Hawking has said that we need only look at the history of inter-species relationships on our planet (let alone race relationships) to get a hint of what exopolitics might look like. He goes on to mention that in terms of the search for alien life, we'd do best to keep our heads low.
The strong assumption here is that the is no divide between intelligent and non intelligent life forms. I don't think it is the only view.
I'd rather compare alien encounter with something like Marco Polo going to China: he didn't wish to kill them all, was impressed by some achievement and inventions but was also disgusted by the Chinese diet. Came back and wrote a book, and it was so foreign most readers didn't believe him.
History up until... when? The last 60 years has seen considerable advances in inter-race politics, and it's improving all the time. Why wouldn't exopolitics be an advanced form of this?
I would not deny the possible that, for reasons I don't understand, any species advanced enough to be capable of interstellar travel behaves like a cross between Bono and Peter Singer. But I would not stake the survival of my species on it.
And there is a reason to believe that they probably won't be - they will be the product of Darwinian evolution, just like us, which is really not a very nice thing.
I completely agree on not staking the survival of the species on it, I just think that it's an overly cynical view. Same as I think most people are good people, but I still lock my car because a very few of them are thieves.
except of course, when the "advanced" species wants something that the "lower" species has. What if liquid water is a rarity, and the earth happens to have a lot of it?
It's too late for keeping our heads low. There's a sphere of EM radiation travelling at 3x10^8 m/s that started expanding out from Earth about the time that we turned on the first radio set. It announces our presence to anything capable listening.
After a few light years non focused radio/tv transmissions will drop off into background noise.
Active SETI is what's needed to send a signal to other planets
Hawking has said that we need only look at the history of inter-species relationships on our planet (let alone race relationships) to get a hint of what exopolitics might look like. He goes on to mention that in terms of the search for alien life, we'd do best to keep our heads low.