... if somewhere in the vastness of space there was another planet with another intelligent species with some young alien creature sitting in his classroom feeling just as bored as I was.
But seriously, there are some things that bother me:
In a competitive natural environment, the most vicious animals come out on top.
In a benign natural environment, there is no pressure to evolve, so no advanced intelligence ever evolves.
So either there are no intelligent beings out there, or if there are out there, they are aggressive and belligerent.
But if they are aggressive and belligerent, they probably killed themselves off before they got into space in any significant way. Which, of course, implies that we will probably kill ourselves off before we get into space in any significant way.
So it seems like the most probably situation is that we are in a universe filled with planets harboring intelligent life, half of which are living in primitive pre-industrial civilizations, and half of which are living in primitive post-industrial civilizations. The age of energy-intensive technological civilization probably only last 50 to 100 years before the energy is gone or the factions blow each other back to the stone age. Either way, we'll probably never get to meet the neighbors, no matter how close they are.
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