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I'm not crazy about chapter 12 either. Diamond seems to give a complicated topic a superficial and highly speculative treatment from which he draws far-reaching conclusions. In all of ten pages, he concludes that we are essentially alone in the Universe as an intelligent species (or at least alone in the galaxy). If there are other intelligent forms of life, he concludes that they will be either too short-lived to contact or hostile; therefore, we should avoid contacting them.

The equations used to determine the likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe are obviously somewhat speculative since they inevitably involve variables whose values can only be guessed. I've always thought that this leads people to guess according to preconceived notions. Diamond seems to choose pessimistic estimates for the likelihood of intelligence evolving and surviving, which perhaps fits an overall pessimistic view of human society. Although we obviously face threats from environmental degradation and nuclear weapons, I think it's a tad premature to conclude that we will inevitably have only a narrow window during which we could detect or contact other intelligent species. I think it's even more speculative to assume that all other intelligent species will follow the same path and flourish only briefly before dying out.

I also think that Diamond's conclusion that any intelligent civilization we might come in contact with would be hostile and pose a deadly threat is highly speculative. No matter how advanced their technology, it would seem likely that they would still be bound by the laws of physics. Considering the vast amount of time and energy that would have to be invested in traveling between stars, it seems unlikely that an advanced civilization would be interested in colonizing or exploiting humans even if they were inclined to do so. I don't know that we can look at "first contact" between Europeans and Native Americans and draw any useful conclusions about the likely outcome of contact with an alien species. I also don't think that we can assume that an advanced civilization would necessarily be any more or less "moral" by our standards - indeed, they might have an entirely different concept of morality - but I think the logistical hurdles involved in interstellar travel make any sort of hostile encounter extremely unlikely.

Given the failure to detect radio signals from other civilizations to date, it may well be that the evolution of intelligent life is not as likely as some presume, but I think the raw numbers of stars (and presumably planets) make it almost inevitable, even if extremely unlikely. It's interesting to speculate about what forms other civilizations might take, but I don't think it's possible to reach the kind of conclusions that Diamond does based on the only technological civilization that we know to exist.