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Any species that is advanced enough for interstellar communication will almost certainly be a highly aggressive apex species. You don't get to the top of the fo

Any species that is advanced enough for interstellar communication will almost certainly be a highly aggressive apex species. You don't get to the top of the food chain by being nice, you get there by murdering all of the competition and plundering all of the resources. And if you were trying to be nice, someone else would have just wiped you out. The big question is if a species can eventually reach some point of collective enlightenment where they leave these primitive impulses behind. But based on the current state of humanity, I'm not to optimistic.

NoGravitas 1y ago
I think any species that reaches that level of advancement without having some kind of collective enlightenment and leaving those primitive impulses behind will destroy itself within a fairly short period of time, making the chance of noticing them quite small. J. Posadas wrote a bit on this: https://www.marxists.org/archive/posadas/1968/06/flyingsaucers.html https://www.marxists.org/archive/posadas/1968/06/flyingsauce... However, the current trajectory of humanity seems more likely towards total destruction than what Posadas envisioned (and perhaps saw as inevitable).
xenobeb 1y ago
I just don't agree with this at all. How aggressive do you feel towards ants and ant hills? Do you feel an urge to murder ants to show your dominance over the competition? I would suspect we are more in competition with ants than aliens would be with us. I think we really underestimate how uninteresting we would be to an advanced alien civilization.
jclulow 1y ago
Certainly if they're like us, and travelling to new worlds, they'll be imperialistic and colonial. They'll plant a flag, because we obviously weren't really making use of the planet, not _really_, and attempt to civilise the natives through something between cultural erasure and genocide.
- devnullbrain 1y ago
  On Earth, in the grand scheme of things, it took a very short time for colonies to a) diverge politically or b) fail. It's not something that stopped happening (much) because we became more cuddly. It's just boring old economics. So I think it's unfeasible to maintain a society that rules with an iron fist over interstellar distance and time.
- astrange 1y ago
  Colonialism isn't profitable for the same reason slavery isn't. We did it because we hadn't invented economics yet. In space it seems like it'd be even worse; something would have to be very valuable to be worth taking it out of our gravity well.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
KumaBear 1y ago
Depends who got to the top first. If the most advanced was peaceful but eliminated threats. I’d assume they could create a collective empire. Apex ruthless only gets you so far verses a collective.
- danparsonson 1y ago
  On the other hand they could still see us as a threat to the collective due to our levels of aggression, and eliminate us to protect themselves.
  - autoexec 1y ago
    It's a safe bet that if they know about us at all they'll just stay away from us. Our media is filled with depictions of us killing aliens. There's little reason to think we'd accept them. We can't even get along with/accept other humans. Some people's first instinct will be to shoot them. Others will want to lock them up and experiment on them. If aliens did come here they'd have to be very brave, powerful enough not to worry about what we'd do, or unaware of what we are. I'm not too worried they'd kill us to protect themselves though. At the rate we're going, we'll kill ourselves off along with every other living thing on the planet long before we get out of our own solar system.
    - marshray 1y ago
      The most horrifying aspect of the hypothesis as depicted in the Dark Forest book is that it was simply the job of a low-level bureaucrat to identify "low-entropy entities which lack the hiding gene" within their region of the galaxy and allocate a basic bottom-shelf munition to "cleanse" it. However, humans were aware of this possibility and had spent centuries reorganizing the solar system to have a measure of resilience to it. So, to humanity's great credit, he had to go get permission from his supervisor for to deploy a next-tier solution. "Why would anyone travel across town (i.e., the galaxy) just to step on an anthill?" We have a whole industry dedicated to exterminating any other life that invades "our" living space. It's considered an unremarkable necessity.
    - 1y ago
ArcaneMoose 1y ago
Not necessarily true! I think this interactive game applies: https://ncase.me/trust/ https://ncase.me/trust/
Mistletoe 1y ago
I think you are wrong and the more humanity has become intelligent, the more empathy and love we have displayed. I think it’s a hallmark of intelligence. The most intelligent people I know are the most kind and understanding. It’s the ignorant that are cruel and uncaring.
- autoexec 1y ago
  Sadly, we're becoming less intelligent with time I doubt the trend is going to get better before it gets worse.
0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago
