Regarding your comments about scientific advances not rendering previous theories obsolete, I agree with this, but that's not what I'm saying is likely to happe

Regarding your comments about scientific advances not rendering previous theories obsolete, I agree with this, but that's not what I'm saying is likely to happen and it's not what I think has happened in the past. What I'm trying to say is that whatever the next paradigm is, e.g QM/Einstein to Newton, is going to be beyond our capability to even imagine, and it'll unlock rather incredible possibilities that will seem magical by today's standards, all the while subsuming our current theories. We haven't been doing physics that long, and you're right that we're not stupid but we evolved under pretty significant calorie constraints so we have no reason to think we're at the upper bound of intelligence in terms of potential. It would surprise me if there isn't much more to discover in this domain by beings much smarter than us with a million years of research time. Our theories say that FTL travel is impossible by travelling through space, but why is it unlikely that the next physics paradigm will be able to figure out a way to manipulate space to achieve de facto FTL travel, for example? Is there something in our current theories that tells us this is unlikely to happen (not merely that it's currently unknown and theoretical, which is a statement that I agree with)? "we'd know it" Would we? I feel like this assumes that these probes would build Dyson Spheres. Is that the only way these probes could work? Why couldn't they bring or build their own fusion reactor.