The Paramters of Justifiable Genocide

[speaker-to-trolls]

As you can probably guess, this was inspired by the monstrous Avatar Review Thread in Other Sci-Fi.

The idea that you can justify wiping out an entire race or culture or even species is obviously a horrible one, but it seems to me that if you can justify killing civilians in wartime, and in fact killing them en masse such as happened in all sorts of German and Japanese cities in World War 2, then you can, theoretically, justify wiping out a whole race/culture/species. It seems to me that it's a matter of scale of the threat, specifics of (their) culture and situation and ability to discriminate hostile from civilian (X)'s.

I think there is an extra horror to the idea of wiping out an entire group, a unique culture distinct from that held by members of other groups. However, unless anybody will argue that cultures have a value independant of the people who are part of them, then I can't really support that argument, a life is a life, after all, be it one out of a thousand or out of a hundred billion.

Basically your stance on what I have just said determines whether exterminanting another 'race' can be justified only if another is in danger of the same if this is not done, or whether it can be justified to prevent a greater number of deaths within another 'race'.
THoughts.

[Enforcer Talen]

This is my coffee table logic. Its a theory Ive had for a while, and seems to work in a lot of situations.

Ok. Sometimes when two groups of people meet, one of them sees the other and finds it so heinous they have to be destroyed root and branch. Did it with the native Americans, did it with the nazis, did it with the Japanese, possibly doing it with the middle east now. The destruction is so complete that the survivors simply have to change to what the victors view as acceptable. A generation or two later, everyone is tremendously sad, and puts up statues and markers in the history books, and oh couldn't we have been nicer, but the boots on the ground at the time would definitively say that they had to go. So we kill millions of them until they shape up.

Keep in mind this hypothesis doesnt work on racial lines, necessarily. It targets more memetic cultures. To paraphrase TBO, you kill an idea by killing everyone who believes in it.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Personally, I find it difficult to construct a scenario where genocide would be the logical and moral course of action.

It's not that hard. If the group is instinctively genocidal or otherwise extremely hostile and too powerful to ignore the you may have no practical choice. The scenario doesn't come up in the real world because in the real world we are all pretty much biologically the same. In the real world there aren't any nonhuman intelligent species or human subspecies genetically engineered for war or who evolved to be instinctively murderous towards everyone else; just a variety of plain old humans who don't always get along with each other.

So; there's no justifiable genocide because there aren't any targets that qualify; not because the idea is intrinsically impossible.

[Darth Wong]

A worthless tangent from an idiot user with the most incredibly arrogant username in the world (Singular Intellect) has been split. The idea that ethics are intrinsically meaningless and arbitrary could be used as a generalized cookie-cutter answer to any ethics thread, and as such, is completely worthless in this one.

[ThomasP]

I had a discussion a few months ago with a rabid right-wing type who liked to justify modern war, including race vs. race conflicts, on the grounds of realist-school international relations. He quoted everybody from Thucydides to Machiavelli to modern neo-cons as moral/ethical grounding for his thought process, which is summed up as "states/ethnic groups/whatever are always in competition and there is no higher right or wrong, so conquer or be conquered".

I suppose there's some truth to that, at least depending on where you are in your cultural acceptance of enlightenment values, though I'd like to think we can be a little more progressive than to see everyone outside our tribe as an enemy and destroyer that must be conquered before they get us.

In any case, I'd hesitate to call any outlook relying on the Melian Dialogues as a model of interaction to be "moral". It's glorified bullying on the international scale, no matter how much it attracts macho dickheads.

Barring that kind of "pre-emptive aggressiveness", the other option is self-defense, which at least has ethical underpinnings. Though admittedly if you reject the idea that the existence of outsiders implies that the outsiders want to destroy you, it's harder to come up with scenarios where you'd have to completely exterminate a group for self-defense. The Nazis tried that one and it turned out to be made-up bullshit.

[Stark]

Keep in mind this hypothesis doesnt work on racial lines, necessarily. It targets more memetic cultures. To paraphrase TBO, you kill an idea by killing everyone who believes in it.

Except in none of your examples did this actually happen. Were all Nazis ever dead? Is the Nazi idea dead? Was there ever a policy of 'genocide' towards Nazis?

I imagine attempts at genocide are driven by fear; fear isn't rational. If people honestly feel an existential threat (which doesn't have to be military), they will be easily led into a 'genocidal' conflict. It's extremely uncommon that it will be seen through to it's conclusion unless it happens relatively quickly, due to cultural shifts.

