# We finally receive a message from space indicating intelligence. Do we respond? S. Hawking says no. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 26, 2010, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364 "2010-04-26T02:17:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/21 "2010-04-26T12:48:45Z")
I don’t see any danger to contact with aliens. Not so much because I think that genuinely spacefaring cultures are any likelier to be benign than any human civilization - after all, our greatest technological advancements have mostly come from trying to kill each other in horrible ways, and it’s entirely possible the rest of the universe is the same way. However, there just isn’t any good reason to fight an interstellar war. Resources? Bunk. If you can extract water/oxygen/iron/etc from a planet the size of Earth, you can extract these things from comets/asteroids/moons, without having to fight a planet’s freaking deep gravity well all the time. As for the “computer virus” idea - come on. Computers aren’t magic - there’s no such thing as a “universal” virus that’ll run irrespective of processor, OS, and so on. I doubt there’d be much practical benefit to talking to aliens - but danger? Hell, I’d worry about talking to _you_ lot long before I’d worry about the aliens … hmm. /\*backs away slowly ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/22 "2010-04-26T12:57:12Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > And then another 100,000 years for them to reply to that and considerably longer if they wanted to deliver the response in person. For that reason, I think if we did detect an intelligent signal, it’d likely be more of an informational beacon or something that wasn’t really intended to be answered. > [@DMark](#): > > I would think an “intelligent” race of people from another planet would take one look at us and think, “blow them up!” Or basically just avoid. Even today we’ve got war, disease, poverty, starvation and most of the population are little more than wage slaves just getting by, while a small percentage of people hoard most of the wealth. We really aren’t very attractive as a species, and it’s probably naive to think there is a race of peaceful Vulcans out there just waiting to lend us a hand. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Bith\_Shuffle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ce73a5/32.png) [@The\_Bith\_Shuffle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Bith_Shuffle)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/23 "2010-04-26T12:58:55Z")
I think that supposing that the alien race would be “hostile” is to think of things incorrectly. Without thinking about it, we treat other species as just not being our equals. Even animal rights activists would not, if a decision were to be made, give their lives to save ten mice. Why assume that extraterrestrials would view us in a way different from the way we view mice? We think we’re so smart because we can integrate (x^2)(e^x) in about a minute. Maybe there are civilizations in the universe where every member would consider Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem to be bleeding obvious. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/24 "2010-04-26T13:05:10Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I do feel that advanced civilisations would probably not be hostile. It would take a lot of cooperation to get to interstellar space travel and bear in mind such a species would probably have come across nuclear energies centuries before. Unless the civilization in question is the remains of a post-nuclear apocalypse developed from the crucible of global war and terror. Warlord: “Hey, everything here sucks. The water’s irradiated, the land is non-arable, and the women all have open radiation sores. Why don’t we go ravage Earth - that planet our foolish ancestors discovered millenia ago and peaceably watched from afar?” ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/25 "2010-04-26T13:05:49Z")
It would seem that we could ignore any signal that came from beyond our own galaxy - unless it was that Andromeda galaxy, which for reasons beyond my grasp, is apparently heading towards our own - as the distances between them, and the speed they are moving away from each other - usually - makes their threat miniscule… unless they have FTL travel methods. As to whether we respond, I’d say “Heck, why not?” They probably already know we are here, so it’s pointless hiding behind the couch and waiting for them to go away. ---
