[brap]

>We're in the center of a ~100 light year sphere of space that we've polluted with our radio waves, so it seems a safe bet that they'll hear us before we hear them.

I don't really see why this is a safe bet, whoever sent signals first is going to be heard by the other party first*, and we have no reason to assume that we were first.

* assuming there's nothing "magical" going on like FTL signals etc

[chatmasta]

Because we haven't been listening for signals as long as we've been sending them.

[brap]

This might also be true for them

[chatmasta]

True. I guess I'm assuming that given two intelligent civilizations, it's more likely they are more advanced than us. But of course I have no basis to assume that!

[brap]

I see why it’s easy to assume that, but there’s a symmetry, anything that we can say about them they can also say about us…

Personally I think our first encounter with aliens, if we ever have one, is going to be more similar to plants, bacteria, etc. It will be very underwhelming.

[chatmasta]

Generally speaking, finding primitive alien life, depending how close to Earth it is, would be very bad news. It would mean the great filter is ahead of us, as Nick Bostrom likes to explain [0].

[0] (timestamped) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vD4df_63wo&t=382s