What else do you want SETI folk to do?

They set up a hypothesis that ETI might be beaming signals
or lasers around the galaxy and we might either be a recipient
or get to eavesdrop on a message, so we fire up the telescopes
and listen.

There aren't any starships handy just yet. We've made a few
efforts to look for simple life on neighboring worlds, but we
have barely just begun there.

So some guys speculate on who's out there and what they
might be like, what they might be doing, and how they might
detect us. Unless the governments of this planet suddenly
decide that massive galactic exploration is in order, what
else is a SETI person to do?

There are 400 billion star systems in this galaxy alone spread
across 100,000 light years and SETI has spent most of its
existence fighting limited resources, lousy budgets that were
cut out from under them at the whims of ignorant and self-
serving politicians, and general ridicule both from the public
and the wider science community. Yet finding out Earth is
the only place in the Universe with life or not is probably
one of our most important scientific questions.

So if a few guys want to speculate now and then on what
is out there, how is that a problem? I worry more if people
stop thinking about such things.