“Not sure if either of you is really advocating for “aliens” here, but.... think about it. If you had the ability to travel thousands (millions?) of light years from here, to another planet with intelligent life, in undetectable spacecraft -— would you REALLY do nothing but make pretty pictures in a wheatfield?”
What I’m advocating is that those of us that think we understand such things are delusional. By your rather simplistic thinking, the whole SETI thing is stupid. Obvious;y no one is going to dial you up if it’s going to take you a hundred million years to answer the phone...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for_extraterrestrial_intelligence
Perhaps we only THINK we have it right and understand everything...
My impression would be that we don’t.
Um, maybe they live in a closer neighborhood, like this solar system? The evidence for civilization having been on Mars a loooooong time ago may be a clue ...