• 16 years ago

>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.

chmike2• 16 years ago

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.

Dove• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

> "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.

bobbyi• 16 years ago

> Like murderous humans or murderous rogue states, they tend to die quickly

So the most prosperous human civilizations have tended to be peaceful? The states who colonized and expanded throughout the world were the least "murderous"?

sev• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.

Stephen Hawking: Aliens Exist, but Talking to them is too Dangerous

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