I think Steven Hawking has some valid points, but I feel he's wrong. One of his problems is that ironically (coming from me) I think he's looking at it too rationally and logically.
I do not think that a civilization with space travel is nessicarly going to be more advanced than us in all respects (weapons, medicine, etc...). The reason being is that I do not think science progresses in a truely linear fashion, a lot of it has to do with imagination and what ideas capture the minds of the scientific community. For example "laser technology" started with the idea of people melting other people and human structures with focused beams of light, much like a kid would fry an ant on a sunny day. Along the way to achieving that somewhat nonsensical goal (there are much more efficient ways to kill people and break things) we discovered tons of technologies ranging from opics, to holograms, to laser communications, to the use of lasers in surgery. None of which were planned when people first started messing around with lasers.
Ironically Space Travel could be discovered based on research in another area that never captured humanity's imagination. A happy accident along another line of thinking. Looking at how science has developed, and how much has been discovered while looking into other things, I find this to be fairly likely.
I have no objections to sending signals and such out into space, BUT I do think we need to spend more time on the space program, and also unifying the planet (pleasantly, or not so pleasantly). Simply put it's impossible to solve all of our problems on Earth with the resources we have here, going into space is nessicary to find more resources irregardless of how long it takes. I find the odds of humanity dying out from being too focused on terrestrial concerns to be far greater than either an alien invasion, or wiping outselves
out in some massive war. Simply put if we keep argueing between nations, instead of creating a global goverment, and fighting over resources that are here and how to distribute them fairly (it's impossible, there are too many people for everyone to have a decent standard of living), we'll use up everything we have, lose the abillity to develop space travel, and then be stuck here doing whatever when our sign dies a billion or so years from now.
At any rate, when it comes to things like SETI or other programs I do not think the risks are unreasonable.
What's more Hawking's examples of what happened when the Native Americans were discovered by civilized man are somewhat scewed by modern politics. Because Columbus treated savages like savages in his journal, people nessicarly assume exploitation and murder started immediatly. That is FAR from the truth, indeed relations were pretty friendly for a long time, which is what things like "Thanksgiving" are in memory of.
Problems with the Natives started when you had issues with differant factions deciding to side with differant European powers. A lot of Tribes signed up with The French since they offered the best deal, and then The French lost their bid to take over America, leaving their native allies behind with a very POed enemy. Even so you still had friendly relations with tribes like "The Mohegans" which ended when they pretty much started making unreasonable demands/got greedy. Chief Uncas, despite the war, is still a legend throughout Connecticut with places named after him (like Uncas' leap, where he rode his horse over a waterfall).
By the time you got to the Western-type period, of people treating Indian like vermin and chasing them off land we wanted to occupy and such, a lot had already happened to get things tot hat point. Today's politically correct history doesn't really do much to provide a balanced accounting. What's more it's also fundementally inaccurate in a lot of ways where even some history books try and say Indians had no concept of land ownership, which is far from the truth given that the first tribes we contacted here on The East Coast were nothing like West/Midwestern indians, they lived in dwellings like longhouses, had farms, and other things. A point made if you ever visit say the Pequot Museum or talk to the tribal members
in the area.
The point of this rant is that it's a bad example. I suppose things could turn out the same way if say we met multiple alien factions and then sided with the wrong one and they left us hanging or whatever.
He's basically relying on a degree of human callousness which I don't believe actually exists (if it seems to, your typically not hearing both sides) to make a point.
Oh sure, an Alien culture could be totally xenocidal or whatever, but I don't see that as being all that likely.
Besides which as ironic as it sounds, one problem with many theories of Alien Invasion is that the US alone has enough firepower to destroy the world 10x over. One thing that would probably hold back an invasion that was out to colonize our planet or take our resources is that before we went down we'd be likely to decimate our own planet out of spite so they
would get nothing.
, besides it doesn't matter, if we found a "Human" on Mars...he would indeed be a Martian, and an Alien to Earth if he was 1) Birthed on Mars and/or never been to Earth. And apparently by all this science calculations the fact we are even alive is just a lucky 1/1000000000000000000000000000000000000000 chance. Whatever the reason may be, if it happened once, I'll believe that it can happen again, but truely doubt any "Aliens" we find will look anything close to humans.
