[smegger001]

Cloaking probably isnt possible without discovering someway to violate the laws of conservation of energy. Any work done by a system will produce heat hiding the heat signature of an advanced technological society is probably impossible.

[somenameforme]

Basic technology we have today would have seemed impossible to people not that long ago. I mean they could have easily imagined it, but would have had no reason to believe it to be possible. There's a fun article here [1] where the NYTimes, in response to a failed attempt at flight, claimed that human flight would be basically impossible. Amusingly enough, that article was posted just 9 weeks before the Wright Bros achieved manned flight. After being proven wrong there, they would later go on to claim space flight was impossible. [2]

The point I make here is that there are two possible scenarios here. (1) We've now finally reached the defacto end of revolutionary technology, technology we might imagine yet have no reason to believe could ever really exist. Or (2) we continue on at just another random point in technological development, where our views of today will look as naive as those of the past. And it seems that one of these scenarios is inexpressibly more likely than the other.

[1] - https://bigthink.com/pessimists-archive/air-space-flight-imp...

[2] - https://www.rfcafe.com/miscellany/factoids/ny-times-admits-m...

[peddling-brink]

What’s to say some of the stars in the sky aren’t massive computing devices disguised as a common star?

[darkerside]

Who's to say that all of them aren't, including our own?

[hollerith]

Every planet, every rock emits heat (thermal EM radiation) so why can't the civilization willing to forgo most of its potential computing and industrial capacities choose to emit a heat signature indistinguishabe from a rock by observers at other star systems?

[shiroiushi]

If you want to hide your heat signature, and you have the technological means to capture and direct your waste heat, you could simply radiate it towards your system's star. This is assuming you're producing so much heat that it would stand out more from a distance than similar but lifeless planets.

[hollerith]

s/the/a/