What do you think the Great Filter is?

The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. As a 2015 article put it, "If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

Personally I think it's photosynthesis. Life itself developed and spread but photosynthesis started an inevitable chain of ever-greater and more-efficient life. I think a random chain of mutations that turns carbon-based proto-life into something that can harvest light energy is wildly unlikely, even after the wildly unlikely event of life beginning in the first place.

I have no data to back that up, just a guess.

pelletbucket ,
@pelletbucket@lemm.ee avatar

evidence of human existence has only gotten what, 150 lightyears out into space?

Cryophilia OP ,

Eh. The amount of oxygen in out atmosphere is pretty much impossible by non-living processes alone iirc. Anyone who can do astro-spectroscopy can probably tell there's life here, from thousands of light years away.

pelletbucket ,
@pelletbucket@lemm.ee avatar

and if life is as abundant as we think, how are they going to tell the difference between intelligent and non-intelligent life

Cryophilia OP ,

Life is so rare, finding ANY life is worth investigation

pelletbucket ,
@pelletbucket@lemm.ee avatar

that has nothing to do with why I asked that question lol. if you have to investigate every single one that shows signs of life, that would mean investigating a lot of worlds before you find any with intelligence.

HurlingDurling ,
@HurlingDurling@lemmy.world avatar

By the color of their hats /jk

Cocodapuf , (edited )

I don't think there is a great filter. I think there's an easy solution to the fermi paradox that doesn't require great filters, we're just the first intelligence in this galaxy.

Here's my reasoning: intelligent species that manage to develop space travel probably do tend to expand out into their galaxy. When they achieve this level of technology they can settle most of all of their galaxy in a matter of 10,000 years or so. That time period is very brief on an evolutionary scale. It's estimated that life began on earth 3.7 billion years ago. That means it took about 3.7 billion years for earth to produce intelligent life, and then from that point it would take a mere 10,000 years to reach modern day, and 10,000 more years to settle the whole galaxy. That expansion happens so quickly compared to how long it took the planet to develop intelligent life, that the chance of two civilizations rising at the same time becomes very small.

It all boils down to this: there are no intelligent aliens out there in our galaxy, because we are the first intelligent species in our galaxy. We know we're the first because if we were second, then aliens would already have settled this star system.

Probably there are lots of alien civilizations out there in the universe, but they're in different galaxies.

MonkderDritte ,

Or we just don't know, because every possible indicator is gone after a few hundred million years or our star system was still a proto disk when they were around.

smb ,

and the ones finding apes on a planet just short ahead or into the beginning of those 10000 years might think "well lets teach them how to stack stones and let them call us gods for just showing some of our million years old and cheap replicated tech gadgets pewpew, how amusing! but now lets go on, this planet has water but way too much oxygen and also there is axial precession that would change weather over only few hundrets of thousands of years if not less, not the planet of choice for eternals like us, duh!"

Cryophilia OP ,

But why are we the first. That's the question. Given the age of the universe, statistically it should have already happened by now. Unless something was stopping it.

Cocodapuf , (edited )

That's definitely the right question! And honestly we don't know, but it's evident that we are first.

Given the age of the universe, statistically it should have already happened by now.

I'm not sure that's true... I'm pretty sure that our sun is old for a main sequence yellow star in our galaxy. When you compare how long it takes for a star to get to the point ours is now, compared to the age of our galaxy, I believe it suggests that sol is part of a first wave of stars of its type. So if life really requires a star like this one to start up, then intelligent life starting just now could be right on time.

Now why is our start perfect for life? Again, we don't know, but evidently it is. Sadly we only have this one data point, this is the only star where we know there's life. So assuming that something about our type of star is perfect is about as sensible as assuming that life could start around any star. Is it that other kinds of stars produce too much radiation in the Goldilocks zone? Or is it that other kinds of stars are too variable in the amount of heat they produce? Or that other kinds of stars don't tend to have rocky planets? We don't know, but something about main sequence yellow stars could be special, and we have one of the first of those stars in this galaxy.

