I think there's probably life out there but once they ditch the shackles of religion they're overcome with ennui and they just end up whiling their time away on their celestial couches in VR with their AI life partners.
I mean, if interstellar travel requires practically infinite energy OR time, what's the point? You're not going to spend a solar system's worth of resources to go mine a planet. And if you've already figured out what's out there, nobody is going to sign up for living on a thousand year generation ship cruising the cosmos hoping you don't get annihilated by running into interstellar litter at near light speed.
If there's life out there, they're probably just sending probes. And if they're sending self-replicating swarms out into the cosmos (why?), you probably don't figure it out until it's too late and they show up and swiftly sterilize your planet.
I mean, if interstellar travel requires practically infinite energy OR time, what's the point? You're not going to spend a solar system's worth of resources to go mine a planet. And if you've already figured out what's out there, nobody is going to sign up for living on a thousand year generation ship cruising the cosmos hoping you don't get annihilated by running into interstellar litter at near light speed.
If there's life out there, they're probably just sending probes. And if they're sending self-replicating swarms out into the cosmos (why?), you probably don't figure it out until it's too late and they show up and swiftly sterilize your planet.