Could Earth be the only planet with intelligent life?

Re:Could Earth be the only planet with intelligent life? by softg on Saturday October 07, 2023 @12:44PM (#37803248)

> In real-world software design, violations of this rule of thumb are common. For example, the FAT16 file system imposes a limit of 65,536 files to a directory.

If the rules of software design apply to the universe, what is to stop us from assuming that our almighty creators are storing an $intelligent_life_form_count variable in a single byte somewhere and there can only be 255 of us ?

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Re:Could Earth be the only planet with intelligent life? by gpvos on Saturday October 07, 2023 @01:12PM (#37803487)

Or there could be a maximum on brain processing power and we're hitting that with our population growth. Possibly affecting intelligent life elsewhere as well.

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Re:Could Earth be the only planet with intelligent life? by cafeinux on Saturday October 07, 2023 @12:55PM (#37803361)

Once a 256th develops, the overflow causes every intelligent form of life to disappear.

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Re:Could Earth be the only planet with intelligent life? by paholg on Monday October 09, 2023 @09:59PM (#37827772)

I'm sure the angels are working hard on the Y256 bug to prevent that from happening.

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