Alternately, learn to upload people. Which is still probably going to require nanotech. This way, you're not dependent on ecosystems because you don't need anything organic. You can also modify computers to be resistant to radiation more easily than you can people.
If we can't thrive on a wrecked Earth, the stars aren't for us.
I admit that a Dyson sphere seems like an arbitrary place to stop, but I think my basic argument stands either way. If any intelligent life was that common, some of it would spread.
And that's why my conclusion is "that wasn't made by aliens."
But that's just the prior probability. I can still say that we have strong evidence that the probability of a given solar system having intelligent life is much, much lower than one in 150,000.
They're in that interval, or there isn't easy space travel.
But that's a lot of information. It's a very short interval. Since it's so unlikely to be in that interval, this is large evidence against easy space travel.
We can argue it's unlikely, sure
It's a probabilistic argument. But what isn't? There's no argument that allows infinite certainty. At least, I'm pretty sure there isn't.
According to Wikipedia, in Malaysia sale and importation of sex toys is illegal, but it doesn't sound like there's any law against using a vibrator you made yourself.
But if those are aliens, then aliens must be common. And if aliens are common, then there should have been tons of them that got to the space travel point long enough ago to have reached us by now.
But how often does that have to happen? They only looked at about 150,000 stars. There are hundreds of billions in our galaxy alone, and if alien civilization developed even 1% earlier than ours, they'd have had time to colonize the entire Virgo supercluster, so long as they start near the center.
basically a negative income tax for the working poor in the US
That would increase incentive to work for the poor, but decrease the incentive to work hard enough to stop being considered poor. They can't have the income tax be negative for everyone.
Kind of reminds me of a discussion of making a utilitarian emblem on felicifia.org. We never really settled on anything, but I think the best one was Σ☺.