I'm not an expert by any means, but I guess I've always felt skeptical that if alien civilizations existed we would have the means to detect them. I mean, we ca

I'm not an expert by any means, but I guess I've always felt skeptical that if alien civilizations existed we would have the means to detect them. I mean, we can barely detect planets, if we look carefully. Unless one of these civilizations really wanted to make itself seen by desperately spending a ton of energy, it seems like they would mostly be invisible just because we don't have sensitive enough means to detect them. I personally find it impossibly unlikely that we are the only intelligent life. It's just, there's nothing in the universe that doesn't repeat. And there is a lot of space for us to repeat. Our solar system likely isn't all that special, so I just don't get that we could be the only thing that appeared in all the conceivable universe. It also might be the case that we're not alone, but that life is just so hard to get going that maybe the nearest civilization is galaxies apart from us. In that sense I suppose we really are "alone" for any practical purpose.