I agree with you. I have no doubts that alien life exists out there somewhere. However that being said, there is no reason for an enlightened, advanced society to come here at our present stage of development. Also, an advanced society doesn’t necessarily equate with goodness or morality and I’m glad Hawking makes that distinction, since it’s a relative concept. Consider that the Spanish were advanced and were considered gods by the natives, and look what happened to them.
However that being said, there is no reason for an enlightened, advanced society to come here at our present stage of development.
There's a case that can be made for the need to monitor savage civilizations who've developed the means of space flight, and have harnessed the atom.
Call it a containment mission.
What I have an issue with is defining preconceptions of sentient intelligent life. My thoughts are based on the infinite environmental conditions existing in the vastness of space, that life may have assumed such an alien for as to be conceptually incompatible with what we expect an for an intelligent life form. Maybe they are christalyn or something so alien that we can't easily recognize their technology? I believe they have defined levels of identifiable civilizations via the Kardashev scale. I just wonder if it's inadequate to truly define the potential form that an alien civilization may take.