If we assume that the universe is homogeneous, infinite, and eternal and the density of stars (possibly averaged over a large but constant scale) is constant, then in any direction on the sky there is some (possibly very faraway) star, occupying a finite (possibly minuscule) solid angle in our field of view. The 1/r² falloff (aka conservation of energy) means that the energy received per unit of solid angle is independent of distance from the emitter, equal for example to that on its surface, so every piece of the sky containing a star means we should see stellar-surface amounts of energy shining upon us from every direction.
Assuming some sort of absorbing dust would obscure the stars doesn’t help: if the universe truly is eternal, every dust cloud, being unable to store arbitrarily large amounts of energy, will eventually heat up to the point that it radiates as much as it absorbs and so is as hot as the stars which it obscures (this is the insight behind Kirchhoff’s law and the existence of blackbody radiation).
What does help is either implementing “no point in space is special” through a device other than simply a constant stellar density (e.g. having stars distributed on a self-similar fractal of Hausdorff dimension < 3, our falloff argument having included what amounts to a definition of Hausdorff dimension) or abandoning “no point in time is special” (giving the universe a finite age or at least having no stars in the far past). Observations show the second possibility (named the “Big Bang” by its critics in what was meant to show its ridiculousness) to be true.
(Modern cosmology has much more direct arguments for a finite age of the universe, but they also require more advanced physics and/or observational technology, so the directness is in the eye of the beholder.)
Being close & between two lights would take the sum of their strengths, say .75 each so 1.5, giving a value greater than 1 (more light than either individually produces)
Being far from the two lights, each contributes .25 strength, so .5 total — half the light of standing on top of one
And of course if you get really far, a ridiculously large number of light sources are contributing a ridiculously small amount of light, which may still sum to something fairly small
I’m imagining it works like an influence map: https://www.gamedev.net/tutorials/programming/artificial-int...