Steven Hawking is a theoretical physicist, and I think he fully deserves his Nobel Prize.
Now: I saw that same article, and I think Dr. Hawking was being speculative. He seems to have based his statement upon extrapolation of what happened here, in human history, when technologically advanced cultures came into contact with those which were less so.
I would argue his point because he seems to be denying any possibility of cultural evolution: that a culture's ethos could not evolve to a state wherein it's not okay to pick on the primitives.
Yes, as a species we've had a great deal of trouble with that one. We're still trying.
But there's no reason to think an alien culture wouldn't have more success.
To sum up: yeah, aliens might turn out to be big jerks. Or they might turn out to be really cool guys. It might even turn out that we're the only sentient life around, though that would be pretty surprising.
Laura (guest) 26 Apr 2010 17:04