So declaring "we're the first" requires some assumptions, but they aren't crazy assumptions, and a lack of evidence of other older civilizations makes those assumptions stronger.

And to your point, the universe is much older than this our star, so I suspect intelligent life has developed many times before us, at least in older galaxies. But sadly I don't expect us to ever meet life from another galaxy. While I think stars within a galaxy are close enough for travel between them, galaxies are very, very far apart. I don't think life has much chance of traveling to other galaxies, at least not without some method of ftl travel (which I am also not optimistic about).

Tlaloc_Temporal ,

It might have something to do with the available elements.

We live in a population I star system, full of crap spewed out from long dead stars. Perhaps it is exactly this crap (like copper, iron, nickle, manganese, and possibly the bulk of carbon and nitrogen) that allow life to develop with enough agility to survive mass extiction events with any kind of complexity.

Or perhaps it's exactly those mass extiction events that have allowed enough breathing room for new paradigms to take hold. Maybe our 5-7 mass extictions that didn't end life entirely are exactly what is needed to prevent stagnation. We just happen to be on the edge of dead and too slow.

Subverb ,

It could simply be that the rise of life is wildly more rare than we think.

Cocodapuf ,

Yeah, it totally could be.

Xanis ,

Statistically I shouldn't fail a 99% roll 7 times during a single mission in XCOM and yet here we are.

Cryophilia OP ,

"weird coincidence" is one potential solution to the Fermi paradox.

creditCrazy ,
@creditCrazy@lemmy.world avatar

In my sci Fi that I've been working on has this theory being true but I also play with asking what is the point of colonization. In my story humans have colonized mars to study the fossils and what life used to be like on Mars. However the people there after a few generations separate from earth. Earth doesn't do anything about it because not only can mars use telescopes to see our ipbm years before it arrives and have that time to shoot our ipbm before it arrives but invasion will destroy the fossils we care about. And that's all assuming history won't just repeat itself. Eventually the mars colony expands until it breaks into different nations all fighting echother to become the first martin superpower. So everything that earth cares about gets destroyed by war anyway and earth is pointless to mars without life and water. Eventually the sun becomes so old that everyone feels the need to move their populations to another solar system. And only then de humans discover alien life. Only to discover that it's currently 900 billion years beyond 2024 and aliens are just now figuring out radio waves and rockets and are more concerned about developing eugenics than discovering humans.

sparkle ,
@sparkle@lemm.ee avatar

The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across. It's physically impossible to settle that in 10,000 years

Soggy ,

That assumes that interstellar travel is possible. Physically, economically, socially, there's a lot of boxes to check for near-light extrasolar expansion (let alone FTL, which probably is impossible)

I think the easy solution to the Fermi Paradox is that we're stuck in our fish bowl and so is everyone else.

Cocodapuf ,

That's true, it does assume interstellar travel is physically possible, but at this point there are forms of interstellar travel that we know are possible.

Solar sails for instance, we know those work, we've tried it. Now if you wanted to travel to another star system with a solar sail, it's just a matter of scaling that proven technology way up. We're not ready to do that today, and we won't be ready in the next 20 years, but to think that we wouldn't be ready in 500 years, I find that idea far fetched.

But a much better technology would be fusion propulsion. With fusion drives you could get your cruising speed up to a meaningful fraction of the speed of light (perhaps 5-10%). At that rate you can make it to the closest stars in less than 100 years. And that technology is not at all far fetched. We truly are approaching working fusion power plants, it's extremely likely that we can eventually develop fusion propulsion, or at the very least, fusion powered electrical propulsion (ion drive).

As for if it will ever be economically possible, I'm not at all worried about that. The fact is, there are a lot of resources and opportunities right here in our solar system, just waiting for people to utilize them. So people definitely will start mining and manufacturing in space eventually. And as we start to operate more in space, we will naturally continue to iterate and improve our methods of getting around. In short, over time it's going to get cheaper and cheaper to make space ships and we're going to get better and better at doing it. The economic factors are likely to fall into place eventually.

