Perhaps the physical make-up of our universe is such that this is the fate of any intelligent species. If that’s the case then it would explain why we haven’t heard from ETCs: they are all stuck at more or less the same level of scientific understanding—and thus technological competence—as we are. They know about quarks and cosmic inflation and dark energy, but they don’t know how it all fits together any more than we do. They wonder whether anybody is out there, but they have the same limited lack the capacity to broadcast their existence to the wider universe as we do. It’s a frustrating
...more
