That’s the point though, isn’t it? Many people have devoted their entire lives to “exploring the options” and still come up with basically nothing.

No, that's not the point. That what your think, and i think, it's a little harsh and dismissive for you to judge someone else's life work or experience or what they amount to and say they've achieved nothing. I bet a lot of other actual human beings would reject your characterization of them. I think you should think of that and I think not enough people remember the human in this topic. And I think that's selfish and cruel

To be fair though, that can also be said about a lot of actual historical discoveries and scientific breakthroughs.

I’m much more willing to accept this corollary with Aliens than Bigfoot. Two very different topics.

Yeah there aren’t three fixed points of either disbelief, true middle ground, or belief. It’s a spectrum and I fall more towards the disbelief point in this case, but that doesn’t stop me from critically evaluating the possibility that I’m on the wrong end of the spectrum

That's all I'm asking. Good on you and I think it's courageous to do that in a topic where there's so much stigma