I thought we were already discussing the possibility of multiple species? i didn't know that was off the table considering everything is speculation anyway. I don't know why you're saying we "never get lucky" to get a clear picture. There was one posted weeks ago in this very thread by a Navy pilot. Not 4k clear, but definitely easy to see its shape. And why would we have physical evidence(assuming we don't) of an advanced species? Would there be crashes? Maybe not.
We don't make "contact" with other species. We observe them from a distance in most cases. We study insects, mice, etc, and the contact is usually us there from a distance, not a dialogue or sharing of information. In many cases, animals don't even know we're there. There is a tribe in Papa New Guinea that just saw the white man for the first time about 50 years ago and others that the modern world usually keeps away from. "Never" being contacted by aliens isn't a direct equivalence because we don't know the history of mankind, even recorded history pales in comparison to the full history of mankind, so limiting it to that tiny sliver I don't know about. Contact usually happens between humans, yes, but again we're all human so you would imagine that would be certain. For some cases, indigenous tribes stay indegious and have very little knowledge of the outside world.
What do you mean why even come to Earth at all? Why even go to the moon and continue to study it even after we know it doesn't have life. It's just a barren lifeless rock. Even the most remote deserts are studied. Shouldn't we devote all our resources to Mars etc? Even though it seems pretty void too. Why not explore more of the ocean even though almost none of it has been explored?
Who said for certain aliens don't care? Maybe they actually do care and they're preserving our way of life? Who says they can't hide perfectly, but their presence is so obscure that we'll never know what it is anyway. Assume my next statement is factual aliens for a moment: Dots in the sky. Balls of energy zipping around. I mean even if you have proof of those things moving around, what can you do besides talk about it on forums? Nothing. They could literally be visiting here in 100 years and people still talking about the same stuff with no conclusion.
It doesn't have to be "extra entities." They could be the same species from the same planet but a different group with their own rules, the same way humans from China and the US might not explore Mars with the exact same rules and technology. Doesn't have to be "unlucky" just unknown variations. Or some of them could be explained later as natural.
I never assumed warlike behavior is unique to humans. I don't have to go any further with that point.
By clear picture, I mean something that does not leave room for interpretation. Shown to a large group of people, 90% would agree about the shape, color, texture, and features of the object. Someone on this page posted a bunch of videos of people looking at a Goodyear blimp. Notice that all of the videos are from a certain distance that makes the object far away enough to be noticeable, but not close enough to be instantly identifiable. Why are there no videos from a much closer location? The object was over an urban area. Surely someone closer must have filmed it. Because no one that was close enough would bother to post the thing on the internet claiming it was a UFO, because they are close enough to know for a fact that it's just a blimp.
There's a selection process going on here that makes it so that every UFO footage will always follow this pattern. UFOs will always be captured at the limit of human pattern recognition. Any closer and we would know what it was.
Advanced fighter planes with infrared and zoom lenses capable of tracking objects miles away? It Will still always be far enough away that leaves room for interpretation. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a story, you wouldn't hear about it.
On the "contact" thing I'll just say that I disagree with your assessment that we study things from afar.
I didn't make the claim that Aliens have no reason to come to Earth. I said in the context of your assessment that they have no reason to want to contact us. I now understand that what you mean by "contact" is to establish a relationship. By "contact", I only meant to make their presence known.
My whole point was that whether aliens know how to hide or not, we will always have a non-zero number of UFO sightings. People will make mistakes. Rare phenomena captured with imperfect data is a statistical certainty.
Given this, what is more likely:
1-Of all the possible aliens out there. The ones visiting us do not make their presence obvious. The sightings of them we do have, are on that threshold of distance I previously mentioned where there is room for speculation.
2-We are being visited by aliens, but they are so competent at hiding that we have never once detected even a hint of their presense. All UFO sightings are mistakes on our part.
3- There are no aliens visiting us at all, and there never have been.
