Stephen Hawking; Aliens Likely to be Hostile.

[Martim Silva]

Way too many ifs.

Aliens could be so advanced as to just observe us as lab pets, and we wouldn't even know about them.

They could be beings we can barely percieve (different molecular structures and densities, for example) and we could be sharing a planet with them without even knowing.

They could be microscopic.

Maybe they cannot even "think" like we do, but able to percieve/change things in a way we can't even fathom.

Maybe they'll look just like us (and then we could have an old-fashioned war).

Impossible to tell. Maybe Humans will just be terrified of it all and try to kill all aliens.

We'll only know when it happens.

[viper37]

This is the way to great Aliens:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkp-MI5hxVw

[Josquius]

Indeed.  You had to kill animals constantly, to keep them from eating your crops.  And then, when your population grew too large for the area, you had to kill your neighbor to take his fields.

You had cats and dogs to keep animals off your crops.
As for killing your neighbour and taking his fields- in a civilized society this is less common than a wild society.
For 'wild' humans you see a guy you don't know in your land- holy cow, kill him, he's after your women. No questions.
In a settled society though....sure, it happens. But its not such a given. He could just be your neighbour passing by on his way to market.

[alfred russel]

The transition to farming likely lead to more violence not less.

Doubtful.
The entire point of it is you don't have to run out and kill a deer every other day.

This assumes that aliens have the same thought processes as humans, which may not necessarily be the case.

Which is sort of the problem with the idea of hostile aliens.
Too many ifs and maybes.
It could be that the aliens find the way we look very offensive and so decide to blast us out of existance.
It could be.
But in lieu of anything else we have to work with what we've got and the odds of that are very remote.

Imagine your example, except that we stumble across a colony of space ants on some remote planet. Now there's a lot less stigma attached to destroying them. And if sufficiently advanced aliens stumble upon us right now, they might see that we can build shit and have social structures just like ants, but they won't necessarily see us as their equals.

Ah the old ants at the picnic thing.
Intelligant life is probally rare.
Sure, we've only got one solar system to go off with certainty but as far as we know there's only existed intelligant life on one planet for a fraction of its lifetime- including a large chunk of that with life.
And if we lived in the Star Trek galaxy where are the radio transmissions from Tau Ceti?
No it seems intelligant life at the least is rare (I would say life in general too but we won't know that for a while so its just guessing on my part)

So. Lets use the ants analogy properly. Or realistically anyway. Ants at a picnic is dumb. So, scientists discover a bunch of ants on a pacific island. They would just destroy them without a second thought, plonk down their equipment on top of their ant hills, etc...
....well....no....but...anyway. Assume yes.
Except these ants aren't just any ants on a remote pacific island. They're a entirely new and unique species of ant. A species of ant which lives in ant cities, has a ant library, throws ant spears and is experimenting with crude ant boats.
Clearly they're primitive ants. They're our inferior. We could smash them without a second thought if we wanted to. But would we?
No. This is an amazing discovery. Sure, they're nothing to us but they're quite amazing nonetheless. They're showing potential. A very interesting and very unique thing to study.
For scientists to wipe out a new species of normal ant would get them in major hot water. To harm these ones...they ought to be shot.

The universe (and galaxy) is phenomenally large. If interstellar travel is practical with some type of alien technology, we are probably not going to be special because there are so many planets with some life. Even if only 1 in a million stars has something approaching intelligent life, that means there are about 400,000 stars with life in the Milky Way alone. And right now, we only really know about 1 star, and that star does support life.

If intergallactic travel is feasible, then we are even more insignificant, because there A LOT of galaxies (not sure on that number, but know it is big).

[Martim Silva]

If intergallactic travel is feasible, then we are even more insignificant, because there A LOT of galaxies (not sure on that number, but know it is big).

Latest estimates point to at least 500,000,000,000 galaxies.

Each with billions of star systems.

[jimmy olsen]

Indeed.  You had to kill animals constantly, to keep them from eating your crops.  And then, when your population grew too large for the area, you had to kill your neighbor to take his fields.

You had cats and dogs to keep animals off your crops.
As for killing your neighbour and taking his fields- in a civilized society this is less common than a wild society.
For 'wild' humans you see a guy you don't know in your land- holy cow, kill him, he's after your women. No questions.
In a settled society though....sure, it happens. But its not such a given. He could just be your neighbor passing by on his way to market.

