(I’m the author of the post.) This is a totally reasonable critique, which I tried to make of myself:
Wrapping things up, I find all this analysis still a bit dissatisfying. While I’ve tried to use the commonalities amongst and differences between energetic aliens to understand them better, I feel like all the factors I identified describe rather than explain what’s going on with energetic aliens. A more satisfying understanding would instead at least suggest candidate causal factors which are predictive of energetic alienness warranting further investigation. Of course, this is also why this essay is called the neglected mystery rather than the resolved mystery.
That said, part of the challenge is that coming up with good theories is really hard here and risks touching on controversial issues, so warrants being careful! If you, or anyone else has such theories, I’d love to hear them.
(I’m the author of the post.) This is a totally reasonable critique, which I tried to make of myself:
That said, part of the challenge is that coming up with good theories is really hard here and risks touching on controversial issues, so warrants being careful! If you, or anyone else has such theories, I’d love to hear them.