The paper was primarily designed to help people start seeing beyond the
current SETI paradigm, which places like The SETI Institute still support
overall.

They've given lip service approval to Dyson Shells and alien probes (no, I
am not going to search out every instance I've seen, and if that's a flaw,
then so be it), but so far no real searches for them in those realms.

Hey, they take the conservative approach and probably don't have the real
resources or interest to do it right now. And as I've said, they are also quite
concerned about doing anything that even hints of UFOs, and who can blame
them there?

If you want a detailed examination of what advanced ETI might be like,
start here (and please don't complain to me if it isn't enough; obviously
there is not a huge body of literature on the subject yet, but I am the
first one to support more research and literature on the subject):

http://www.aeiveos.com:8080/~bradbury/MatrioshkaBrains/index.html

http://www.cs.usu.edu/~degaris/

And here are the results and details of a recent real SETI project for Dyson Shells:

http://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/Infrared_Astronomy/Fermilab_search.htm

It is a shame this has to be some kind of argument because quite frankly I
would rather be searching than endlessly debating their existence or lack
thereof, what they look like, what kind of cars they drive, etc. (though I
certainly enjoy those intellectual exercises, too).

I support all kinds of plausible scientific methods to hunt for ETIs, including
radio (which is cheap and easy to broadcast and can be spread over a wide
area of space) and optical (which while narrow can carry a lot more information
and to an observer who is the target of such a signal would look like a very,
very bright star).

The article is simply pointing out that advanced ETI who go the technological
route may not want to be confined to a single world or two with limited
resources. They might also need the energy output of chosen stars beyond
the measely <1% we collect on Earth now. If this is the case, then there
are certain parameters that go along with such needs and capabilities.

I also don't buy into the idea that advanced ETI will "just" be humanoids
with really big heads and little bodies and have a few more fancy gadgets
than we do. That to me at least is a really old paradigm of what people
thought "superior" aliens might be like going back a century or so. And the
whole point of the article was to break out of that old way of thinking, even
if in the end it isn't the only answer, either.

Do I know all this for absolute certain? Nope, that's why I support SETI.
Optical SETI alone could find both laser beams and the infrared glows from
Dyson Shells with just a few adjustments.

If advanced ETI decide not to do this and still don't bother to try and signal
anybody, then that's the end of the debate where we stand now, what more
can I say? But that's also why we aren't focusing on such concepts and
trying to figure out what the ones who do build Dyson Shells might be like.

So if you'd like to help plan on how we might detected these advanced ETI
and plot their potential developments and motivations, I am all for it. But
if you want to just keep saying how incomplete and whiny the new paradigms
are, then the discussion can end right here for me. The ETI won't care one
way or the other, I suspect.