Like, yeah, if the likelihood of alien life is *just so*, then maybe the friendly alien scenario in Contact might make sense.
But if intelligent life is anything close to commonplace, then we might be in a universe filled with implacably hostile aliens who will outwit and outmatch us at every move. We might be in a game where to be discovered is to lose. We might have already lost decades ago. Or maybe the reality of our place in the hierarchy of life is even more bizarre.
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