> At a bare minimum, human thought patterns have to be rare.
I'm not so sure. We can't even be sure if cetaceans, in particular orcas, have thought patterns similar to ours. Of course, they lack the physicality and environment to develop written history and knowledge and also technology, but we currently have no way of knowing what their thoughts are.
Agreed. How then could we expect to exchange views with an alien species, when we cannot do the same even with Earth species? We imagine it would somehow be easier if only the alien species were "intelligent", but then our expectation arguably defines intelligence in No True Scotsman terms, essentially an intelligent species is one with which we could communicate.
Most would argue against a species being intelligent if we could not communicate with it. "These are just automatic processes, like sophisticated software"
I'm not so sure. We can't even be sure if cetaceans, in particular orcas, have thought patterns similar to ours. Of course, they lack the physicality and environment to develop written history and knowledge and also technology, but we currently have no way of knowing what their thoughts are.