Re: [GZG] A number of scientists respond to Hawking's concerns about Aliens

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Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lThe pertinent
thought here was that we shouldn't meet Aliens on their terms
(as in, they show up here with tech advantage vs. we show up somewhere
else
with tech advantage) because we cannot depend on their good natures.
They
may be out in search of resources.

It is also good to see that those in academia can actually discuss this
sort
of thing now. SETI seems to have been embarked on without (to my mind)
adequate concern about who might be out there and what they might be
like.

If anyone read Luna Marine, Semper Mars, and Europa Strike by Ian
Douglas,
you'd have been exposed to the theoretical question - if there are so
many
aliens out there, why haven't we heard from any? The answer in the books
was
'the Hunters of the Dawn' - some unspecified race that must have made it
unwise to stick your head up in the universe (for Darwinian reasons). A
good
read (as well as the follow on trilogy) for the military SF and the
evolution of the sort of warfare that goes on as relativistic effects
start
to distance your military from their point of origins. It's also of some
interest to Traveller folks because the original author was one of the
Kieth
brothers.

To Allan's point about SETI: Maybe it is a good thing if we can't be
heard
too far out.

I see no reason to believe Aliens we meet will be more like E.T. than
those
found on LV426. We've only really got human and Terran animal biology to
go
by, but it seems most of the time, when we've met other human groups for
the
first time, they've had many of the same sorts of behaviours we have
(good
or bad). Some of this seems to be because of similar evolutionary
realities.

Since we have no idea what alien evolutionary realities would be like,
why
presume they'd be benevolent? That seems like a prayer more than a
rationally defendable position.

Tom B