Stephen Hawking: Beware the Space-Vikings!

[mckitterick]

Yesterday's big news was all about Stephen Hawking's warning against seeking out aliens. Why? Because they're likely to turn out to be Space-Vikings intent on stealing our land and pillaging our women! Or something like that.


Click the image to see the story.

The opposite view is that any species advanced enough to travel interstellar distances will have needed to learn cooperation on a massive scale, would have survived internal conflicts long enough to do so, and would have likely passed through the technological Singularity. What do you think?

[Poll #1556972]

Chris

Comments

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

I'd guess that given the range of environments in which creatures can survive on this planet, it's entirely possible that creatures from other solar systems wouldn't be able to survive on Earth, even with massive life support--too hot or cold or windy or wrong atmosphere or gravity or whatever. I rather like John Christopher's Tripod trilogy, but I always wondered why the Masters wanted to go to all that trouble of "terra"forming Earth to their specifications, as the planet was otherwise completely unsuitable.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Oh, I hear you. I think Hawking was talking about resources more than anything else: Take our stuff and move on. Like the Vikings, only more nomadic.

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

Who knows what the aliens will find useful? They're alien. For all we know, they'll want carbon dioxide or PCBs or tetraethyl lead and we'll end up with a repaired ozone layer and clean Great Lakes.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Hooray for PCB-eating aliens!