The problem I see with this article is that it doesn't acknowledge you only need a handful of people to make the advances necessary to reach out to other civili

The problem I see with this article is that it doesn't acknowledge you only need a handful of people to make the advances necessary to reach out to other civilizations. It does admit there will be variation, but talks about fundamentalists and anti-consumerism folks rather than committed scientists/researchers who will make the contact possible. In our own history, you could argue that only a small set of outliers (the Einsteins, Darwins, etc.) really contributed to our major strides. If we're beaming signals to outer space today, you can track it back to only a few committed geniuses who made that feat possible. So, if alien civilizations do exist, I'd say they likewise need only a handful of committed folks; and they will come about through natural variation regardless of what the societal attitudes are.