Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

I'm increasingly of the completely unresearched, lay- and baseless opinion that the great filter explanation has a fair bit of merit. Not so much from the idea that civilisations create their own destruction before they get off their rocks because of a technological race condition, but rather that intelligence as we see it is a knife-edge balancing act, and humankind is near to the maxima of ability as a result of intelligence.

If humans were a little less intelligent or a little less social, I don't think we'd have seen nearly the same the scientific advancement we have achieved. We'd either be unable to come up with the advancements, or too tribal to come together to benefit from collaboration. This would have a knock-on effect and I don't think we would've ended up in a situation where we're capable of rocketing out of our gravity well.

Conversely, it wouldn't surprise me at all if a hypothetical creature with more intelligence than us found itself too burdened by its intelligence - by way of wrestling with the philosophical challenges of existence - and ended up wiping itself out. Alternatively, I could easily believe that the biological foundations of what produces intellect quickly end up producing side-effects that inhibit achieving outcomes.

For example, we all-too-often see incredibly bright people struggle with depression, etc. due to their intellect. It feels like intellect itself might lead to additional struggles that are self-defeating. Moreover, neurodevelopmental conditions such as ASD seem to correlate to some degree with intelligence, with more extreme cases quickly become limiting. It sort of seems like intellect itself could become too overwhelming and quickly begin to put a handbrake on a species' development.

Additionally, human brains are incredibly expensive. We use about 20% of our total energy intake to power them. These days that's easy to handle, but a super-brain with even a bit higher energy requirement might quickly cause a species to struggle to find enough energy in its early era, before it's had a chance to really develop all of that scientific advancement that leads the surplus of to modern food production.

I mean, I am pretty much entirely talking out of my arse here and have no formal or informal education by which to really lend any credence to this hypothesis. Additionally, I totally realise that evolutionary pressures would tend towards these outcomes over time. However, evolution isn't exactly a precision tool, and so it would not surprise me that among many rolls of the 'intelligent life' dice, many burn themselves out due to not striking that balance well enough.

I'd love to hear from anyone who has a more informed take on this.

But if alien life is common, a reasonably likely outcome is that one species gains dominance and eliminates all other potential threats in the galaxy. In that case, we wouldn't see visitors if just that one species was incurious.

> I'm sure I'm not the only person on this forum that has a casual interest in observing ants

From Wikipedia for "ant": "More than 12,500 of an estimated total of 22,000 species have been classified."

From our human perspective, we are interested in ants. Everybody has seen ants. Everybody is curious about ants.

From an ant perspective, humans scarcely exist. There are 10,000 ant species that don't have a relationship with humans sufficient to deserve classification, let alone a name.

(I also want to wonder aloud why extra-terrestrials would be more interested in humans than in ants)

It's hard to be sure what a 10 or 100 million year old civilisation might still find interesting. I certainly wouldn't think a few hundred years of industrialisation, and a few decades of the information technology age gives us any real idea.

> Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

Because it makes good sci-fi!

But in all seriousness, we have so little tangible evidence of extraterrestrial life that there's no way to answer this question. It always comes down to opinion and speculation.