[Sarevok]

Acceptable to whom ? Because it all depends on who is writting the history and who reads it.

[someone_else]

some rather interesting thoughts on this, on the Atomic rocket: Aliens.

I think that it is mostly a problem of survival, if both could annihilate each other there is a high chance that it will happen.
Cold War is not a good example. Because they were both on the same planet and a atomic war would have destroyed it for both.
If one race cannot possibly annihilate the other, it is at the stronger race's whims. Usually this means slavery or something close to it (like puppet governments under their control).

"justifying" what you are doing with your population is rather easy, look at what the "white men" put up to cover their acts against, Indians, Incas, Atzecs and so on. It worked pretty well for centuries.
Even now money remains a good excuse for a lot of bad things like child exploitation.
And unless aliens have DisneyEyes (big round eyes) and resemble us, it will be even easier to say that they are just man-eater monsters that deserve no pity.

If we are talking about aliens, it is also easy to determine who is who, so no big problems in killing them all. They are also all distant from any kind of press guy that could say "hey our army is murdering civilians".

If we are talking about human populations... Ideas spread fast these days.
Then you have press that controls all your actions, you have soldiers that are shocked by what they are doing (even Nazi had to stop shooting jews directly because the soldiers could not endure the psychological stress), and the fact that we are all on the same planet (that limits the destructiveness of the weapons employed).
Ah yes, you have also loads of treaties that theoretically restrict your weapon selection.

Well, I think that wiping out completely a decently sized group of people for whatever reason is impossible. Oppressing and enslaving them is more doable, wiping out an entire race of aliens is just a matter of gun size instead.

[speaker-to-trolls]

^You know I was really asking if there is a situation under which such a thing is acceptable according to whatever your ethics are, rather than what you can get away with it in the eyes of the masses. I'd also say that, depending on circumstances, it can actually be much easier to wipe out an enemy group rather than oppressing/enslaving them, since for the first option all you have to pay for is the weapons to do the job, for the second you have to pay for occupation and oppression for years afterwards.
I'm also not all that convinced by Space Game Theory, as I call the idea elaborated on at Atomic Rockets. As far as I can see you run a big risk if you mess up the trajectory or underestimate the technological status of the other civilisation, since in either case they would end up with genuine justification for building their own space cannon and hitting you right back, and you could end up starting a shooting war you didn't need. And what happens when neither of you are based on big, relatively easy to monitor planets, but instead spread all over the place on small, elusive and potentially mobile space habitats?

I imagine attempts at genocide are driven by fear; fear isn't rational. If people honestly feel an existential threat (which doesn't have to be military), they will be easily led into a 'genocidal' conflict. It's extremely uncommon that it will be seen through to it's conclusion unless it happens relatively quickly, due to cultural shifts.

This is probably true, particularly considering the fact that, for most of history anyway, once one is in a position to exterminate ones enemy, the enemy are no longer a threat. This is what I meant when I talked about your ability to distinguish enemy combatants and civilians; if your only definite chance of winning a war which you believe to be an existential conflict is to immediately wipe out most or all of your enemies, and you have the means to do it, you could have justification. Could, but you'd have to already be at war or have concrete knowledge that they were going to attempt to wipe you, or possibly someone else, out, before they attacked.

So; there's no justifiable genocide because there aren't any targets that qualify; not because the idea is intrinsically impossible.

This has certainly always been the case in human history, but to be pessimistically honest I don't think that it would necessarily always be the case where one is dealing with standard humans, I think in the presence of weapons which meant that destruction would be swift and total, and an intractable enemy in control of those weapons (and remember the enemy here could just be those in control of the weapons, not an entire population). Admittedly this did not happen in fifty years of power politics between nuclear powers, and is unlikely to happen in the foreseable future, but it would, in my view, be possible.

As I said earlier, this was inspired by some of the unpleasantness of the Avatar thread, now while I don't agree the situation in Avatar was one which could justify anything of this kind, the idea has nagged at me; is it justifiable to kill people who are not directly threatening you in order to prevent a greater death toll among your own people? In other words is it justifiable to wipe out an enemy who has done nothing more to you than deny you resources, if their denial of those resources (food, habitable planets, unobtainium, whatever) poses an existential threat to you or will result in death and suffering on a similar or greater scale?
Obviously you would try negotiation first, but that applies to war as well. If I were going to war with anyone I didn't categorically know were all inhuman monsters, even if they were inhuman monsters with a decent sense of reason and self preservation, I'd try negotiation first.

