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Comment by dkuchar | Hacker News Reader

hawkings:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7...

Life on this planet is predicated on material transformation/consumption. that's what we do - we eat and excrete our environment. no reason to believe it would be fundamentally different on other planets.

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Surely there is enough uninhabited bodies of matter\resources in space to preclude the necessity of fighting with aliens over them for the next 100,000 years?

Perhaps; perhaps not. There's many situations it would be worthwhile.

- They want to kill us just because

- They have already occupied virtually everywhere else, and want more (our) space

- We are in the way of their wave of expansion, and they don't care (and are set to steam-roller over us)

- Earth or nearby planets are valuable to both them and us, and equivalents are too far away (nobody says FTL travel is possible)

There have been plenty of wars (not every single one, but plenty) here on Earth already that demonstrate that.

The fact that a human has killed another human in the past is hardly sufficient reason for recommending Xenocide as de facto future policy, mein Fuher.

Did you examine my hypothetical scenarios? They all basically revolve around another race that wants to commit xenocide on us. Or can you simply not conceive of a scenario where humans are not the superior species calling the shots? If we are not the only sentient race, then there's bound to be quite a few out there, and I can guarantee you we aren't the best, the strongest, the most adept or adaptable, or the most competent. There's always someone better, and odds are if the other race finds us, they are superior (they managed to go exploring and expanding before us).

The history of human wars is purely an example demonstrating that even when there is enough land to go around, there are times when you have to fight (unless of course you are ambivalent towards your own survival). To use your apparently favorite example, Hitler, America engaged in WWII and yet did not win a scrap of land. Nor did America want land. Was this just some stupid unjustified, unreasonable mistake?

Straw man, argument 'self-defense == bad' not present.

Possible arguments:

1) The ethics (and humor) of pre-emptive strikes

2) Given that the proportion of resource-containing matter forming planets inhabited by sentient life to total resource-containing matter in the galaxy approaches insignificance, it seems extremely improbable that homo sapiens will ever be engaged in a competition for resources with sentient alien life at a time point where homo sapiens still exist and have not evolved into several other species.

And when the 100,000 years runs out, what then? Clearly we need to prepare now by eliminating all competition.

How far away are these things? Don't send a grunt, make sure it's someone who can think on their feet because the closer you get to these places the more obvious it may become that you need to turn around. ;)

the more I read about evolution, emergence, etc, the more I start to feel that life is almost as common as rock, and not all that much more interesting. all it needs is a highly interactive environment of molecules. water and carbon works in our environment, and I'm sure there's other ways it can be brewed. carbon based life is likely to be the most common only because of the multitude of ways that it can be transfigured.

anyway, given the right set of conditions, which shouldn't be all that uncommon in the universe, life is a matter of time, not a stroke of luck. so, in my completely amateurish opinion, I think any planet that would be immediately inhabitable (by us) would already be inhabited. however, I'm sure there are plenty of planets, Mars even, initially barren (at this moment) that we could terraform to our purposes. as I alluded to in my first comment, we're natural born terraformers, and we've done that already (in this case for the worse) on this planet.

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