> I think the lack of visible galactic civilisations is more plausibly explained by a combination of life being rare (and probably brought to Earth via panspermia after billions of years of evolution elsewhere) and both multicellular and sentient life also being rare.
I always put this out here when this sort of topic comes up, but it’s certainly possible that given life itself is apparently rare, and intelligent life is definitely rarer still…that we could be among the first and most advanced so far.
We make the assumption that there must be others and far more advanced, but all we know about life so far would indicate that intelligent life on the one place where we know it exists took nearly 4B forms of life to produce that 1 form that can apparently even conceptualize that there may be others out there…and…it apparently took over a third of the age of the universe for us to get as far as we have.
I always put this out here when this sort of topic comes up, but it’s certainly possible that given life itself is apparently rare, and intelligent life is definitely rarer still…that we could be among the first and most advanced so far.
We make the assumption that there must be others and far more advanced, but all we know about life so far would indicate that intelligent life on the one place where we know it exists took nearly 4B forms of life to produce that 1 form that can apparently even conceptualize that there may be others out there…and…it apparently took over a third of the age of the universe for us to get as far as we have.