Scary indeed. I really don't like the Great Filter argument. The idea that we are somehow special and the singular survivors of some great event is preposterous to me when you consider the sheer amount of space that is unexplored, unprobed, or untouchable by current human standards. The idea that a filter event may be forthcoming is certainly unsettling. I'd like to think that probabilisticly speaking we are an average civilization just beginning to reach outside our home sphere. I didn't know it had a name, but I like that title, The Mediocrity Principle.Even Carl Sagan (a general believer that any civilization advanced enough for interstellar travel would be altruistic, not hostile) called the practice of METI “deeply unwise and immature,” and recommended that “the newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and comparing notes, before shouting into an unknown jungle that we do not understand.” Scary.