Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

EXCERPT: E.T. was the perfect extraterrestrial: Cute, smart and — best of all — a perfect pacifist. Unfortunately, scientists aren't so sure that an actual intelligent alien would be so benign. In a recent interview with El País, famed physicist Stephen Hawking posited that an alien visitation would put Earthlings in the same position as Native Americans when Columbus landed on their shores.

"Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach," Hawking speculated. [7 Huge Misconceptions About Aliens]

The likelihood that intelligent life is out there is up for debate; less discussed are the conditions necessary to evolve a life-form that's both smart and nice. But the lessons from Earth suggest that intelligence and aggression might evolve hand-in-hand....

"Alien" came out 4 years before "E.T. and was much better imo. The problem with predatory aliens is you are projecting a likely prey role to an entirely independently evolved organism. This imo is unkikely as a prey and a predator must be part of the same niche to have such interdependency. The lesson of life, if nothing else, is the almost infinite diversity of it's ecological systems. Flesh eating aliens is not imo a very likely scenario. More likely we would be totally irrelevant to them, being composed of entirely incompatible chemical compounds.