The thing about presuming ETs is that the vast space of potential forms is so broad. They could have different senses. They could have different
concepts of a universe. (They might not even have one.) They could be so different in so many ways that trying to figure out how they 'reason' might
be entirely meaningless.
When I posit ET, I am more inclined to assume that I know little about their relation to time, space, (cause and effect in general) and thus I do not
jump to the assumption that their 'actions', as they were, would follow a game-theoretic path to which our reasoning is chained. In other words,
they might 'do' things that have no effect. Or they might 'be' ways that have no purpose we can discern.
As a result, I have always thought that one of the WEAKEST arguments against the ET hypothesis is that UFO behaviors don't make sense.
But that's just me. Some people think ET and immediately assume bi-symmetric arm-and-leg-and-head creatures. The question I always ask myself is,
unless you have met them or put stock in certain stories, why start with that assumption?
So let us assume anthroids for a moment. Assume they have 'concepts', 'reason', 'intent' , 'memory', 'self', 'time', 'senses' and a
whole host of other elements that we are chained to believe we have. In that very particular case, a HUMAN reason for 'showing off' would be that
they are tired and busy and find our reactions irrelevant. Or maybe they are scheduled to slowly ramp up revelations over the next 200 years, as
espoused by the Disclosure Handbook for Backwards Truly Screwed-Up Worlds (tm.) But I am not inclined to put much stock in these particular guesses
for the aforementioned reasons.
So if you want to go down the anthro way of thinking, perhaps you should investigate some of the threads on ATS where people claim to be in contact
with bipedal bug heads. (I use that term endearingly

) Maybe they could give you some clues to the supposed behavior that might describe what you
seek.
Now as an aside, here's a possibility we do not fantasize about:
What if ET has been, over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, interacting with us through space-time like a kid poking an insect? Maybe we
don't make sense to them. Maybe after hundreds of thousands of years they have devised that projecting bug-head forms into our reality and then
saying deep things stirs reactions. But here's the kicker. Using hundreds of thousands of years of sampling, they might be able to create deep
stories and thoughts to make us react WITHOUT EVEN UNDERSTANDING WHAT THEY ARE SAYING. That is a nightmare scenario.
Kind of like when you poke an ant with a stick. The ant might be thinking "You have very big antennae. Why did you just ask me to stick my thorax
into a rock and excrete fungal growth nutrients into it?" We are just poking it with a stick in a particular way that gets a big reaction from the
ant. We have no idea that we are speaking to it in an ant antennae touch language.
For the first few years of poking ants, we might just make them run around and panic. But maybe after a lifetime of studying them with a stick we
could get them to do some funny dances. Those poor ants!
Anyway, I'm just trying to point out that there are so many myriad possibilities. Some are very appealing to the human spirit. Others are not. We
need to consider them all while speculating, but at the end of the day we are likely to get something entirely unexpected.
[edit on 15-6-2007 by Ectoterrestrial]
[edit on 15-6-2007 by Ectoterrestrial]