Space Aliens: Don’t Encourage Them, Says Stephen Hawking

[The Overfiend]

Robert McHenry - May 3rd, 2010

Stephen Hawking; Paul Alers/NASA “To Serve Man” is one of those stories that, once read, stay with you. It was written by Damon Knight and first published in a science-fiction magazine in 1950. The story tells of an alien spaceship coming to Earth. The beings aboard make contact with humanity, gradually overcome the initial fears and doubts as to their intentions, and proceed to apply their advanced technology to making an Eden of Earth, eradicating disease and hunger and war. Many humans cheerfully volunteer to visit the aliens’ home planet, said to be even nicer.

One determined linguist obtains a book belonging to the aliens and manages to translate it. It is titled “To Serve Man,” and, as he shouts out in vain to another tour group being ushered into a ship bound for the other planet, it turns out to be a cookbook. The story has been widely anthologized, dramatized, and parodied.

Human-meets-alien has been a perennial theme in science fiction, going back at least as far as H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898). Sometimes, to paraphrase the old adage, the alien eats man, and sometimes man (or his new BFF, a bacterium) eats the alien. Rarely, because it less easily lends itself to drama, the meeting is entirely benign, as in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977). Or sometimes the encounter is simply minatory, as in that greatest of all science-fiction movies, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951; absolutely not the 2008 travesty).

Now Stephen Hawking — the media’s favorite boffin – has been prodded into making some comments on the possible outcome of a real close encounter of some kind. Professor Hawking emphasizes the downside: Aliens may bring diseases we can’t resist, or they may steal our resources, or they may decide to colonize Earth. He compares the appearance of such aliens in our sky to the arrival of Columbus in the New World, “which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

The precautionary principle suggests, then, that we not encourage alien tourism. We should not be calling attention to ourselves. The unfortunate invention of radio broadcasting a century ago has already created a certain amount of peril, of course. In that century, Reginald Fessenden’s first broadcast of the human voice and of music on Christmas Eve of 1906 has spread across a sphere that encompasses more than 100,000 stars, and it’s still going. Right behind it, cosmically speaking, are “Amos and Andy,” “Queen for a Day,” millions of aired and reaired episodes of “I Love Lucy,” “The Gong Show,” and — let us hang our heads in shame — “American Idol,” the earliest installments of which already passed Alpha Centauri five years ago.


 

Is anybody listening to us? Let us hope they are a forgiving or an easily amused species.

But what if, as in Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End (1953) or the movie “Independence Day” (1996), they just show up one day? Should we prepare by creating vast camouflage covers for our cities and towns? Practice freezing in place, so as not to be noticed, and whispering out of the sides of our mouths? Such tactics seem unlikely to hoodwink an alien of even middling superhuman intelligence.

I haven’t yet settled on my own survival plan. Best bet so far, though, is to start taking quinine pills regularly, hoping that they will render me unpalatable.

[.:DaYg0sTyLz:.]

We could just have Sam Cassell have a talk with em...

[ikke]

I posted he documentary months ago

[westsiderider323]

fuck stephen hawking provoke the aliens and see if they would blow shit up

[C-BLUE]

fuck stephen hawking provoke the aliens and see if they would blow shit up

i agree stephen hawking is a bitch made nigga. i mean look at him lol

[NotoriousTDA]

I haven’t yet settled on my own survival plan. Best bet so far, though, is to start taking quinine pills regularly, hoping that they will render me unpalatable.

nigga what?

[Bananas]

I haven’t yet settled on my own survival plan. Best bet so far, though, is to start taking quinine pills regularly, hoping that they will render me unpalatable.

Very 19th Century British Army of you, for different reasons of course.

[jeromechickenbone]

Alright I have a few things here:

1) Stephen Hawking is a retard.  Not because he is blatantly handicapped, but because he tries to feed people bullshit.
2) He is owned by the powers that be as their token handicapped guy, showing how open minded they are. 
3) Anybody who does any research will be convinced that ET's are real.  There is no excuse for not knowing this.  If you are waiting for Ted Koppel to tell you, it's not gonna happen (yet anyway). Once you get that, you then realize that if ET's were going to destroy us it would have already happened by now. 
4) He is purposefully fear mongering to try and scare people.  People in a constant state of fear are easy to control.  That is one of the cornerstones of the powers that be philosophy.
5) He fails to acknowledge that not every other race of humans acts as savage and barbaric as the old school caucasians, so therefore his assertion that they will kill us all is very weak.

Peace

[The Overfiend]

A lot of intelligent and down to earth people don't actually believe in aliens. Its not simply because people choose to be ignorant, rather, they could be considered rational and sceptical. For a lot of people, seeing a grainy youtube video of what is claimed to be footage of an alien or alien craft is not hard evidence. And how can you blame them when fantasy is so very mixed with fiction in our media. 


I also think its a valid perspective to consider that if there are aliens, they could be out to exploit us in their own self-interest.

It pays to be cautious. Come in peace, but prepare for war.

[ikke]

A lot of intelligent and down to earth people don't actually believe in aliens. Its not simply because people choose to be ignorant, rather, they could be considered rational and sceptical. For a lot of people, seeing a grainy youtube video of what is claimed to be footage of an alien or alien craft is not hard evidence. And how can you blame them when fantasy is so very mixed with fiction in our media. 


I also think its a valid perspective to consider that if there are aliens, they could be out to exploit us in their own self-interest.

It pays to be cautious. Come in peace, but prepare for war.

I think you mean they don't believe in aliens being here.
Aliens not existing at all is very improbable.

We shouldn't look at the invading aliens as an equal species, look at them like you look at a cow.
If they want anything from us they would make it obviously clear.