[marcinzm]

Assuming universal ethics onto a human is the subject of whole fields of study. Doing so onto something that isn't even from the same evolutionary tree seems silly. An alien evolved from predators might find vegetarians merely dinner and not worthy of talking to.

[karatestomp]

Same as the problem with Pascal's Wager: if you don't know the motivations and values of the entity you're trying to please and can't even really narrow the possibilities down much, you might find the "wrong" behavior/belief is actually the one that pleases them, and the "right" one pisses them off.

[vzidex]

I disagree, Pascal's Wager deals with the situation where you don't know whether the (omnipotent) entity you're trying to please exists or not.

This comment thread assumes the omnipotent entity (aliens) exists, and so you'd be taking a coin flip as to what behaviour they find pleasing. Pascal's Wager resolves to:

(infinite gain * non-zero probability of success) > (finite gain * non-zero probability of failure)

While this situation is more like:

(infinite gain * non-zero probability of success) ~= (infinite gain * non-zero probability of failure).

[karatestomp]

Pascal's Wager hits precisely the same problem because it's not knowable what might make one eligible for "infinite gain", including not believing in gods. There's no way to differentiate between "finite gain" behavior and "infinite gain" behavior.

[indifferentalex]

Good point of course, however irrational it might be, I can only imagine the scenario where there's a really awkward confrontation between us and the ETs over one of these articles. Will take the bravest of us to start throwing bacon jokes.