Quote:
Originally Posted by bojan
I must strongly disagree with this statement.
The evolution in general prefers aggressive species - they have advantage over other, less aggressive and capable to protect or claim their living space and territory.
As a result, humans are what they are, aggressive and seeking control even over other, human "tribes" (read: nations cultures etc).
To me it is quite obvious that evolution on other inhabited planets will result in very similar (if not much worse) behaviour of successful species.
So, I fully agree with Dr. Hawking opinion on the issue. Better be safe than sorry.
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I think you'll find, Bojan, that in the academic literature, the species who survive the longest and flourish are those that actually cooperate with one another, both within species and interspecies. This whole competition and survival of the species thing is a holdover of 19th and early 20th Century thinking for the most part. Yes, species do compete for resources, but if you really look in nature most species have specific niches which they occupy and only rarely do they actually compete openly with one another. Otherwise, nothing, or very little, would survive.
The world is far more complex than "dog eat dog", which is what's being implied.
Human aggressiveness has little to do with our innate natures and more to do with social conditioning. Yes, we can be aggressive, just like any other creature, but for the most part we're a rather cooperative species. If we weren't, we would've wiped ourselves out. Truly aggressive species don't last long. They either wipe themselves out or run into someone bigger and uglier than they are that does the job for them.