# 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:** 5
**Author:** ![This\_Just\_In\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@This\_Just\_In\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/This_Just_In_2)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2010, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/81 "2010-04-27T03:04:49Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > Given the extraordinary amount of effort and economics to get a very small colony ship to another planet, it seems extremely unlikely that we would invest many many times that amount to attempt to exterminate pre-existing life. Unless worlds in the habitable range turn out to be so unbelievably rare that the world we come across is pretty much the only one, there’s almost ZERO chance that we would spend so much effort to exterminate the life there in order to take it over. Even less that we’d attempt to ship what would very likely be many more times as many soldiers and military materials in an attempt to conquer that world. > > If only because exposing ourselves to the life there would be exceedingly dangerous and filled with all sorts of completely unforseeable consequences. Who knows, we may find that their ordinary skin fungii is worse than Ebola to us, or that a common parasite that they don’t find even slightly troublesome absolutely loves Humans and is completely debilitating to us. > > So again, unless it is the ONLY habitable world we come across, we quarantine, place observers, and move on. I disagree completely. In an earlier thread I’ve already put forward a plausible way aliens could easily get rid of humans, for example. Imagine - an alien generational ship has travelled for 1000 years at 0.1c and has arrived into the Sol system, and heads for earth. We send out communication but it is ignored. The alien craft enters Earth’s orbit. You look up in the sky, and see - a nuclear bomb going off. Thousands of nukes hit every major center. The next 5-10 years of nuclear winter wipe out the remaining humans. Another 10-20 years go by and the aliens (who may/may not have life spans far exceeding our own) leave orbit, land and begin to settle into their new home - the radiation has subsided to very reasonable levels and all the vermin are gone. It would be so easy really -even with our ‘primitive’ weapons. And who knows what scenario’s and weapons a more advanced tech might employ. Intersteller aliens are certainly not going to come down to our planet and fight us hand to hand. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2010, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/82 "2010-04-27T03:05:26Z")
> [@This\_Just\_In\_2](#): > > Except for energy. Most of space is way too far away from stars to be enable efficient energy gathering. Without energy, good bye civilization. > > What earth has, which is plausibly valuable to an alien, is about a billion years of sustainable, habitable area in which that alien can live **energy efficiently**. If your goal is energy efficiency, it doesn’t get any more efficient than in space. We can’t tap even a tiny portion of the sun’s energy here on Earth. If an alien civilization built space colonies (really the same thing as a generation ships) and committed to spending the next 10,000 generations living on them, I kinda doubt they’d remember what was so great about living on planets. Planets are messy dirty places with nasty unpredictable weather, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, disease carrying bugs, animals, plants, and if a planet-killer asteroid shows up you can’t move it. At the end of the day, cosmically speaking, you still have to move again eventually. I can certainly see why a race might want to find a new solar system, but I’m unconvinced the goal would be downgrading back to planet living. ---
**Author:** ![ataraxy22](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ataraxy22/32/307_2.png) [@ataraxy22](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ataraxy22)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2010, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/83 "2010-04-27T03:15:34Z")
Wow. I can’t believe people are pretty much assuming that intelligence has to be confined to the organic! Also, if travel \> _c_ is not feasible or possible, and it is so important to restart organic life around another star, its far easier to cross the void with non-organic machines that carry the instructions (e.g. DNA) for recreating that life and to resurrect it from materials found in the new star system. I think Hawking is being incredibly naive in his statement here. If “they” are out there, they already know all about us. A bunch of von Neumann probes can explore a galaxy thoroughly in a trifling amount of time. ---
