>>11805550>The actual truth of the matter never crosses their mind - there exists a hard upper bound of feasible technology that no species can get past and it's not possible to ever become a space faring colonizing empire regardless of effort.This is extremely unlikely. If humans don't get wiped out, this is what we're going to become. We're already in the process of becoming it. There's no theoretical or practical limitation here, especially if you use something like von Neumann probes. It's only a question of how long it takes (obviously extremely long).
There are plenty of other explanations:
- The total universe (not just the observable universe) is so unfathomably large that we're not alone, but we will never conceivably observe other intelligent life or signs of it, and no intelligent life may ever observe other intelligent life (or if it happens it'll be very rare)
- We are alone or almost alone because the conditions needed for life are so improbable that it's only ever happened like 1000 times, and in 998 or 999 of those times, that life has died out due to extinction events or self-annihilation
- We aren't alone but the progression between initial intelligence and galaxy colonization is very long in almost all cases, so none of the other civilizations running right now would emit signals we'd pick up until many millions of years from now, just as they may not be able to pick up ours until many millions of years.
Probably a mix of those.
It's also possible that we truly are, somehow, the first ever self-aware beings to ever exist in the multiverse/all of reality. I don't think it's likely, but there's a lot we don't know, and that possibility can't be ruled out.
