faceless chick said:
So, we all know there are (probably) lots of aliens out there,
Says who?
The Drake Equation requires a number of unknown variable to be plugged into it; Robin Hanson wrote an extensive mathematical proof showing that the difference between 'gateways' of somewhat-improbable occurrence and extremely-improbable occurence are impossible to distinguish, when you only have the example of one planet where all the gateways were opened. Of all the various steps - abiogenesis, sexual reproduction, multicellular organisms, sentient organisms, technological development, and transhumanism - we only have strong evidence that two of these were probable (the first and third, I believe). While we can't say for certain how improbable the others are, subjective evidence suggests that they might be higly improbable, with a less than 50% chance of occurring during the lifetime of the Universe - our own developed intelligence certainly seems like an accident born of runaway sexual selection, not as an evolved trait to improve fitness in the ancestral environment.
And then, of course, there's the sheer magnitude of time to consider; complex life has been present on the planet for 10 million years, and only for the tiniest fraction of that has there been an intelligent species. That's not even getting into how long earth-like planets have been around. Assuming we don't destroy ourselves, we'll become transhumanists in the near future, begin augmenting our intelligence, and quickly begin expanding throughout the Universe, consuming and storing every bit of negentropy we come across. Even if there is a planet which might one day harbour intelligent life, what do you think the odds are that we'll discover it when we show up? With digitization our thought speed will increase, and even if we limit expansion to 1/10th C, then it will only take us 100 000 years to colonize the entire galaxy.
If any intelligent race had evolved, they would have done this already, and we wouldn't be here; when we eventually do it, it will prohibit the growth of other intelligences. And given that by the time we've colonized the galaxy our intelligences will be to our present selves what ourselves are to a houseplant, chances are we won't be remotely interested in preserving such simple forms of intelligence.
Then of course there's the fact that whatever species we might meet will have drastically differenct morality than us; look up Eliezer Yudkowsky's short story "Three Worlds Collide". Anything we meet will likely be deeply morally disgusting to us, and genocide or forced biological reprogramming will be our only options. We'd better hope that we *don't* meet anyone else out there.
