> This is like ants arguing that life outside their ant hill will likely have 6 or 8 legs because all the life they've seen so far have had 6 or 8 legs. I woul

> This is like ants arguing that life outside their ant hill will likely have 6 or 8 legs because all the life they've seen so far have had 6 or 8 legs. I wouldn't scoff at those ants. Ants who conclude life outside their anthill will have 6 legs would be mostly correct. 90% of lifeforms on earth are insects. Anyway, my guess is that life at least as intelligent as us exists out there somewhere, and that more technologically advanced than us is possible too. But interstellar civilization, from what we are today? I don't think so. I think we're already in the "great filter", which I suspect to be the speed of light and our developing addiction to low latency communication. Turning ourselves into AIs or something won't solve that problem; if anything it would only make it worse. The more intimate our relationship with computers becomes, the more insular our civilization becomes.