**Author:** ![PoorYorick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/26 "2010-04-26T13:35:12Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I do feel that advanced civilisations would probably not be hostile. It would take a lot of cooperation to get to interstellar space travel and bear in mind such a species would probably have come across nuclear energies centuries before. I imagine that it took a lot of cooperation for the Aztecs to build their pyramids, but I wouldn’t answer the door of they came a-knocking. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/27 "2010-04-26T13:35:30Z")
But we have already replied to them. Ninety years or so of radio and TV transmissions tell them we are here. If they have the interest and capacity to damage us, all they need to know is that we are here and maybe learn some of our languages. But I would sure like to ask some advanced civilization if the Riemann Hypothesis is true. We have no way of judging if the evolution of intelligent life is at all likely. The dinosaurs lived for over 100 million years without developing any kind of society (which isn’t the same as being intelligent, but any species that could travel or even communicate like that would have to have developed a society). That is why I think that human intelligence (such as it is) came about only through an improbable series of climatic and other events. We evolved from arboreal primates that came down from the trees and entered a niche (communal hunting) that favored vastly increased communication skills. Now if there were a faster-than-light drive, all bets are off, but where are they then? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/28 "2010-04-26T13:36:43Z")
> [@Uzi](#): > > …that we have conceived of. We’ve thought about it quite hard and the notion that it’s not possible underpins a considerable swathe of our science (which appears to confirm the notion by happening to work). ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/29 "2010-04-26T13:40:13Z")
> [@](#): > > I imagine that it took a lot of cooperation for the Aztecs to build their pyramids, but I wouldn’t answer the door of they came a-knocking. This. It took a lot of cooperation for Columbus to make _his_ voyage; remember, he had to get the personal sanction of arguably the most powerful person in the world. Iain M. Banks dealt with this in a sense in the rather awesome novel _Excession_: > [@](#): > > An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop\*. The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you’d tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass… when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you’ve just been discovered, you’re all subjects of the Emperor now, he’s keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests. Let’s assume that some hyper-advanced civilization finds us. They cooperated to get here. Well, so what? There’s no need for them to cooperate with _us_; after all, we probably don’t have anything to teach them. \*_full stop_ = _period_, for our American friends. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/30 "2010-04-26T13:41:02Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > We’ve thought about it quite hard and the notion that it’s not possible underpins a considerable swathe of our science (which appears to confirm the notion by happening to work). We’ve thought about a lot of things quite hard and most of the interesting stuff has come about by accident, or at least via a spin-off of the intended field of exploration. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/31 "2010-04-26T13:44:38Z")
“We’ve thought about it quite hard”. Ah, well. That’s settled then. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/32 "2010-04-26T13:46:02Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > We have demonstrated a . . . small . . . talent for war. The operative word being “small.” And if we’re discussing alien races I don’t know if we really have that much of a talent. Don’t get me wrong: I’m exasperated by the human tendency toward conflict, but it’s likely that any spacefaring civilization has advanced through a similar period itself. It could just be a developmental stage of life. We haven’t been to the moon in 30-plus years and we’re hoping, sooner or later, to eventually send a couple of people to the nearest planet. We’re not even really _interested_ in space travel. The idea that we’re a serious threat to a civilization that can move between solar systems is a little conceited. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/33 "2010-04-26T13:53:15Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > The operative word being “small.” And if we’re discussing alien races I don’t know if we really have that much of a talent. Don’t get me wrong: I’m exasperated by the human tendency toward conflict, but it’s likely that any spacefaring civilization has advanced through a similar period itself. It could just be a developmental stage of life. We haven’t been to the moon in 30-plus years and we’re hoping, sooner or later, to eventually send a couple of people to the nearest planet. We’re not even really _interested_ in space travel. The idea that we’re a serious threat to a civilization that can move between solar systems is a little conceited. Well, we certainly can’t _project_ military power effectively beyond our atmosphere. But it’s worth pointing out that an alien race that decided to come hang out on earth despite our Very Stern Warnings not to so such a thing might not have a particularly pleasant time of it. Bullets move very fast, artillery makes rather a mess of anything it happens to detonate near, and nukes make more than a mere “mess,” and don’t particularly fuss about being “near” the people whose days are about to be thoroughly ruined. Not that a spacefaring civilization couldn’t inflict all sorts of nastiness on us from far beyond our reach, of course. But if they decided to come down here and touch us - well, we could touch back. And I imagine we could touch back fairly hard. ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/34 "2010-04-26T13:54:41Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > The idea that we’re a serious threat to a civilization that can move between solar systems is a little conceited. And even if we were a threat, any group of aliens capable of moving across interstellar distances could nudge a mid-sized comet in its orbit so that it crosses our path without us being likely being any the wiser or capable of stopping it. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/35 "2010-04-26T13:56:32Z")
