An interesting take by Brian Cox on all of this. The short of it is that he thinks intelligent life at the level of civilizations might be extraordinarily rare, to the point where there may be only 1 or 2 per galaxy. He thinks it is possible we are the only advanced civilization in the galaxy. But since there are 2 trillion galaxies, he cannot comprehend this extraordinarily rare and special thing has not happened anywhere else in the universe. He also concedes the possibility, at the end, that advanced civilizations may develop in ways we cannot see, like developing inward, with nano tech and virtual reality sims.
But his primary hunch is interesting, because of what he thinks it means for us. If our type of self-aware meaning-making life is so rare that we are the only ones in this galaxy, it means even more that we don't squander it.
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