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Politics : Evolution
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To: Solon who wrote (9670)11/10/2010 4:58:57 PM
From: Jacques Chitte  Read Replies (1) of 69300
 
I am a bit puzzled and disappointed by Hawking's item 2. It seems unlikely, but more surprisingly to me, it seems unimaginative.

An alien race or nation that would see our technical infrastructure as a resource - prey - would necessarily be not far advanced from our own. Man is currently nowhere near having a starfaring capability. China will need at least a decade to make good on its declared intent to sendpeople to the lunar surface. Mars is out of reach except to small robot probes. Human starships, let alone large colony/factory vessels, are ideally in the haze of the far future. I consider it very unlikely that, if aliens are indeed targeting Earth, they would be in that narrow stratum of technical advancement that would make stripping our world at all practical.
Chances are that the aliens are so advanced that their interest in us would be biological. They would not see us as peers, just as we do not consider baboons our peers. I would just hope that they don't regard us as we do, oh, lobsters or tuna.
I would have thought that an intellect of Hawking's weight would not be mired in such an anthropocentric and somewhat hackneyed conceit. (The parallel to the movie "Independence Day" has already been drawn and seems rather apt. Hollywood is not known for pushing the boundaries of imagination.) More likely yet imo (assuming aliens on their way) is that they are so different from us that there would be no significant overlap of their interests with ours.
My variant on Hawking's idea of aliens portrays him as an optimist. I cannot stop fearing that the dumbest thing we have done to our species and our home system is to be conspicuously noisy in the electromagnetic spectrum.
cheers js
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