Hawking warns of alien contact

Well its seems that Hawkins fears may already be a reality:

Anyone remember Gary McKinnon? The fledgling aspergers hacker who broke into the Pentagon looking for information on aliens? Well despite the fact that the US government fought hard to have him extradited to the US and place his tail in prison, Gary has disclosed some of the information he viewed and discusses the whole affair in several mainstream news interviews, but this one I find to be the best:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8690427088949208642&q=mitnick#docid=-4252902807834262581


For those of you who prefer not to watch the whole video here is the video excerpt synopsis:

"Gary is lucid, eloquent and extremely intelligent. He made it clear that the real reason the Americans want to extradite him is not for any damage he has done, for in fact there wasn't any. They are pursuing him is because of what he might have seen. Specifically, documents revealing a list of "Non-terrestrial officers" and off-world cargo operations somewhere out in space, hinting at the real possibility of military activities taking place in relation to other planets. Such a possibility has got to be mind-blowing to the average person who barely grasps that there might actually be aliens from other worlds interacting with earth and governments in the vicinity of our solar system. Key to the whole extradition matter is the issue that there were NO passwords required in order to access this material... and that a relatively unprofessional hacker, self-taught albeit brilliant, would be able, using a dial-up modem, to gain top secret access to NASA files and places as sacrosanct as the Pentagon."


So you see we may already be in good standing with aliens from 'god only knows where'.

There is now a 'Free Gary' campaign much like the 'Free Kevin' from back in the day. If you are interested in 'freeing' Gary from extradition to the US so he can face trial in the UK sign the petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/autism70/petition.html

 

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Do you understand how big a galactic quadrant is? We've only been emitting radio waves in a serious way for about 100 years, so any aliens farther away than 100 light years probably wouldn't know about us. Even within the 100 LY radius sphere, it's very possible that aliens would miss us if they weren't deliberately looking in a serious way. While it's difficult to predict what sort of detection technology an advanced alien race might have, the inverse square law means that it's hard to notice anyone very far away if they aren't deliberately broadcasting at you specifically.

Uh...again, no. Perhaps some race 30 light years away picked up our 1950 broadcasts 30 years ago, and their automated weapons will be arriving to kill us tomorrow.

 

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Er, riiight.
The organisation that made that video (and the transcript, available here) doesn't, in my book, count as really reliable. (Or even particularly sane, but that's another question...)
From their website:

In other words they're uncritical "believers" and McKinnon's interview also puts him in much the same bracket - he mentions the Disclosure Project (another notable crank organisation who have singularly failed twice to my certain knowledge to have their "revelations" shown to have any substance) a couple of times.

In short, McKinnon is a UFO nutter and the interview is by UFO nutters. And strangely lacking in anything but his and their unsupported word...

 

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Not really reliable? Whew! That's a burden off my shoulders

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@Nasor

What if its all a trick like in Arthur C. Clarks 'Childhoods End'

Those alien devil could have a grand ruse of ingratiating themselves with our governments and then us, only to later wield their destructive plan and exterminate us:shrug:

You see this is why I continue to shop

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It sounds like we're switching from Independence Day to Star Gate.

 

^This.

 

LOL! It will lead to Fringe but end up with in Body Snatchers.

Obama always did look a little strange to me. Ever notice? His head is out of proportion with the rest of his body. I think he be an alien manufactured president. Very suspicious

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Don't tell limbaugh, hannity, beck, levin, et al.

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I am thinking all of our presidents and senior government officials are aliens. Oncel they are elected they quietly get the pod treatement. Have you noticed, once they get elected, they change.

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This is why we have to Free Gary!

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The inference that the US government is in cahoots with aliens. That would explain...well everything

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Gary knows!

Gary saw!

I mean what exactly did he see? Why has the US government insisted that he be extradited? The UK isn't some butt fuck country that wouldn't fairly prosecute the poor guy. Hmmm. Maybe that's what they fear, a fair trial.

 

The way I see it, life on Earth is a sort of gigantic computer. Our various environmental constraints were the inputs and, over the past few billion years, we've generated a lot of output data in the form of living things. I'm not an alien (I don't think), but, if I was, I'd have a field day reconstructing the history of this planet from its evolutionary legacy. This is a very resource-intensive and, by all accounts, rare computer, therefore they aren't particularly cheap clock cycles. If I found some ancient relic somewhere, I probably wouldn't toss it unless there was a very good reason. Maybe there's like an Antiques Roadshow for aliens, where they compare all of the pathetically "intelligent" races they've found.

