I had this awful thought.  I now know why we shall never receive any
communications from outer space from intelligent life forms.

Of course there are parts of the Universe far older than ours and any
intelligent life there is likely to far more advanced than we are.
Moreover, they are likely to have consumed much or all of their raw
materials, and their star may be becoming a red giant. They may have already
despatched their healthier specimens into space to find a new home.

And then there's Earth.  Broadcasting to the Universe that there is life,
water and food here.  Any predatory intelligent life will already be
changing course for Earth and a liveable habitat, and maintaining radio
silence.  Any non-predatory life forms will also maintain radio silence
because we might either be trying to trap them into betraying their
location, or because a response from them to us would do the same.

Seti makes the implied mistake of assuming that intelligent life forms out
there have the same benign motivation as we have in trying to find
intelligent interlocutors elsewhere in the Universe.

This could have dire consequences in a few thousand years' time when
predatory carnivores arrive to eat us.

This is why intelligent life in space will never communicate with us.  We
are doves in a Universe of sparrowhawks.

This is why Seti should be shut down immediately.


Clive Abramovich Delmonte