Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us? It is presumptuous to assume that we are worthy of special attention from advanced species in the Milky Way.

It is presumptuous to assume that we are worthy of special attention from advanced species in the Milky Way. We may be a phenomenon as uninteresting to them as ants are to us.

We'd be ants from a different world. We go to great lengths to study rocks for simple geology from elsewhere. Natural systems are complicated. Mathematics and limitations of physics suggest there are plenty of novel interactions on any world that can't be simulated or observed from afar.

I am a believer in the great challenges of travel and distance compared to the speed of light. I'm no space expert, but wouldn't any planet be an interesting curiosity or exhibit, if we are talking about civilizations that somehow have prevailed for billions of years in post-nuclear societies bracing challenges of AI and so on?

Visitors might observe us from afar, and remain hard to spot. Who's to say they'd telegraph that they're here?

I think there's a vast simplification of how hard space is to traverse. The ideas of human space colonies in my lifetime just seem like someone in the 1920s envisioning everyone driving personal flying cars: Completely unrealistic.