Humans should count ourselves lucky that we have yet to encounter a more powerful species.
The various sophistries we use to justify how we treat other animals and each other... we embody everything we accuse others of but worse.
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Every time I see someone wish for contact with aliens, I silently wonder if they're completely insane.
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Any sane aliens would quarantine the hell out of our planet, solar system or star cluster.
Non-sane aliens... well, observe nature. You tell me.
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You'll note that this completely omits out of left field, cosmic horror-esque dread sentiences or beings so different as to be unfathomable.
But considering how well-adjusted we are to dealing with *minor* cultural differences, you can see how that would go for us...
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Thinking we are alone in the universe isn't some kind of rationally justifiable position; it's comforting denial.
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There are many so-called scientific arguments for why alien life is so and so likely or implausible to exist, but consider how much we *really* know about the workings of our own planet.
Then extrapolate that for stars in such quantities, your mind can't even compute the number.
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You can take any definitive claims about the nature of the wider universe with about as many grains of salt as there are on this planet.
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I mentioned this under Eldritch horrors. Such a thing seems monstrous to us, but may well be at least somewhat justifiable, depending on how the rest of the universe compares...
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