[someone_else]

^You know I was really asking if there is a situation under which such a thing is acceptable according to whatever your ethics are, rather than what you can get away with it in the eyes of the masses. I'd also say that, depending on circumstances, it can actually be much easier to wipe out an enemy group rather than oppressing/enslaving them, since for the first option all you have to pay for is the weapons to do the job, for the second you have to pay for occupation and oppression for years afterwards.

I just said that with the current state of affairs wiping out any state with guns is a complete suicide.
One Hitler was enough. The next will be stopped cold by _anyone_ combined.
Unless you are in Africa, in that case they will be happy to sell you guns.

While you can easily oppress their population as much as you want if you have a good political or economical standing. Just think of the places where most shoes or soccer balls come from.

If we are talking of aliens, the guns becomes the first (and probably only) choice.

As far as I can see you run a big risk if you mess up the trajectory or underestimate the technological status of the other civilisation, since in either case they would end up with genuine justification for building their own space cannon and hitting you right back, and you could end up starting a shooting war you didn't need. And what happens when neither of you are based on big, relatively easy to monitor planets, but instead spread all over the place on small, elusive and potentially mobile space habitats?

That's why I think that a relativistic big cannon is a bad idea. Still, I think that both will try to destroy the other, how they do it is irrelevant.

I think that here the main game-spoiler is the travel time between systems. Unless someone develops FTL (without killing physics in the process) we are safe for the next thousands of years. No technological aliens detected anywhere near.

As I said earlier, this was inspired by some of the unpleasantness of the Avatar thread, now while I don't agree the situation in Avatar was one which could justify anything of this kind, the idea has nagged at me; is it justifiable to kill people who are not directly threatening you in order to prevent a greater death toll among your own people? In other words is it justifiable to wipe out an enemy who has done nothing more to you than deny you resources, if their denial of those resources (food, habitable planets, unobtainium, whatever) poses an existential threat to you or will result in death and suffering on a similar or greater scale?

Do you prefer dying of thirst or fighting till your the last breath for that water guarded by random guys?
The guards's sheer existence is threatening your life/well-being.
Hell, I think that yes, it is justified. After any diplomatic attempt had failed of course.
There are plenty of wars on resources even now.

Obviously you would try negotiation first, but that applies to war as well. If I were going to war with anyone I didn't categorically know were all inhuman monsters, even if they were inhuman monsters with a decent sense of reason and self preservation, I'd try negotiation first.

The point that the vast majority of fiction overlooks (usually for story reasons), is that communication between two alien species with an alien mindset is more or less restricted to math and algebra. Or to "training" them with preprogrammed reactions, like we do with pets.

That said, I hate Avatar (as a film) and the extreme disney-ness of Na'vi design. I'd happily bomb them all to extinction. Just because I hate them.

[Purple]

Note: The fallowing post comes from me as a fledgling SF writer and only concerns hypothetical situations with aliens. It is written from the perspective of a future society and not my self. Hence it does not in any way reflect my personal opinions on the extermination of any national or religious group on earth and is only meant to provide an insight into the alternate morality that we will probably have to accept if we are to stay alive in a hypothetical FTL space colonization situation.

You asked the question "Is it morally justifiable to exterminate an entire species (not faction or race but an entire alien species) to achieve your goals."

And the answer I came up with is YES.


To put it in perspective. If you are facing aliens, it will always be either you or them. You will constantly be competing for limited resources and habitable space. As such, for every day that they are alive and in control of their planets you are loosing the resources those planets could have produced under your control. Even if you manage to set up some sort of extremely unbalanced trade agreement (like what happened after the Opium wars) you are still at a loss.

Furthermore, for every day you waste, they are using these same resources to grow stronger. So even if you would have no use for said resources you still have to strive for them just so that they can't use them.

If you are honest and accept that they are at least 1% as intelligent as you are you will need to accept that they have probably come to the same conclusion.

Every day that they exist might be the day they decide to wipe you out. Because of this, it is absolutely essential to wipe them out first.


In a space situation, you really have to ask your self the all important question.
Since they are not human but some strange creature. Should you be asking your self: "Can I justify exterminating them?" or "Can I justify not doing so?"

