> Targeted probes would be more complex, and thus more prone to mechanical or software failure, or copy failure across generations I'd argue that your argument

> Targeted probes would be more complex, and thus more prone to mechanical or software failure, or copy failure across generations I'd argue that your argument is either a. not intrinsically true of complex probes or b. just a modified version of the great filter argument You could imagine an advanced civilization that creates an artificially intelligent probe that is pretty effective at problem solving and resilient to these sorts of failures. Even if targeted probes have to remain active, there is no reason they couldn't consume energy harvested from their origin world to course correct. If your claim is that every form of intelligence will inevitably fall to mechanical or software failure, etc. then that claim seems to just be identical to the great filter claim. > targeted probes seem less likely to succeed over the scale of time necessary. Your own GP seems to provide a very compelling reason why this is not true.