[Luke Skyfreeper]

Within the scientific community, the question is no longer whether extraterrestrial life exists, but if ET is smart enough to do long division.

If we succeed in locating any ET life, one of two conditions is highly likely to be true:

a) such life will be no more intelligent or technologically advanced than a field mouse; or

b) compared to such life, we will be no more intelligent or technologically advanced than a field mouse.

And it may well be that I'm actually being quite generous in my estimation of the degree to which we might be able to interrelate.

[Quix]

Dialogue has been evidently possible and productive for at least 40 years.

At least one ET race has had this nasty habit of agreeing to things and then violating the agreement.

For example, supposedly our government agreed to look the other way regarding abductions SO LONG AS OUR GOVERNMENT WAS GIVEN A LIST OF THOSE ABDUCTED--list provided at regular appointed times. In exchange, we'd get some of the ET technology.

We got the technology. Then we discovered that they were abducting far more than they'd agreed to. The **** hit the fan. And supposedly there was a standoff for some time. I haven't read anything convincing about what then.