On Friday, August 24, 2018 at 12:35:11 AM UTC-6, Chris.B wrote:

"Conquering the galaxy" is a very human viewpoint.
Nobody else is that daft. Nor that sociopathically aggressive.
Nor that badly organized regarding its population control.

It certainly is true that some humans, like Arthur C. Clarke, have pretty much
seen that we ourselves will realize that "conquering the galaxy" is daft long
before we're in a position to take a stab at it.

So you're likely to be right, even though you do not have direct observational
knowledge of what the other clever beings in our galaxy are like.

I would be afraid of an alien species that did not have its own John W. Campbell
to arrange for the publication of countless science fiction stories explaining
just how likely it is that an intelligent, even if technically inferior, species
would find ways to defend its freedom against attack. Aliens who had never
experienced anything like the Vietnam War just might think they could get away
with conquering the Earth, should they feel a reason to do so.

And of course the notion of the first alien species to achieve interstellar
flight wiping out every other nascent civilization in the Universe, as a
precautionary measure against them developing technology and being warlike... is
not an utterly implausible solution to the Fermi Paradox. Where are they?
There's only one they, and they haven't got around to exterminating us... just
yet.

An alien race *could* be paranoid.

John Savard