On the potential realities of alien life
It's true I'm skeptical, but I'm also very interested in science, space, physics, and space travel. Skepticism doesn't dampen my enthusiasm for ET, it informs it. So it's painstaking for me to browse through forums where the basics of genetics, physics, human anthropology and biochemistry are willfully ignored, but I also think about it.
What we know from telescopes like Hubble and James Webb is that there are trillions of galaxies out there, each with billions of stars and even more planets. And life seemingly evolves *because* of the way physics and chemistry and entropy work, it's not defying the odds by existing when the conditions are right. So the chances life has developed elsewhere in the universe and maybe even our own galaxy are quite high actually. The chances of intelligent life a bit lower but not unlikely. The chances intelligent life evolved and are able to send a message across hundreds or thousands of light years of space in the exact window of time for us to be able to detect it is much lower. And the chances any intelligent life including ourselves are able to travel through space at high speeds for the thousands of years it takes to get to another star system without hitting a speck of dust and blowing up are astronomically small. We have a much higher chance of finding microbial life on another planet in our own solar system in my own opinion.
But let's consider that there might be visitors from other solar systems flying around the galaxy. Why don't they show themselves and shake hands? Well that might be catastrophic for more than social reasons. If their biology is anything like ours, they don't exist perfectly independently of microbial life: they have their own gut biomes, respiratory microbiota, skin and hair parasites and "tamed" viruses that manage reproductive functions. We don't know how devastating it might be for them to introduce their forms of symbiotic microbes into our sealed environment, or ours into theirs. They could have left handed proteins and we would basically destroy each other the second we breathed the same air for a moment like a deathly allergic reaction. They might breathe gasses that are toxic to us or have gravity needs that are different from ours, so in looking for a planet to colonize they might actually prefer Jupiter or one of its moons as candidates rather than Earth. So the odds that aliens would risk interacting with an already inhabited planet and its lifeforms, much less attempt interbreeding with us, is seriously remote. Even sending reconnaissance drones that would contaminate us as a sample would be pretty unscientific behavior for a species that managed to survive interstellar space flight, and if they were present they likely wouldn't show themselves at all if they could avoid the risk.
If I were those aliens I would do something far more indirect and minimally risky. Something like a fly by with an apparently interstellar object that basically punches through our solar system like a bullet, takes readings, and disappears quickly, and we have seen objects like that such as 3I/ATLAS. That for me is a better candidate for hiding alien technology than the Mars rover 'jellyfish' camera artifacts or even the released military UAP footage. It behaves more the way I would expect of an interstellar species quietly monitoring us.
Beyond that, there's something I find deeply disturbing about the way different people internalize the subject of alien life and its possibilities. Not the least of these is the 'starseed' cultural phenomena and its deeply problematic taxonomy of alien/human hybrid species based on continents and cultural stereotypes. The idea of an invented alien eugenics project ordering human beliefs, attitudes, and expectations about each other is simply using science fiction to justify racism and harm. In the same way the field of psychology wrongly predicted modern medicine and technology would eventually find biological justifications for the expanding political and cultural pathologies being invented, diagnosed, and added to the DSM. Because if there are other intelligent species out there, then what should be happening is that our conception of ourselves and our definition of "humanity" must expand to include ourselves as only one of a number of species that have humanity and intelligence in common. That should humble us and lead to greater acceptance and commonality with one another. If it makes you think you've got to compete with or genocide entire continents to protect your pure alien or human dna or whatever, you're doing SETI wrong and are probably the last person any alien would want to meet.