How much of Luna have we really explored in the kind of detail that would let us know
for certain whether ETI had visited there or not? A few landings over a body the width
of the United States. Plenty of close-up images of the surface, but darn few that can
even show objects we put there in bare detail. And footprints, human or otherwise?
Forget it.

On a much larger scale, it is interesting how I read here and elsewhere over and
over that while there is so much of our galaxy - to say nothing of the Universe - that
we know so little about, some people are pretty darn confident that intelligent life
is quite rare beyond Earth, probably even non-existant. Is it confidence, arrogance,
or relief?

If there are about 70 septillion stars in the known Universe thanks to those 100 or
so billion galaxies (and I won't even touch the idea of multiple universes for now),
then I'd say the odds of there being at least a few more IBs somewhere in the
Cosmos are pretty good, wouldn't you? Even if you are tired of hearing that
analogy, it doesn't make it any less true. Nor does the possibility that they
are few and far between make them any less important in the cosmic scheme
of things.

And star travel: It's actually seems to be getting proven with each passing day
that reaching other stars in a matter of years via known physics and technology
is getting more and more possible. How about that recent item on sending a
small probe to Alpha Centauri via Earth-based lasers in less than 10 years?
We could actually send a lot of them a lot cheaper and faster than a few
big, expensive ones, which would take decades at the least to reach the
nearest stars.

And this is just us coming up with such ideas; imagine what someone with far
more experience has probably already done.

If long travel times are the issue for you, then stop thinking about starships
being driven by biological crews. Some beings may not have a problem with
long trip times, and Artilects even less so.

Maybe there are even multigenerational colony ships out there taking whole
sections of alien societies to other worlds for various reasons and they didn't
have the time or ability to wait for warp drive to get invented. Maybe we
will have to do that some day ourselves.

Or maybe there are ETI who WANT to spend their lives traveling among
the stars, living and exploring as they go, with no definite timetable or
destination and no desire to live on a planet or moon.

And what if we find out that somehow we are the only intelligent beings
in the Universe? That may still only make us special to us. If anything
it would that we and life in general are flukes of existence. If Earth has
the only living creatures, it also shows that except for one place in the
last few billion years, the Universe has done quite well without needing
life and one tiny dot among the zillions of other celestial objects ain't
gonna make much of a dent. Even if we do spawn Artilects, one group
of them by themselves still won't have much of an impact on reality for
a long, long time, if ever.

I say this last part not to instill despair but to make humanity wake up
to the fact that while it is special in a certain sense, it has to get over
this view that we are special to everything everywhere. Maybe it was
okay to think this way thousands of years ago, but we know better now.
Our hubris may do more harm than good if we don't listen to the silent
examples and messages of the Cosmos.