We expect alien's with highly advanced technology to be proportionately wiser then we are. We expect these advanced aliens to have a more refined sense of the Golden Rule, perhapse. We certainly expect them to be as intelligent as their technology would indicate.
But, what reason do we have to think that, when I see no evidence that we contemporary humans are any smarter or more compassionate or wiser with regard to how we treat our own kind, and other races that many of us don't feel connected to, then humans were three thousand years ago. We have more rules, more experience and our cultures have taught us other options, but are we actually better then our ancient ancestors?
Bronze Age humans reportedly had bigger memories due to their lack of literacy, they calculated and defined the very mathematical systems we still use today, their philosophical explorations were every bit as sophisticated as any modern Philosopher's, and they somehow figured out the diameter of a spherical Earth, that there was an axis wobble and what its period is, they built structures that we have a difficult time imaging how. Just because they didn't have the education of the succeeding 2500 years, doesn't mean they didn't have the intelligence to understand General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics or some future human epiphany in science that we haven't yet imagined.
There is no reason to believe that a race of advanced aliens will be any smarter than we are or that we can't understand their technology. Only that they may have a millennium or so more experience at discovery and study.
I can't help feel, despite the fact that I can't understand General Relativity, that there wouldn't be much they can understand that I couldn't.
After saying all this, I would like to point out that we often are not satisfied with simply sending probes and investigating remotely via giant telescopes. At some point, humans will decide to climb a mountain because it's there. Why not expect the same from aliens? Would you not expect factions, disenfranchised, rival nations, to still be competing for resources, for status and esteem? Maybe we could be considered the barbarian hordes on their borders that they could recruit, hire, impress into military service like the Roman's did.
It's easy enough to build mech to fight for you, but until your own kind are fighting and dying, there's little impetus to win or lose a war. You throw robot soldiers at an enemy and their robot soldiers trash yours, you don't just roll over and say, "We concede, you're the better warriors." When they come to destroy the enemy, it ain't the failed robot army they care about. And if you're still up and righteous after the loss of your mech, actual citizens will be thrown into the fray, regardless of any agreement to conduct a civilized war that has no lives lost. Loosers don't confine themselves to the rules if they still have lives to spend.
So, that's one set of ideas about why an advanced alien species may actually come to visit us in person.
The other one is, because it doesn't cost anything. If they have near light speed capabilites, maybe it doesn't cost them the time or the fuel, as we have come to think about it, to make the trip in person. Perhapse there are tons of species out there who have the ability to get here, but only one or two who can do so with little energy spent. Maybe an advanced alien species has been able to develop their minds so that they actually travel by instantaneous thought.
"Remember that little Paris bistro that had the fabulous macaroons and dark roast coffee when we visited Earth back in the early days of their industrial revolution, Glietta? Maybe we could return there, when the Jutshox' arrive at 10, for brunch? I'll give them a call and get their order."
-Will
