[Joe Brower]

"Or everyone invariably falls into a virtual reality hole when they become technologically advanced enough."

The Great Filter. When civilizations become technologically advanced enough to extinguish themselves, the vast majority do so. Humankind as a species has been at that point for over half a century, and the jury's still out on that one.

Those races that can surpass their animal origins and grow beyond themselves would advance to a point where they could easily keep themselves hidden. And probably do so. It's a jungle out there!

[Ransomed]

It’s all conjecture when you have an example of exactly one to work with, namely us. It’s fun to speculate though.

I’m betting virtual reality just becomes too tempting to resist when it gets really good. I base this upon my scientific observations of people walking into traffic while looking at their phones.

Freegards

[cgbg]

Science fiction writers have done a lot of deep thinking on what advanced civilizations would be like, and there are some clear general patterns:

--Animal bodies = gone--too fragile, life span too short, risk of predators, etc etc

--Above ground or visible structures--gone--subject to surface weather, meteor strikes, hostile alien contact, etc etc

--Radio signals--long gone, discussed above...

Better possibilities: --Merging intelligence with the very large (planet, for example) or the very small (subatomic, for example)

--Communication through true "web" connecting individual minds--invisible, no radio signals--probably underground if physical infrastructure required

--Merger of intelligence with transportation, so "spaceships" would actually be some type of living entity

--Manipulation of space/time with wormholes or "gates" or some other to be discovered variation.

--Wide dispersion throughout galaxy so if one part was destroyed, the rest could learn and survive.

--Primitives like humans could be studied like we study animals. The best approach would be to disguise themselves as non-threatening, non-intelligent parts of the environment (trees, mountains, etc).

--Nanotechnology creates anything from anything without leaving a trace.

etc etc