Mercy it sounds all very wonderful but sadly the facts ruin that lovely fantasy. I don't want to sound argumentative, just airing a bit that I've learned from other forums mainly.
Communicating with squid because they have information that may, or not, be 'useful' to us isn't the point. That we can't communicate with them at all indicates the difficulty of communicating with other alien lifeforms.
If we can't crack that with a creature who shares the same carbon based chemistry and common origin what chance do have with one whose entire structure, priorities and thought processes are beyond our comprehension?
And more importantly, why would an advanced alien race want to talk to we 'squid'?? What do we have to offer them?
The New Planet fantasy:
The nearest 'possibly' habitable planet to Earth is 20 light years away. We may make advances and invent Warp drive, or master wormholes in the future, but at our present level of technology that 20 light years equates to ...are you ready?.... approx 375,000 years of travel time, one way!
Considering how the human race has changed over the last 375millenia what would it be by the time it arrived there?
That's presuming that we could build a craft the size of the moon to carry the equipment necessary and capable of supporting life for a sufficiently large gene pool and work force of humans, and the fuel and supplies needed, and then guaranteeing no breakdowns in the cryogenics, air scrubbers, and hydroponics units for all that time. That would be one hell of a fine piece of engineering.
It's taken Voyager half a lifetime just to get out of our own solar system. I could go on but I'm a sci-fi freak and most aren't so suffice to say that SETI is a total waste of money because if we did contact something which would even bother to answer they'd be too far beyond our capacity to reach them. And if they wanted to reach us and had the technology to do it, and were only interested in terran type planets, as we are, then they'd be so advanced that they would squash us like ants and just take it.
And as for us moving to another Earthlike planet, what if it's already occupied?
If we plan on crushing them like ants instead then having SETI chatting to them and letting them know what we're really like would not be a great tactical idea either.
I don't mind them listening quietly but we already spew out enough garbage from TV and radio transmissions to attract the attention of passing aliens, increasing the power of broadcasting our shortcomings seems an unnecessary risk to me.
Personally I would be the most surprised person on Earth if any ever turned up at all, let alone ones with a recognizably similar technology level to ours. It's in unimaginably big Universe and has existed over a mindblowing amount of time, it's full of star systems at all different stages of viability for life to occur, so that lucky coincidence is (excuse the pun) astronomically unlikely.
A last point. You can give a Ferrari to a baby but it won't know how to drive it, and would you give one to a baby anyway? That seems to be what we expect to be given by these mythical technologically advanced saviours from deep space.
We need to get over ourselves and realise we have no one to call to come and help us out. If we mess up in our room, we have to clean it up or suffocate in it, there's no one else to do it for us and no other room to move in to.
We're home alone.
