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There was a really cool episode on Mindscape with Arik Kershenbaum: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QFLrpIslOOk

He talks about why certain things simply make sense. Like how wings evolved six times, why communication via sound is simple and communication via some sort of telepathy is not, and why it makes sense for a large animal to be symmetric. From that he reasons why alien life probably wouldn't look all that different.

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Communication through sound is just vibrating your inner organs at a pattern of frequencies, causing the air to vibrate at the same frequency, and resulting in someone else's ear drums vibrating at the same frequency. This causes thoughts to spontaneously appear in your partner's head. How is this different from telepathy?

Everything? You're describing two different channels, not two different intentions.

The takeaway is not how speaking is like telepathy, but that telepathy wouldn't be that different than speaking. It would presumably have some different characteristics, like speed-of-light propagation, but it would still be just a sense organ.

"Dammit, Joe's thinking at me again. I'm going to ignore him while I watch TV."

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