**Author:** ![This\_Just\_In\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@This\_Just\_In\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/This_Just_In_2)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2010, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/84 "2010-04-27T03:17:23Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > If your goal is energy efficiency, it doesn’t get any more efficient than in space. We can’t tap even a tiny portion of the sun’s energy here on Earth. > > If an alien civilization built space colonies (really the same thing as a generation ships) and committed to spending the next 10,000 generations living on them, I kinda doubt they’d remember what was so great about living on planets. Planets are messy dirty places with nasty unpredictable weather, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, disease carrying bugs, animals, plants, and if a planet-killer asteroid shows up you can’t move it. At the end of the day, cosmically speaking, you still have to move again eventually. > > I can certainly see why a race might want to find a new solar system, but I’m unconvinced the goal would be downgrading back to planet living. Other than nuclear, all we have ever used is stored energy from our sun - oil/coal/hydro/wind are all by-products from the sun’s energy. However, I agree that it is conceivable an alien would forsake living on planets and live on spaceships/asteroids. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2010, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/85 "2010-04-27T03:37:06Z")
[QUOTE=Koxinga] We have demonstrated a . . . small . . . talent for war. [/QUOTE] > [@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. [You have no idea . . .](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbT1fCHOjfI) ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2010, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/86 "2010-04-27T03:50:38Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > If an alien civilization built space colonies (really the same thing as a generation ships) and committed to spending the next 10,000 generations living on them, I kinda doubt they’d remember what was so great about living on planets. Planets are messy dirty places with nasty unpredictable weather, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, disease carrying bugs, animals, plants, and if a planet-killer asteroid shows up **you can’t move it**. At the end of the day, cosmically speaking, \*\*you still have to move again \*\*eventually. So, basically your argument is, that if there is advanced life moving between the stars, they have a trailor trash mentallity? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Uzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/91b2a8/32.png) [@Uzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uzi)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2010, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/87 "2010-04-27T03:56:41Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his Prophet.” \ ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2010, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/88 "2010-04-27T04:22:22Z")
> [@Isamu](#): > > “Greetings Earthlings, if you are intelligent enough to understand this message, there may be a place for you in our slave corps mining calcite on Epsilon 5” = think twice before responding. > [@Astroboy14](#): > > Of course we answer. We send a picture of our dick! > [@Uzi](#): > > \ Entirely non-sequential posts, but they work so well together. 🆒 Point of Order: Who decides whether to respond? The U.S.? The U.N.? Each nation individually, either via cooperation or acting on their own initiative? ---
**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 27, 2010, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/89 "2010-04-27T08:25:49Z")
> [@This\_Just\_In\_2](#): > > So your future advanced civilization is going to find it easier to create a star than to fly to one? That makes no sense. You need massive amounts of material to create a star - if doing such a thing could even even be possible. It’s funny that you were implying a lack of imagination on the part of other posters, and yet you’re assuming a “millions or billions” of years old species would essentially live by a slash and burn method. The idea of scooping up H to initiate a star formation does not contravene any physical laws, neither does terraforming. They seem like plausible progressions for such an advanced species. OTOH travelling astronomical distances to get to a tiny ball of rock is just a waste of time and resources, for this hypothetical species. > [@](#): > > And you need a star for energy. You can’t just pull energy out of your arse. Yeah…that’s why in my last post I was talking about stellar formation. > [@](#): > > The very fact stars are not infinite should clue you in that you’re not going to come up with an unlimited source from some other source. That sentence doesn’t make a lot of sense. But in any case, we’re not talking unlimited energy; I was just saying that there’s clearly a lot of free energy about, untapped. Who knows what Super Advanced Race might do, once energy gets short. But we clearly are not living in such a time period. ---
