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Macleans.ca

Canada’s magazine

Is there anybody out there? Do we care?

My column for the print mag this week takes a break from Tory-baiting and looks at the biological  assumptions that underly the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.  I take issue with Stephen Hawking’s specific worry that aliens we encounter will be too much like us (greedy, rapacious, violent), because I think the real worry is that they’ll be nothing like us at all.