That's true, but, though I don't really have any good evidence to support this, I get the feeling that Earth is an extremely rare find. Even if you found it a couple of billion years ago, judging by the young star and the relatively stable climate, you could be reasonably sure that, if you were going to get intelligent life anywhere, this would be one of those places. There was a huge time window to discover it is what I'm saying.

Again, I can't really argue against your last point here. However, I feel like considering ourselves a potential threat to such a civilization is a liiiiiittle bit arrogant. We're a long ways away from firing objects off at the speed of light, and, even if we knew how to do it, we'd have no idea where to aim. To any aliens monitoring this planet, we're probably about as unpredictable as an ant farm.

I can't agree. What we selfishly consider to be "harmful" might actually be beneficial in the long run. Like I said, good and evil is just opinion unless you have some objective measure of expediency. If you had to excise a tumor from one of your family members, you probably wouldn't think of it as harming them, would you? If aliens wanted to destroy lots of humans, maybe they'd be doing it to save the countless generations ahead of us. Or maybe they'd get rid of humans altogether and allow another species to evolve consciousness, one that would produce more responsible stewards for this planet. I see where you're coming from, I just don't feel like "benevolence" is the right word to use.

Irrelevant. The Borg are an alien race invented by humans and are thus subject to our own intellectual inadequacies

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In fact, if they were completely logical, they probably wouldn't be very fun to watch. I could just imagine the plot twists: "oh... well, that makes sense".

Word.

That's true, but we can't really do much about that. Unless you mean that we should cut off all electromagnetic communication in hopes that the aliens missed that 60 year time window to catch our broadcasts, in which case I definitely don't think the risk matches the precautionary measures we'd have to take. Can you say "can-wire-can telephone"?

Also, I get the feeling that, if aliens did want to kill us, they'd do a better job than we're currently doing. I'd much rather get turned into plasma by some massive kinetic weapon than get starved to death by a bunch of psychopathic plutocrats.

...seriously? I mean, something like this would be a very big deal. More so than anything else I can really think of at the moment. There are plenty of people who have tried to expose much more obvious "conspiracies", and, despite going on record, stating clearly that they had no intention of committing suicide, they were found dead and the official cause of death was determined to be suicide.

If this guy had the evidence they're claiming he does, extradition would be entirely unnecessary. He would simply cease to exist.

 

I doubt they would think of us as a threat given our limited abilities. If they did view us as a threat, we would probably not be here. I think it is more likely they find us just plain uninteresting or that they have some principal like the "Prime Directive" first created by the series Star Trek.

And actually, I think any advanced species would be very linked in to its tools. I would expect any advanced intelligence to be some combination of machine and flesh...and I would expect some pretty innovative combinations of machine and flesh probably beyond what most of us would want to think about.

Machines do not mean an elimination of the self by the way, nor does it mean elimination of personal interests. The self and personal interests can be maintained in a mechanical or electronic environment.

My point was, that when technology drives the price of goods and services to become so inexpensive as drive out all costs, goods and services cease to loose their classical power over human behavior and other things will become more valuable as drivers of behavior. So the bottom line is that an advanced species is more likely to be a commune sharing hippie than a capitalist pig. As the mastery the species would exhibit over its enviornment would obsolete the reasons for being a capitalist pig.

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No, no, no! Who said anything about evidence? You should watch the video. What he did is spend a long period of time browsing through their files until he got caught and it wasn't always the same files. He was just curious. What he speaks of is some data that infer's such and such occurrence but he even says he isn't sure. He goes on to say what it was he had seen but it doesn't amount to evidence (he knows that) and he didn't download anything.

 

By the way, I've never seen The Borg do their thing, so, if that's what they're actually like in Star Trek, then I stand corrected. Though I still can't imagine them appealing to a human audience, except maybe as a relentless, one-dimensional villain. We do like our one-dimensional enemies. Yes we do.

