Judging by the vast majority of our population, I'm sure the first question we get asked by foreign life will be what the score in the football match was.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

Let's just hope the Lizard People from Remulak weren't watching and come calling to rid Earth of those pesky geckos.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

Probably too much Douglas Adams... :-)

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

As for the massive, long-lived species that you speculate about, even if such a species were to exist, we would never receive any radio messages from them, nor would they decipher any that we transmit, without a strong technological base.

Again, you're overstating your case. Bats and dolphins use organic forms of radar/sonar. It's "conceivable" that this massive, long-lived emotionally trenchant being had developed a way of communicating and/or understanding radio frequencies. Again, this is all pure speculation that's all that's needed to poke a hole in this technology assumption.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

Bats and dolphins do NOT use radar/sonar, they just use sonar.  No known species on Earth has a biological mechanism (as opposed to an artificial device, which we humans have built) with which to communicate by radio frequency.  (There are species which can detect electrical fields, but that's a different thing.)  

That doesn't mean it couldn't happen, of course.  I actually did mention in a previous comment that I could conceive of a species which evolves a built-in biological radio communication organ, but that even if such a species were to evolve somewhere in the universe, it would still be very difficult for such a species to communicate on an interstellar scale without technological enhancement of the built-in biology.

But what if such a species, which communicates over interstellar distances by purely biological means, actually existed?  What if a thousand such species existed?  That wouldn't in any sense invalidate my argument.  All we have to do is find ONE species which we can communicate with over interstellar distances, and which has scientific knowledge that it wishes to share with us, and our efforts will bear fruit.  If, however, we instead wind up contacting a species which communicates across interstellar distances by purely biological means and which has no knowledge of or interest in science or technology, but which instead wishes to exchange poetry with the human race, then I guess we would exchange poetry.  This would almost certainly not be as useful as exchanging scientific knowledge, but who knows, alien poetry might be very artistic.

And there is nothing mutually exclusive about these scenarios.  We could in theory communicate with all sorts of different species, and for all sorts of different purposes.  I still believe that those species which have significant scientific knowledge to impart would prove to be the most helpful to the human race.

Of course, this is all speculative since we have as yet detected no recognizable signals coming from any extraterrestrial species, and quite possibly we never will.

I agree, these aren't mutually exclusive scenarios. Personally, I just don't think scientific knowledge is necessarily the most important thing they could bring us. Look at The Day The Earth Stood Still.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

Of course, in "The Day The Earth Stood Still" the Earth was actually visited by an alien spaceship, a scenario which presents a wider range of possibilities than a mere radio message from outer space.  I have begun this discussion with the observation that given the overwhelmingly large distances between stars, it seems very unlikely that anybody is actually coming to visit us from those stars.  But certainly, if some wiser and more advanced alien race, which (contrary to my expectations) does have the capacity for interstellar travel, were to come to our planet and, like the galactic equivalent of a UN peace-keeping force or aid agency of some sort, were to take charge of our messed-up world and straighten us out, that would be ideal.  We could really use the help.  That would be far better than merely giving us scientific knowledge, because in our current state of political lunacy, there is no telling whether such knowledge would be used for good or for ill.  Presumably, when and if our world is in better shape politically, and has achieved a reasonable degree of sanity, we could then receive the advanced scientific knowledge of our benefactors, and make appropriate use of it.

Given the improbability that any outside help is coming, we'd better not count on being rescued by anyone other than ourselves.  But if friendly aliens do arrive, no one will be happier to receive them than myself.

My point was that in the day the earth stood still, the aliens had no interest in exchanging technology with us. In fact, they made a point of it. They had no interest in our technology because it was rudimentary to them and they had no interest in sharing their technology with us because they viewed us as irresponsible with the technology we had. Instead, they wanted to share a message on social maturity.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

It is a curious scenario, that some alien race which is scientifically so much more advanced than ours that they would see no point in exchanging scientific information with us, nonetheless wishes to help us out by delivering a message about social maturity.  In reality, the human race already possesses any number of inspirational ideas and philosophies.  We already understand the concept of social maturity, even though we seldom achieve it.  The concepts of loving our fellow human beings, of seeking peace rather than war, of taking better care of our world, etc., are already quite familiar, and have been around for thousands of years.  There is no message that any alien race could deliver, however inspirational, that would solve the political problems that the world currently faces.  Only by active intervention, could this hypothetical advanced alien race really help us out.  If they are indeed so extremely advanced, it might be quite easy for them to intervene.  But it is also possible that this hypothetical alien race would rather not solve our problems, on the grounds that it would be better for us to work out our own destiny, however painful that process might be, than it would be for us to be taken over by an alien race.  There might be some kind of Prime Directive (as in Star Trek).  Personally, I think we could use the help.  I also think that there probably isn't any alien race out there which has the capability to visit our planet anyway.  But if we were to be visited by an alien race which only wanted to give us an inspirational message, I would be deeply disappointed in them.  

But if we were to be visited by an alien race which only wanted to give us an inspirational message, I would be deeply disappointed in them.