Alternatively, advanced megaprojects are only achievable through sophisticated large-scale cooperation. Aggression leads to infighting; infighting wastes resources on zero-sum conflict. >based on the current state of humanity, I'm not to optimistic. Which version of Earth culture has a better shot at building e.g. a megastructure for an interstellar beacon: Earth culture during the post-nationalist 90s moment, or Earth culture during the current dysfunctional moment? "Earlier this year, the White House proposed a nearly 24% cut to NASA's 2026 fiscal year budget, primarily aimed at the organization's fundamental science research. If the cuts come to fruition, they would be the largest in the agency's entire history." https://www.npr.org/2025/07/22/1266983866/trump-science-space-nasa-federal-cuts https://www.npr.org/2025/07/22/1266983866/trump-science-spac...
- jcgrillo 1y ago
  Not advocating for this approach, but maybe a fascist oligopoly will get the job done. Or something entirely stranger like a corporate theocracy. There's plenty of room for aggressive, murderous, backstabby species to achieve incredible things. We have a great existence proof right here on Earth. EDIT: Maybe even a future culture that reveres aggression and has achieved some success in their warlike ways will look back on the peaceful post nationalist 90s as an age of decadent sloth. It could be that massive sustained conflict actually drives humans to achieve greater technical heights than peace.
  - binary132 1y ago
    The world wars drove more technical progress than the world has ever seen, before or since. (Making your iPhone better at doing the same thing worse and slower so the end result comes out basically the same isn’t “progress”.)
- protocolture 1y ago
  >Alternatively, advanced megaprojects are only achievable through sophisticated large-scale cooperation. Alternatively, megastructures are only achievable through massive amounts of low wage workers with terrible working conditions. Consider: Panama canal, most large railroads, Snowy hydro. As time rolls forward we appear to lose our ability to do large things, and in part that's because we are less and less accepting of risk.
dlivingston 1y ago
> Any species that is advanced enough for interstellar communication will almost certainly be a highly aggressive apex species. How can you estimate likelihood of behavior when currently N=0 (or N=1 if you count humans)? There is no baseline, no control; it's just complete speculation, a roundabout way of saying "this is what I think humans would likely do, therefore, all advanced life forms must also be like this".
- willis936 1y ago
  Projecting behavior onto a phantom is just a venue for reflecting a personal worldview onto something else. "Being short-sighted and selfish worked for the aliens, so it would work here too".
- binary132 1y ago
  Evolution favors highly competitive individuals and collectives
xfeeefeee 1y ago
> Any species that is advanced enough for interstellar communication will almost certainly be a highly aggressive apex species. Well we could always be pets. That wouldn't be so bad.
- lotrjohn 1y ago
  Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ @13,500 BCE
- ants_everywhere 1y ago
  > Well we could always be pets. Porno for Pyros has you covered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgPeP_pfjp4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgPeP_pfjp4
artursapek 1y ago
I think if you develop to that point, you don’t really need to have a competitive scarcity mindset anymore.
- Yeul 1y ago
  My thought exactly. The universe has near infinite resources. There is nothing in our solar system that needs conquering.
zoeysmithe 1y ago
Under a scientific economy like socialism you dont need to be "apex male who exploits the workers under him to get yachts and tax breaks." The workers co-operate and thus the "apex predator" capital owner becomes dismissed the same way our towns and villages in the developed West don't pay fees to warring bands of gangs but instead we've unlocked the Republic and the system of representation and taxes and such via democratic action. You absolutely can have utopian beings. In fact, I'd argue the greed-based societies get caught in the great filter and if there is a space faring race, its absurdly ethical and fair and, to me, explains the Fermi paradox. They're out there and maybe they see Earth but it would be hugely unethical to intervene here. The proper thing to do would be to only observe us from afar. If this was a movie or novel maybe the Wow signal was them messing up, or a defector amongst their midst who disagrees with full isolation policies. But most likely it'll end up being something simple. The last good theory I heard was it domestic and was reflected off orbiting space junk, but who knows.
thrance 1y ago
You have a really bleak and limited view of the far future. Species that have the means to cross interstellar space probably have found ways to alter themselves and removed their need to grow exponentially as they realized it is unsustainable, and are now perfectly content to chill on their homeplanet. You're thinking of cancer cells with spaceships, not highly advanced beings who have mastered matter and physical reality. I recommend reading Dispora by Greg Egan, it could potentially expand your mind on what the future may actually look like.
fny 1y ago
