How likely is it that we will meet intelligent aliens? I will say very unlikely. I see planets existing all over the galaxy in huge numbers, a good proportion of them sustaining life but I see intelligent life as unlikely and therefore rare. Intelligence, sentience and communication which has helped our species become capable of infection by contagious ideas is not a package that is likely to develop in every environment that is capable of supporting life. I think it is likely that most ecosystems will never produce anything smarter than an octopus, a bear, a parrot, a pig or a dolphin. That is a remarkable and useful degree of intelligence, but not sufficient to allow the development of powerful memes. Basically there is a limit to how smart any species needs to be, and no natural selection pressure to exceed that level.
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I have a slight doubt that perhaps intelligent life may develop as a spiral either of a self-catalysing process of positive feedback or as an arms race of sexual selection. Something similar happened with the mighty Irish Elk, it got itself in a spiral of development of antlers that proved dangerous, as the growth genes and antler genes were selected together and sexual selection selected them as though there was no tomorrow, and then, for the elk, they were right. If that does happen then perhaps intelligent life will be a little more common. It is certainly plausible. However, once a species becomes bright enough to think and communicate it will come up with ideas that will get passed around. Ideas about how shitty death is and what the point of living is and where did everything come from. These ideas will compete with each other for the attention of the people (generic sense, meaning evolved intelligent communicators) and only the fittest ideas will survive. The fittest ideas will be the memes that spread. Fitness will be defined by how likely they are to be understood and faithfully replicated. Ideas that sound good and feel good will be passed on better than those that don't seem so good. Truth is only one way in which an idea can have resonance. Plausible falsity can register better than truth in the same way that saccharine can register better than sugar. Once ideas are widespread then new ideas cannot be judged on their own merits alone, but by how well they fit in with previous well established ideas. Certain ideas will be inherently more appealing than others. Certain ideas will slot together well with other ideas. A good idea for easing the sadness of a grieving person such as a notion of a life after death will fit in well with an idea of judgement of souls. The idea that the world around them was created will fit in well with ideas of purpose. Ideas that contribute well to other ideas will aggregate together and be passed on together, the development of memeplexes. Religions are memeplexes which are concerned with matters of philosophy. It is my contention that any evolving community with the power of communication (surely a pre-requisite for intelligence?) will develop memeplexes of a religious kind, simply because religions make people feel good. Answers, even bullshit answers, feel better than constant doubt. Given that religions will develop the next question is what, if anything will make them go away. I have found a lot of atheists are profoundly optimistic about the future (despite watching a hell of a lot of sci fi which always seems to suggest the future will be one shitty place) and they believe (faithfully?) that religion will wither away. But where is the evidence of religions withering away in the face of scientific knowledge? It doesn't exist. The number one religion in the USA is a direct descendant of a Bronze Age religion. This religion has survived every scientific discovery and social change since then. Iron, the rise and fall of empires, the rise and fall of slavery, the industrial revolution, the idea that the Earth is not the centre of the universe, the discovery of the great age of the Earth, the discovery of evolution, relativity, quantum science and the landing of men on the Moon. And naturally this has led to religion vanishing. Except that it hasn't. It hasn't because religions evolve. Religions can and will stay ahead of the game because they were built by replicators, memes, ideas that propagate. Memetic evolution is very rapid. Religions adapt or die. The general pattern I have seen is that a religion once born will either die in infancy (within three generations) be taken over by a bigger or more powerful religion (either the ideas, or the population that hold them) or the religion will be immortal. If religions can survive intact from the Bronze Age to the Space Age what possible reason is there to expect that the inevitable trend that we simply do not see will somehow be carried on to its logical conclusion? Religions have not gone away now will not go away in the future. We have put men on the Moon and still men are religious. The first real spaceship we had, that left near Earth orbit, went around the Moon and the crewmen read from the Bible. Why do we expect that other species will be able to cure themselves of idiocies that we cannot cure? I would love to lose my bet (Willett's Wager). Ideally by finding evidence of distant intelligent communities communicating and us being able to decode their signals and find them talking about science and rational discovery and perhaps overhear them as they remark on our backwardness. But I have yet to be convinced by anybody that the triumph of logic and reason is assured.
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