Yes good point. They might be doing this to set up a situation where they tell us to not build Dyson spheres. If we accept that aliens are visiting us and observe that the universe is otherwise in a natural state we might infer that the aliens don’t want us to disturb this state outside of our solar system.
Why would they want the state of the universe to be unnatural on Earth but natural outside the solar system?
edit: I think aliens that wanted to prevent us from colonizing the universe would either destroy us, or (if they cared about us) help us, or (if they had a specific weird kind of moral scruples) openly ask/force us not to colonize, or (if they had a specific weird kind of moral scruples and cared about being undetected or not disturbing the experiment) undetectably guide us away from colonization. Sending a very restricted ambiguous signal seems to require a further unlikely motivation.
Surely if they were showing themselves to the military then that would put us in an unnatural state.
Yes good point. They might be doing this to set up a situation where they tell us to not build Dyson spheres. If we accept that aliens are visiting us and observe that the universe is otherwise in a natural state we might infer that the aliens don’t want us to disturb this state outside of our solar system.
Why would they want the state of the universe to be unnatural on Earth but natural outside the solar system?
edit: I think aliens that wanted to prevent us from colonizing the universe would either destroy us, or (if they cared about us) help us, or (if they had a specific weird kind of moral scruples) openly ask/force us not to colonize, or (if they had a specific weird kind of moral scruples and cared about being undetected or not disturbing the experiment) undetectably guide us away from colonization. Sending a very restricted ambiguous signal seems to require a further unlikely motivation.