"Don't talk to aliens!", said my favorite physicist Dr. Stephen Hawking .
I can understand his concerns, I guess. It's what I've heard, all my life starting from mum! "You never know what they really want" is the first justification. And even though, we are taught about human values on trust and friendship in the subsequent years of our childhood (virtually turning around "Don't talk to strangers" to "Be nice to strangers"), the latter doesn't quite apply to people who are not human beings! I don't intend to pass judgements. I am only expressing my views.
It's been natural for people throughout history to live in tight-knit communities. People trust their immediate kin with their lives, but are weary of outsiders. 10,000 years ago, we had little villages. 1000 years ago, we had empires. 100 years ago, we had nations! And today, we hear slogans such as "Embrace humanity" "All humans are equal" and so on. Our perception and size of the community has grown over these thousands of years, and I don't see why the next big philosophy won't be "All sapient/sentient species are people, including dogs and dolphins!" This is one of the reasons, why I don't believe that making contact with aliens would spell doom to humanity.
It's also a well known idea (only a distinctly possible fact), that aliens would come here to conquer our planet and take away our resources. If so, I pose two questions: If the aliens could travel across star systems in their tiny little ships, why would it be so hard for them to find a life-less planet with more "resources"? What are the odds, that there is no such thing as a much bigger galactic community that humanity isn't yet a part of, and/or is not welcome in that community? Until these two questions are answered, I strongly believe that aliens would prefer only to make friends with humanity, not destroy it.
I can understand his concerns, I guess. It's what I've heard, all my life starting from mum! "You never know what they really want" is the first justification. And even though, we are taught about human values on trust and friendship in the subsequent years of our childhood (virtually turning around "Don't talk to strangers" to "Be nice to strangers"), the latter doesn't quite apply to people who are not human beings! I don't intend to pass judgements. I am only expressing my views.
It's been natural for people throughout history to live in tight-knit communities. People trust their immediate kin with their lives, but are weary of outsiders. 10,000 years ago, we had little villages. 1000 years ago, we had empires. 100 years ago, we had nations! And today, we hear slogans such as "Embrace humanity" "All humans are equal" and so on. Our perception and size of the community has grown over these thousands of years, and I don't see why the next big philosophy won't be "All sapient/sentient species are people, including dogs and dolphins!" This is one of the reasons, why I don't believe that making contact with aliens would spell doom to humanity.
It's also a well known idea (only a distinctly possible fact), that aliens would come here to conquer our planet and take away our resources. If so, I pose two questions: If the aliens could travel across star systems in their tiny little ships, why would it be so hard for them to find a life-less planet with more "resources"? What are the odds, that there is no such thing as a much bigger galactic community that humanity isn't yet a part of, and/or is not welcome in that community? Until these two questions are answered, I strongly believe that aliens would prefer only to make friends with humanity, not destroy it.
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