Do you think there are aliens?

[Myrddraal]

it is imo conceited to believe that aliens are watching us. why us of all people? its ridiculous.

Why would aliens watch us? Why would aliens have eyes? Eyes are a very earthy thing in my opinion.

Lets just remember that if life exists elsewhere, its evolutionary course will be completely independent of ours. The likelihood is that this other life, be it intelligent or not, would be so (dare I say) alien that we would have difficulty recognising it as intelligent. Why, perhaps in some resource rich planet movement was not necessary for survival, and these aliens have developed no natural way to move around. Naturally such aliens would have no interest in exploration, let alone in building spaceships... When we encounter these super intelligent aliens, we will probably mistake them for some kind of primeval sludge, scoop up a handful of individuals (perhaps literally) and make a new type of glue out of them.

But does other life exist at all? Most people seem content to say "The universe is really big/infinite therefore the chances are pretty high", but if the universe isn't infinite, then there's no justification to this argument at all. We have no idea about the number of stars in the universe, nor do we have any idea what the probability of those stars supporting life is (our current sample is way too limited). The probability of life could just as easily be negligible compared to the number of stars.

[Myrddraal]

Just to illustrate how ridiculous our very human interpretations of aliens are, here's that classic clip of the English housewife offering aliens tea:

[Kadagar_AV]

Why would aliens watch us? Why would aliens have eyes? Eyes are a very earthy thing in my opinion.

Lets just remember that if life exists elsewhere, its evolutionary course will be completely independent of ours. The likelihood is that this other life, be it intelligent or not, would be so (dare I say) alien that we would have difficulty recognising it as intelligent. Why, perhaps in some resource rich planet movement was not necessary for survival, and these aliens have developed no natural way to move around. Naturally such aliens would have no interest in exploration, let alone in building spaceships... When we encounter these super intelligent aliens, we will probably mistake them for some kind of primeval sludge, scoop up a handful of individuals (perhaps literally) and make a new type of glue out of them.

But does other life exist at all? Most people seem content to say "The universe is really big/infinite therefore the chances are pretty high", but if the universe isn't infinite, then there's no justification to this argument at all. We have no idea about the number of stars in the universe, nor do we have any idea what the probability of those stars supporting life is (our current sample is way too limited). The probability of life could just as easily be negligible compared to the number of stars.

Have you actually read up on the topic? I dont say this as a flame, just that some of your points are very much covered. Wiki the drake equation and take it from there :)