taking the Narf in vain, eh?

I originally felt like I needed to report myself for derailing the thread, but once xeno joined in, I felt better! 

well we don't control all forms of planetary energy in abundance.

Godwin's Law!  I win!

Why should we care how anybody rates on that scale?

Well, the big problem with the scale in the context of this discussion is that there's no relative comparison.  We can't say "it took humanity 50 million years to get to .9 on the scale, but the Klingons got to .9 in 80 million years, so we're doing good relatively."

Without any comparison, this thread really boils down to a general "could we have done better?"  Answer?  Well, duh!  There's no such thing as a society which didn't make mistakes, and it would be laughable to imagine any society ever did EVERYTHING correctly.  However, saying "we could have done things better" doesn't really help much because we're essentially Monday Night Quarterbacking human history... we know without a doubt the consequences of, for example, the Versailles Treaty, but would not know the effects of changing that equation (any time travel movie would tell you this). 

Short answer: Probability assessments of outcomes are skewed.

Long answer+a better explanation:

At casinos, there is a game called keno.  It has the absolute worst odds in the casino, with casinos generally getting 25% of all bets on average.  The rules are simple: You pick between 1 and 20 numbers from 1 to 80.  Twenty numbers are randomly chosen, and you get paid based on the amount of numbers you picked vs. the amount of numbers you guessed correctly.  Basically, it's a casino equivalent of the lottery.

So... if someone were to ask me before they played at a casino what they should do in relation to the keno game, the best answer (that being, the answer with the best average result, considering both probability of possible outcomes and return on investment for each possibility) would be to tell that person to stay away from keno.

Now... let's say the numbers were picked: every number from 1 to 20 was picked by the casino.  Knowing what the casino would select, the probabilities become different.  Why?  Given the casino's picks, the probability of winning becomes 100% if I tell that person to play those specific numbers.

Does this mean I am in any way better at keno?  Nope.  If I was to use the same advice in that instance in any other given instance, the probability would not reflect the probability for that specific scenario.  That is, just because the casino outcome in that situation was X, it does not mean the casino outcome in every similar situation would be X.  Thus, when I give advice which presumes the casino outcome would be X because I saw the casino outcome as X in one situation, it would not increase the validity of my advice in a separate but similar situation (another keno game later).

So... what does that all mean?  Simply put, we know the outcomes that will occur in response to the web of choices which have actually been selected.  However, the actual events which resulted in any given outcome are generally so complicated and multifaceted that any given choice may only be a small fraction of the circumstances that they triggered, and may be part of larger unintended consequences.  Although there's some ways we can learn from history, to give any sort of guess as to what could have been achieved through some series of changes in history (what this thread specifically asks through your quote, "I question where we could be on the Kardeshev Scale now had things 'been different'."), it's essentially a moot question due to the complexity of time and causation.

"I question where we could be on the Kardeshev Scale now had things 'been different'."), it's essentially a moot question due to the complexity of time and causation."

What you mean is it is a moot question because assessments of probability of outcomes based on past empirical data are skewed by the 'human factor'.

Disagree that its a moot question.

See, we're playing poker, not Keno rigged by the house.  Sure you can't count cards because 1. a human dealer is shuffling; not a machine, 2. you never know when they'll switch dealers, 3. each dealer shuffles differently, 4. any player can ask for a new deck at any time.  In spite of this, if you play long enough, often enough, get to know how each dealer shuffles differently, how often they switch around, get to know the players, their nuanced facial expressions, etc., you can beat the odds.

"But to say he can achieve the same outcome sitting at the table that he would have achieved had he known what he knows after the fact would be wrong, because he has information after the fact (knowledge of the other guy's hand) which can't be recreated without cheating before the hand is finished."

We can say, however, a different, better player could have achieved a better outcome.

"Just about any poker player will tell you to throw it away, because the general probability of achieving success with that hand is terrible.  However, if the flop was, for example, two 7's and a 2... the general community would have been wrong, despite their advice being good."

What happened to the human factor?  Your whole point is that the human factor is a significant influence, which I agree it is. This is our world:

The cards are shuffled by dealers; the dealers shuffle very differently from each other and certainly NOT how a machine might; the dealers in small houses are usually in on some cheat with some of the players and everybody knows this and so smart players stay clear of those houses; the dealers are themselves playing hands on behalf of the house and they get paid out of cuts of the house's winnings; In this world, if you are going to beat the odds then, you either have to be a really damn good poker player, be working for the house, or be cheating with the dealers in some of our more disreputable houses.

If a house is to make any money, their dealers have got to play on behalf of the house; to attract high-stakes players, they either have to cheat and NEVER get caught or they've got to attract the best poker players in the world to be the house dealers / players.  As they only need to get caught once for them to go out of business, they can only attract the best poker players if they don't cheat or keep the cheat a secret.  More often than not, the house doesn't risk engaging in cheating because it is so risky.  A reputable house has got to be able to attract the best poker players in the world to play as the house's dealers if it has any hope of making enough money to sponsor the truly high stakes games that big-shots want to play.

Big shots want to play with the best players in the world, because they want a chance to learn from the best, become the best, and prove it by wonning, winning, winning, and winning at the highest stakes games in the world.

The problem is, recently, some previously reputable high-stakes houses were caught cheating; high-stakes players are moving houses; the house's dealers are quitting, and finding other houses to play for, or even starting up their own houses, and the old previously reputable house owners are pissed.  Well, too bad.  It was their own damn fault for cheating / letting cheating dealers into their houses.

and poker is a euphemism for whores right?