What if Aliens use a completely different type of communication we haven’t invented ? D’oh
That was Thomas Gold’s contribution in a book about CETI (one of Sagan’s terms I think, either preceding the invention of SETI or a spinoff) — I think it’s quoted around here a number of times...
Hmm, I’m sure it’s around here, but as people have come to suspect, Google is scrubbing FR search results.
My version:
SETI (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence that uses radio signals) is the search for really really stupid aliens—because that is the only kind of being dumb enough to telegraph their location to potential hostiles.
(Yup—humans are really really dumb.)