By picked up I meant your Case 2. But I don't believe people are afraid of stigma. I think people in general are very curious about and interested in these kind

By picked up I meant your Case 2. But I don't believe people are afraid of stigma. I think people in general are very curious about and interested in these kind of news. Think about the Oumuamua coverage. It was a strange thing that had no clear explanation and a remote but exciting possibility that it was an alien ship. 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.