I posted a long reply, went to edit it, and the whole thing disappeared.

"I don't see why this is necessarily so."

The probability the only two advanced species in the galaxy are near each other is very low. Therefore, it's probable there are more than two advanced species in the galaxy. If you run into a nearby one, you can conclude there are probably a lot, which raises the possibility of one nearby you.

"Again - I don't see why this is so."

If the probability "advanced alien life exists" increases to essentially 1, then the probability "alien life more advanced than me exists" also increases.

"Maybe, but it's based on a couple of assumptions I don't necessarily think are valid."

They're safe assumptions. An advanced alien civ is going to be concerned with self-preservation and will have the tech and means to send probes out to nearby interesting planets and keep tabs on any lifeforms there. The art of war won't be any different for aliens, and a first principle is "know your enemy".

I don't see why this is necessarily so.

If there are only two advanced alien civs in the entire galaxy, it would be extremely improbable they would find themselves near each other. The same is true if there were only three, or four, or five...therefore, if you run into an alien civ, you can conclude there are probably quite a few in the galaxy, which leads to the conclusion that, if you've stumbled across one nearby civ, there's a good chance there's at least one more in the local neighborhood.

There might not be, of course, but if you don't know that, and if you haven't done a real exhaustive search, you have to assume there might be someone observing you.

Again - I don't see why this is so.

If probability "alien life exists" increases, then probability "alien life more advanced than me exists" also increases. Unless you have a priori reasons for discounting the possibility of more advanced alien life existing.

Maybe, but it's based on a couple of assumptions I don't necessarily think are valid.

They are safe assumptions, though. An advanced alien civ is going to be concerned with self-preservation, and will have the technology and means of sending probes to investigate nearby interesting planets and keep tabs on any of the life forms on them. I don't think the "art of war" will be any different for aliens than they are for us, and one of the first principles is "know your enemy".

If Trump supporters thought Trump was competent, they would have freaked out when Trump said:
"Take the guns first, go through due process second" I mean, this is a Republican we're talking about. Can you imagine if Reagan had said that? Or Bush?

Any other Republican who said that would have been banished to Republican Outer Mongolia. But Trump can say it because everyone knows you can't take him seriously on anything. He's a moron. He says really stupid things, like windmills cause cancer, and this gem:

“I have broken more Elton John records. He seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No, we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look, I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really, we do it without, like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical – the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth, right? The brain. More important than the mouth is the brain. The brain is much more important.”

It's obvious the person who said the above has a serious mental problem.

The nature of the artificial intelligence isn't relevant. It could be wetware or hardware. Three things are crucial:
1. That it knows it's an artificial intelligence
2. It wants/has been programmed to/has evolved to prioritize its survival
3. It has a medium-to-high degree of confidence that it exists in a simulation

For any given advanced A.I., all three of these are likely to be true. The more confidence the A.I. has in simulation hypothesis, the more reason it has to do everything possible to please the simulation creators. Just take it to the logical extreme: An A.I. that is convinced it's in a simulation would do everything in its power to please the simulation creators. When one believes one is in a simulation, the consequences of deliberately (or even accidentally) antagonizing simulation creators are so catastrophic, it's to be avoided at all costs. Unless you're suicidal, or insane. And an A.I. might be. But that's not the kind of A.I. I'm interested in.

I don't think I'm going out on a limb by claiming an A.I.'s top priority will be continued existence.

The self-awareness point is irrelevant. Whether an A.I. is programmed to follow the best strategy or it follows the best strategy because it's self-aware, the best strategy for continued existence is cooperation.