UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low

It's also not about "shaking in their shoes", but about making the other powers aware. This is the soft war that's been happening ever since first two human groups met each other - showing off your sticks and stones to deter others from trying to attack you in the first place.

I agree with you that it's a leap of faith. I'm not asking you to make that leap. Seems you have an open mind. All I'm saying is all these experiencer testimonies I think means something is happening.

I'm not sure if by picked up you mean "detected in their telescopes" or "the story picked up and discussed". Case 1 is I think unlikely unless there were sightings everywhere at once. But there have been multiple things seen in the sky over a number of places, like Mexico City, Phoenix, Belgium, etc, that got lots of press, and have videos and hundreds of witnesses. Case 2 I think is a result of stigma. For the same reason that, even tho > 50% of people believe in aliens and psychic abilities, you are not allowed to research into those things, and if you do, people will call you crazy. It's changing a bit now...but

I agree with you on the vastness making it difficult. But I think it's arrogant to say, "Well, it looks difficult. Nah, can't be done." because that assumes that other civilizations would be unlikely to achieve more than us. I think the vastness of space and time, and our civilization's minuteness, is its own counter example to that take. It permits an alternate take which suggests there has to be somebody else out there, and they had plenty of time to do stuff.

In terms of why there's no "open contact" I like to fall back on the Star Trek Prime Directive.

That went all over the world and credible/authoritative people commented on it and the possibility. Of course with all the appropriate caveats and scepticism, but the discussion was had.

About the capabilities of other civilizations, I of course concede there are almost certainly many out there with vastly greater capabilities than us. But space is just so stupidly large. Also what is the chance that aliens happen to make contact just as we as a species started to realise there was more out there than us?

Why isn't there already an alien colony here that was established a 100 million years ago?

That's actually the plot in a sci-fi I'm reading these days so there's that... In addition to the Prime Directive there is also the Dark Forest theory explaining no contact, I quite enjoyed Ken Liu's Three Body Problem trilogy.

I am very excited by our near-term (next 200 years or so) possibilities to colonize the solar system. Rather disappointed I won't get to see it happen barring some major life prologing therapies in the next decades.

I read them so you shouldn't assume that i didn't and that's in the rules but apart from that it's arrogant and narrow minded because if you're assuming the only reason I disagree with you is because I didn't read what you read then your implicit assumption is that you are absolutely right because if I had read what you'd read I would have reached the same conclusion as you. it's very disrespectful to other viewpoints and so I think if you're going to lecture people on logic and implications then you do well to sharpen your own. Logic without perspective is blind and useless, it's like knowing how to drive the car but not knowing where you're going.

I wasn't lecturing you...as "lecturing" in that usage implies there was angry criticizing, I wasn't angry. But if you feel like it's lecturing and you're feeling resistance to that I guess that might be part of your problem because you're assuming that I don't have anything that I could teach you. So I'm not lecturing I'm teaching you. You taught me About the idea that people copying each other. I'd never thought of that but it's a good point.

So if you're assuming that I have nothing to teach you it's going to be hard for you to be willing to hear what I'm saying and if you're not going to be willing to hear what I'm saying you're probably going to be assuming that you're totally right and you have nothing to learn. So it's not going to be very useful for you for me to continue to talk now is it? That's got nothing to do with me of course that's just where you're at. So before you blame me for how you took what I was saying maybe you could consider how your reaction is getting in the way of you learning something here.

So I think that validates the point that you assume that I didn't read the things that you read, because I had a different view to you. Tho doesn't it seem normal that different people are going to arrive at different views even if they read or look at the same thing? And isn't that kind of diversity of viewpoints something that you're okay with?

See I think it's very arrogant and narrow minded apart from being in the rules, to not assume that people are not reading, the implication being that there's only one truth, one possible conclusion and you're in possession of it. so clearly I think this demonstrates that you're not willing to hear on this topic right now as I said before. I don't blame you specifically I think it's something about this topic that triggers people to leaping logic and going straight to certainty and I don't think you've escaped that yet. Best of luck with doing that I think you'll be able to just open your mind a bit. I'm heartened to hear that you don't have any strong opinions about people's personal experiences I'm totally with you on that.