Intelligent life on other planets and what to do.

If anything I'd say a lack of imagination is to blame. For years we've had fiction that paints aliens as human-like creatures with some aspect being different, or like some lifeform or based off an object we're familiar with.

Most wrote:

Most of the speculations about alien/human contact are too human. Most likely there is simply no way we can imagine how a contact between species with different environmental and cultural backgrounds might go down.
What if they don`t even recognize us as sentient beings? Would we recognize a sentient rock if we landed on some planet? Would interstellar-traveling rock recognize us? Perhaps it just wants to crash into planet and fuse with the existing materials as part of it`s million-years long self improvement programm. While meanwhile we`re all going "Armageddon! Where`s Bruce Willis?"

I`d say, contact becomes more and more dangerous the more aliens are like us. What if they view this sector as some long-lost homeworld of their ancestors, like some kind of Israel for jews and finally have mustered resources to return?
What if they feel the urge to convert us to some arcane religion no matter what it takes?
Would a hive mind even grasp the concept of billions of individuals and fact that you have to negotiate with each of us? What if the first person they made contact with was a loonie who offered them to stay and multiply?

The possibilities are just too infinite and most likely, we can not even fathom the right ones because of who we are and how we have evolved for thousands of years. Galactic Council is just a human idea, copy/pasting our existing political/cultural developments into sci-fi setting. Perhaps, most of the races in universe live in separately in carefully designed zones because previous such contacts have proven to be disaster.

William H. Keith did a good job of addressing a situation like "sentient rock" encountering humans in the "Warstrider" books. Just ignore the stupid cover art.

IMAGE(http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/1140/sandcastle.png)

NOT WORTH THE RISK!

Phil Plait, Astronomer and former head of the JREF, pretty much summed up how I view the situation. Any spacefaring civilization is going to have to cast a wide net for fuel and resources, so on the off chance that we come across an alien civilization it will likely not be the aliens themselves, but rather some sort of automated robotic/biological probe sent out to search for and gather said resources.

ruhk wrote:

Phil Plait, Astronomer and former head of the JREF, pretty much summed up how I view the situation. Any spacefaring civilization is going to have to cast a wide net for fuel and resources, so on the off chance that we come across an alien civilization it will likely not be the aliens themselves, but rather some sort of automated robotic/biological probe sent out to search for and gather said resources.

IMAGE(http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Star%20Control%202/Update%205/08.jpg)

Tanglebones wrote:

IMAGE(http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Star%20Control%202/Update%205/08.jpg)

IT'S A TRAP!

OG_slinger wrote:
Nevin73 wrote:

Think of how much the inter-continental railroad must've cost to construct, but it was done because more money could be made from it. I see the same thing with interstellar travel.

Assuming that our advanced alien's economy is space capitalism...

Or Space Manifest Destiny.