I’m pretty much on board, though how much anyone can agree is a matter of relativity.

We know about the closest stars and the planets within them, and based off spectrometry, we’re confident the planets “close” to us haven’t had life, though they might be capable.

The chances of there being no mass extinction events in the millions of years following abiogenesis is arguably smaller than surviving the five or so we’ve had. Given everything we know about astrophysics, we owe the asteroids a few clean hits, we have been astronomically lucky, and that’s not even taking into consideration every other cause of mass extinction.

15 billion years is still considered early in the grand scheme of things, it’s likely that we are the early ones. A billion years head start is plausible, sure, but it’s certainly less plausible than our existence.

All of this is to say that life is rare enough without them being a stones throw away.

And this is all disregarding any possible intent behind a visit. Any being capable of space travel does not need our resources.

Unless they’re sex tourists, which would explain all the anal probing.

On second thought, I choose to believe.