Usually lack of evidence is evidence of lacking.
Big difference between there being a lack of evidence, and a lack of an ability to detect and identify evidence which exists.
I think people are rather cheeky to assume that we necessarily have the ability to detect a SI.
There is no difference in saying that there is no evidence and that there might be evidence, but we don't have ability to detect it. Does god exist? Well maybe there is plenty evidence that it does, we just don't have the ability to see it?
...Think of the Federation's "Prime Directive" in Star Trek.
Or the way we try to keep isolated people isolated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples)
given our current observations (I.e. that there is no evidence of it`s existence)?
Our current observation is that we haven't detected and identified any evidence of their existence.
Another option: Maybe they're not hiding, their just doing their thing, and don't leak energy in a way that is obvious to us.
Usually lack of evidence is evidence of lacking. But given their existence AND lack of evidence, I think probability of purposefully hiding (or at least being cautious about not showing off too much) is bigger than they just doing their thing and we just don't see it even though we are looking really hard.
For a moment lets assume there is some alien intelligent life on our galaxy which is older than us and that it have succeeded in creating super-intelligent self-modifying AI.
Then what set of values and/or goals it is plausible for it to have, given our current observations (I.e. that there is no evidence of it`s existence)?
Some examples:
It values non-interference with nature (some kind of hippie AI)
It values camouflage/stealth for it own defense/security purposes.
It just cares about exterminating their creators and nothing else.
Other thoughts?
Because the pleasure of eating meat is very small conpared to the pain of a factory farmed animal. And I find it very unlikely, that i end up in a state, where I do not fully discount animal utility (in which case i would. Just continue to eat meat out of habit, without deliberately conaidering pleasure) , but discount it so much, that my very small pleasure of eating meat compares to a livetime of pain for the animal.
What about lifetime of HUGE pleasure of eating those delicious ribs? It seems you underestimate the pleasure, most people get of eating meat and overestimate the suffering of animals living in the farm (assuming they do have consciousness and their pain matters). Yes it seems extremely bad when compared to the way we humans live in the age of technology, but you should compare it to things like living in the wilderness with predator always on your back or not living at all.
Looking from utilitarian perspective, why don't you consider the pleasure of eating meat here at all?
I quite understand the point author is making or a feeling that he has, which could be described by this one sentence: It is so easy for women to give sex and so important for men to get sex, that for women not to give it to men is just plain cruel. Everything is OK with this reasoning except one thing - assumption that it is easy for women to give sex. It is actually hard. Now this might not be obvious or intuitive from a man point of view, but you can get to this conclusion if you consider evolution. When evolution took place, to have sex with a man for a women, with high probability meant, to carry and give birth to the child of that man. By choosing to whom to have sex with, women actually determined the faith of her own genes in the long term, which is like the most important thing in evolution. Given that, it is reasonable to believe, that rejecting sex for women is as primal as the desire to have sex for men. Better analogy in this story would be that girl can lift the burning branch, but by doing so she burns and loses her arm and she only have 3-5 arms.
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Big difference.
You don't know how much money is in my wallet. I do. You have no evidence, and you don't have a means to detect it, but it doesn't mean there is no evidence to be had.
That third little star off the end of the milky way may be a gigantic alien beacon transmitting a spread spectrum welcome message, but we just haven't identified it as such, or spent time trying to reconstruct the message from the spread spectrum signal.
We see it. We record it at observatories every night. But we haven't identified it as a signal, nor decoded it.
It seems you have some uncommon understanding of what word evidence means. Evidence is peace of information, not some physical thing.