Sorry Lucy, I didn't get a chance to check out the video so I was really just working with my prejudices. That being said, diverting the population's attention from the things that are actually going on right underneath our noses is a big business and I wouldn't be surprised if aliens were yet another device to do so.

Basically, I'm not worried about aliens. In fact, I'd really like to meet some. If they end up not being so nice, whatever, people die sitting on the toilet; there are plenty of stupid ways to go out.

As far as the government meeting with aliens... I don't see why the aliens would waste their time. If you were looking for a representative sample of the human population, you'd probably only need one person from DC. If you wanted their cool toys, I'm pretty sure you could just take them.

 

Aliens are not big on my agenda either but I found it interesting that Gary thought that the US government may be hiding technology that would make the world a better place without considering all the technology and rational ideas that already exist that can make the world a better place. Why would the US government hide technology that could be used for the improvement of humanity and the environment when they already underutilize what we all know they do have? :shrug: Never seemed to cross his mind.

People will tend to...mind the pun...'reach for the moon' when they think the world is out of control and that they are unable to make any difference. There is a lot of fascination around the idea of aliens hence the Discovery special. Its almost as if the idea of outside interference becomes an attractive thought or a way to project or deflect our fears around the destruction humans are committing towards their very own planet. I mean isn't it easier to worry about something that amounts to fantasy instead of facing the reality? Its the same way people appease themselves with god and prophecy. The occidentals will say that the coming destruction is unavoidable and part of 'gods' plan. Even the hindu's and buddhists will go on about Kali Yuga and convince themselves that the signs of destruction are all about and the end is imminent. This way they are not only absolved from personal responsibility for the world they live in but they can also appease their fears by claiming they will be 'saved' from the destruction.

I say worry about aliens when they ring your doorbell trying to sell Amway or Scientology.

 

Illogical.

And here's why:

(1) If they have not detected us yet, due to their being enormously far away from us, then who cares..? Because even when they finally discover us, we will have advanced so far beyond where we were when those radio waves were first broadcast that the aliens will have absolutely no way of knowing how powerful we CURRENTLY are. In other words, I send a radio broadcast out into space in 1922. And the nearest alien civilization is 2000 light years away. Well then, by the time they finally receive that 1922 broadcast, 2000 years will have passed here on Earth. How much more advanced do you think humans will be after 2000 years have passed..? The aliens will have no idea... so for them to launch a massive and expensive armada of starships towards the Earth would be insanity. For all they know, they could arrive and find themselves facing an enemy who is quite capable of blowing them all out of the sky. Would you risk something like that, based upon a million unknowns..? Only a fool would even consider it.

(2) Also, if they have not detected us yet, due to how far away they are from the Earth, and if they do not possess a means of faster-then-light star travel, then WHO CARES if they are hostile..? Let's use the distances in my previous point. Let's say that they come from a system 2000 light years away. If so, then even if they are capable of traveling at 99% the speed of light, it will still take them 2000+ years to reach us with their invasion force. And meanwhile, we'll continue to make our own technological advancements during those 2000 years and so once again, they will be attacking us without having a clue as to how powerful we might be. And even worse for them, the relativity equations make it clear that so much time will have passed back on their home world that by the time they reach us, their own starships will be obsolete and all of the people whom they left behind will very likely be dead and buried.

What kind of lunatic would launch an invasion like that..? Against an opponent of unknown power, who is so far away that the journey to reach them would be several MILLENNIA in duration. And by the time we get there, everybody on the invaders' home world will have long since died. For all they know, their home world might not even want them to invade the Earth anymore.

No matter how you slice it, it just doesn't make sense. So yes... I think you are simply being paranoid. So is Stephen Hawking. No offense.

 

An a meer 200 years from now our limited abilities coud change into a threat as we evolve into non-biological entities.!!!

 

As we move into space and space travel and exploration, it will require some physical adjustments. Our bodies are not well suited for space travel and exploration. We are very vulnerable to things like radiation, lack of oxygen, water and food. Space travel would be much more efficient as a machine.

I think as humans evolve we will create our own biological bodies and be able to move from machine to flesh at will.

 

Sure... but what woud be the prupos/need for a "flesh-body".???

 

To be immortal.

 

Originally Posted by cluelusshusbund
Sure... but what would be the prupos/need for a "flesh-body".???

So you dont thank a machine coud be immortal.???