Note follow-ups

Tim Daneliuk wrote:
...
And that really worries me, because "failing" in this context (and down
the line a few decades) could bring on a poisoning of the planet and
a level of human tragedy that has never heretofore been seen. Hopefully,
we'll all be smart enough to avoid that...
...

I find the null results from the SETI project to be profoundly
disturbing.
particularly when one considers Fermi's paradox.

Fermi realized that atomic power made insterstellar travel possible.
How to do it was simple a matter of engineering. So Fermi stated
the paradox as a question: "Where are they?" (or perhaps it was
"Where is everybody?") The point being that since atomic power
made interstellar travel possible, we should have received visitors
from other civilisations.

The SETI results to date tell us that civilizations like our own are
not
very common, or do not long survive after developing 20th century
technology. Supposing the first to be the case, is a lonely thought.
The alternative is ominous.

--

FF