I really love this stuff, even if I don't believe that humans will ever encounter, at least knowingly, technologically advanced, intelligent, alien life. The odds are so extreme. I think there's probably like a 99.999... percent chance that there is intelligent extraterrestrial life out there. But the probability that that life is close enough to us to communicate, let alone visit, survives long enough to communicate effectively, exists in the same time period as us, is comprehensible to us, experiences time the same as us, went through a similar enough evolutionary process that we admit is basically a miracle to have happened, other planets have a similar number or less catastrophic worldwide extinction events, other worlds atmospheres that support life are similar to ours, alien civilization that has developed technology to communicate or traverse space decides that it is safe enough to do so and isn't hostile or aggressive, do technologically advanced intelligent life decide to continue living and experiencing the universe physically or move into a virtual reality.
There's just so many issues to overcome that are absolutely massive. I don't believe that humans will ever encounter them at least not while both civilisations still exist and can communicate or visit one another.
