Do you believe we are alone in the universe?

The universe is far, far, far too big and ancient a place to reasonably rule out life elsewhere. Even if the galaxy is currently lacking intelligent life other than our own (and I'm not convinced it is - our expectations of what intelligent life should be doing with itself is, obviously, prejudiced toward our own ideals), I don't think it was nor will be. I'm also much more optimistic about FTL.

 

[Morrus]

Our tabletop RPGs are full of sci-fi universes - Star Wars and Star Trek, to Warhammer 40K and and Starfinder and more. From Drake’s Equation to Fermi’s Paradox, from the sheer number of extrasolar planets to the lack of evidence of other life, what say you? Are we alone? If not why have we seen no convincing evidence of alien life?

(I’m firmly in the not alone camp, but believe FTL travel will never happen, meaning that most civilisations don’t travel very far behind their own system).

 

[Umbran]

Given infinite space, and a non-zero chance for life to develop, being the *only* intelligent species is statistically impossible. Heck, it then becomes statistically impossible that there's only one Morrus!

Being the only intelligent species within signalling distance? That's far more likely. We may well be alone, insofar as there may not be another intelligent species near enough to ever know they exist.

 

[Blue]

I do believe that over the life of the universe there will be countless (but finite) sentient races.

But ones that coexist at this time that we can currently sense, or existed before us and we have not yet found/understood that we have four artifacts and signs of them - that I think is a very small number. On that's increasing at a dramatic rate based on what our technology has done in the at 50 years.

Also, the Sol system is in a particularly lousy place in the Milky Way for density of potential life-bearing systems.

 

[trappedslider]

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[Dannyalcatraz]

I’d say humans are not alone, but isolated. It’s kind of like being someone native to a tiny Pacific island: there are other humans out there, but entire cultures on the island could rise and fall- or even be wiped out completely- without ever becoming aware of humanity in another part of the ocean.

We’re separated by oceans of time AND space from any other planet we know of that could support intelligent life in a form we would expect with our current understanding of biology.

But as Fox Mulder would say, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

 

[Tonguez]

I’d say humans are not alone, but isolated. It’s kind of like being someone native to a tiny Pacific island: there are other humans out there, but entire cultures on the island could rise and fall- or even be wiped out completely- without ever becoming aware of humanity in another part of the ocean.

We’re separated by oceans of time AND space from any other planet we know of that could support intelligent life in a form we would expect with our current understanding of biology.

But as Fox Mulder would say, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

As a descendant of one of those Pacific Island peoples can I just say that your analogy is a bit patronising and entirely wrong since Pacific people’s had complex inter island trade and communication.

Secondly I think Humanity is the most advanced species that we are ever going to encounter AND comprehend as intelligent. Of course it’s quite possible that we have been dealing with vast incomprehensible intelligences since our hairy ancestors first contemplated the Storm clouds
.

 

[Jhaelen]

Clearly, the question is already wrong. There's no "we". I'm the only real being in existence. Everything else is just fabrications of my mind.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

As a descendant of one of those Pacific Island peoples can I just say that your analogy is a bit patronising and entirely wrong since Pacific people’s had complex inter island trade and communication.

Apologies. I understand where you’re coming from, but no offense was meant. I specifically avoided naming any particular island to avoid that.

I was trying to find an area on the earth isolated enough that belief that your local area was everything was conceivable. Land masses don’t give you that kind of isolation very often. Despite the well-known trade in the Pacific, it is so vast that it is possible that an island existed on which the inhabitants eventually lost the knowledge that they came from somewhere else.

Because, if we’re honest, there probably haven’t been many cultures unaware of “others” since the Paleolithic era. (Though whether or not they regard the others as human or not is a different question.)

 

[delericho]

I don't think we're alone. But I doubt whether we'll ever make contact with alien life.

The vast majority of the life that is out there won't be intelligent life; the vast majority of the intelligent life that's out there will be completely incomprehensible to us; the vast majority of what remains will still be confined to their own planets and/or systems; and the vast majority of the rest will be impossibly far away.

So there's only a tiny tiny fraction of the life that's out there that we might make contact with. Given that, I think we're more likely to wipe ourselves out than to make that contact... unless and asteroid hit or other disaster does that for us first.