THW: Avoid contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life

He began by suggesting we first communicate remotely and then make close contact in a controlled environment. While this is, of course, a much more sensible idea than just landing on their planet and shaking hands (if they even have hands) with their leaders, it is still incredibly risky, and has a number of logistical issues; firstly, how do we communicate with them at all? Languages are incredibly sophisticated systems of code. It takes years to learn a language that we already have established translations for. Think how many years longer it will take to learn to communicate with a species which may not even be physically capable of producing the same sounds we use to communicate, and with which there is no one capable of speaking both their native tongue and any Earth language. Secondly, even if we, by some remarkable means (that it would very much be in my opponent's favour to establish) managed to find a way to translate between languages remotely, there is the issue of implied meaning. Imagine a native German speaker hearing the following sentence: "I went down the local rag with my mates, got very pissed and pissed off the bartender by pissing on the floor, so I rang the rents to pick me up". They have learned English to the extent that they can understand the literal meaning of individual words, but without the sociological context and implied meanings of words, the sentence becomes gibberish. The many different meanings a word can have (e. g. "pissed"), the use of slang (e. g. "local rag") and the use of sayings (e. g. "pick me up"), can give ambiguity to sentences even when one is capable of translating the sentence literally. Therefore, communicating with the IEL would be nigh on impossible. We couldn't meet in a sterilised environment because we wouldn't be able to communicate the message: "Board this ship at this time in this location to be placed in a quarantine so that we may study each other's biology" Without first having prolonged contact. One misinterpretation of one message could result in a war, or in the IEL landing on Earth and a pathogeneous outbreak. Consider also the possibility that the quarantine fails, or the IEL is unwilling to co-operate with us and decides to land on Earth anyway. I feel my opponent's refutation of my second point was less thorough, so I will spend fewer words responding to it. Evolution is evolution. It is the only way to get to complex life. That which is efficient at surviving and reproducing does so. That which is inefficient does not. This would be as true on another planet as it is on Earth. Carnivores and omnivores will always be under more pressure to develop intelligence because it necessarily requires more reasoning ability to corner and kill another organism than it does to evade one. Even if one were to somehow doubt the above claims (and one shouldn't), one would have to concede that it's at least a possibility that they would be aggressive. At that point, why take the risk? This brings me nicely to my third and final point: As expected, all of the examples of benefits my opponent presented are better pursued by other means. How life evolved on other planets is necessarily the same as on earth. Evolution is evolution wherever it happens. We'd be better off studying it here. Unlocking "free energy" is a violation of thermodynamics and simply can't happen. Curing diseases is difficult but something we can do on Earth without risking introducing a whole bunch of new diseases. We have the capacity to both improve our society and to solve poverty, but we don't because it wouldn't suit those in power to so so. We'd be better off harvesting resources from uninhabited planets; all the reward for no risk. It is for the reasons outlined that I once again urge the voters to side with the motion of avoiding contact with IELs. Thank you.