You know, while playing around with some friends a while back (Roleplay, pretending we were Spacemen™) the idea of communicating directly with the mind came to me. Like, sentient creatures think, which suggests that the organic ones have minds--would the brain be universal? If it is, would they all operate on the same principle (electric signals, right?)?

If both are true, would it be possible to create a piece of technology that would let you share thoughts, and communicate that way?

Serious question! That's the gimmick I used to communicate with my friend's aliens.

Draug, fortunately, we have a way of seeing infrared or sensing electromagnetic waves, using technological means. It might not be easy at first, for us to understand what they are saying.

But from our side: Even if aliens communicate with each other via telepathy or witchcraft or whatever, we should still be able to communicate to them. Given that we're in a clumsy physical world, with vocal cords and hands and such, we can certainly produce phenomena that the aliens could see. Unless they're completely non-corporeal (in which case conflict is not really a big deal), then they will still be able to see rocks and at least some spectrum of light and other things that can the basis of early communication.

But even if we can't communicate, that doesn't make extermination okay. We can't communicate with honey bees, and if they sting some of us we will die. That wouldn't make it okay to exterminate all the honey bees in the world.

But we don't know what we don't know... My examples were of known wave and particle forms. There may be energy forces out in the universe we don't know exist and can't detect and those may be the means by which an alien race communicates. You are assuming they will.communicate using a means we can detect, but that may not be the case at all.

I should also point out that even here on earth there are creatures which are genetically blind. The bat uses sonar and has no use for eyes. Again, we don't know how they perceive the universe. Perhaps when they move it is in a non-corporeal manner but when still it isn't. Perhaps their intellect will cause them to view us as we once viewed all other life forms including dolphins. It has only been recently that we have begun to understand just how intelligent and complex the dolphin is.

My view is attacking an alien race that visits us is foolhardy. If they had peaceful intentions, we piss them off and their advanced tech decimates us. If they planned to pwn us anyhow, our puny tech won't mean shit.

Our best hope is early detection and to pray we quickly find a way to detect how they communicate and start sharing basic mathematics.

But in reality, if they are interstellar travelers, they probably will already have monitored us before visiting and have a means of rudimentary communication if they have recognized us as intelligent.

It occurs to me that any technology that advanced will require a grasp of mathematics beyond all but genius level lifeforms. It could well be, therefore, that all mathematics of any importance will be carried out by computers and the aliens themselves will carry mathematic knowhow at a far lower level than our own.

By sending basic mathematics we may in effect be sending them what they only remember as being difficult and totally pointless homework from school (a bit like if aliens travelled the vast void of space, overcoming countless dangers, in order to test us on our Latin Vocab).

It would also make us look like total squares :p

Probably not. Scientists get hard-ons over mathstuff, even the women. ;D

They'd probably be as "WOW!" as we'd be, provided they've a thing for learning like we do...

Well, possibly...

...although any alien with half a wit would have done a bit of recon on signals originating from Earth before making contact. By the time we're ready to say hi he will have seen everything from Hitler's Reichstag Address to Debbie Does Dallas. If we then follow that up by broadcasting maths homework to him as a "hello" we may well have achieved the worst first impression in the history of the universe.

In my moral philosophy, yes it would be wrong. Self-defense is justified as usual, so if they are incessant and continuous in their attacks on us, at some point yes it is possible we might exterminate them, or come close, but it would be wrong if we did it on purpose.

In my ethical framework, what matters is intelligent life. Each intelligent life is endowed with moral worth.

Assume you've just seen the aliens blow up Mars and Jupiter on the way here, would you kill on sight?

No, not necessarily - nothing lives on those planets. It's impossible to guess why they might have done such a thing. I would be on alert, of course, but killing on site is... extreme.