[seanmcdirmid]

Why do we assume the aliens would even recognize humans as a species worth talking to? They could be so far beyond us, that (a) they would have no idea how to talk to us (like we have no idea how to talk to ants) and (b) they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between us and other species in terms of intelligence (like we can’t tell the difference between a fish and a crab).

We humanize aliens because otherwise movies would be boring, but more likely they would be very different from us, heck, we might not even recognize them ourselves.

[Joeri]

They may just consider us very young. You only tell a child things it is ready to handle. Arguably we’re not ready to make first contact. It has a high risk of leading us to war, the equivalent of a child throwing a tantrum.

[krapp]

On the other hand, the aliens might not care, any more than Europeans cared about African or Mesoamerican cultures. The aliens may simply show up and consider the world to be theirs by their version of divine right.

[heeen2]

What is so special about earth aliens might be interested in it in the first place? You could argue sentient life - or even any life - is even rarer than any other kind of matter.

Several science fiction pieces have been written and filmed about alien cultures only finding value in other species' history, stories etc for their entertainment.

[seanmcdirmid]

You are humanizing them again. It would be more like kicking an ant hill than western colonialism.

[stanfordkid]

We may be surrounded by aliens right now and just not know it. Perhaps alternate life forms are nothing more than laser beams or cosmic rays with specific encodings being beamed back and forth from some a distant transmission station or central "brain" and they take host in various organic creatures through manipulation of brain chemistry. Philip K. Dick has a novel called "VALIS" (Vast Artificial Intelligence System) that delves into these ideas -- the plot involves a satellite that essentially shoots down information to various living creatures in order to accomplish its ends.

[MR4D]

It’s highly possible that aliens travelling far distances are merely a century or so ahead of us, with the major distinction that they figured out interplanetary travel.

We figured out rockets well before nuclear ( Robert Goddard’s rocket launch in 1926, vs the Chicago Pile in 1942 ). Seems to me that the same thing could be true for something like warp travel.

Secondly, we try to communicate with dogs, apes, dolphins, etc. That gap is pretty big, but nowhere near ants -clearly it could be, I’m just saying there is no reason for it to be that big of a gap

[llama9000]

If the aliens could detect and understand our communications, they would see the violent, duplicitous and prejudiced nature of our world and avoid us like the plague.

I doubt they would want us to spread ourselves into their galaxy and bring our problems to them.