Do YOU believe in space aliens?

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by surfinmuse

My thought is that a species (or planet, etc.) advanced enough for space travel of this magnitude to visit us, won't actually bother doing so. To loosely paraphrase a line from the new War of the Worlds movie, it's like a non-relationship between us humans and maggots: they do their thing, we do ours, we don't feel compelled to learn their language and communicate with them on their level.

My thought is that any alien visiting earth would be the interstellar equivalent of an Anthropologist. Grad students doing field studies and the like. As such they would certainly not hover over the white house and toot their horn. They would set up blinds and study us in our natural environment perhaps snatching a few specimens from deserted country roads or on Friday nights when they’ve had a bit too much space-juice turning the robo-surgeon loose to carve their initials on some local bovine livestock. As long as we don't have anything they need (like dilithium or Ben and Jerries) we should be left in peace to eventually blow ourselves up.