If they want to affect the environment, or perform computations, they have to use energy. If they have to use energy, they have to get energy from somewhere. Hydrocarbons don't last for more than a couple centuries. Heavy-element fission will get you another century. Light-element fusion will get you another ten thousand years.
Whither comes the energy for a million year civilization? Should they ignore their star? Just let all that power go streaming by?
(Dyson won theHeineman Prize, Harvey Prize, Wolf Prize, Templeton Prize, Pomeranchuk Prize, Fermi Award, and the Poincare Prize; but did not win a Nobel.)
Maybe you proved my point. Just look at how many ifs this theory depends upon.
1. That a civilization similar to ours exists
2. That such civilization exists in the same time frame as us
3. That such civilization's demands on energy are similar to ours
4. That such civilization expands enough to face energy shortcomings
5. That the best source of energy such civilization finds is a nearby star
6. That they arrive to the same conclusion as Mr. Dyson about the best way to harness the power from this star (the biggest pretension by far in my opinion)
7. That they manage to build it
A very interesting chain of propositions, but really? I find amusing that are people willing to take this more seriously than a simple imagination/future prediction exercise.
We can't even reliably predict how our own civilization will look like in a matter of decades. Now imagine how naive is to think we can predict which problems hypothetical begins similar to us are going to face, let alone predict a particular the solution they are going to come up with.
Son, you don't have to start jumping up and down and gibbering excitedly about the singularity. This ain't hard.
All life uses energy. All civilizations will always use energy, because they are made of life forms. (biological or silicon-- who cares)
If civilizations grow steadily, then their need for energy will grow steadily. If they don't flame out, then they'll need to expand beyond their host planet, and intercept more solar energy, until eventually all sunlight is captured, and you've got a Dyson sphere.
If civilizations grow until they hit a threshold, then stay steady-state for the rest of the universe's lifespan, then we'll only be able to detect them if the threshold is pretty big-- if they just stay on their planet, then they'll be hard to spot, without really big space telescopes.
Thanks, but again, you're explaining me the reasoning behind it (I get it, otherwise I wouldn't be arguing it), and losing the point about why I say it's pretentious in the first place.
Whither comes the energy for a million year civilization? Should they ignore their star? Just let all that power go streaming by?
(Dyson won theHeineman Prize, Harvey Prize, Wolf Prize, Templeton Prize, Pomeranchuk Prize, Fermi Award, and the Poincare Prize; but did not win a Nobel.)