My money is on the pulse rifle...
Posted on 04/25/2010 11:08:20 PM PDT by nickcarraway
British physicist Stephen Hawking, the brilliant man who wrote "A Brief History of Time," says aliens probably exist and frets that if they discover Earth their intentions might be less like the film, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and more like the book, "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." In the book, alien bureaucrats determine the Earth should be demolished to make way for space highway and blow the Earth up. Sorry. Nothing personal. Prepare to die.
It's not such a crazy thought, says Hawking, in a Discovery Channel series. "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," he said.
Then, citing the example of Christopher Columbus' landing in the Americas and colonizing indigenous tribes, Hawking concluded efforts to contact alien races may well be "too risky."
"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet," he said. "I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach."
Sounds like the Vikings. Or Romans. Or, yes, Spaniards. [Read Hawking's biography.]
Meanwhile, enjoy this trailer from the "Hitchhiker's" film...
Title of siad cookbook: How to Serve Man.
“siad” should be replaced with “said” - sticky fingers!
They would have been brutal by now, I should imagine. Assuming Louis Farrakhan’s Mother Wheel is out there, the White Devil would have been served on platters well done several years ago.
“No way of evaluating alien motives or capabilities until actual interaction is documented.”
There is clearly a motive to leave us be to a large extent. There might be a treaty. But then you have poachers and pranksters.
I mean, imagine if Junior sneaks onto a star ship for a joy ride and shows off to his scaly girl friend. He saws up a cow with his laser and holds a barbeque someplace private. He wants to avoid long range spy devices [imagine the spy drones!], so he knows a nice cave in a giant meteor. Then, just when things get interesting, “This is no cave.”
Glibness aside ...
Some of the smartest students in the world go to Hillsdale. Hundreds of students saw a UFO — I forget if it was in the 60s or 70s.
I imagine this would be a good site to check for mass witnessing:
UFO Sightings Worldwide
http://www.noufors.com/ufo_sightings_worldwide.html
I had assumed that cameras in i-phoes would have found plenty by now. But maybe as our technology advances, they get more camera shy? Heck if I know. In all seriousness, I think there is intelligent life out there. And it concerns me that leading figures such as Louis Farakhan are openly claim they are taking orders from E.T.s. [As well as Kusinich — sic]
If your thesis is correct, it would actually be worse for us. Think of it ...it would be akin to what is currently occuring off the coast of Somalia all the way to Yemen. In parts of South America, and parts of Thailand. In essence, piracy. The pirates are ill-educated (oft illiterate), quite dumb, linear thinkers ....yet with motorized boats, Kalashnikovs and RPGs they have turned places like the Somali town of Kismayu into El Dorados (literally ...as a fund manager I've been tracking the appreciation of real estate in Kenya, a small part being due to monies streaming in from Somalia ...since Nairobi Kenya is a developed city, while all of Somalia is a wasteland, thus piracy money streams to where it can be used).
On Aliens ....the speedboats would be spaceships, the kalashnikovs some new-fangled weapon, the RPGs some master-weapon. We would be a helpless cargo ship the size of a planet!
I remain convinced that the day aliens come to earth (if they exist, and mathematically speaking the odds of alien lifeforms existing is certain ....the question is advanced species, and according to one calculation there should be around 10,000 sufficiently advanced populations in the vastness of the universe) will be a day we wish never happened. Look outside your office window one day (as i am doing now) and look at the masses moving about below. To me they look like ants, and our buildings and skyscrapers like ant-hills and termite-mounds.
I wonder what you do to termites?
“District 9”, a great movie, addresses the very scenario you suggest. Chilling flick.
Amazingly, the Onion has revealed that Hawking is actually a hand-puppet that was infrequently used on Kukla, Fran and Ollie. PBS dusted him off and thought the wheelchair and artificial voice would make a good series. He’s do to be replaced by a Tickle Me Elmo puppet next year!
Women and minorities hurt most!
What I have an issue with is defining preconceptions of sentient intelligent life. My thoughts are based on the infinite environmental conditions existing in the vastness of space, that life may have assumed such an alien for as to be conceptually incompatible with what we expect an for an intelligent life form. Maybe they are christalyn or something so alien that we can't easily recognize their technology? I believe they have defined levels of identifiable civilizations via the Kardashev scale. I just wonder if it's inadequate to truly define the potential form that an alien civilization may take.
Well, my comment would be that not every stellar exploit is a success.
Also consider if the vehicle is manufactured by Earth's equivelent of "union labor".
We need to develop alien-destroying weapons before they find us.
Alien Unions. God help us.
I imagine when we get out into space, and I mean really get out there, our entire definitions of life, physics, and a few other things will have to be completely reevaluated.
Not that I’m judging or condemning here, but what is the reason for your dislike of SH? He seems like a pretty ok guy to me...
You made Surok the human preparer sad. hope you are happy ;)
If I may comment.... Machines are only as good as the people who design+build them. Creativity is not in the realm of computers, contrary to what Hollywood thinks.
I would agree with you, however, that computers are faster and more accurate than humans, and will respond to specific sets of inputs far more quickly. So, your argument is true, to a point. If the humans who designed computers, say, told it "In events 'a', 'b', and 'c' occur, your response will be thus" ... then, computers will beat humans nearly every time.
Where the wild card comes in, is when events 'a', 'b', 'c', and 'X' occur ... if the computer hasn't been programmed to respond to 'X'. Humans (most humans) can handle the wild card - judge whether it needs a response, measure what the response should be, and so forth. Computers can't do that, and I don't see it on the horizon, either.
'Tis the reason why things like computer-controlled driving (PopSci had a big article on it recently) and such scare the hell out of me. There's no way to control for all possible inputs, ergo, the system may be successful 99% of the time, but the failures in the other 1% will be spectacular. This is fine when the worst that can happen is a crunched fender while parallel parking....not so much at 70 mph on a computer-controlled freeway.
And we’re still a puny type 0.
I'm not sure that was the case in 1947. I think attitudes were a whole lot different. I suspect that had FDR survived, he'd have had a good shot at winning in '48, and the whole nation had just rallied around the US Government for WWII. I don't think that an inherent "mistrust of government" would be a given, or even a reliable variable for the basis of a PSYOP campaign at that time.
My money is on the pulse rifle...
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