**Author:** ![PookahMacPhellimey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pookahmacphellimey/32/3175_2.png) [@PookahMacPhellimey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PookahMacPhellimey)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2010, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/90 "2010-04-27T09:43:52Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > In the 40s and 50s comic books often had depictions of aliens lusting after human women. Such notions seem silly to us now: not to rule them out, but we’d no more expect that than we’d expect aliens to paint pink polka dots on every yellow object they find. > But somehow people find pillaging far more plausible than rape, for reasons that don’t stand up to scrutiny. Exactly, but I would stretch that point much further. I think most of us still think of aliens in a kind of “Star Trek” way, that is that they are basically humans with lumpy foreheads. Or fail that, like some adaption of earth animals like insects or predators, perhaps with extra limbs or teeth. Who knows if they are so small we don’t notice them or so slow we think they are rocks or so fast they think we’re plants or inorganic or something else we haven’t even conceived of? On the level of motivation I think we have the same problem. We think everyone is like us and therefore everyone has motivations like ours. On a much smaller scale it is similar to anthropomorphising the motives of animals (“my cat likes me”) in order to ascribe feelings and sentiments similar to our own. In fact, we would have some amount of trouble truly understanding the humans of a few thousands years ago, say, the Romans who’s moral system was radically different from ours, and I think aliens would be far more, well, alien to us than we imagine. We probably wouldn’t have the slightest idea what they “want”, perhaps the idea of “want” does not even exist for them. I actually think it is more than likely we wouldn’t be able to understand each other in any meaningful way. However, I think this doesn’t immediately invalidalates Hawking’s point in that even if a hostile race if a small risk, the potential consequences are disastrous enough to avoid them if we can. Which is, as many have pointed out, doubtful. ---
**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 27, 2010, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/91 "2010-04-27T09:59:18Z")
Any question of risk needs to be balanced against potential benefit though, doesn’t it? In every other area of life, we weigh it up - why would this be any different? ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2010, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/92 "2010-04-27T10:54:16Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Any question of risk needs to be balanced against potential benefit though, doesn’t it? > > In every other area of life, we weigh it up - why would this be any different? Weighing risk vs. benefit, hm? Going by the only experience we have to draw on: Aztecs vs. Conquistadors ('nuff said) North American Indians vs. European powers (benefited for a short time from being pawns in their Great Power games; long-term, not so much) Native African peoples vs. European powers (Ethiopia and Shaka Zulu notable for being such exceptions to the utterly miserable rule) Innumerable non-Han minorities vs. the Chinese Empire (you will be assimilated!) Only counter-examples I can think of offhand are Japan, which hasn’t turned out all that well nonetheless, and I suppose Thailand. (Either we turn our own societies into something unrecognizable and then get our asses roundly kicked in trying to play Zorg’s own game, or maybe hope there are a rich enough colonies in Alpha Centauri that several competing alien powers decide we’re not worth the bother. But how many times did that happen in our own history?) ---
**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 27, 2010, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/93 "2010-04-27T11:16:50Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > Weighing risk vs. benefit, hm? Going by the only experience we have to draw on: > > Aztecs vs. Conquistadors ('nuff said) > > North American Indians vs. European powers (benefited for a short time from being pawns in their Great Power games; long-term, not so much) > > etc Yep, then they’ll clearly rape us, as rape has a long history in human conflicts. All known cultures have music, so they’ll be some alien jazz playing as they rape us. Next they’ll build settlements on major ports. They may bring some of their own livestock to earth, and maybe get some humans to work on their plantations. Yep, nothing ridiculously short-sighted about this line of speculation. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2010, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/94 "2010-04-27T11:21:54Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Yep, then they’ll clearly rape us, as rape has a long history in human conflicts. > > All known cultures have music, so they’ll be some alien jazz playing as they rape us. > > Next they’ll build settlements on major ports. They may bring some of their own livestock to earth, and maybe get some humans to work on their plantations. > > Yep, nothing ridiculously short-sighted about this line of speculation. Ah, drawing from the experience of human civilization is ridiculously short-sighted. So, please do enlighten me with experience you’ve drawn from non-human civilizations.:dubious: Or, alternatively, admit this business about “weighing” any “question of risk” versus “potential benefit” is even _more_ ridiculous, as we have no conceivable frame of reference for doing so. ---
**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 27, 2010, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/95 "2010-04-27T11:51:39Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > Or, alternatively, admit this business about “weighing” any “question of risk” versus “potential benefit” is even _more_ ridiculous, as we have no conceivable frame of reference for doing so. So never in the history of the human race, has anyone faced the somewhat unknown and felt able to weigh the risks? ---
**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 27, 2010, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/96 "2010-04-27T11:55:08Z")
Weigh them against what? If some data variable is unknown, your scales are going to be a bit wobbly anyway. ---
