Unless some intelligence designed the entire vastness of the Universe, much of it so big we still can’t observe it, just for us—then it is nearly a statistical certainty that there is intelligent life out there and that much of it is far advanced over us. Our solar system is only about 4.2 billion years old in a Universe that’s 13.75 billion years along in development. There had to be many billions of places suitable for life that developed far before our Earth did.
We are so culturally bound in our search that we may be walking right among and even through intelligent aliens right now. Who says intelligent lie can’t evolve inside a star, or based on silicon, or based on energy out of phase with ours? I have to applaud Terrance McKenna for his clear way of putting it. “To search expectantly for a radio signal from an extraterrestrial source is probably as culture bound a presumption as to search the galaxy for a good Italian restaurant.”