Arrival - A first contact movie where everything doesn't blow up.

[kariko]

[QUOTE=Helix Snake;50906149]That's basically what Cosmic Horror is.[/QUOTE]

Hmm yeah, that's right. I guess it's sort of similar but another fear I imagine is what if they just eradicate the planet without even trying? Like a person walking somewhere talking on the phone, and you step on an ant and kill it without even thinking. That just freaks me out...the unknown is scary as hell to me. This seems way less likely than the other thing I said though, since it would kinda be more like trying to kill an entire species instead of one bug.

[Genkaz]

[QUOTE=kariko;50906139]I think Vsauce talks about this? But the scariest thing to me is what if we're just like an anthill and they're humans? You would never even try to communicate with an ant because it's not even on the same level as yourself, what if we're so primitive to them that we aren't even seen as something they can speak with or like, we can't even comprehend the knowledge they have? I'm not sure if I'm making sense but I hope you guys understand what I mean.[/QUOTE]

Maybe with humans this is not really possible because we are complex enough as a species to be viewed as approachable by even the most impossibly complex beings? Maybe humanity has reached some sort of a universal "minimum level cap" at which it is no longer possible to consider us as ants by pretty much anyone?

An entity of a vastly higher level could instead view us as small children for example.

And even if someone did view us as ants, establishing some form of "communication" with ants is still possible on a really basic level. When we accidentally step on an anthill, we still tend to briefly go "oh shit", even though they're ants.

Another paradox lies with assuming that a race of a massively higher development would treat species of an earlier level in the same manner as humans would, while in actuality it being possible that someone that high up would treat these sorts of encounters with infinitely higher amounts of attention than ourselves, especially given the possibility that they themselves were on the level of humans a really long time ago.

[Aya86T]

I honestly love first contact stories or movies; I think they're absolutely wonderful.

First contact as a subject I love; really. I just wish I knew where to find more stories or movies based on it.

[lolita la vida]

[QUOTE=Silly Sil;50899994]So what's the explanation why the super-intelligent-space-traveling aliens wouldn't try to learn our language instead of trying to teach us theirs?
Surely species so advanced would learn alien languages faster than less advanced species?[/QUOTE]

maybe our language is not sufficient to communicate the ideas the aliens might wish to teach us.