On a Long Enough Timeline...

This initially began as a response to comments on a post here, at IHW, as well as an article posted by Erik Stitt of Contact, and is in regards to Stephen Hawking's recent opinions on the nature of extra terrestrial life. But once I'd posted it thought it might make for a good piece on it's own, after elaborating on some points and cleaning it up a bit.

With Stephen Hawking's latest statement on extra terrestrial life, their arose the question of anthropomorphic tendencies among some physicists. Of course, this isn't anything particularly new. It's human nature to project human qualities on other forms of life and sometimes even on inanimate objects. These peculiar inclinations of ours provide a lot of interesting questions and has produced some awful literal representations. But when it comes to inserting our qualities into the mind of an intelligent alien life form, when does it become overly presumptuous, if not completely presumptuous from the start?

I have mentioned in past articles that labeling the possible actions of an extra terrestrial civilization with terms like 'good' or 'bad', is a bit ridiculous because it assumes that all intelligent beings would act more or less like us, portraying the same kinds of emotions and have the same ideas of what is considered 'right' and 'wrong'. So, when science speaks up and theorizes that contact with EBEs may be to our detriment because they could live a malevolent existence and seek to conquer us, it gives the general public the impression that life really is like Star Wars and that it might not be such a slick idea to set up base on Hoth.

Could that really be the case? Sure. Why not? But such ideas do not sit well with everybody. Many are arguing that assuming human concepts of 'good' and 'evil' are prevalent throughout the universe is a childish and naive approach -- and coming from the keyboard of such a notable and respected physicist, why, that's just adding insult to injury! Seriously though, I agree that it is indeed a naive perspective, but I'm not so sure that's what Hawking (and others) are really suggesting. I believe what he was trying to convey (albeit poorly), is that certain actions of an extra terrestrial people may appear as 'malevolent' to us.

Evolved and intelligent life on other planets would undoubtedly be quite strange to the people of Earth, and have developed significantly different in comparison. Things like atmosphere, water, vegetation, sunlight, and so on, are all factors that can produce different outcomes in the evolution of a species. But I think there are some 'human' qualities that might apply across the board: certain so-called universal behaviours, such as the idea that 'For something to live something must die' and 'All living creatures have a right to survival'.

If we do one day find ourselves tits-up as a result of heinous space-faring beings, it doesn't necessarily have to be the product of some devious alien nature. Good and Evil are subjective concepts, but it's how these concepts impact us that dictates our actions and fears, and promotes the creation of labels and shoveling of things into neat little boxes we can conveniently tag as Black or White.

I don't think Stephen was totally out of line for propounding that aliens could want to invade us, unless he was also suggesting that they would do so only for purely diabolical reasons. It is very possible that an alien act of survival may seem like something horrifically cruel to us, if we found ourselves on the short end of that stick, thereby causing us to knee-jerkingly brand them as 'malevolent'. So, Hawking was probably only suggesting that there exists the chance that some alien civilizations may be malevolent, or what we might consider as malevolent... and it just may be one of those that could pop on by for some liver and a nice Chianti.

If you buy into the law of probability, given a near (if not) infinite universe, the probability of more than one other alien civilization evolving similar to us, is very high. So in that alone, there would probably be (and probably is) an alien civilization very much like us, somewhere out there in the Great Beyond -- and with that comes a real concern of motives and what they might do if our humble little planet were to be discovered by them. We don't trust ourselves, so why would we trust someone like us? The odds that one such civilization would exist by or would have come anywhere near us are probably pretty high, but who really knows?

As Erik mentioned in his piece, this is all speculation. It really is. Your ideas, my ideas, and Hawking's ideas. Our speculation comes from what we understand, only. Perhaps ironically, even the speculation that extra terrestrial life would be 'totally alien' to us is coming from a very human position.