Humans' Encounter with Space Aliens

A recent article on Huffington Post said, in its headline, that an expert has said that the world should prepare for encounters with other-world aliens.

Although the article, and the comment it was reporting, focused on the prospect that Mankind will encounter other intelligent beings as Man voyages further and further out into space, we've been largely conditioned (by sci-fi movies) to think in terms of aliens landing on earth in their "flying saucers."

I don't want to weigh in on the likelihood that aliens are going to land on earth—let alone the question of whether they have already done so. But I do want to speculate a bit on what an alien "encounter" might be like.

First, I fear that Mankind's first reaction might well be to let loose the military or the police and those first aliens—even if coming in peace—might well be killed by us.

Second, thought should be given to how we are going to communicate. In the movies, the aliens speak English and say, "We have learned your language by monitoring your radio and television broadcasts." Well, I don't think we ought to count on that; and the issue of how we might communicate is not an easy or obvious question.

Next, I've amused myself by thinking about how aliens might differ from us. Entirely apart from how aliens might differ from us in physical appearance (and there's no reason to think they're going to have two eyes, one nose, one mouth, two arms and two legs, etc.), how about if their minds are very different from ours? Maybe they will be beings who are incapable of lying and will have no comprehension of what lying is or of how and why we can and do lie.

Last, suppose they are creatures who never make mistakes. They might say to us, "Well, if you intended to do [such-and-such], why did you not do that? Why did you do something else?"

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