<story><title>Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-we-assume-extraterrestrials-might-want-to-visit-us/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ballenf</author><text>The point is that we&amp;#x27;re one of (large number)  of ant colonies and there&amp;#x27;s nothing particularly interesting about us vs. any other ant colony.&lt;p&gt;Even if ETs study ants generally, there&amp;#x27;s nothing unique about us to give us a greater than 1&amp;#x2F;(large number) chance of being studied.</text></item><item><author>nend</author><text>&amp;gt;We may be a phenomenon as uninteresting to them as ants are to us; after all, when we’re walking down the sidewalk we rarely if ever examine every ant along our path.&lt;p&gt;Not really the most convincing argument. There are professions that study ants. And I&amp;#x27;m sure I&amp;#x27;m not the only person on this forum that has a casual interest in observing ants.&lt;p&gt;Pretty sure aliens would still be interested in us even if we were as primitive as ants.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bbarnett</author><text>This.  And to add my own expansion to this, the number of ants studied by humans is effectively zero.&lt;p&gt;First, out of all the ant biomass, humans have only seen a very, very tiny amount.  Ants are so numerous, and so ubiquitous, Google claims 10 billion billion.  Yet this number seems incredibly low, for apparently (wikipedia) some ant colonies have 100s of millions of workers.&lt;p&gt;Regardless, as a human, can you imagine trying to visit each ant colony?  How about if you lived just as long as an ant, or thereabouts?  Say, a few years?&lt;p&gt;How about ant colonies which appear, die off?  And how about the fact that ants have been around since the dinosaurs, and our modern civilisation has been around for a few hundred?&lt;p&gt;And how about if you are a researcher?  Let&amp;#x27;s say you stand back, and watch the ants.  Do the ants even notice?  Especially the main colony?&lt;p&gt;Or are you looking at a few out of endless numbers?  What do they report when they get back.  Do you even need to be near the ant colony to watching them?&lt;p&gt;And after you&amp;#x27;ve looked at 100 ant colonies, do you need to look at another 1000?  Million?  We keep discovering subtle branches of insects, so why would a.. I dunno, being comprised of energy, find different (after the first 1000) in a species with a bunch of meaty limbs?</text></comment>
<story><title>Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-we-assume-extraterrestrials-might-want-to-visit-us/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ballenf</author><text>The point is that we&amp;#x27;re one of (large number)  of ant colonies and there&amp;#x27;s nothing particularly interesting about us vs. any other ant colony.&lt;p&gt;Even if ETs study ants generally, there&amp;#x27;s nothing unique about us to give us a greater than 1&amp;#x2F;(large number) chance of being studied.</text></item><item><author>nend</author><text>&amp;gt;We may be a phenomenon as uninteresting to them as ants are to us; after all, when we’re walking down the sidewalk we rarely if ever examine every ant along our path.&lt;p&gt;Not really the most convincing argument. There are professions that study ants. And I&amp;#x27;m sure I&amp;#x27;m not the only person on this forum that has a casual interest in observing ants.&lt;p&gt;Pretty sure aliens would still be interested in us even if we were as primitive as ants.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yoz-y</author><text>Last time a new mammal was discovered here it was international news.&lt;p&gt;If an alien civilisation has trillions of trillions individuals, there must be quite a bit of them interested in any possible niche. This assumes that an interstellar species would be naturally curious.</text></comment>