Phil says:

You apparently don't like it, but the fact is that some proponents of the yet-not-happened behave just the same as religious fanatics. They get easily offended and all emotional at any criticism. Their outlook of the future must be accepted and is not to be questioned with skepticism as I did. The behaviour speaks for itself.

I reply:

Why should I like it? SETI still goes through enough just trying to keep its head above the morass
of public and professional opinion that it is akin to UFOs and alien abductions. Seeing those who
treat ETIs as some kind of gods manipulating/helping/destroying us doesn't help. Neither does
having everyone and everything involved with SETI lumped into that area as well.

Phil says:

What 'reasonable speculation' was shot down? All I've read here so far are articles full of self-aggrandizing bloviation about 'New Paradigms' without any real concrete examples or search proposals. And articles with snarky insults denigrating ongoing investigations as 'Old SETI' while the new enlightened folk have no specifics for peer review. I may not think that the old SETI serches have much of a shot, but I've contributed to Paul Horowitz's microwave and optical efforts on the outside chance that there might be low hanging fruit.

I say:

I have said this before but I will repeat it again: I and others are NOT against OLD SETI. I still support it
and think it has a reasonable chance of success. It has just taken the old guard to come around to new
ideas (which aren't so new any more in certain areas), just like it took them decades to accept Optical
SETI because of the limited thinking that if we couldn't do a certain technology, then neither could a
more advanced civilization.

As for those other methods, I still think looking for IR signatures has the best chance, because of these
two reasons, which I freely admit are my speculations and others:

Advanced civilizations that keep growing in population and expanding territorally are going to get
awfully cramped after a while if they stay on one planet. They will need more energy as well as
room. Well, one way to get more energy is to take fuller advantage of their star, thus the Dyson
Shell idea.

If such aliens don't plan on expanding or decide to go live in another dimension, then that idea is
moot, but I am not focusing on them, mainly because I assume you and others would really shout
pseudoscience then, plus I personally find it rather esoteric myself.

My other view is that advanced ETI just aren't going to bother talking to lowly creatures like
us, and not just because we are a different species. Sure they might study us (if they even
know we exist to begin with, something else I often question) and record us in their archives
of galactic knowledge for completeness, but talk to us? What would they say and what would
they want to know from us?

My thought on humans is that we are the dog under their dining table, waiting for any scraps that
might happen to fall from their banquet of technology. Detecting their astroengineering projects
or braodcast leakage are two possibilities here.

Yeah, it would be great if they did want to talk to us, or there are others out there not too
different from us in at least mindset and technology broadcasting into the galaxy deliberately
and putting info packets on their deep space probes, but I guess I need reasons and more
evidence for such scenarios. I never did buy into the Star Trek view that most everyone
has starships with warp drive, transporters, phasers, looks a lot like us, etc.

Phil says:

It's up to the chattering proponents of the so-called new paradigms to propose concrete examples that can be investigated via observation programs. All I've read so far is rehashed decades old stuff like searching for Dyson Spheres via IR, which was and is a good idea. So far those apocryphal Type II and Type III civilizations have not shown up. I gather that any speculation that maybe they just don't exist is just not PC.

There are other methods besides the ones you bring up, but they get even more problematical than
seeking Dyson Shell IR signatures. Gamma rays, neutrino beams, gravity waves - those are all possible
communication methods for advanced ETI, but how ready are we to detect and interpret such things
correctly?

While I too wonder if Type 2 and 3 civs are in this galaxy or any nearby ones (especially 3), I also
wonder if we would actually know what one looks and acts like if we were in such a civilization?

Phil says:

Me, I can't wait for the unveiling of new paradigm specifics and their searches to begin. I hope that they are ready for the type of commentary they've prematurely directed at today's experimental observers.

Me too. As long as it isn't something involving tin foil hats and wire coat hanger antennae, I am
all for whatever new methods could help us find ETI.