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| Are we exercising for cosmic conquests? Yeah, you bet! |
Fantasies about "colonial conquests" may reveal more about our youthful and barbaric past than about our future. After all, western nations only dismantled their colonial empires a short 60 years ago. When they conquered the colonies in the 19th century, western median ages were very low.
What will we want collectively when our society reaches median age 64? We don't know because historically we have never had such a society. Given the current aging trend, we will find out soon enough. Then we might know, 2 billion light year from us, what the old aliens really want. Just some quiet Tai-chi in the morning, perhaps.
From the Daily Mail: "ET will 'conquer and colonise' humanity, warns Stephen Hawking"
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Now, in his latest dire warning, the physicist claims that if AI doesn't conquer humanity, an advanced alien civilisation may do so instead.
'If aliens visit us, the outcome could be much like when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans,' Professor Hawking said in a recent interview.
'Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach,' Hawking told El Pais.
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'To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,' said Hawking.
'The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.'
But Hawking says if aliens don't kill off the human race, then climate change or AI could do so instead.
'I think the survival of the human race will depend on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe, because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth,' he said.
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