Seems to me that this “obvious solution” has exactly the same problem as the original one… “it would only take ONE civilization breaking this trend to be visible”.
It’s possible that exotic physics/computation offers such ridiculous benefits relative to interacting with normal matter AND that its discovery is very obvious along all lines on the way to tech that colonizes normal matter star systems that all civilizations escape into it.
Seems to me that this “obvious solution” has exactly the same problem as the original one… “it would only take ONE civilization breaking this trend to be visible”.
It’s possible that exotic physics/computation offers such ridiculous benefits relative to interacting with normal matter AND that its discovery is very obvious along all lines on the way to tech that colonizes normal matter star systems that all civilizations escape into it.