Here's a related thought experiment for those hoping for interstellar kumbaya: On planet Jung dwell the Jungians, sapien-like beings who need only a single cup of a rare liquid to live an entire lifetime. For humans, that same cup grants twenty extra years of healthy life. Human just landed on the planet Jung and discovered the liquid--what happens next?
- avar 1y ago
  The "2 sentients 1 cup" thought experiment?
- thrance 1y ago
  If your point is to prove that the patterns of domination and conquests that exist here will necessarily exist in the stars too, then I'm afraid your thought experiment is deeply flawed. If ever we are able to journey through the interstellar medium, we ought to have achieved immortality by then. We'll probably live as deincarnated beings in virtual worlds, free from any desire to grow exponentially, having realized this is deeply unsustainable and pointless once you have mastery over physical reality. Read Diaspora by Greg Egan, perhaps it can cure you from this simplistic vision of the far future we have inherited from the 50s pop SciFi books.
  - tremon 1y ago
    The counterpoint to immortality is generation ships -- and as witnessed by today's society, humanity can't sustain peaceful coexistence across even a few generations. I would bet that by the time such a spaceship encounters new life, the most domineering and conquest-happy in humanity will have outwrestled curiosity and desirelessness.
- giraffe_lady 1y ago
  The violence we do is a choice we make based on circumstances and conditions. It is not inherently part of us nor is it inevitable. In your scenario it is easy to imagine making the choice you imply. But that's all it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seville_Statement_on_Violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seville_Statement_on_Violence
alt187 1y ago
Bears most likely out-ruthless you, but, uh, I don't sed them building Dyson spheres anytime soon. Aliens probably aren't this edgy, nihilist caricature. Most likely, they're kind of like us- Curious about us, hoping for the best, but irrationally fearing we're an "highly aggressive apex" or whatever self-absorbed nightmare the less enlightened individuals of their species dreamed. Seriously, you think anyone is gonna cross 50 light-years to kill a bunch of featherless bipeds and plunder some common rocks?
- helpfulclippy 1y ago
  At this point, I’m terrified some spacefaring AI is going to come over and relentlessly interface with whatever systems they can find while screaming “IF THIS BOT IS TROUBLING YOU PLEASE BLOCK ME AT THE PHYSICAL LEVEL” and self-replicating millions of clones.
  - alt187 1y ago
    I'm sad that I get this joke, but I'm sadder it sounds less and less like a joke every day. Von Neumann spam.
Juliate 1y ago
Can a highly aggressive species plundering all of the resources avoid self-suicide by destroying the very conditions of its existence? Considering multiple invasive animal species, and past and current humans societies fate… the answer seems not very positive.
schneems 1y ago
The somewhat counterintuitive rules for the best expected strategy to repeated conflicts: - Nice - Friendly - Retaliatory/provokable - Clear https://youtu.be/mScpHTIi-kM https://youtu.be/mScpHTIi-kM At 15:00 in.
- birn559 1y ago
  Largely depends on the parameters. I believe it also assumes infinite resources. In general it's a very simple model not meant to explain all and everything.
  - schneems 1y ago
    The interesting thing here is that it breaks assumptions that to be "alpha" you MUST dominate to win. Even if within only these parameters, it suggest there are conditions where being "nice" isn't just a nebulous ethical thing, but it's an optimal conflict strategy. I think it carries two different messages to two different groups. If you're a "lets all be friends" type, then it's important that you also guard the resources that allow you to be nice. Being provokable isn't "being mean" its the thing allowing you to be nice. If you're a "take advantage of the rubes" type, it's a hint that there might be metaphorical money left on the table by being too greedy. > not meant to explain all and everything. That it's not true ALL the time, is less interesting than the fact that it's true some of the time. At least to me.
pndy 1y ago
> a highly aggressive apex species I won't pretend that I'm some expert but I find this and similar approaches very anthropocentric, stained with pop-culture of image of aliens namely from the Independence Day and Alien (sic) series. Why extraterrestrial life has to be aggressive at all? I'd rather imagine that if something exist out there it either have similar fears that we have or don't bother with rest of the universe and prefers an isolated existence because it already discovered that own survival is more important. And perhaps it doesn't resemble humanoids at all. Hell, maybe it even takes form of giant organisms that can freely roam through the space and just exists. Perhaps the most boring and obvious truth is that we're alone and we exist because of sheer series of weird and improbable accidents. Pretty sure some people who work in this field believe that we're first to emerge as a sentient intelligence. So perhaps it's up to us if should reach out to the stars and explore, spread across the space. Or it might be possible that we're in a fine-tuned simulation ran by our ancestors who evolved beyond physical form and who decided to study us as we study microorganisms in a Petri dish.

