Stephen Hawking; Aliens Likely to be Hostile.

[Tamas]

Also regarding our peacefullnes. One could argue that there is greed behind that as well: a heavily industrialized society requires skilled and educated workers, not to mention the service sector. These (compared to the old times) educated masses cannot be controlled by brute force alone if you expect them to maintain the quantity and quality of work required.

I am not saying this was some grand conspiracy or something, but rather a natural flow of things.

[Josquius]

Also regarding our peacefullnes. One could argue that there is greed behind that as well: a heavily industrialized society requires skilled and educated workers, not to mention the service sector. These (compared to the old times) educated masses cannot be controlled by brute force alone if you expect them to maintain the quantity and quality of work required.

I am not saying this was some grand conspiracy or something, but rather a natural flow of things.

Whatever the motivation the end result is the same and thats what matters.

[Tamas]

Also regarding our peacefullnes. One could argue that there is greed behind that as well: a heavily industrialized society requires skilled and educated workers, not to mention the service sector. These (compared to the old times) educated masses cannot be controlled by brute force alone if you expect them to maintain the quantity and quality of work required.

I am not saying this was some grand conspiracy or something, but rather a natural flow of things.

Whatever the motivation the end result is the same and thats what matters.

Maybe. What I am saying is that in our core we are a pushy competitive race, and this is exactly what built our civilization. This recipe seems to be far the most likely to result in a space-faring civilization, making peaceful coexistent with them highly unlikely.

[grumbler]

I find this argument over something no one could possibly know to be most amusing.  I especially enjoy the entirely uninformed speculation about how likely various completely hypothetical scenarios are.

Do carry on.  *pops popcorn*

[Josquius]

Maybe. What I am saying is that in our core we are a pushy competitive race, and this is exactly what built our civilization. This recipe seems to be far the most likely to result in a space-faring civilization, making peaceful coexistent with them highly unlikely.

Name a species which isn't competitive though. Competition is the natural order of things.
Peace is what made our civilization- rather than just playing by the same old rules of throwing pointy sticks around someone thought longer term about farming.
A species which remains as violent as cavemen would destroy itself long before it gets anywhere near space (if indeed if ever does get anywhere to begin with. And its likely they wouldn;t)

Also, don't underestimate just how damn big space is.

[Razgovory]

I find this argument over something no one could possibly know to be most amusing.  I especially enjoy the entirely uninformed speculation about how likely various completely hypothetical scenarios are.

Do carry on.  *pops popcorn*

By the greatest minds on the forum no less.

[Tamas]

I find this argument over something no one could possibly know to be most amusing.  I especially enjoy the entirely uninformed speculation about how likely various completely hypothetical scenarios are.

Do carry on.  *pops popcorn*

Dude, it is fun. There are people who do not have to constantly bask in the light of their own omnipotency in order to get through a day.

[grumbler]

Dude, it is fun. There are people who do not have to constantly bask in the light of their own omnipotency in order to get through a day.

Of course it is fun.  For the spectators, especially.  Participants who don't mind going on the record stating that their abstract speculations are concrete truths (or making up words like "omnipotency") also enjoy these kinds of things.

It is win-win! 

[Tamas]

Dude, it is fun. There are people who do not have to constantly bask in the light of their own omnipotency in order to get through a day.

Of course it is fun.  For the spectators, especially.  Participants who don't mind going on the record stating that their abstract speculations are concrete truths (or making up words like "omnipotency") also enjoy these kinds of things.

It is win-win! 

FFS when I did I write I am exactly certain I know these things?

At least when I join a conversation I say something about the topic, rather than nitpicking on a badly placed letter to start one of my perceived "debates".
Get off me, I am not in the mood.

[Eddie Teach]

Once again Jos shows how glaringly ridiculous his new handle is.

[DGuller]

I cannot think of a single reason why a machine AI would have a survival instinct, so i am not concerned about meeting them.  If we were going to encounter machine "AI," we just as likely already did, in the form of von Neumann-style machines that have come and gone.

If machines reproduced with some kind of a genetic algorithm, then survival instinct should be among the very first things selected for.

[Neil]

I am sorry but the post-Columbus destruction of the native Americans is the most probable scenario. Viruses and bacteria that would take the organisms of Earth by total surprise, A various aliesn among their piopulace seeing big profit in our planet thus creating conflicts, human xenophobia and idiots worshipping the aliens as gods here to save us etc.

Viruses and bacteria?  Alien viruses and bacteria might not be able to interact with our cells at all.  And as for profit, how does one derive profit from Earth?

Personally, I am puzzled by the huge amount of naivity regarding the perceived peacefulness of a space-faring civilization.
I hate to break it to you people, but our civilization has been on a near-constant rise in the last 4-5 thousand years because we are, as a species, lazy, greedy, violent bastards. These three characteristics have been the driving force behind the technological and economical development which resulted in such advanced and rich societies which could support artists and intelligentsia to create all the wonderful and peaceful art.

If a species is peaceful and content, it will never rise to a civilized level, because if you are content to eating leafs off a tree and hiding from the predators, you will never need agriculture, housing, etc.

No uncivilized species could ever be peaceful.  Nature is a dangerous place.

At any rate, if people were lazy, we would never have started agriculture, which is much, much more labour-intense than hunting and gathering.  Greed isn't quite right;  Humans are tribal, but naturally share within their groupings.  As for violence, humans are no more or less violent than other animals.  I think your claims of bastardy are overstating matters.

[Neil]

I cannot think of a single reason why a machine AI would have a survival instinct, so i am not concerned about meeting them.  If we were going to encounter machine "AI," we just as likely already did, in the form of von Neumann-style machines that have come and gone.

If machines reproduced with some kind of a genetic algorithm, then survival instinct should be among the very first things selected for.

Machines don't reproduce with genetic algorithms.  They are built.

[Tamas]

  I think your claims of bastardy are overstating matters.

Yes, if you compare it to the other animals, but I was arguing against Josq's perception on humanity as 6 billion hippies.

Your point about agriculture supports my point about greed. As for laziness, I thought of various inventions, even in agriculture.

[alfred russel]

I find it very bizzare that someone so smart can come to such an unlikely conclusion.

I think its quite a given that the opposite is true. Any aliens we encounter will be peaceful.
Just imagine if somehow we are out exploring space today (impossible but...yeah) and we stumble across a alien civilization. Are we going to go all Independance Day? Of course not. The press is bad enough when the military kills a few Arabs let alone wiping out an entire civilization.
It would be an amazing discovery which changes the way we look at the universe. We aren't going to destroy them just for the hell of it.
And thats our far from perfect modern civilization which still has a lot of the violent animal in us. Starflight is a few hundred years of development out of our reach at least- either we continue to become less violent or we destroy ourselves before we get anywhere.
Just imagine if spaceships were freely available today. There would be bound to be some nutter who decides to smash into earth at relativistic speeds.

Analogy to the past- doesn't work.
People say 'yeah but Earth has resources, the aliens will want those!'- not really.
Earth is a insignificant remote little skerry which is damn difficult to land on. We're the Faroe Islands (only relocated to the middle of the Indian ocean or something), not the Americas. If the aliens want resources they can get them far far easier in space itself with asteroids and comets and the like.

Our track record is fairly violent, both to people and animals. MAD may have caused a cooling off of hostilities among the most advanced societies, but MAD would probably go away in this scenario. It is very possible that anyone visiting us will be far advanced and view us as indifferently as we view animals, but then we have a sample size of one of species that can put themselves in space, and that species hunts all manner of other animals for sport.