IIRC archaeology records a great increase in the rate of death by violence after the introduction of agriculture.

[PDH]

The entire point of it is you don't have to run out and kill a deer every other day.

But you do need to watch over a now sedendtary population, you need to guard initial surpluses so you can eat when not harvesting, you have higher population densities, you have fewer social leveling mechanisms, you create a stronger us vs them mentality.

While not the peaceful bliss imagined earlier, foragers simply do not have as many means of protracted and systematic violence as farmers.

Now, the above is humans - but you seemed to argue that horticulture/agricultural shifts do not lead to more violence, when it seems they do.

And for the record, hunting (your "killing a deer every other day") is a cooperative activity, reducing tensions, the sharing of meat helps sooth interpersonal conflicts, and all in all seems to be a social positive...

[PDH]

IIRC archaeology records a great increase in the rate of death by violence after the introduction of agriculture.

Sadly, I have to kind of agree with the ELS putz here. Not just archaeology, peoples have moved to horticulture/agriculture in historical times and this has been noted.

[PDH]

Latest estimates point to at least 500,000,000,000 galaxies.

Each with billions of star systems.

Sagan - BILLI-YUNS!
Reporter - How do you spell billi-yuns?

(anybody who gets this comic strip reference is official old)

[Josquius]

The universe (and galaxy) is phenomenally large. If interstellar travel is practical with some type of alien technology, we are probably not going to be special because there are so many planets with some life. Even if only 1 in a million stars has something approaching intelligent life, that means there are about 400,000 stars with life in the Milky Way alone. And right now, we only really know about 1 star, and that star does support life.

If intergallactic travel is feasible, then we are even more insignificant, because there A LOT of galaxies (not sure on that number, but know it is big).

Where are they then?
The idea that aliens would suddenly show up with a comparable technology level to us (i.e. 3000bc-3000ad) exactly at the modern day is built on 'if'.
And there's no evidence for any godlike aliens nearby....so I would tend towards us being freakishly lucky.

IIRC archaeology records a great increase in the rate of death by violence after the introduction of agriculture.

Archaeology records in general also increase greatly for settled societies.
There's the factor of there being more people in general, more developed religion and burial, etc...

While not the peaceful bliss imagined earlier, foragers simply do not have as many means of protracted and systematic violence as farmers.

Its variable.
Maybe they're lucky, the first people on some little island with plentiful stupid game and lovely weather and all is perfect hippy paradice land.
Maybe they're in a area going through a bad drought and a over population problem (much easier to happen when people are playing by the same rules as animals). Then things get nasty.

Now, the above is humans - but you seemed to argue that horticulture/agricultural shifts do not lead to more violence, when it seems they do.

I don't believe anything is the case really if we're talking pre-civilization.
Agricultural development all through history I've no comment on either. I don't see how that could directly affect things other than temporarily relieving population pressures.

[Neil]

Even so, they'd still be building each other.  Why bring genetic algorithms into it at all?

Genetic diversity could be a deliberate design feature.  If you're going to build robots that could replicate themselves, then you're probably doing it because they're going to be left in a remote environment.  In that case, you may also design some diversity with a random component into it, as part of the adaptive algorithm.

It sounds like a terrible idea, and something that a machine intelligence would avoid at all costs.

[Ed Anger]

Hail Draconia!

[Neil]

Indeed.  You had to kill animals constantly, to keep them from eating your crops.  And then, when your population grew too large for the area, you had to kill your neighbor to take his fields.

You had cats and dogs to keep animals off your crops.

To some extent, but they still required supervision.

As for killing your neighbour and taking his fields- in a civilized society this is less common than a wild society.

Not really.  The scale changes, but it still happens.  We call it war.

For 'wild' humans you see a guy you don't know in your land- holy cow, kill him, he's after your women. No questions.

Obviously not.  Early human groups managed to exchange genes, and while no doubt they killed each other, they also coexisted.

[Neil]

They could be beings we can barely percieve (different molecular structures and densities, for example) and we could be sharing a planet with them without even knowing.

They could be microscopic.

Chemistry and physics do place some limiters on what they can be and do.

[Fate]

Some ants have fungus farms, domesticated aphids, wars, slaves. If we ran into a neolithic, insectoid species that could do all that (and were obviously sentient unlike ants) on another planet with something we wanted, would we be nice to them? Doubtful.

Are you retarded? (yes)

Large insects are physiologically impossible.