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This is a sneaky little issue that a lot of alien proponents try to use as an argument but it doesn't really work.
It goes generally along the lines of
The first two steps are fine. We exist and are life, therefore life can exist.
But other life is likely is not a great conclusion because we're looking in on ourselves. The observation "we exist and therefore life can exist" is true whether life is 1/100,000 planets, 1/100million planets, or 1/100^googolplex planets. Life could be so rare that it exists in one of every 1000 universes in a greater multiverse, and it would look the same with "we exist" in all those scenarios.
Space may be unfathomably big, but some things can also be unfathomably rare. Same way I'm sure there's a bunch of genetic disorders that could in theory happen but the chances are so rare (because they would require multiple precise mutations all at once) that to even get a coin flip chance would take a thousand times the entire lifespan of humanity. They're making an irresponsible leap in logic by assuming that "we exist = other life is so common it should interact with us"
But Robin Hanson isn't the only other atheist I've known who has turned into a UFO believer and I think there's a reason for this. Belief in aliens fulfill the human compulsion for a greater mystery and greater meaning in a similar way belief in religion does. And the arguments for them follow similar strained paths.
Consider for instance the other main issue of UFO theories, that their technology and ability to hide just happens to adapt and evolve in sync with our ability to discover them so they're always hazy and just out of peripheral vision ala Bigfoot or the Mothman and there doesn't seem to be much reason here. Isn't that very similar to how God stopped doing a bunch of blatant and undeniable miracles the second cameras were invented? The dragon in my garage works for both oddly enough.
Post-camera miracle claims are a dime a dozen; you can choose to believe that they aren’t sufficient evidence but they are there.
Similarly ufo reports are basically the same thing even with improving technology.
I know they are, same people still claim to be abducted from time to time. The issue is that despite having the prove things really well machine in everyone's hands now, God, Aliens, Ghosts, Bigfoot, and every other similar preexisting cryptid esque being have seemed to simultaneously decided to scale how back how blatantly they're willing to expose themselves.
Now it's possible to conjure up some explanation where they want to be widely known about but not widely proven for some reason. Like hell maybe they exist in some metaphysical Tinker Bell like form where they gain power from belief in them that dissolves with knowledge or something, but interesting coincidence so much of the interesting stuff all happens to work in this way.
The Catholic church verifies miracles on a regular basis and provides evidence using modern technology. You may think this evidence is insufficient to prove a miracle(because you need to accept the existence of God), but it hasn't stopped happening. Improving medical technology has not ended miraculous healings. Many holy relics are at least not provable as false.
The same can be said, by the way, for UFOs. Cell phone videos of the sorts of things that UFOs would claim would turn up on cell phone videos are in fact turning up.
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Its entirely fair to disagree with the alien theories - I dont have enough confidence in anything anthropic to change my behaviour, much less to put it on a list like that - but I think you make it sound much worse than it is. This is not a typical aliens conspiracy theory, it doesnt turn on "sightings", and not really more "out there" than related work like eg Bostrom on the Fermi paradox.
In line with above... that is one way you can do anthropics. Im not sure "the likelihood of life can get arbitrarily low, because I can always posit greater non-interacting multiverses" is really on so much more solid ground than what youre critising with it. All of anthropics is weird, and we shouldnt point and laugh at one because its weird in a way that reminds us of a popular conspiracy theory.
You're making a logical error. @magicalkittycat isn't saying this as a fact; it's being used to show that "therefore other life is likely" does not necessarily follow from "therefore life can exist". It's a disproof of a simple fallacious argument.
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