The universe is big enough that life probably exists in other places. Anything advanced enough to reach us (an extraordinarily difficult feat) would not be dumb and incompetent enough to fall under the control of people, and people just want to believe in something fun to compensate for how boring modern life can be.
Carrolade
joined 3 months ago
An enclosed space can also get hotter than the "burning temperature" of whatever fuel you are using to heat it up. Because heat keeps accumulating if it has nowhere to escape to.
Also good to never underestimate human negativity bias, where the brain remembers bad things far more than it remembers positive things.
Look at air travel. We invented it over a century ago, and have made it safe enough that a single failure out of thousands of successful flights becomes newsworthy.
The statistical likelihood of stupid-yet-capable aliens happening to fuck up that badly is very small.