Try to comprehend how large the universe is.
Now 100x what your most wild guess was, that's a bit closer.
There is absolutely no way we're the only intelligible life form.
I know it's big. do you know how long it's existed? I don't doubt that there have been or will be intelligent races elsewhere, but what do you think is the likelihood that there's been another one, in this galaxy, in the last 200,000 years? whether its at their own hands, or more likely because of some massive extinction, I think it would take quite a lot of tries before finally reaching intelligence. and each try takes at least millions of years
just talking about our galaxy. I actually do think there are enough galaxies for there to be some more right now, but as I'm about to say, that doesn't really matter
You can't carry off the hundreds of billions of galaxies there are and say that even if we are the only intelligible life form in our galaxy, we are a big deal.
sure you can. integalactic travel is difficult enough that every other galaxy is irrelevant. the
large magellanic cloud (which I chose because I started reading Ringworld a few days ago) is 163,000 light years away. that's a long time, especially for a race of people that only live around 100 years
the
closest "galaxy" is the
canis major whatever, and that's still 25,000 light years away, over twice as long as we've been keeping track of history
and the closest galaxy comparable to our own,
andromeda, is a staggering two and a half
million light years away
more importantly, what reason would any species have to leave their galaxy in the first place?
whether they don't because they don't have the technology, or because they don't have a reason, if nobody ever leaves their galaxy, then the only thing that will matter to one intelligent race is what's within its galaxy
in any case, we are pretty important. we're literally all we know of, and who's to say another race would be more important?
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