[TheOtherHobbes]

And we don't make much of an effort to understand ants, because they're not very interesting.

Let's say we start leaving some scent trails around a nest in the hope of starting a conversations.

Will the ants see that as "communication from an advanced civilisation"?

Even if they do - unlikely, but let's pretend - will they be able to use that communication to power up ant civilisation to the highly advanced and superior technological level that defines the Internet and Hacker News?

It's far more likely that beyond a certain point civs become invisible, because they're doing things less mature civs literally can't imagine.

And this applies even if we share a physical space with them. We could be surrounded by technology and completely unable to recognise it. It would be invisible to us, except maybe - maybe - the very occasional fleeting anomaly.

Because we're looking for radio scent trails, and the galactic civ is using Something Else Entirely which we not only don't have the words or the math for, but the brain space to begin to imagine it.