Quote:
Originally Posted by ardeegee
That is under the assumption that the "meat" stage of an intelligent technological species will tend to be a relatively brief one. A couple of hundred years between the discovery of radio and super-humanly intelligent computers doesn't seem unfeasible on Earth, so if there is no fundamental reason thought (or a reasonable emulation thereof) can't be done unless it is in a lump of meat (and I don't see why there would be) most "people" we could be in contact will have probably already reached that point. A couple of hundred years is a very, very, very short time.
It is the difference between expecting someone to answer your phone call at all, and expecting them (not knowing who you are calling) to be exactly 12 hours and 23 minutes into their 11th birthday. Chances are, the person answering will be somewhere other than that exact age-- and chances are, they will be older (unless there is some compelling reason that getting older makes you loose interest in answering the phone, or makes you dead.)
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Our solar system is half the age of this galaxy, approximately.