I'm reminded of the old problem of the flight of bumble bees. Someone did some calculations on bees, modeling their flight using the same properties of aerodyna

I'm reminded of the old problem of the flight of bumble bees. Someone did some calculations on bees, modeling their flight using the same properties of aerodynamics as fixed wing aircraft, and they came to the conclusion that bees couldn't fly. Of course the obvious answer was that bees simply don't fly the way that fixed wing aircraft do and we merely did not understand how they flew at the time (we do know). But imagine an alternate world, a world where bees and other flying insects did not exist, then the equivalent calculation might be taken much more seriously about the impossibility of flying insects. Similarly, what do we know about hyper advanced technological civilizations with the capability of colonizing galaxies? Basically nothing. So any model we have of them is fundamentally invalid. Even if we pretend that layering on a bunch of "conservative assumptions" can remove that fundamental difficulty of having zero knowledge of such civilizations, it very much does not. At the end of the day this is a problem that is beyond our current understanding and we cannot make any firm statements about it one way or another.