Contact aliens a good or bad idea?

[capitano666]

I say it's a bad idea mainly because I believe no one will ever answer, in my opinion the chances for another civilization at least advanced as ours are pretty scarce, despite the size of the universe.

But if we really want to assume aliens exist then I agree with this:

There is no way for us to prevent our signals from going into space. We've been broadcasting for 50 years now.

Heck the light of our cities would probably be potentially perceptible a significant distance away.

Imagine tomorrow we got a signal from another galaxy that was some how readable and understandable from our perspective. Even if we discovered it tomorrow we couldn't communicate with them because of the 10-25 year+ delay, we can't go see them because of the light-years of distance from us, and we certainly wouldn't be affected by them other than psychologically.

The only difference between that signal and the light from a star is that we see a different pattern in it.

And if we really want to assume aliens exist, have a way to receive our messages and a way to travel to us, then I still think it's a bad idea.

Such a complex life form must have been evolved by natural selection and that usually implies some kind of selfish behaviour.
(It sounds pretty dumb said this way but to explain myself better I would have to write a wall o' text)
The stereotype of illuminated aliens sounds laughable to me.

[Slanderize]

I think it'd certainly be interesting to see what our species would do if we felt we were no longer on top of the food chain. The sheer thought of us amassing together like in so many Sci-Fi novels to utterly exterminate some alien species seems like the only shot in Hell we have at not continuously warring against others of our species based upon nationalities and political interests.

Also on the same note though, whenever ants get together, climb up on your feet, and make contact with you... what's your response? :P I vote bad idea.

[Deleted]

Given the vast amount of traits another species could possess it's impossible to say. If we were aware of an alien species we would not be able to hide from them forever, at some point contact would have to be made. Given the history of the human species I wouldn't be surprised if first contact was made with an army shortly behind it, whether or not they understand our fears and seek diplomacy regardless of our blood-lust and xenophobia is beyond me.