NoGravitas 1y ago

I think any species that reaches that level of advancement without having some kind of collective enlightenment and leaving those primitive impulses behind will destroy itself within a fairly short period of time, making the chance of noticing them quite small. J. Posadas wrote a bit on this: https://www.marxists.org/archive/posadas/1968/06/flyingsaucers.html https://www.marxists.org/archive/posadas/1968/06/flyingsauce... However, the current trajectory of humanity seems more likely towards total destruction than what Posadas envisioned (and perhaps saw as inevitable).

xenobeb 1y ago

I just don't agree with this at all. How aggressive do you feel towards ants and ant hills? Do you feel an urge to murder ants to show your dominance over the competition? I would suspect we are more in competition with ants than aliens would be with us. I think we really underestimate how uninteresting we would be to an advanced alien civilization.

jclulow 1y ago

Certainly if they're like us, and travelling to new worlds, they'll be imperialistic and colonial. They'll plant a flag, because we obviously weren't really making use of the planet, not _really_, and attempt to civilise the natives through something between cultural erasure and genocide.

devnullbrain 1y ago
On Earth, in the grand scheme of things, it took a very short time for colonies to a) diverge politically or b) fail. It's not something that stopped happening (much) because we became more cuddly. It's just boring old economics. So I think it's unfeasible to maintain a society that rules with an iron fist over interstellar distance and time.
astrange 1y ago
Colonialism isn't profitable for the same reason slavery isn't. We did it because we hadn't invented economics yet. In space it seems like it'd be even worse; something would have to be very valuable to be worth taking it out of our gravity well.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

KumaBear 1y ago

Depends who got to the top first. If the most advanced was peaceful but eliminated threats. I’d assume they could create a collective empire. Apex ruthless only gets you so far verses a collective.

danparsonson 1y ago
On the other hand they could still see us as a threat to the collective due to our levels of aggression, and eliminate us to protect themselves.
- autoexec 1y ago
  It's a safe bet that if they know about us at all they'll just stay away from us. Our media is filled with depictions of us killing aliens. There's little reason to think we'd accept them. We can't even get along with/accept other humans. Some people's first instinct will be to shoot them. Others will want to lock them up and experiment on them. If aliens did come here they'd have to be very brave, powerful enough not to worry about what we'd do, or unaware of what we are. I'm not too worried they'd kill us to protect themselves though. At the rate we're going, we'll kill ourselves off along with every other living thing on the planet long before we get out of our own solar system.
  - marshray 1y ago
    The most horrifying aspect of the hypothesis as depicted in the Dark Forest book is that it was simply the job of a low-level bureaucrat to identify "low-entropy entities which lack the hiding gene" within their region of the galaxy and allocate a basic bottom-shelf munition to "cleanse" it. However, humans were aware of this possibility and had spent centuries reorganizing the solar system to have a measure of resilience to it. So, to humanity's great credit, he had to go get permission from his supervisor for to deploy a next-tier solution. "Why would anyone travel across town (i.e., the galaxy) just to step on an anthill?" We have a whole industry dedicated to exterminating any other life that invades "our" living space. It's considered an unremarkable necessity.
  - 1y ago

ArcaneMoose 1y ago

Not necessarily true! I think this interactive game applies: https://ncase.me/trust/ https://ncase.me/trust/

Mistletoe 1y ago

I think you are wrong and the more humanity has become intelligent, the more empathy and love we have displayed. I think it’s a hallmark of intelligence. The most intelligent people I know are the most kind and understanding. It’s the ignorant that are cruel and uncaring.

autoexec 1y ago
Sadly, we're becoming less intelligent with time I doubt the trend is going to get better before it gets worse.

