Imagine, an intelligence that didn't have the universal emotion of badweather!

Of course, extraterrestrial sentients may possess physiological states corresponding to limbic-like emotions that have no direct analog in human experience. Alien species, having evolved under a different set of environmental constraints than we, also could have a different but equally adaptive emotional repertoire. For example, assume that human observers land on another and discover an intelligent animal with an acute sense of absolute humidity and absolute air pressure. For this creature, there may exist an emotional state responding to an unfavorable change in the weather. Physiologically, the emotion could be mediated by the ET equivalent of the human limbic system; it might arise following the secretion of certain strength-enhancing and libido-arousing hormones into the alien's bloodstream in response to the perceived change in weather. Immediately our creature begins to engage in a variety of learned and socially-approved behaviors, including furious burrowing and building, smearing tree sap over its pelt, several different territorial defense ceremonies, and vigorous polygamous copulations with nearby females, apparently (to humans) for no reason at all. Would our astronauts interpret this as madness? Or love? Lust? Fear? Anger? None of these is correct, of course the alien is feeling badweather.

I suggest you guys taboo interesting, because I strongly suspect you're using it with slightly different meanings. (And BTW, as a Martian Yudkowsky I imagine something with values at least as alien as Babyeaters' or Superhappys'.)

It's another discussion, really, but it sounds as though you are denying the idea of "interestingness" as a universal instrumental value - whereas I would emphasize that "interestingness" is really just our name for whether something sustains our interest or not - and 'interest' is a pretty basic functional property of any agent with mobile sensors. There'll be other similarities in the area too - such as novelty-seeking. So shared common ground is only to be expected.

Anyway, I am not too wedded to Martian Yudkowsky. The problematical idea is that you could have a nanotech-capable spacefaring civilization that is not "interesting". If such a thing isn't "interesting" then - WTF?