We have this mental image that a flying saucer will circle the White House lawn,

我们总觉得会有一个飞碟在白宫外的草坪上空盘旋

land on the White House lawn and give us a bounty of all sorts of technological goodies to initiate an age of Aquarius on the planet earth.

然后降落在白宫草坪上 给我们带来各式各样的技术新玩意儿 从此开启地球上天下大同的太空时代

Personally, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

我个人认为这是不可能发生的

For example, if you’re in the forest do you go out and talk to the squirrels and the deer?

比如 如果你身处森林中 你会去跟松鼠或者鹿说话吗？

Maybe you do for a while, but after a while, you get bored because they don’t talk back to you

或许你会去说几句 但是没过多久 你就会产生厌倦 因为它们不会回应你

because they have nothing interesting to tell you because they can’t relate to our values and our ideas.

因为它们没有有趣的东西跟你分享 因为它们无法共享我们的价值观和思想

If you go down to an anthill do you go down to the ants and say I bring you trinkets;

如果你俯身去看蚁丘 你会对着蚂蚁说我给你们带来了好东西

I bring you bees; take me to your ant queen; I give you nuclear energy.

给你们带了蜜蜂 快带我去见你们的蚁后 我赐予你们核能量

So I think for the most part the aliens are probably not going to be interested in us

所以我觉得外星人很可能对我们根本不感兴趣

because we’re so arrogant to believe that we have something to offer them.

因为我们太过自大 总以为自己能给他们提供好东西

Realize that they could be thousands, maybe millions of years ahead of us in technology

要知道 他们的科技可能比我们领先数千 数百万年

and they may have no interest in interacting with us in the same way that we don’t necessarily want to deal with the squirrels and the deer in the forest.

他们可能根本没兴趣跟我们交流 就像我们不一定愿意搭理森林里的松鼠和鹿一样

Now some people say that we should not try to make contact with them because they could be potentially dangerous.

有些人又会说我们不应该跟他们联系 因为他们很可能极其危险

For the most part, I think they’re going to be peaceful because they’ll be thousands of years ahead of us, but we cannot take the chance.

我觉得他们很可能是和平的 因为他们比我们先进几千年 不过我们也不能冒这个风险

So I personally believe that we should not try to advertise our existence to alien life in outer space

所以我个人认为我们不应该大张旗鼓地向外太空的外星生命宣告我们的存在

because of the fact that we don’t know their intentions.

因为我们不知道他们有何意图

Then the other question is what happens if they’re evil?

另一个问题就是 如果他们很邪恶 那会发生什么？

Well, I think the question of evil is actually a relative question because the real danger to a deer in the forest is not the hunter with a gigantic rifle;

我觉得邪恶其实是个相对而言的问题 因为森林里鹿真正的危险并不是扛着大步枪的猎人

he’s not the main danger to a deer in the forest.

他并不是鹿主要的危险来源

The main danger to a deer in the forest is the developer; the guy with blueprints;

森林里鹿的主要危险是开发者 是心里有蓝图的人

the guy in a three-piece suit; the guy with a slide rule and calculator;

是穿着三件套的人 是有计算尺和计算器的人

the guy that’s going to pave the forest and perhaps destroy whole ecosystems.

是打算夷平森林甚至摧毁整个生态系统的人

In other words, the aliens don’t have to be evil in order to be dangerous to us,

换言之 并不是只有邪恶的外星人对我们才是危险的

they might not care, they just might not care about us and in the process pave us over.

他们可能不在乎 他们不在乎我们 并在这一过程中把我们全部毁灭

In fact, if you read the novel War of the Worlds,

其实 如果你看过《世界大战》这本小说

the Martians in HG Wells seminal novel were not evil in the sense they wanted to torture us

就会发现赫伯特·乔治·威尔斯这部有新意的小说中的火星人并不是想折磨我们

and they wanted to do all sorts of barbaric things to humanity.

他们并不想对人类施以各种暴行

No, we were just in the way.

不是这样的 我们只是妨碍了他们

And so I think that is a potential problem.

所以这是个潜在的问题

We could be in the way of a very advanced civilization that simply is not evil but simply views us as we would view squirrels and deer in the forest.

我们可能只是妨碍了一个非常先进的文明的前进之路 他们并不邪恶 他们只是像我们看待森林里的松鼠和鹿那样看待我们

So personally I think that we should not advertise our existence when we go into outer space.

所以我觉得我们探索外太空时应该默默进行

For the most part, however, I do think they are going to be peaceful,

不过 我真的觉得他们极有可能是和平的

they're not going to want to plunder the earth because there are plenty of planets out there that have nobody on them

他们并不想掠夺地球 因为还有其他数不胜数的星球 上面一个人也没有

that they can plunder at will without having to worry about restive natives called humanity.

他们可以随意掠夺 还不用担心“人类”这个坚强的本土居民

And so I think they’re not going to come to visit the earth to plunder us, to do all sorts of mischief.

所以我觉得他们并不想到地球上来烧杀抢掠 来伤害我们

For the most part, I think they’ll just leave us alone.

他们很有可能会让我们自生自灭