0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago

Alternatively, advanced megaprojects are only achievable through sophisticated large-scale cooperation. Aggression leads to infighting; infighting wastes resources on zero-sum conflict. >based on the current state of humanity, I'm not to optimistic. Which version of Earth culture has a better shot at building e.g. a megastructure for an interstellar beacon: Earth culture during the post-nationalist 90s moment, or Earth culture during the current dysfunctional moment? "Earlier this year, the White House proposed a nearly 24% cut to NASA's 2026 fiscal year budget, primarily aimed at the organization's fundamental science research. If the cuts come to fruition, they would be the largest in the agency's entire history." https://www.npr.org/2025/07/22/1266983866/trump-science-space-nasa-federal-cuts https://www.npr.org/2025/07/22/1266983866/trump-science-spac...

jcgrillo 1y ago
Not advocating for this approach, but maybe a fascist oligopoly will get the job done. Or something entirely stranger like a corporate theocracy. There's plenty of room for aggressive, murderous, backstabby species to achieve incredible things. We have a great existence proof right here on Earth. EDIT: Maybe even a future culture that reveres aggression and has achieved some success in their warlike ways will look back on the peaceful post nationalist 90s as an age of decadent sloth. It could be that massive sustained conflict actually drives humans to achieve greater technical heights than peace.
- binary132 1y ago
  The world wars drove more technical progress than the world has ever seen, before or since. (Making your iPhone better at doing the same thing worse and slower so the end result comes out basically the same isn’t “progress”.)
protocolture 1y ago
>Alternatively, advanced megaprojects are only achievable through sophisticated large-scale cooperation. Alternatively, megastructures are only achievable through massive amounts of low wage workers with terrible working conditions. Consider: Panama canal, most large railroads, Snowy hydro. As time rolls forward we appear to lose our ability to do large things, and in part that's because we are less and less accepting of risk.

dlivingston 1y ago

> Any species that is advanced enough for interstellar communication will almost certainly be a highly aggressive apex species. How can you estimate likelihood of behavior when currently N=0 (or N=1 if you count humans)? There is no baseline, no control; it's just complete speculation, a roundabout way of saying "this is what I think humans would likely do, therefore, all advanced life forms must also be like this".

willis936 1y ago
Projecting behavior onto a phantom is just a venue for reflecting a personal worldview onto something else. "Being short-sighted and selfish worked for the aliens, so it would work here too".
binary132 1y ago
Evolution favors highly competitive individuals and collectives

xfeeefeee 1y ago

> Any species that is advanced enough for interstellar communication will almost certainly be a highly aggressive apex species. Well we could always be pets. That wouldn't be so bad.

lotrjohn 1y ago
Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ @13,500 BCE
ants_everywhere 1y ago
> Well we could always be pets. Porno for Pyros has you covered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgPeP_pfjp4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgPeP_pfjp4

artursapek 1y ago

I think if you develop to that point, you don’t really need to have a competitive scarcity mindset anymore.

Yeul 1y ago
My thought exactly. The universe has near infinite resources. There is nothing in our solar system that needs conquering.

zoeysmithe 1y ago

Under a scientific economy like socialism you dont need to be "apex male who exploits the workers under him to get yachts and tax breaks." The workers co-operate and thus the "apex predator" capital owner becomes dismissed the same way our towns and villages in the developed West don't pay fees to warring bands of gangs but instead we've unlocked the Republic and the system of representation and taxes and such via democratic action. You absolutely can have utopian beings. In fact, I'd argue the greed-based societies get caught in the great filter and if there is a space faring race, its absurdly ethical and fair and, to me, explains the Fermi paradox. They're out there and maybe they see Earth but it would be hugely unethical to intervene here. The proper thing to do would be to only observe us from afar. If this was a movie or novel maybe the Wow signal was them messing up, or a defector amongst their midst who disagrees with full isolation policies. But most likely it'll end up being something simple. The last good theory I heard was it domestic and was reflected off orbiting space junk, but who knows.

thrance 1y ago

You have a really bleak and limited view of the far future. Species that have the means to cross interstellar space probably have found ways to alter themselves and removed their need to grow exponentially as they realized it is unsustainable, and are now perfectly content to chill on their homeplanet. You're thinking of cancer cells with spaceships, not highly advanced beings who have mastered matter and physical reality. I recommend reading Dispora by Greg Egan, it could potentially expand your mind on what the future may actually look like.

fny 1y ago

Here's a related thought experiment for those hoping for interstellar kumbaya: On planet Jung dwell the Jungians, sapien-like beings who need only a single cup of a rare liquid to live an entire lifetime. For humans, that same cup grants twenty extra years of healthy life. Human just landed on the planet Jung and discovered the liquid--what happens next?