[Feil]

snip Purple hitting on Shep

Rather than respond to this idiocy, I'm going to just suggest replacing 'aliens' with 'Canada' everywhere in your post, to hopefully illustrate why it is the most hopelessly inane view of foreign policy... well... ever. Also, 'loosing' means 'setting loose'. You are looking for 'losing', as in 'if you think that annihilating an existing infrastructure in a cataclysmic war is more efficient than just trading with them, you must be losing your mind'.

[Purple]

In advance, I apologize for any spelling errors. I use a spell checker but English is not my first language and some errors do slip.

But to get back on topic. You have to accept some things here.
Firstly, there is no guarantee that any aliens species will want to trade with you at all. There is plenty of evidence for extreme isolationist cultures here on earth who simply refused to trade even under extremely unequal conditions.
Alternatively, they might simply have no use for anything you have to sell.

Secondly, there is no guarantee that the alien race will have moral standards that come even close to our morality. There is again plenty of evidence for this on earth between human sacrifice and cannibalism and down to the Nazis and their ideology of genocide.
They might consider us no more than beasts or alternatively as a threat. If earth cultures could justify genocide over fellow humans that in it self proves that the aliens might do so as well. Heck, for them we might be no more than cows or sheep. Except that sheep are not a threat.

In the end the only thing you can rely on is that they will not be willing to sacrifice the benefit of their people for the benefit of yours. They will look out for them self first just as you would. And even if they are not aggressive now in another century they might become a genocidal warrior race.

Under these conditions you are left in the situation where genocide becomes a simple act of self preservation. I for one would not want to be the emperor who had to justify why he did not wipe out the aliens when he had the chance. And if that means that I have to exterminate and enslave anything I can than so be it.
Remember, they are not human. And as such it is absolutely justifiable to place human interests and human lives over their.

We can not expect that aliens will care for us any more than we can expect a starving lion or tiger not to eat us out of the goodness of his hearth.

And once you accept all this. Than you will realize that genocide is your only option.


The Eldar morality from Warhamer 40K describes it perfectly. If you have to destroy billions and doom entire civilizations to save one single life from your species than it is absolutely worth it. And you must always understand that any other species would do the same in your position.

Don't get me wrong. I don't like it any more than any of you. But that is the only understandable position under realistic conditions.


If all else fails to convince you can simply think of me as a bigoted idiot. And than consider the possibility that some similar bigoted idiot will come to power in their realm. Do you really want to risk that happening just so that you can sleep at night?

[Formless]

Any civilization you encounter that isn't planet bound must be assumed to be more powerful than you simply due to the likely age they have. Thus, attempting any sort of attack against them until you can confirm their technological capabilities must be assumed to be suicidal.

This strategy you propose is even worse off when we consider how a third party might view your act of aggression-- now they know what you are capable of, and they know you are a danger to them. Que your species getting a taste of its own medicine.

Edit: basically, its the same reason you do not pick fights with strangers.

[speaker-to-trolls]

Responding to all of the points in your second post in turn.

Firstly, there is no guarantee that any aliens species will want to trade with you at all. There is plenty of evidence for extreme isolationist cultures here on earth who simply refused to trade even under extremely unequal conditions.
Alternatively, they might simply have no use for anything you have to sell.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't try to trade or that you shouldn't try to just have a peaceful relationship with them, after all, did any of the great powers of the world try to conquer and destroy Japan when it was going through its antisocial phase?

Secondly, there is no guarantee that the alien race will have moral standards that come even close to our morality. There is again plenty of evidence for this on earth between human sacrifice and cannibalism and down to the Nazis and their ideology of genocide.
They might consider us no more than beasts or alternatively as a threat. If earth cultures could justify genocide over fellow humans that in it self proves that the aliens might do so as well. Heck, for them we might be no more than cows or sheep. Except that sheep are not a threat.

In the end the only thing you can rely on is that they will not be willing to sacrifice the benefit of their people for the benefit of yours. They will look out for them self first just as you would. And even if they are not aggressive now in another century they might become a genocidal warrior race.

And again, why does this mean you shouldn't try to establish peaceful relations with them first and try to avoid conflict? Yes they might be warlike, and they might become warlike, so might any culture in the world, they might become more peaceful. Remember that war is always expensive, even if you're somehow ok with wiping out any number of aliens (I'd do it under extreme circumstances but only under extreme circumstances, and unless they were tyranids or daleks or some other omnicidal abominations I'd feel pretty bad about it) then some of your people will probably die and your infrastructure will really suffer. That's just if its a quick and easy one-shot kill, see my point about starting an interstellar shooting war, that isn't a risk to take lightly.