And finally, will interstellar travel ever be possible socially? Hey, your guess is as good as mine. I don't think we have any way to answer that...

averagechemist ,

Space itself. I believe there are other intelligent life forms out there and some of those happen to be close enough to communicate to each other/discover each other. We just hit the unlucky(or lucky) spot that we are simply too far away.

Cryophilia OP ,

Man that would suck
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/76e8fa70-ed71-4284-87c7-ddfa95a56818.jpeg

Spacehooks ,

Kind of like we don't have hive minds so they just think we are regular animals.

LodeMike ,

It's very very obviously the speed of light.

Maggoty ,

I think we're the first. Or rather in the first wave of intelligent life. It could take a thousand years just for a message to reach us. On the theory that life has evolved to this point as fast as possible over the life of our Galaxy, there's no filter. There just hasn't been enough time for contact to occur.

LordGimp ,

Time itself is the filter. I don't think we are the first, but I don't think we will every find any other intelligent life. The universe is too big and our lives are far too short to make any sort of attempt to travel or communicate across those distances ourselves. I'm also not entirely confident our idea of what a society is will last in any meaningful way over the timespans required. Our longest lasting dynasties rarely make it more than a couple hundred years. Space is just too big for us to work with using our current understanding of physics.

theywilleatthestars ,

Either multicellular life or that societies that are bent on expansion at any cost tend to destroy their planet's ecosystem before they can establish themselves outside of it.
Not making a definitive claim on either, obvs. We have an extremely low sample size after all.

weeeeum ,

I think it would be nuclear warfare. Nuclear fission is a universal development for any advanced civilization. It would be easy to construct a nuclear bomb in an advanced civilization. Once a few rogue/pariah states start making them, everyone's screwed.

Making nukes is easy, the only reason we don't see more nuclear states on earth is because of the international backlash. With a couple more Iran and North Korea's we'll likely meet the filter ourselves.

whotookkarl ,
@whotookkarl@lemmy.world avatar

There's been at least 5 mass extinction events we are aware of where I think over 80% of all species become extinct. I'd probably guess one or more of those could do the trick.

TheBananaKing ,

  • space

  • time

We've been producing noticeable radio waves for a matter of decades. We've been capable of detecting even super-powerful, super-deliberate, super-targeted broadcasts for even less time.

And on top of that, it doesn't look as though our civilisation is going to exist for more than a handful more decades, in any detectable-from-light-years-away form.

The chances of that onionskin-thin slice of lightcone intersecting with that of any other civilisation out there seems ludicrously remote.

bravesilvernest ,
@bravesilvernest@lemmy.ml avatar

Personally? Nationalism & nation states. The longer they stay around, the more likely everyone is to think they're more deserving of X, and pull the literal and metaphorical trigger that leads to hitting the filter.

I recognize that individuality is very much our thing, but that will literally only take you so far.

veganpizza69 ,
@veganpizza69@lemmy.world avatar

For us it's conservatism and its synonyms.

Anyolduser ,

Read like any history book.

Or just about any book, really.

veganpizza69 ,
@veganpizza69@lemmy.world avatar

I think that it's you who should read more.

Here:

Characteristic processes of human evolution caused the Anthropocene and may obstruct its global solutions | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

We propose that the global environmental crises of the Anthropocene are the outcome of a ratcheting process in long-term human evolution which has favoured groups of increased size and greater environmental exploitation. To explore this hypothesis, we review the changes in the human ecological niche. Evidence indicates the growth of the human niche has been facilitated by group-level cultural traits for environmental control. Following this logic, sustaining the biosphere under intense human use will probably require global cultural traits, including legal and technical systems. We investigate the conditions for the evolution of global cultural traits. We estimate that our species does not exhibit adequate population structure to evolve these traits. Our analysis suggests that characteristic patterns of human group-level cultural evolution created the Anthropocene and will work against global collective solutions to the environmental challenges it poses. We illustrate the implications of this theory with alternative evolutionary paths for humanity. We conclude that our species must alter longstanding patterns of cultural evolution to avoid environmental disaster and escalating between-group competition. We propose an applied research and policy programme with the goal of avoiding these outcomes.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4c98d163-d037-41e0-9092-479db76236df.jpeg