As would I, for two reasons.  The first of course would be the aliens having the means to give aid, but refusing to do so and the second would be that they're acting like my favorite republican:

"Stay the course"
"Light at the end of the tunnel"
"You're doing a fine job, Brownie"
"Axis of Evil"
"Mushroom cloud over New York" (hey, they don't have to be nice inspiring, do they?)

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

I am reminded of a science fiction story in which aliens arrive in the from indestructible black cubes (or was it pyramids), which sit and completely ignore all attempts at communication, and grow and divide faster when hit with atomic bomb radiation.

I am reminded of another story in which aliens arrive and demand that Earth immediately end servitude and treat everyone equally.  The only problem is that they think the most advanced form of life on Earth are the dogs, and when the humans initially refuse and tried to negotiate, they herd he humans into reservations, leaving the bulk of the area of Earth to the dogs.  The prevalent sentiment amongst the humans is, "Thank God it wasn't the pigs."

For all we know, alien civilizations are common, and aliens have already visited earth and are currently blocking any signals from reaching us, as an experiment to determine how primitive lifeforms react to a seemingly uninhabited universe.

And of course, there's always the theory that interstellar civilizations are relatively common, but last only a short time before their radio transmissions attract something which exterminates them.

Interstellar travel is very, very expensive, and any interstellar ship is likely to be a small seed ship designed to establish a new colony, with nearly no other interstellar travel.  If there are a lot of intelligent beings around a star which isn't their birth star, it's likely because they've been expanding there from a seed ship.

But if there were aliens here, what would they think of us?  Most likely, either we would make no more sense to them than an anthill, or they would be so advanced that they would view us as ants.  That they would  directly help us either socially or technologically doesn't seem to me to be all that  likely.  Maybe they'll find teaching us to use their technology to be of the same difficulty as teaching a cat to drive a car.

In any case, we generally assume that they would be friendly or antagonistic, while I would find it most probable that they would be other.

This post has been translated from the original 5-scent Rangorakese.

That first story you mention was by THE VISITORS (1980) - Clifford D. Simak - I remembered reading it in HS.

I tend to think that life like ours is highly unsuited to interstellar travel mainly because:

1. We each live a very brief time
   
2. We cannot perpetuate our consciousness through time - human achievement is collective and cumulative but it lacks direction or purpose - our history unfolds like some unconscious emergent property - mostly reactive to inadvertent effects/consequences of earlier activities = characteristics unlikely to produce diaspora or attentional focus sufficient to move a space colonization effort.
   
3. We are insufficiently adapted to survive the variety of physical conditions outside of our nursery here on the surface of earth at the bottom of a gravity well.
   

There are plenty more items that could go on the list of why Humans & interstellar space are a bad combination but looking at just those 3 is a starting point for imaging what sort of characteristics an interstellar life form would have:

1. Near immortality - to cross interstellar distances at sub light speeds would require the ability to plan projects across millennial timetables and surviving long enough to see the plan through to fruition would give those projects a point.  Some sort of 'self' must be around at the beginning and end of a project to justify all the effort.
   
2. Perpetuating consciousness through time will provide an ability to focus on and complete tasks that take hundreds or thousands of years to complete this can be solved in a number of ways:
   • Hive Mind/Consciousness = individuals of the species can be born, grow old, and die but the 'mind' will continue to benefit from their existence as long as it can merge/share thoughts and memory with all remaining individuals
   • Machine Life - can 'live' for as long as its physical components can remain intact & be repaired
   • Combination of Machine & Biological life that allows 'copies' of consciousness to be made & then placed into a variety of storage media or into new 'bodies' - this allows for life forms and individual consciousness closer to Human.
    
   
3. Space is brutal environment - my first choice for space-life would be machine based since that would allow for some pretty extreme 'toughness' when it comes to dealing with being able to scale needs for baseline energy and consumables for maintaining life during long trips, the ability to have parts of oneself go inert when they are not needed, the ability to reconfigure oneself to operate in nearly any environment...the advantages to being machine based life if you want to travel the galaxy are very great.
   

I'm thinking 'Robo-Conquest-Seed-Bot' is the most reasonable form of extraterrestrial intelligence to expect.  If we humans survive another hundred years or so and crack the whole Artificial Intelligence thing - the first wave of the mechanical terror invasion should be streaming outward into the galaxy from Earth.  I almost feel bad for some future Alien farmers looking up into their night sky - how do you think Machine Life born on earth would behave?

"...when theft and high crime becomes obscenely obvious to even the blindest beer sucking idiot, it is always the Republicans who are in office." -- Joe Bageant

A true von Neumann machine inevitably favors evolution towards running amok.  I presume this is what you mean by "'Robo-Conquest-Seed-Bot".  Certainly machines have major advantages when it comes to radiation resistance and the ability to enter a low temperature, low power usage sleep mode.

What makes interstellar travel possible at all is that you have the resources of a world working for only a few people.

I tend to think that it would be easiest to dispense entirely with a  human crew and have the ship raise someone from an egg on arrival.