[duopixel]

> When weighing the risks involved in interactions with less-developed cultures such as ours, these advanced civilizations may choose to refrain from contact.

I think establishing communication with a more advanced civilization would be deeply disrupting to our culture. We would ascribe their cultural practices to their advancement, and get a bunch of people doing "alien cargo culting". Imagine they were strict vegetarians, or peaceful and kind meat eaters for that matter. It would completely disrupt our own evolution by injecting foreign memes into our culture.

You can also reverse the situation and suppose we are able to visit an alien planet where we find a rudimentary civilization which has customs that appear exotic to us. What would the experts recommend? The cynic would say we would go at war with them to take over their planet, but being realistic it is much more advantageous to study them without interfering. I think the evolution of conscious life in different conditions than our own planet must be of tremendous interest to other conscious life.

[zionic]

The aliens could also have morals we find repulsive, for example how would society react to aliens that said hitler was right etc etc?

[whatshisface]

We can feel pretty safe that they would not say that, because if they liked Hitler, they would be invading, not chatting about history.

[drummer]

Read the book "Hitler's Table Talk" by Trevor Roper.

[ardy42]

> Imagine they were strict vegetarians, or peaceful and kind meat eaters for that matter. It would completely disrupt our own evolution by injecting foreign memes into our culture.

Or imagine they were psychopathic sadists, like the Affront in that Ian Banks novel.

[MajorBee]

I have full faith (some pun intended) that as soon as an alien civilization shows up (however slightly more advanced they might apparently be), there will be entire religions based around them as the gods. Hell, I'm sure there will be a few existing ones that will claim these are the gods that they were talking about all this while, the Great Reckoning is here, etc.

[coding123]

> "alien cargo culting"

As it is right now we're doing human cargo culting, most of which is indoctrinating people into believing things that are not true - sooo YMMV?