Then there's also the fact that... time in space is a messed up fact. We could see evidence of life that was sent out 50k years ago (say a beam of light), but their whole race could be dead for a few thousand years and we'd never know until we set foot in their solar system.
Or there could've been life nearby that went extinct the minute we began fashioning our own tools out of stone and metals.
There could've been whole wars fought in space with the winners/losers going extinct before we were ever even formed through evolution.
Would be nice if we can ever explore all of the universe and figure out all those secrets, and see the archaeology of other races, but I don't know if we'll ever get there. Would be amazing if we did, to only find out that we are the only sapient species. How rare a thing that would be that we're the only ones to make it past the great filter.
Although the current state of affairs seems to be that we are hellbent on activating said filter and we‘ll be long dead (at least as a technological civilisation) by the time anyone else receives our current radio transmissions.
True... but odds are also that IF civ's get near to Kardashev 1, there's a good chance they ALSO build AI's, which even if they died out, the AI would live on being synthetic and nearly immortal.
I think it's odd we don't see more synthetic ai type signs of life out there, at least.
I think if we do kill ourselves we might have AI before then to at least broadcast to the universe that we were here.
Or there could've been life nearby that went extinct the minute we began fashioning our own tools out of stone and metals.
There could've been whole wars fought in space with the winners/losers going extinct before we were ever even formed through evolution.
Would be nice if we can ever explore all of the universe and figure out all those secrets, and see the archaeology of other races, but I don't know if we'll ever get there. Would be amazing if we did, to only find out that we are the only sapient species. How rare a thing that would be that we're the only ones to make it past the great filter.