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Just my opinion but I don't care how "smart" the quadriplegic fear monger is. Yes I'm sure there are "bad" ET's out there but I would hope that anything able to make it here is ABOVE what humans have demonstrated....several hundred frickin' years ago!!!

Likening our first encounter with ET's to Columbus raping the Pigmies is a bit narrow of view in my opinion.

Not saying it can't happen but that's just too 1950's for me.

Big breath in, exhale.... relaaaax.

The irony is that we have already made contact with aliens, they're within. We are also doing a pretty good job of ass-raping the earth without the help of extra terrestrials looking to plunder the earth of her resources.

"don't talk to the aliens, son. You'll just encourage them."

Poor guy's never smoked DMT. Imagine his career if he did.

(The below assumes that *ALIENS* exist in regular spacetime as we do, and are not some 5th dimensional ascended angelic beings who love us.)

Here's what you can bet on.....if Earth contains, in abundance, ANY natural resources considered scarce or valuable to an alien, space-faring species, you can expect to bend over and grab your ankles within a day of first contact. Yeah, I'd rather believe that aliens will be enlightened and well-meaning too. But if you believe in the microcosm --- > macrocosm, then we can expect there are 'others' out there who aren't at all that different from us.

Or, flip the scenario. We encounter a civilization that is a few generations behind us technologically and they have raw materials that we value. If the past is any indication whatsoever, we would (unfortunately) take advantage of them. We treat each other like shit, why would we extend compassion to ALIENS?

Sorry, I'm gonna go with the demonstrably super-intelligent quadriplegic fear-monger.

Know that for a fact? Or just an assumption?

Assumption, I've never talked to Mr. Hawking but I think he'd have a bit of a different view on aliens if he did. Following the patterns, that's all.

Well, what we see in hyperspace does seem 'alien,' but not biological and/or existing in standard 4D spacetime. Maybe I am debating semantics here... While I have no evidence whatsoever, I intuit that what we encounter in hyperspace exists in another field or plane of existence....somewhere outside the boundaries of what we think of as the universe. I would assume that what Mr. Hawking is referring to when mentioning aliens are biological entities elsewhere in the known universe.

Just thinking out loud.....

IN other words, nothing in hyperspace seems terribly threatening to my biological existence, whereas it is not hard for me to imagine things elsewhere in our 4d spacetime that WOULD be threatening to my biological existence.

I didn't know Columbus raped pygmies. I knew he was an imbecile, and a rotten bastard, but I didn't know he was a pygmy raper. There goes the last little (tiny actually. only 'cause he wore cool hats) bit of respect I had for him.

Pokey the Disenchanted

On a side note... I believe the reason behind Hawking's fearmongering is post-traumatic stress after Obama tried to strangle him to death.

Careful now. That photo almost made me fall out of my chair.

What's he doing?

Pokey

Haha, same here! He's trying to put a medal on Hawking's neck, which apparently isn't that easy.

one thing i liked about the movie avatar was that it was the 1950s scifi role reversal. Instead of aliens invading earth to exploit its resources we are the aliens invading another world to rape it of its resources. Honestly though i think that we have to figure out how to be wave to travel through space time at great distances ie between solar systems, and i think inorder to do that it requires altering consciousness as a step. some times i wonder if DMT allows us to see particle in their wave forms. Any who all just assanign ponderings...
my only question for hawkins on this would be, why waste the time thinking about it when we have real problems to solve?

It's just what he does, I guess. Academics are paid to think of crazy shit, with no requirement to provide any usefulness or concrete solutions. They leave the detail to the engineers ... I reckon it's got to rank up there with top jobs in the world, really. Just think about shit all day. Excellent.

Actually, the best job title I ever saw was in a music college. There was a woman there who's door had a brass plaque which simply said, "Head of Jazz". How cool is that.

In the Natural History Museum in London, they have a convention of informally naming someone for the species or even genus in which they have expertise. The higher up the chain you go, the more senior you are - so 'plant man' far outranks 'potato woman'. Then popularity plays a part as well - 'dinosaur woman' is more influential than 'fish man' even though fish man has more species etc. (Fish Man is actually a very funny, super cool dude who re-pickled Damien Hirst's shark when it started going off because the great artist had used the wrong pickling stuff ...)

I love this set-up, and am convinced, somewhere in a wet, dank, Victorian basement, there is a 'banisteriopsis caapi man'. If not, I should think one of us should apply for the post.

The one I liked the best? "Man man." For real.

brilliant. Gotta love academics.

"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet."

If man creates God in his image, why not aliens, too?

^^I think that quote is indicative of some serious internal states... that some strong medicine may suggest needs puring, healing...

Call me overly permissive, but I think he's earned the right to speculate on whatever he darn well pleases. And I doubt it took a lot of his time to surmise. Nor, is it a sheer impossibility. No, I don't anticipate being invaded tomorrow, but its not impossible by any means. We simply cannot say that it will never be a 'real problem.'

I have a feeling that if we were to be contacted by an already spacefaring alien civilization, they would be so much more advanced than us that the only resource they would be interested in would be us.

Hmmm, I suppose if they have the ability to travel on a cosmic scale, they could probably manufacture any desired atomic element using spare electrons and protons, or something on that level of manipulation. In which case, what you say makes sense to me.

Sounds simple enough, but it had never quite occurred to me in those terms before. Thank you!

IDK, war drove a large part of huge technological leaps in humanity, so an alien species with the capability of traveling light years might be extremely violent by nature. But that is comparing human nature to alien nature, so it would probably be apples to oranges.