[ExI] NASA doubts Dyson megastructures will ever be necessary

[BillK]

On Mon, 19 Aug 2024 at 05:22, Robert G. Kennedy III, PE via
extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> I think this is an extremely parochial point of view, even by human
> standards.
>
< big snip >
>
> Right off the top of my head, I can think of worthwhile constructive
> activities that would require six to twelve orders of magnitude more
> power than what we use now:
> - Fast Interstellar flight with machines.  (Having won a NIAC Phase I
> grant, my colleagues and I will be presenting our work on an
> interstellar probe swarm to Proxima Centauri to NASA at the Pasadena
> Hilton in September.  I'll be turning 65 whilst there.  Can't think of a
> better way to celebrate a milestone birthday than not acting my age.)
> - Terraforming Lite, using techniques you already know about.
> - Terraforming Heavy using Shell Worlds, which I also helped pioneer.
> - Slow Interstellar Heavy with Worldships or Fast with some other
> small-ish craft with a live crew.
>
> That's just the actually useful stuff.  For humility, I like one of the
> background plot elements in one of David Brin's "Uplift" novels - that
> the big intragalactic war was essentially a difference of opinion
> between art critics.  Vernor Vinge (may he RIP) touched on this too in
> "A Fire Upon the Deep".
>
> We have absolutely no idea what aliens would find interesting, fun, or
> compelling to do.  We'd be like ants to them, and that's being generous.
>
> Hooey.
> K3
> _______________________________________________


You are thinking along the lines of the galaxy-spanning Kardashev
Scale where advanced aliens could use large amounts of energy,
potentially from their entire planet (Type I), star (Type II), or
galaxy (Type III). This scale assumes that as tech advances it will
consume more and more energy up to the maximum available.
However, the lack of evidence for such vast energy consumption
suggests that this may not be the case.

The Fermi paradox leads to many alternatives.
Maybe it is simply that no alien civs exist at present.
Perhaps advanced aliens use other energy resources that we cannot detect.
Perhaps alien tech is so economical in energy use that it makes them
look like natural phenomena.
And so on.......

Humans are beginning to realise that long-term survival requires
economical energy use and less environmental damage.
Certainly, if aliens were rampaging across their system / galaxy as
you describe, we should be able to detect the environmental changes.
So, perhaps they aren't doing that?

BillK