Has anyone considered we may be the most intelligent species in the Milky Way?

reply to post by PW229


Excellent post.

I'm not the type of individual that likes to equate intelligence to morality, but you tend to see that a lot on here.

I understand why that's done, because as a species, our morals are questionable sometimes and you would think a very intelligent species would be purely benevolent, but that doesn't change the fact that we, as a race, have achieved incredible things.


Yes, the Milky Way has some 400 billion stars, and I'm still willing to be life is fairly common in other solar systems. But it still seems, to me at least, that a tremendously large number of conditions must be met before a living organism can become intelligent, not just alive. And still, we really don't have a firm metric to gauge just where we place in the whole of the universe just yet.

We could be gods, or we could be apes.

reply to post by SaosinEngaged


Thank You my friend.

I particularly liked your statement about morality, well said.

It would be utterly incomprehensible to believe we are the only intelligent life in the entire universe but it's unfortunately not a great leap of imagination to believe we are the pinnacle of development in our own Galaxy. One day we may all be proved wrong and our Galaxy is awash with intelligent species, but I doubt it.

I agree totally with the OP.

However, whether we are the most intelligent species in the milky way is kind of irrelevant.

I dont think a lot of people give the human race enough credit. I for one, do. I dont like selling ourselves short by saying that some ET race is more intelligent than us. While it maybe true, there isnt anything that we can do about it. So chastising the human race isnt doing much good.

reply to post by CheapShotArtist


That's kind of what I'm getting at.

I see no need to sell ourselves short. We're not a perfect species. We have our troubles, our squabbles, our shortcomings, etc, but we've achieved so much.

From stardust to stargazing. I at least think that's pretty cool.