Remember, they are not human. And as such it is absolutely justifiable to place human interests and human lives over theirs.

Why? I realise the nature of this thread means I think it's acceptable sometimes to kill others to preserve your own interests, e.g. when those interests are to do with staying alive and preserving the lives of others, but why is it inherently different when your enemies can't produce fertile offspring with you? If you're talking about the simple fact that these aliens are likely to be lightyears away and thus impossible to monitor I agree you may have a point, but if you mean that simple taxonomy means any contact=genocide then I really don't understand where you're coming from. Like you said, humans can justify atrocities against each other to their own satisfaction, so it's not as if we all have some intrinsic connection that means we're less dangerous to one another, to be honest the thing that makes us less dangerous to one another is proximity, a bunch of humans on the moon sufficiently motivated would, I'm sure, be able to bring themselve to wipe the Earth clean of life.

By the way

You asked the question "Is it morally justifiable to exterminate an entire species (not faction or race but an entire alien species) to achieve your goals."

No I didn't.

[Purple]

dam... typed the entire post than lost it to IE. This is take 2.

Firstly, I think you misunderstood. (My English is to blame I suppose, also, I tend to have problems explaining what I want to say.)
I am not advocating an instant kill them all approach to diplomacy. What I am advocating is that any and all conventional morality has to be thrown away when dealing with aliens. Since you can not rely on them to share your views on what is acceptable.

Another thing supporting that logic is the presence or rather absence of FTL.
Without FTL, there is virtually no viable way of conducting warfare in space so the whole point is mute. With FTL however things get a lot more complicated.
Any starship capable of extreme accelerations becomes a superweapon in its own right. And even if you have some sort of restrictions placed on the nature of FTL that prevents their use as kinetic impact weapons, you still face the possibility of a FTL starship simply dropping off weapons as primitive as nuclear warheads en mass to any planet in any empire.

Furthermore, there is no guarantee that any faction you meat in space will be more advanced than you are. You might well encounter civilizations that are bound to one single planet or solar system just as well as you would those that span whole sections of our galaxy.

What you can be sure of however is that those of the second variety did not become such by being nice and moral to other races.

It is because of these three points that a "Kill them all" option must always be available to you and your ultimate goals must always be either subjugation or destruction of all others.


But that is all besides the point.

What I want to explain is that these are aliens. And as aliens you do not have any moral obligation to them. They are not human, they are not even from the same planet as you. And as such you simply must newer have any more moral considerations for them than you would expect them to have for you. And when it comes to you or them. If they have something you need, they don't want to share and you know you can take it. Than it is your duty toward your race to go and take it.


The scene where the humans attack the native tree and massacre the natives in Avatar. It should have happened in the intro to the movie. Actually it should have been in the background to the movie. Instead the humans chose to opt for diplomacy in a scheme that cost many human lives and resources and in the end caused them to lose the war to a now unified native population. How can you morally justify that?

[Formless]

Firstly, I think you misunderstood. (My English is to blame I suppose, also, I tend to have problems explaining what I want to say.)
I am not advocating an instant kill them all approach to diplomacy. What I am advocating is that any and all conventional morality has to be thrown away when dealing with aliens. Since you can not rely on them to share your views on what is acceptable.

This fails when you realize that we still consider the moral worth of terrestrial predators, even though they fit every criteria you posit.

[Purple]

This fails when you realize that we still consider the moral worth of terrestrial predators, even though they fit every criteria you posit.

Actually it does not. Consider the fallowing situation:

You are trapped in a cage with a lion. He might or might not be hungry but you don't know that.
There is nothing in the cage to eat for either of you. And you have a rifle.

Do you try to reason with the lion and hope that he decides not to eat you?
Do you try to reason with the lion and hope that if he does decide to do so you will be quick on your trigger?
Or do you shoot him right away and eat his flesh?

All three answers are somewhat valid. But the morality they come from is vastly different.
It depends on what you expect the lion's morality is. And due the sheer difference in your respective natures you can simply newer know that for sure.

[Formless]

Bad analogy. A bear lacks the intelligence to negotiate, and I'm no Steve Erwin. Nor am I trained in diplomacy. Furthermore, we aren't locked up with ET. If I were faced with the same situation and the bear was human and had a gun and was obviously angry, I would still shoot him, and I would still feel bad about it. That's a much closer analogy.

