A Sample of...One

[ceptimus]

I think life may be very common, but intelligent life that wants, and is capable of, interstellar communication is exceedingly rare. That's the way Earth has been for 99.999...% of its existence, and based on what SETI has found so far (nothing) it's true of all the star systems in our section of the galaxy.

There remains the possibility that radio signals are only a primitive way of communicating - the technological equivalent of smoke signals - and that we've yet to discover/invent the system that all the smart aliens are using to communicate with each other.