Talk to the Animals

Stephen Hawking thinks that alien extraterrestials are out there and that humans shouldn't try to contact them. Human History is pretty definitive on the consequences of encounter between technologically unequal culture, humans seem certain to be far behind any extraterrestial culture they encounter. Hawking is worried that the planet might be taken over by aliens who had trashed their own planet or just wanted more room.

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the native Americans,” Hawking said on his show.

I think that I can reassure Hawking on both those counts, though. Most advanced civilizations in the Galaxy have learned to live within their means, and no longer require the intermediation of an Earthlike planet to extract negative entropy from the Universe. Frankly though, you do scare the hell out of us. It's the combination of rapacity and skill in harnessing techology to it that's bothersome. Our course we all came up through more or less similar Darwinian meatgrinders, so those traits aren't exactly new to us.

Up until recently we have pursued a policy of more or less strict non-intervention, but I feel that I should warn you that four out of five planets that develop a technological civilization don't make it - the rest either sterilize their planet themselves or need to be removed as a threat to the rest of us.

Your local wildlife ranger,

Zrydric