[Captain Tom Coughlin]

Hawking on a new TV series featured on the Discovery channel warns against the danger in contact with alien beings.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7107207.ece

[Enterprise Captain]

Originally Posted by Captain Tom Coughlin

Hawking on a new TV series featured on the Discovery channel warns against the danger in contact with alien beings.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle7107207.ece

Hawking makes a good point. We can be a very narrow minded species and being cautious is not a bad idea.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

I agree. He makes another interesting point in the show that isn't in the article I linked. He says basically that due to the competitive nature of evolution, that it is likely that an advanced alien race may have an aggressive side to their nature much like we do.

[MagaditH]

So he watched Independence Day.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

We'd better start working on computer viruses to bring down their shields

[MagaditH]

Originally Posted by Captain Tom Coughlin

We'd better start working on computer viruses to bring down their shields

Its been developed. Its called Windows Vista.

[kevin]

Originally Posted by Captain Tom Coughlin

I agree. He makes another interesting point in the show that isn't in the article I linked. He says basically that due to the competitive nature of evolution, that it is likely that an advanced alien race may have an aggressive side to their nature much like we do.

True.

Overall I agree with his potential comparison with how various Western groups treated indigineous populations in many countries around the world.

One can easily imagine the same applying, except we would be the losers this time round.

[Livingston]

It's interesting how, Sagan, someone who takes the exact opposite approach basically broadcasts our location while Hawking cautions against reaching out. I see Hawking's point though. If there is anything here that an alien civilization would find useful, what could we possibly offer as resistance to a civ that can cross space?

We already have a 360 degree 70 or so lyr radio signal bubble around us that's advertising our location. Only fortunate thing about that is, 70lyrs isn't all that much when you get right down to it that is unless aliens are actually friendly and they're many thousands of lyrs away. That would suck.

[TheTrekkie]

The really interesting thought:

And if they were not violent we probably would destroy them coz of our violent nature.

So no matter if they are violent or not, it would take a bad ending

[horatio]

So it would be either invasion or exploitation, Independence Day or District 9?
Nah, aliens with a far superior technology who wanna make peaceful First Contact wouldn't have any problems to deal with pesky humans. But either they are too far away or they obey the Prime Directive.

Evil invaders or wise peaceful creatues are good extremes for story-telling but the hypothetical real aliens would probably be somewhere in between, just like us.