Very cool read. Thanks.

Yeah, but the idea of time travel is much more abstract than the tangible possibilities that this article lays out. Time travel either is or is not possible. You can't do basic math and lay odds on it like you can with the development of intelligent life.

We don't exactly go around talking about it.

I'm with Hawking on this issue. It won't be ET aliens visiting us, it will be MIB aliens. Who is going to try to educate or be friends with such a backward society? On the other hand, we are intergalatic low hanging fruit.

But we used to, until that problem arose in 2019.

I've thought about this a few times before.

I do not believe in the theory that there's a lot of civilizations out there who choose not to talk to us and who we can't notice. I also think the theory that civilizations naturally destroy themselves is dumb. Even if you think humans are assholes, some portion of intelligent species out there would be enlightened enough not to kill themselves.

I believe there is a great filter, and that the filter is ahead of us. I think that filter is simply "unable to travel near the speed of light, and unable to warp space".

If you can't travel near or faster than the speed of light, then the mind-boggling vastness of space really puts a damper on any civilization's ability to survive the death of their star, much less colonize other planets.

If we're still alive when our star gets perilously close to cooking our planet during its red giant phase, I imagine we'll try sending out generation ships out of desperation, and they'll probably fail. The End.

Yep, that's my take as well.

Yeah, whenever 2019 rolls around I usually fast forward to 2022 to when all the dust has settled.

I agree with your take. But I think this article alludes to the same thing with the "Great Filter". Doesn't mean we are wiped out, but our intellectual capacity could simply peak and the concepts needed to rise farther are beyond us. Or it might actually just be physically impossible, no matter how smart we are or how much we learn.

I can't imagine the QA testing involved in developing a Type III civilization.

I disagree. We have not even began to tap our brains potential. Studies have shown that we could possibly be using as low as 10% of our brains potential.

I'm not equating the great filter with us dying (though that could be it, if you think the great filter is natural disasters, for example), the great filter (the answer to "where is everybody") is that no one can really get to any other star because space is too damned vast.

I just morbidly continued on from where we get stuck in our advancement to our likely demise.

I think we continue to climb, but evolution-wise, you don't have to be very smart to produce offspring who produce other offspring, and so on. No reason to think our brains are on some course for superpowered intelligence.

This seems most likely to me as well. The "colonization" approach that the article covers gave me pause, though. Kind of breaks that down over a long enough timeline. Fascinating stuff.

No, there is no reason to think we will evolve into a "super powered intelligence" species. However, I think we will be able to master warp speed or travel at the speed of light. That will ensure our survival as a species.