Articulett:
I think that between the two possibilities I postulate above, I think the second more likely than the first, but I am discussing that possibility more on another thread.
For the second, I think it would be more likely that a race seeding us or controlling us as an experiment to some extent is more likely only if they are actively preventing us from detecting them. Advanced civilizations are noisy. We would hear any advanced civilization of significant age if it were near us and likely hear them if they had even traveled close to us.
But how could they do this? Well, it gets into the power of what mastering molecular engineering is capable of. A nano engineered computer integrated into our DNA and brain could be able to control important aspects of our perception, thought and memory.
It would have to deal with some pretty significant bending of our perception, but such technology could do it. We literally could have an huge alien city existing in the middle of Europe and have such an implant bend our perceptions, thoughts and memories such that we would not detect it or even notice something wrong with the missing space the city occupied. Well, the greater the thing being hidden, the more effort it would take on their part and the greater chance for minor slips. But memories of such slips could then be manipulated and/or erased. Still, it would be more likely they would minimize their presence to make it easier to cover up.
As to when such a thing could have happened, well, it could have begun 100,000 years ago or 100,000,000 years ago.
As for why such waste, what waste do you speak of? One of the whole points of such s thing would be to allow as close to a natural and undisturbed development as possible, hence why they would take such extreme effort to keep us from knowing of their existence. They might make a few deliberate changes to set us going in a particular direction, but to have a cleaner experiment or a more natural development, they would have to minimize they effect on us.
As to why, well, consider some of the goals that would fit our own experiments we have performed on primitive life forms. We have tried experiments to develop life from scratch to see how it might have developed in the first place. We have placed or gone to observe many primitive species to learn how they are developing. It is possible we are nothing more than such an experiment. I hope not, because that might place us as being allowed to only develop to a certain point. I also think it is less likely than one other goal I have thought of.
Consider, a race achieves virtual immortality. After so much time passes, how do they introduce new ideas and new thoughts? Such a goal could become of extraordinary importance to them. One way to do this would be to set up a situation where a new intelligent life form would develop and then allow that life to develop with as little outside disturbance as possible. They would likely watch such a race develop closely while insuring that the race could not detect them. This could be accomplished by the integration of nano scale engineering involving our DNA and brains. They would likely go through great effort to also minimize their physical presence to minimize what they would have to disturb to conceal their presence.
But such an immortal race would be quite capable of carrying out such plans over hundreds of millions of years. It could even become considered to them as giving birth to a new child in their race, meaning that they would consider our entire race a child which was developing towards a similar immortal stage as they. But, so important would the idea of new ways of thinking or fresh viewpoints, they would have to keep us unaware of them.
Please keep in mind I am not posing this as what I believe. I am posing it as a possibility developed to handle the known fact that we have no provable evidence of alien races or of supernatural beings.
Occam's razor: "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one."
The simplest solution is that we are a primal race naturally developing in a physical existence that has nothing supernatural in it.
But, while Humans are not now smart enough to invent the technology to do something like some of the things I have described, Humans will become smart enough and will develop such technology. That is, if Humans do not become extinct first.
