Just contemplating the idea that there is no “order” of technological discoveries, that, depending on many factors, humans could have figured out flight a thousand years ago or more, could have figured out iron before bronze, or could have gone down a completely different path totally unaware to us right now. The idea that everything happens or is discovered in some sort of chronological order, and that if aliens are here they must be far more advanced than we are by an extremely large scale, I think may not necessarily be true. There could be so many technologies that remain undiscovered, that we could be nearly just as advanced, but in a completely different way. Hearing people say “if they’re billions of years more advanced than us, they obviously wouldn’t do X or would do X. Why do we assume this?