I'm convinced that intelligent alien life exists out there. But I am also convinced that there is no advanced alien civilization in our immediate vicinity, maybe even the entire milky way. If there was a spacefaring alien civilization even remotely close to us, we'd definitely be able to notice them with out current technology. If anything, the age of the universe and the apparent abundance of planets potentially being able to support life, and the amount of time that has passed since our galaxy became able to support intelligent life, we should be totally surrounded, but we're not.

I think this points to the existance of some sort of Great Filter that we either haven't reached yet (maybe space travel is impossible? maybe every civilization wipes itself out?), or more optimistically, we are maybe the first to get this far in our galaxy.

This does however offer a frightening possibility: if we ever find traces of intelligent alien life on a similar or slightly lower level of advancement than us, it would mean that there must be a Great Filter still ahead of us, that nobody in our galaxy has yet passed.

Also Icky is definitely an alien