avar 1y ago
The "2 sentients 1 cup" thought experiment?
thrance 1y ago
If your point is to prove that the patterns of domination and conquests that exist here will necessarily exist in the stars too, then I'm afraid your thought experiment is deeply flawed. If ever we are able to journey through the interstellar medium, we ought to have achieved immortality by then. We'll probably live as deincarnated beings in virtual worlds, free from any desire to grow exponentially, having realized this is deeply unsustainable and pointless once you have mastery over physical reality. Read Diaspora by Greg Egan, perhaps it can cure you from this simplistic vision of the far future we have inherited from the 50s pop SciFi books.
- tremon 1y ago
  The counterpoint to immortality is generation ships -- and as witnessed by today's society, humanity can't sustain peaceful coexistence across even a few generations. I would bet that by the time such a spaceship encounters new life, the most domineering and conquest-happy in humanity will have outwrestled curiosity and desirelessness.
giraffe_lady 1y ago
The violence we do is a choice we make based on circumstances and conditions. It is not inherently part of us nor is it inevitable. In your scenario it is easy to imagine making the choice you imply. But that's all it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seville_Statement_on_Violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seville_Statement_on_Violence

alt187 1y ago

Bears most likely out-ruthless you, but, uh, I don't sed them building Dyson spheres anytime soon. Aliens probably aren't this edgy, nihilist caricature. Most likely, they're kind of like us- Curious about us, hoping for the best, but irrationally fearing we're an "highly aggressive apex" or whatever self-absorbed nightmare the less enlightened individuals of their species dreamed. Seriously, you think anyone is gonna cross 50 light-years to kill a bunch of featherless bipeds and plunder some common rocks?

helpfulclippy 1y ago
At this point, I’m terrified some spacefaring AI is going to come over and relentlessly interface with whatever systems they can find while screaming “IF THIS BOT IS TROUBLING YOU PLEASE BLOCK ME AT THE PHYSICAL LEVEL” and self-replicating millions of clones.
- alt187 1y ago
  I'm sad that I get this joke, but I'm sadder it sounds less and less like a joke every day. Von Neumann spam.

Juliate 1y ago

Can a highly aggressive species plundering all of the resources avoid self-suicide by destroying the very conditions of its existence? Considering multiple invasive animal species, and past and current humans societies fate… the answer seems not very positive.

schneems 1y ago

The somewhat counterintuitive rules for the best expected strategy to repeated conflicts: - Nice - Friendly - Retaliatory/provokable - Clear https://youtu.be/mScpHTIi-kM https://youtu.be/mScpHTIi-kM At 15:00 in.

birn559 1y ago
Largely depends on the parameters. I believe it also assumes infinite resources. In general it's a very simple model not meant to explain all and everything.
- schneems 1y ago
  The interesting thing here is that it breaks assumptions that to be "alpha" you MUST dominate to win. Even if within only these parameters, it suggest there are conditions where being "nice" isn't just a nebulous ethical thing, but it's an optimal conflict strategy. I think it carries two different messages to two different groups. If you're a "lets all be friends" type, then it's important that you also guard the resources that allow you to be nice. Being provokable isn't "being mean" its the thing allowing you to be nice. If you're a "take advantage of the rubes" type, it's a hint that there might be metaphorical money left on the table by being too greedy. > not meant to explain all and everything. That it's not true ALL the time, is less interesting than the fact that it's true some of the time. At least to me.

pndy 1y ago

> a highly aggressive apex species I won't pretend that I'm some expert but I find this and similar approaches very anthropocentric, stained with pop-culture of image of aliens namely from the Independence Day and Alien (sic) series. Why extraterrestrial life has to be aggressive at all? I'd rather imagine that if something exist out there it either have similar fears that we have or don't bother with rest of the universe and prefers an isolated existence because it already discovered that own survival is more important. And perhaps it doesn't resemble humanoids at all. Hell, maybe it even takes form of giant organisms that can freely roam through the space and just exists. Perhaps the most boring and obvious truth is that we're alone and we exist because of sheer series of weird and improbable accidents. Pretty sure some people who work in this field believe that we're first to emerge as a sentient intelligence. So perhaps it's up to us if should reach out to the stars and explore, spread across the space. Or it might be possible that we're in a fine-tuned simulation ran by our ancestors who evolved beyond physical form and who decided to study us as we study microorganisms in a Petri dish.