I agree with a lot of what Hawking said, it’s quite prudent to assume the worst about what is completely unknown and potentially very dangerous. I also agree what he said about the forms of extraterrestrial life. For all we know we could be the only intelligent life in the local cluster, the Orion arm, the galaxy, who knows - and that most of ‘life’ is quite primitive. On the other hand there’s also the possibility that our speck of dirt is in the midst of a hyper-technological galactic-spanning Empire with an intelligence we can’t even communicate with, and who wouldn’t bother wasting their time with a bunch of shaved primates even if we could. Most of the time this discussion falls pray to the ‘Sci-fi writers have no sense of scale’ trope. Remember Sagen’s Pale Blue Dot. It’s quite possible that humanity will never find any evidence of intelligent life whatsoever before our time is done for whatever reason, we can’t even contemplate a feasible way of making it to the nearest star. There was a good discussion in GQ not long ago about the feasibility of interstellar empires, which would basically break our understanding of physics due to the no-FTL restraint. @ **Mijin** , I think the analogy we’re the natives opposing technological superior new arrivals - which, in human history, has usually meant a trip to paintown for the hapless natives. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/36 "2010-04-26T14:02:43Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > Well, we certainly can’t _project_ military power effectively beyond our atmosphere. We were able to launch a shuttle full of US Marines in like twenty minutes in _Moonraker_. What? ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/37 "2010-04-26T14:11:55Z")
> [@PoorYorick](#): > > I imagine that it took a lot of cooperation for the Aztecs to build their pyramids, but I wouldn’t answer the door of they came a-knocking. Right, but the aztecs did not harness energies that could destroy their entire civilisation at the push of a button. Any spacefaring race would probably have a centuries long history of harnessing such energies. * * * As for the post-apocalyptic world, this is another sci-fi cliche. A race that could navigate space is unlikely to be like mad max; they would probably have just about any resource they’d care for. And…what exactly is so precious about earth to such a species? There’s never an answer to this question, just an assumption that earth is The Prize. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/38 "2010-04-26T14:16:00Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > But we have already replied to them. Ninety years or so of radio and TV transmissions tell them we are here. If they have the interest and capacity to damage us, all they need to know is that we are here and maybe learn some of our languages. Our transmissions fade into background noise before they get terribly far. I’ve read that the Earth is getting quieter now, with more and more of our transmissions tightly focused at satellites very close to home, and more and more communication here on Earth is carried via cables. Unless we deliberately try to call out to the surrounding galaxy, we’re probably very difficult to detect. OTOH, an advanced species actively searching for life with ridiculously large telescopes could have spied interesting colors and gasses on our planet a few billion years ago, giving them plenty of time to send something our way, were they inclined. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/39 "2010-04-26T14:54:38Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > And…what exactly is so precious about earth to such a species? There’s never an answer to this question, just an assumption that earth is The Prize. Well, based on our current knowledge of our own galaxy, rocky planets are relatively rare; rocky planets with stable atmospheres are rarer still; rocky planets with stable atmospheres in the orbiting in a habitable range are rarer yet; and rocky planets with stable nitrogen-oxygen atmospheres in habitable orbits are rarer than rocking-horse shit. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2010, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/40 "2010-04-26T15:10:45Z")
And inhabited by creatures carrying around ready-made wetware ripe to be harnessed and subjugated to the Omni Mind, as it is focused and enhanced by the uttermost tension\* and awareness\*\* of its indissoluble conscious component beings? Ia! Shub-Niggurath!All glory to the Omni Mind! \*AKA “pain” \*\*AKA “terror” Posted only half in jest. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364.md?page=3)