Stephen Hawking Warns Against Being Friendly With Aliens

this exists

by Glynnis MacNicol | 10:10 am, April 25th, 2010

» 14 comments

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans…We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”

In what I have to imagine will be one of the better headlines you are going to read today, scientist Stephen Hawking offers some sage advice on how to deal with an alien encounter — the real kind, not the Arizona kind. Truth be told, fter all the dim, earthbound news of late, close encounters of the third kind offers a nice change of newsy pace. Hawking weighed in on the matter in a series for the Discovery Channel, and really, someone should be thinking about these things. Steven Spielberg’s version below.

Aliens, Discovery, Stephen Hawking

m

Hawkings is correct in his analysis. This is why every time I see scientists beam out information into space where we are and who we are – I just cringe. Maybe sometime in the future we’ll realize how big of a mistake all of that was.
Cecelia

We’d probably sell them the Virgin Islands for some baubles and their version of the Xbox.
Blackspeare99

Yeah, we get it—-It’s a cook book!
MerryMarjie

Is it possible that beings from other worlds have already visited us and found us to be giants compared to their own physical stature? Why does an alien culture have to be bigger, stronger, smarter?

Some of us worry way too much about the unknown, when there are a lot of present-day crises that should merit our concern.
Jim R

I tend to think the ever increasing vastness of space will win the day, where distances are measured in the tens and hundreds of millions of years traveling at the speed of light to our nearest neighbors.

It is, however, always interesting to contemplate the question laid out in the Jody Foster movie, “Contact”, where they wonder if aliens would have any more compunction at snuffing us out than we would to smush an anthill.
shootfromthehip

Extra terrestrials, if they exist (and the evidence is mounting that they do) have likely been aware of us for a long time now. If they wanted us dead, they would have killed us long ago.
stevor

Think Slick Willy (Bill Clinton) conned people? Think Obummer’s “looking presidential” conned a lot of people? Well, some advanced civilization would make Willy and Barry look like amateurs.
analogkid

From Zathura:

Walter: [Asking about the alien Zorgons] What do they eat?
Astronaut: Meat.
Danny: That’s good.
Astronaut: Dude, you’re meat.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Sco-Scone/100000978170152 Sco Scone

He brings up interesting points that we needed to think about as we explore space. What if we find THEM first and we are more advanced, will we do what we have done before? Remember payback could be a problem.
Capt Kirk

Trust me guys, the man knows what he’s talking about.
http://none pyrope

Maybe we could learn something from the people in Arizona; they have found out how aliens can have a negative impact on their state and they’ve voted to do something about it…since the Federal government will not.
raveybaby

We’ll encounter our Alien relatives in the year 2012 when everyone thinks our world is coming to an end. It’s the end of life as we have known it. It will be the ” beginning ” of a new way of life ” when our ancesters come to finally meet us
annejaa

On Hawking’s point of view,its totally true what he said.Today we reached to explore the space to live better but this will bring Aliens to our lives which may have a negative impact on the world.
m3 zero
http://www.facebook.com/people/Turchin-Alexei/1562091030 Turchin Alexei

In fact passive SETI is much more dagerouse activity than METI – we could download Alien AI (ie cheme of a computer and programm to it) which will use the earth to send its copies further.

See detail in
Is SETI dangerous?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/7428586/Is-SETI-Dangerous

I am going to present these ideas on Humanity + summit