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Re:Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens by herdcall on Thursday December 22, 2011 @11:40AM (#3382123)
The problem I see with this article is that it doesn't acknowledge you only need a handful of people to make the advances necessary to reach out to other civilizations. It does admit there will be variation, but talks about fundamentalists and anti-consumerism folks rather than committed scientists/researchers who will make the contact possible.

In our own history, you could argue that only a small set of outliers (the Einsteins, Darwins, etc.) really contributed to our major strides. If we're beaming signals to outer space today, you can track it back to only a few committed geniuses who made that feat possible.

So, if alien civilizations do exist, I'd say they likewise need only a handful of committed folks; and they will come about through natural variation regardless of what the societal attitudes are.

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