Hawking Warns Humanity to Avoid Dangerous Aliens

[Silva]

If they are as advanced as Hawking hints then why would they give a shit about us? There is a reason Italy doesn't invade San Marino. At a certain point we are just so small that we aren't worth the time.

The same reason why colonial empires like Rome and Britain have historically conquered what they considered "savage" nations.

Raw resources, and a good environment, not to mention potential "lesser" sentient beings for use as slaves, technological alliances, trade, commerce, and the military advantage of a self-preserving outpost.

If a hyper advanced people can't find an uninhabited planet to mine those resources from without having to deal with invading a planet full of sapient beings then they probably aren't advanced enough to escape their own solar system. It might not take them forever to get rid of us pesky humans but it would still be cheaper and easier and faster to just ignore us and move on.

No, that would depend on whether there is such an uninhabited planet as rich in resources and life as ours nearby enough to warrant being chosen over us. So far we haven't found anything very close by us that even really carries much potential for life, at least not using present imagery or technology. They may be more successful, but uninhabited planets don't scream "we're rich, healthy and vulnerable" quite like our media signals do. In fact, it could save them time to just come here, wipe us from the system in whatever fancy way they've figured out, then take over the newly harmless planet.

 

[DyslecticAnarchist]

Yeah He's probably right, He is Steven ?Black hole? Hawking after all.
But I would like to think that there is a big chance that they can be nice too. I mean cooperation and curiosity is tow evolutionary advantages, examples: cooperate to build hut = hut gets better, cooperate to find food = find more food, curiosity on how to adapt killing power of stone = invent spear with stone tip, curiosity abut what's behind neighbouring hill = find more resources! And so on.
So maybe they are just a bunch of super-social, mega-curious space drifting hippies who are really nice and will bring us space-weed so that we can all get stoned and discuss the secrets of the universe together!

But LSD aside, I hope that we have the time to pose a bigger threat to them before they can actually threat us.

 

[the1ultimate]

That's probably a good point. Even though he is probably one of the most trustworthy people to make an educated guess, and making few assumptions as he did, I still somehow feel that we as gamers (and film watchers and adherents to other forms of speculative fiction), are probably some of the best people to ask on the subject.

 

[NotAPie]

I...I was just watching that!
but anyway I agree with him, he makes the most sense.

 

[Singularly Datarific]

I swear I just read about this just before they posted it on this site.

 

[Haloperidol]

No way! Aliens are awesome! Were going to have a federation set up to explore space, meet new lifeforms, and boldly go where no man has gone before. There are going to be starships, and captains, and aliens who look human that rely solely on logic. Its going to be awesome.

Dude, quit watching Star Trek.

 

[Glass Joe]

Hey Earth people. I'm technically an Alien, and I just want to say that you have nothing to worry about. My people love your internet, and your governments treat us very well.

PS: Don't eat YOGURT for diplomatic reasons.

 

[Denamic]

He's right.
If humans are anything to go by, we should stay away from aliens.
I mean, we nuke ourselves, for fuck's sake!

 

[Spiner909]

Crazy guy. Also, good work on putting District 9 there. I bet he made all these conclusions from that film.

HAHAHAHA! Very good sarcasm. Steven Hawking is one of the great genius scientists. Hes going to be remembered along with Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton. So yes your intelligence compared to his is like comparing a normal human to a monkey.
I believe he is correct, we need to avoid showing all our cards to the universe, if anything think of this: Weapons we have can destroy our world, and can travel through space without humans. All we have to do is load a ship with hydrogen bombs and send it at a planet.
So what if another Species is more advanced then us?

Also we cannot measure other species at all. Kindness, anger, love emotions etc. might not even exist to another race. Meaning no friendship. They could also just kill us because we might kill them for the same reasons, the other species is another threat to our ENTIRE species.

Any one person is only as smart as we give them credit for. I don't understand this quote. are you insulting or complimenting me...?

 

[DividedUnity]

totally agree on the whole planetary defense system idea

but what makes us think that they will even reply to the signal let alone deem us worthy of contact

Most likely out of curiousity. If say, you saw a small light blinking out of the grass of your front garden would you not investigate it? Simply to find out what it is

 

[Spiner909]

Crazy guy. Also, good work on putting District 9 there. I bet he made all these conclusions from that film.

indeed, district 9 humans were, up until the films events, comeplete alien-abusing cocks of whom they(the aliens) didnt know existed until they came here on accident.

You know, when we finally do meet aliens, WE will be the evil invaders. Not them.

 

[BlindMessiah94]

The title of the story is a bit silly "Hawking Warns Humanity to Avoid Dangerous Aliens"

Well its not like we wouldnt avoid them anyway if they are dangerous, thanks for that insight stephen

OT: I agree with his views. Sending out signals is pretty silly id be glad if we werent found till we had the power to colonise other planets or interplanetary warships would be nice too

Indeed. Some type of planetary defense would be nice before we started broadcasting where we are.

We've already been broadcasting into space since the Aracibo message. So it's not like we can set up a defense before we send stuff out. Its already out. We're screwed.

 

[DarkDain]

Wouldnt our diseases and germs on earth easily exceed whatever germs the aliens have, limited to their bodies and spaceships ? Or, more realistically, our entire atmosphere be lethal to them? If they're capable of getting here, they wont need to colonize or take resources, they should capable of terraforming almost any hunk of rock into a planet to colonize, and harvest metals from all kinds of planets and meteorites. Both of these are much more practical than coming to earth for this stuff (transformers cartoon anyone?). If anything, earth and aliens would send messages back and forth, exchange information, and eventually meet in space in a contained environment. hm actually i really like Mass Effects take on alien life, in the book and game, and how earth reacted.

 

[archvile93]

God, I love that man.

And really, it's hard not to agree, I mean, by the time a species has actually developed some sort of space travel theve probably used up most of the resouces on there home planet, wether due to wasteful useage, useing the resources to build those ships, or other reasones.

What if they're so advanced that they built a device that allows them to break down any material at the atomic level and reform it into anything they want?

Then we are just more atoms to reshape?

Not likely, it would be vastly more efficient and easy to gain such materials from asteroid fields and uninhabited planets.

 

[Rigs83]

I don't agree. Aliens may not like us. But why would they want to colonize OUR planet? If they already are space-faring, wouldn't that have set up colonies on other planets, somewhere nearby their original planet? That would solve their resource problems. Plus, The Earth is already be depleted pretty rapidly, I can't think there'd be much the aliens would want on our planet.

They may destroy us, but they aren't gonna bother trying to colonize the planet.

We have a wast workforce and/or protein resources... 6 billions and counting...

Just saying.

And don't forget the tasty tasty braaaains!

 

[thePyro_13]

Gotta agreee with hawking. I mean, if we became and intersteller species and found another planet like ours with intelligent life on it, we would probably take it off them.

Why should we expect them to be any different?

 

[Cliff_m85]

But does Hawking know how magnets f*ckin' work?