> But actually I think there’s no lack of “alien intelligence”; indeed it’s all around us. But the point is that it really is alien. At an abstract computationa

> But actually I think there’s no lack of “alien intelligence”; indeed it’s all around us. But the point is that it really is alien. At an abstract computational level it’s like our intelligence. But in its details it’s not aligned with our intelligence. Abstractly it’s intelligence, but it’s not human-like intelligence. It’s alien intelligence. I'm not buying this explanation. Maybe the reason isn't so much about intelligence as it is about motivation. Perhaps intelligent aliens have no desire to make contact, or already have on few rare occasions but isn't interested in pursuing more than those random events. The implicit assumption that's here is that alien intelligence is similar in advancement, only different. It's likely that the alien intelligence is far more advanced, since we are only barely venturing out. If aliens were about as intelligent and had similar motivations to make contact they would do similar things e.g. generating mathematical patterns not typically found in nature. The ones that are probably have signals too weak for us to detect or our surveys not detailed enough to pick them out, and vice-versa. A conversation with alien 'abstract computational' intelligence being indistinguishable from nature means we're not the capable target listeners, who should recognize that it's not the noise of nature. Their intelligence isn't necessarily different, but they have more technology at their disposal and the one they chose to use we don't have, i.e. they're more advanced. My take is that humans are either viewed in the universe as "bees can count!", don't have the tech to listen to the discussions, or both and then some. Everything to me points to humans lacking intelligence in the universe not the other way around. Thinking otherwise is believing Hawkeye is a capable Avenger.