Edit: besides, come to think, its not just predators. No two humans or human cultures have exactly the same morals, and yet we don't consider those morals worthless when dealing with them.

[Purple]

Well, an alien will also have it extremely difficult to negotiate.
As someone here pointed out communication between two alien species with an alien mindset is more or less restricted to math and algebra.
And to make things worse there is no telling what the alien might appear like.

It would be far less likely to be the situation where you are facing something that even remotely resembles a human with a gun who is obviously angry, and far more likely to be a situation where you are facing a giant insect, a microscopic cow, a sentient robot, a gas cloud or even a giant amoeba. They might express emotions with smell or communicate by changing colors. Their guns might look like sticks and their walking sticks might look like a BFG9000.

There would be almost no way of knowing if they are angry. There would be no way of understanding their morality. And even if communications were possible with some magitech translator there would still be the extreme difficulty of understanding their culture and behavior.
They may even consider our attempts of diplomacy as an act of war.

So unless you live in the world of Star Trek and its rubber forehead aliens anything we are likely to encounter will be so alien, so absolutely different from us that common logic and morality need not and can not apply.

Edit: besides, come to think, its not just predators. No two humans or human cultures have exactly the same morals, and yet we don't consider those morals worthless when dealing with them.

Examples from history include but are not limited to:
- European conquest of south America
- European conquest of north America
- European conquest of Africa
- European conquest of Asia
- German acts against Jews and Slavs in WW2
- Japanese conquests in Asia in WW2
- Cold war hate between communists and capitalists
- American conquests in the middle east (right now)

All of these have in common that one side considers any and all moral, social and other values of the other to be worthless. And most of these have in common that one side takes it upon it self to "correct" these by means of force.
And again, this is humans fighting humans. Now imagine humans fighting giant amoeba.

[Formless]

Well, an alien will also have it extremely difficult to negotiate.

Why? Because you say so? They don't lack for intelligence, unlike a bear or a lion.

As someone here pointed out communication between two alien species with an alien mindset is more or less restricted to math and algebra.

So? If we can communicate at all, we can negotiate.

And to make things worse there is no telling what the alien might appear like.

This matters because...?

There would be almost no way of knowing if they are angry.

That's kinda the point in establishing communication. To make problems like these go away.

[Purple]

But they might, and likely will function on a completely different level than we do.
Not better or worse mind you just different.

How for example do you communicate with a race that has no written language, who's members have genetic memory, who are giant amoebas and who communicate by exchanging chemicals between each other.

By the time you even start to grasp their methods of communication and develop ways to mimic them who knows how many years will have passed.

And even once you get to actually conducting communication there are problems. Here on earth we have many examples of wars breaking out due to a misunderstanding between cultures.
Now imagine the shear challenges involved when communicating with a culture that is so radically different from our own that we likely will not be able to comprehend it for centuries.

And keep in mind the same extends to them.

Just as a race of giant mantis-amoebas might look insane and strange to you, so a race of small squishy bipedal bald monkeys might look to them. They would not understand our sound based communication or our strange by gender culture.

It only takes one single slip on any point at that line to cause the extermination of one of your two races. Can you honestly say that you want to be caught unable to ensure that it is not you?

I mean sure, you would feel terrible about it 100 years later in the history books. But that is far preferable than having them feel bad about the war of extermination in their history books.

[Formless]

How for example do you communicate with a race that has no written language, who's members have genetic memory, who are giant amoebas and who communicate by exchanging chemicals between each other.

Radio?

You don't have to meet the aliens in person like in Star Trek to communicate or interact peaceably.

[Purple]

Radio? :roll:

You don't have to meet the aliens in person like in Star Trek to communicate or interact peaceably.

I would appreciate it if you at least read my posts before replying.
Thank you.

[Formless]

How for example do you communicate with a race that has no written language, who's members have genetic memory, who are giant amoebas and who communicate by exchanging chemicals between each other.

Radio?

You don't have to meet the aliens in person like in Star Trek to communicate or interact peaceably.

I would appreciate it if you at least read my posts before replying.
Thank you.

Moron, radio is an essential technology for any space faring civilization. In order for them to communicate between themselves and their own spacecraft they are going to need radio. If they don't have spacecraft, then no interaction between them and us is possible, and the only way we could contact each other is through radio anyway.