Figure 2. Dimensions of environmental management create an attractor landscape for long-term human evolution. Environmental sustainability challenges (curved frontiers) require a minimum level of cooperation in a society of a certain minimum spatial size. Alternative potential paths move humanity toward different long-term evolutionary outcomes. In path B, competition between societies over common environmental resources creates cultural selection between groups for increasingly direct competition and conflict. Path A, growing cooperation between societies facilitates the emergence of global cultural traits to preserve shared environmental benefits.

Anyolduser ,

A Great Filter is way, way bigger than that. Something that prevents a civilization from being able to expand into space. This includes things like "you can't make fire on this planet and therefore are never able to learn to work metal" and "supernovas sterilize regions of space before species can leave them".

Even the worst ecological disaster - one that kills billions - will not prevent humanity from eventually recovering, rebuilding, and expanding.

Under no circumstances (even Cold War mutually assured destruction) can human politics be a Great Filter. Thinking that it can be is small-minded and petty.

veganpizza69 ,
@veganpizza69@lemmy.world avatar

I see, so you don't understand what's happening on the planet.

Don't worry, you're not alone, you represent the majority.

nondescripthandle ,

I'm sure simply continuing to live will show me more about possible great filters than most teachers could unfortunately.

rottingleaf ,

It's a society (or the whole humanity) becoming big enough to survive even when ignorant murderers are the elite and the majority of it, and civilized people - a smaller part and almost a property, similar to animals in a zoo.

When such a point is reached, the former will make the transition, and the latter will diminish over time. Then it just has no future.

A bit like with Ottoman empire and Qajar Iran, only on the scale of the whole humanity there won't be someone else to buy weapons and technologies from to keep going. Then some of the previously passable filters will kick in. Like hunger or resource scarcity.

Wahots ,
@Wahots@pawb.social avatar

I think there are many great filters, but I think one of those filters is fighting over limited resources and wars. Perhaps limited to humans/earth, but I doubt it. Nukes, dropping rocks from orbit, and theoretical (but possible) weapons like black hole bombs are all going to tempt irrational beings to take someone's stuff.

We have to be extremely careful that we don't accidentally trigger a weapon that is going to kill or dramatically cripple our civilization before we become a truly interstellar species. There is so much to learn out there, while so many people are currently focused on the wrong things such as minor conflicts or what children aren't allowed to learn.

Cryophilia OP ,

We have to be extremely careful that we don’t accidentally trigger a weapon that is going to kill or dramatically cripple our civilization before we become a truly interstellar species.

Great filter confirmed to be oopsie-daisies

Spacehooks ,

That's what everyone was thinking with the LHC. Really should put oopsie labs off world.

Melvin_Ferd , (edited )

Resources often get squandered on trivial vanity and novelty products instead of being channeled into advancing science and medicine. Imagine if we had a cosmic ledger tracking every resource used to develop simple items, like a pencil. It would show countless fires burned and animals consumed just to fuel the human ingenuity required for lumber, materials, and mining. Now, think about how many more resources are required for rockets, heat shields, and life support systems. Extend that to space stations, energy capture, and escaping Earth’s gravity.The resources on a planet are abundant, and nothing is ever truly destroyed. However, we’ve often allocated too much to building flat-screen TVs, leaving little for constructing even a modest space station in orbit, let alone an interstellar spaceship. It's as if the planet offers a finite amount of resources, challenging its inhabitants to focus on space travel. Only a species wise enough to stay on track can unlock the universe's resources. Otherwise, we risk ending up like Australian pines, choking ourselves out in our isolated star systems, having wasted our potential.

Imagine it like interstellar travelling having a single path to achieve it while the path to self destruction is limitless.

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