At risk of sounding cynical I think of the words of some wit on Twitter in the early days of the pandemic: "Rest assured that whatever happens, we will learn nothing from it."

> I'm relatively young and so I'm pretty sure I will be alive to live the "okay, we really are screwed" or "yes, we've successfully pulled out of this one" moment.

Consider how many moments in history had people feeling this way and how often it was the latter rather than the former outcome.

At the same time, if they are really far away, we might not be able to communicate meaningfully with them. So likely after a first phase of hype, it might dwindle down.

I strongly suspect it's a natural source, like the little green men sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar

Anyway, we can try to detect strange signals, like signals with a narrow bandwidth, some regularity, like repetitions, and some parts that looks like random, like the letters in a foreign language you don't understand.

For examples, see the image in this article and ignore all the text: "The sound of the dialup, pictured" https://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup-picture... HN discussions https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15635144 (675 points | Nov 6, 2017 | 108 comments) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171514 (174 points | March 9, 2015 | 35 comments)

Even if you don't understand what it's happening, there is clearly something weird and not natural.

I agree, do we humans, as a whole, seem to care what animals think/feel/experience? Why would we? Only now are we starting to find points of commonality that our human brain experiences. So, if the aliens are like us but more intelligent would they think of us in the way we see animals here on earth (pets, experiment subjects, objects)? I wonder, what would be have to offer any alien civilization that is more intelligent/advanced?