I was abducted by an Alien from my local pub when I was 18, and home on leave from the military.

Turns out these aliens are female, about 38 years old, and from Finland.
It let me go in the morning, and unfortunately, I never met one again! :shrug:

"
40 TRILLION civilizations at least as advanced as ours in the observable universe. "
How can this be anything else than pure speculation' on what any individual guess of the odds. There is only one data point. planet Earth,

Google the Drake equation, then plug in recent estimates from our space telescopes----2 trillion galaxies, 1 trillion stars each, and over 1/2 with planetary systems and see. Yes, it is all speculation, and yes, I used the high estimates as well---but to suggest we are alone in the universe is to state the estimates and speculations are off by 39,999,999,999,999----highly unlikely

With only one data point the accent is on what odds you except, Life ?, intelligent life? ,comparable intelligence ? , greater intelligence? piling speculation on top of speculation , add human nature to normalize ones own experience and situation . It would be great to find out for sure , but I think it unlikely we ever will, but happy to be wrong

Unless FTL travel is possible, we will probably never find out. And that might be a really good thing. I forget who---Isaac Asimov or Carl Sagan that suggested any two spacefaring civilizations that met each other would be so different and so unequal in technology that one would simply wipe out the other. Somehow, we tend to think any civilization that is advanced enough to traverse interstellar space is friendly and benign. I submit-----the Borg :1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl:

But what we have right now is just absence. And breaking the speed of sound is a far cry from being able to travel at 186,000 miles per second.

And you may well be right. But right now there is no hard evidence you are, just alot of speculation that because the universe is so big, there just HAS to be other intelligent life out there and they MUST have figured out a way to cover the vast distances of space quickly because they MUST be so much older/more advanced than us. Oh, and totally sidestepping the issue of space/time that comes with lightspeed travel.

Several other posts fall back on "anything is possible" as a way to open the door to all possibilities. Well, "Anything is Possible" is why people buy Mega Millions lottery tickets. Explain to them that the odds are 1 in 302,575,350 and they would have to buy 30,257,535 combinations at $2 each for $60,515,070 just to have a 10% chance of winning, and at the very least, you might get them to stop buying more than one ticket per drawing, thus throwing less money down a rat hole.

As I've posted before, happy to be wrong, and I want to see space exploration continue. But the thought that we have been visited by intelligent species is fantasy, at least until I see hard evidence. Not tin foil hat stuff.

That was no alien, that was a cougar!

As a principal I don't know if intelligence would equate with benign or friendly if the other has anything of value you would want, Hey tomorrow morning we all get together, axes in hand ,go to the other end of the valley and take out those Neanderthals, their axes and spears ain't worth squat, no organization, strong as an auroch , but dumb as can be , they are thinning the resources and we need to stop it, take a slave or two, our grandfathers did it some time ago , its time to push them out completely

And then again, concepts such as friendly, belligerent, good and bad might not exist in their culture. Just hope we are not the equivalent of filet mignon in their diets.

Kinda like lawyers, who do not necessarily believe in right vs wrong, or moral vs immoral. All they care about is legal vs illegal. That is the moral code of many.

So do others think you’re believes matter? Just one out of 2 trillion plus? Why is so important to make believers or non believers. So don’t believe, it only matters to them. It also don’t matter what I believe either. That would be 2 out of 2 trillion plus.

No for lawyers it’s ALL about the money, morality has nothing to do with it. Laws are writing by lawyers so the can argue what legal till cows come home. The more arguments the more money.

Sagan would be saddened that you think so little of humanity.
I am just happy the people who created faster the sound travel did not listen to the people who falsely claimed it was only possible in science fiction.
Just like In happy those who created heavier than air flight did not listen to those who claimed it could only exist in science fiction.

Slaves have been around from beginning when one human took control. Once one took control the other was slave. Slavery still going strong we or majority just don’t see it first hand.

Only if you limit yourself to current human technology for detection of life and ability to travel through space. I like to think humans are just starting out with such things. Given a million more years of innovation and I bet we can detect life in vastly superior ways than we do today and travel through the cosmos in ways we have yet to even create in science fiction.

I accept that you disagree and think humans and all other life forms are incapable of inventing new things that appear to be break what we call rules today, just like humans did with so many other rules we claimed are impossible to break.

Heck, just a few decades ago, War of the Worlds has the aliens using MASERS. We have since invented them even though it was soundly science fiction.