There are mountains of untapped resources lying around. If there were intelligent agents in the galaxy 4 billion years ago, where are their advanced descendants? There are no advanced descendants—so there were likely no intelligent agents in the first place.
It might be that what looks like a lot of resources to us is nothing compared to what they need. Imagine some natives living on a pacific island, concluding that, because there’s loads of trees and a fair bit of sand around, there can’t be any civilisations beyond the sea, or they would want the trees for themselves.
We might be able to test this by working out the distribution of stars, etc. we’d expect from the Big Bang.
If Robin is right, we’d expect their advanced descendants to be hundreds of light years away, heading even further away.
These are space-faring aliens we are talking about. Such creatures would likely use up every resource—and forward energy and information to the front, using lasers, with relays if necessary. There would be practically nothing left behind at all. The idea that they would be unable to utilise some kinds of planetary or solar resource—because they are too small and insignificant—does not seem remotely plausible to me.
Remember that these are advanced aliens we are talking about. They will be able to do practically anything.
The first wave might have burnt too many resources for there to be a second wave, or it might go at a much slower rate.
link
Edit: link formatting
Um, that link is to a string quartet version of an Oasis song. It is quite good but I’m pretty sure that isn’t the link you meant to give.
Thanks, Fixed. I better check the link other link I posted, actually.
It’s the new Rickrolling, except with better music.
There are mountains of untapped resources lying around. If there were intelligent agents in the galaxy 4 billion years ago, where are their advanced descendants? There are no advanced descendants—so there were likely no intelligent agents in the first place.
It might be that what looks like a lot of resources to us is nothing compared to what they need. Imagine some natives living on a pacific island, concluding that, because there’s loads of trees and a fair bit of sand around, there can’t be any civilisations beyond the sea, or they would want the trees for themselves.
We might be able to test this by working out the distribution of stars, etc. we’d expect from the Big Bang.
If Robin is right, we’d expect their advanced descendants to be hundreds of light years away, heading even further away.
These are space-faring aliens we are talking about. Such creatures would likely use up every resource—and forward energy and information to the front, using lasers, with relays if necessary. There would be practically nothing left behind at all. The idea that they would be unable to utilise some kinds of planetary or solar resource—because they are too small and insignificant—does not seem remotely plausible to me.
Remember that these are advanced aliens we are talking about. They will be able to do practically anything.