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.

RealFknNito ,
@RealFknNito@lemmy.world avatar

Hard to determine with what we know. We haven't met any other intelligent species which suggests we've passed the filter. Yet, making that conclusion before knowing there are no others to meet is too presumptuous. But, if I were to guess, I'd think the filter is adaptability.

We're superior to animals for being able to use tools, live in radically different climates, and shape every spot on earth into a livable climate. Even on Mars, the moon, and space. How else would a species venture through space if they can't adapt?

That might be too general a concept for the question though.

doctordevice ,

We haven't progressed far enough to be detectable by intelligent life in other star systems, even the closest ones. The filter can easily be in front of us. It could just simply be that interstellar space travel is too infeasible, so intelligent species never reach beyond their home system.

RealFknNito ,
@RealFknNito@lemmy.world avatar

Yet we haven't even found other planets with complex dumb life, much less ones with intelligence, communicative life. Nothing like what we have on Earth, not even close. Either space is too big or we're past the filter.

doctordevice ,

We are nowhere near advanced enough to say that life, complex or intelligent, doesn't exist anywhere near us. There is no reason to believe an intelligent spacefaring race would make themselves so obviously detectable that us stupid primates could see them. And for non-intelligent life, we've been able to confirm mere thousands of planets. We have a very long way to go before we can start talking about the meaningfulness of a lack of life signatures in the atmosphere.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

I always thought my Pür was great. /s

yyyesss ,

the internet. or some other mass communication methodology. we have developed it before we're responsible enough to have it. there are too many bad actors ready to take advantage of our innate biological tribalism. we'll kill ourselves before we reach very far into space.

Lupus ,

Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536), Dutch Renaissance humanist:"To what corner of the world do they not fly, these swarms of new books?"

I think people were concerned about that kind of scenario since the invention of the printing press, if not the written word itself.
Not trying to dismiss the destructive potential the Internet can and will have in the future, just pointing out, that this kind of fear is not new.

yyyesss ,

thanks, this actually makes me feel better.

also like an old man yelling at clouds. but better, nonetheless.

CheeseNoodle ,

I'm starting to wonder if its LLMs. An AGI is something we would be incredibly cautious around and is really no more likely to be psychopathic than any other living thing, the vast majority of which are not. LLMs on the other hand are pushed into every role techbros can shove them into while having less understanding of what they do than a housefly, the potential for damage is immense if someone decides to put one in charge of something important like infastructure or weaponry.

send_me_your_mommy_milkers ,
@send_me_your_mommy_milkers@lemmy.world avatar

One dope-ass 2 pole analogue ladder filter

Tramort ,

Your answer doesn't make sense.

"Photosynthesis" is a positive development for life. The great filter must be a negative development: it's a filter or a barrier that keeps life from achieving long term extra terrestrial survival.

So "climate change" would be an answer. Or "fuel depletion" (to which photosynthesis may be a solution). But the filter is the mechanism by which life forms are prevented from progressing.

Cryophilia OP ,

I was suggesting that photosynthesis is a very unlikely mutation to occur and thus its unlikeliness means most life, if it emerges, won't progress to that stage.

The filter doesn't have to be ahead of us, it could be some stage of development that we've already passed. Like photosynthesis, or the development of consciousness. If, out of all life that develops, only a tiny fraction ever develops photosynthesis, the universe would be largely devoid of any life that we can presently detect. Despite us being the lucky lifeform that did develop photosynthesis in our past.

Tramort ,

Regardless: photosynthesis is a possible solution to avoid the filter. Not the filter itself.

You can't filter something in

Cryophilia OP ,

The failure to develop photosynthesis is the filter. I don't know how you're not getting this. No photosynthesis, no complex life, no sentience, no interstellar civilization.

Tramort ,

You started here

Personally I think it's photosynthesis.

Now you're here

The failure to develop photosynthesis

I think you got it! Good job!

Cryophilia OP ,

I'm sorry to tell you this, but I think you might be stupid.

AA5B ,

Exponential functions. Seriously. You meet crisis after crisis, each having a risk of ending civilization, but that risk never goes away. It keeps multiplying and multiplying, until you realize the risk curve is approaching a vertical line

Cryophilia OP ,

Why would risk go up over time? For humanity, we're pretty much at the point that very little could end our species now.

Brickhead92 ,

Well except, obviously, for humanity. That's our greatest enemy, and it seems to be shown more frequently.

Cryophilia OP ,

We would be hard pressed to end our own species either. Even global thermonuclear war would end civilization but not our species.

DeanFogg , (edited )

Edit: This mf just jinxed humanity

Depends on the amount of nukes.

Acidifying oceans also dares a cascading effect that would wipe us out.

Disease.

Also, think about globale warming. The core of the sun is 27 million degrees. 130 degrees is enough to make the surface unbearable, higher than that is going to be>!!< uninhabitable.

Also let's not forget space is wild, meteors or GRBs can take us out instantly

Spacehooks ,

Universe 25 experiment.
My take away from it is when society gets bored and loses goals it's over. If the mice had some predators they probably wouldn't have collapsed.
Humans don't have predators but have dreams that we worked toward amd stimulate us. Once we lose that it's like what happened Walle. Stuck in a system slowly dying full of apathy.

oo1 ,

I think most lifeforms will have more pressing matters than wasting large amounts of time an energy blasting signals in to space for no reason, or listening to the sky.

Maybe those civilizations that waste more energy chasing aliens die off sooner due to wasting resources on sci-fi bullshit and ignoring their real problems at home.

Cryophilia OP ,

I disagree. I think there is no more important thing we have ever done or will ever do as a civilization, than try to make contact with alien life.

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