[ExI] Drake Equation Musings

[Keith Henson]

On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 5:40 PM,  Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

Snip

> The fact that we do not see primitive aliens nearby

Note that the jury is still out on Tabby's star.  But probably not.
It's still the most interesting star we know of.

> nor supercivilizations far away

So far at least.  If you want to travel star to star, using the stars
to power big lasers is the obvious way to go.  Such a transportation
network would be visible and obviously the work of sapients across the
entire visible universe if it were in our light cone.

I largely agree with your analysis.  But it's possible we missed
something, like a physics based reason for intelligent species to stay
in their star system or even to stick to their home planet.  I have
speculated about civilizations "collapsing" to 300 m spheres sunk in
the deep ocean.  The small size gets the latency down and the cold
water deals with the waste heat problem.

Keith