**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 27, 2010, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/97 "2010-04-27T11:57:55Z")
Or to elaborate… Risks: This whole thread has been about the risks (funny how everyone felt able to do _that_ without frame of reference)- so I think that’s covered for the moment. Benefits: If they have already communicated with us, we know they can communicate, so they might have something to say that is interesting or profitable to us. If they have the capacity to visit us, their means of interstellar travel could be of great interest and benefit to us, quite possibly alongside a whole bunch of attendant technologies to do with power sources, reliable machines, recycling, etc. Some of it might not apply to us because of differences in our biology and environment, but some of it might - and the plain fact they’d have solved hard problems might mean they have some transferrable methods. So there’s a start. ---
**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 27, 2010, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/98 "2010-04-27T12:00:24Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > Weigh them against what? If some data variable is unknown, your scales are going to be a bit wobbly anyway. Why is it that everyone was fine with speculations in this thread, until now? What’s special about the question of potential benefits that makes it unguessable, when we were all so happy to guess the other stuff? ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2010, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/99 "2010-04-27T12:01:54Z")
WRT alien motivation, if their motivation is so frakking alien to us, we’ll probably never see them or hear them. They won’t even be space-faring, and probably won’t be communicative. Those are very human-like concepts. Any aliens who have concepts like technology and space travel and communication are going to be similar enough for us to come to some sort of mutual understanding. What would be their motivation for sending out a signal we can hear? To give us knowledge we don’t already have? I doubt it. It would probably more along the lines of, “if you can hear this, you aren’t alone.” What would be their motivation for coming to our solar system? Well, they haven’t so it could very well be no such motivation exists. Why would we travel to a new solar system? Profit? Doubtful. To escape a polluted cesspit? Greener pastures, so to speak? Possibly. But if aliens are looking for greener pastures they’re going to avoid an already occupied system well on its way to becoming a polluted cesspit, and we’d probably also avoid an already occupied cesspit. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2010, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-finally-receive-a-message-from-space-indicating-intelligence-do-we-respond-s-hawking-says-no/537364/100 "2010-04-27T12:30:04Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > If they have already communicated with us, we know they can communicate, so they might have something to say that is interesting or profitable to us. > If they have the capacity to visit us, their means of interstellar travel could be of great interest and benefit to us, quite possibly alongside a whole bunch of attendant technologies to do with power sources, reliable machines, recycling, etc. Some of it might not apply to us because of differences in our biology and environment, but some of it might - and the plain fact they’d have solved hard problems might mean they have some transferrable methods. > > So there’s a start. Acknowledged: but aren’t you still projecting some implicit limitations on the aliens? What with power sources, machines, recycling, you seem to be picturing beings that are perhaps a few centuries ahead of us at most, in terms of technology and their own evolution. (Like somebody upthread pointed out: Star Trek!) But what if they’re much more advanced, millenia ahead of us or more, in the same relationship to us as we are to chimpanzees (if not further down the evolutionary scale)? What’s the daily concerns of a chimpanzee, and what has chimp society gained from _us_ in figuring those problems out? And as for motivation: the chimpanzees can’t very well grasp the rubber trade, or colonialism, or whatever other motivations the Europeans had for being in Africa. But once the men in pith helmets were there, it was bang-bang time nonetheless. You might say that they communicated with us (in the OP’s scenario), therefore they’re more on our level and have an interest in communicating with us. But what if we overheard something that wasn’t meant for us? We’d be like chimps screaming at the side of a riverbank in response to the tooting of a riverboat on the River Congo. [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=4) [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=6)