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The paper basically says that the Drake equation is just a guess, and if we’re going to guess, we might as well do so using probabilistic models. Their model pu

The paper basically says that the Drake equation is just a guess, and if we’re going to guess, we might as well do so using probabilistic models. Their model puts the Great Filter behind us. This makes intuitive sense too — an early Great Filter simply has to stop life from occurring, while a late Great Filter has to deal with the complexity of preventing life from doing what it does best (surviving and spreading in a “Life finds a way” style). Concretely, an early Great Filter has fewer variables it must affect than a late Great Filter. Like the paper says, we are probably alone, but there’s little reason to be alarmed about it. And if you happen to believe that AGI and a Singularity are the inevitable outcome of intelligent life, the case is even stronger that we are the first, last, and only. However powerful the Great Filter might be, it’s unlikely that a super-intelligence would succumb to it.

gfxgirl 5y ago
I'm fairly confident the great filter is ahead of us. It won't be long (20-50yrs) until any hacker minded 14yr old can create a virulent virus in their bedroom and release it to the world when their girlfriend/boyfriend dumps them or just for the lulz. And that's just one of the many ways coming where any average person can decide to ruin the world. It's already possible today for a single rich person, if they wanted to, to destroy the world. I don't remember exactly how. Something like buy 1k airplanes and have them seed the atmosphere IIRC. Those kind o things get cheaper and cheaper until their in reach of your average joe
- taneq 5y ago
  The Sum Of All Fears was partly about this. In that case it was atomic weapons being in reach of wealthy individuals, but the same principle applies. The barrier to entry is just getting lower every year. That experiment/art project with E. Coli on a penicillin gradient a few years back was terrifying.
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    Any links or more identifying info? Sounds interesting to me too.
- wildermuthn 5y ago
  You paint a compelling picture here. But if we extend this picture to a galactic timescale and space, then even a minuscule chance of surviving distributed technology would mean a galaxy full of intelligent life. So if we can imagine even a small chance of humanity surviving itself, then we’re no longer dealing with a Great Filter, but a Small (and in the aggregate, Ineffective) Filter. We don’t really have to imagine ourselves, since enough science fiction novels have already been written where humanity nearly extinguishes itself (sometimes multiple times) but then finally gets its act together. There would have to be something more fundamental than technological power being too cheap and widespread for a late Great Filter to get to 100% effectiveness. The only thing I can think of is that every super-intelligence checks out of our universe for some reason — that the ultimate end of technology is always effectively (if not literally) suicide. But this goes against the very nature of technology — to reshape existence to fuel the battle against entropy. Perhaps every Singularity sees that this battle can’t be won, and decides to call it quits? Maybe. But it seems more likely it would fight until heat-death itself. In fact, there’s a great short story about that too. If there’s hope in our imagination, I think it’s likely there’s hope in our reality too.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Or maybe the singularity realizes there's more to existence than indefinite propagation.
- mannykannot 5y ago
  Given the project that Fermi is most associated with in the public mind, I am a little surprised that he found his paradox puzzling.
- wildermuthn 5y ago
  To address your scenario concretely, though, technology advances generally – not just giving the power to destroy, but also giving the power to protect and restore. Covid and mRNA vaccines are a good example – globalization surely contributed to the pandemic, but the creation of the vaccine is also a product of globalization. If a single 14-year-old can create a virus, then thousands of 20-to-70-year-olds can create a vaccine even faster. I might be wrong about this, but I think intelligence and benevolence are more strongly correlated than intelligence and malevolence, and that as the world becomes more educated, it is also becoming more intelligent and more benevolent. An evil-genius is a trope because it is an anomaly. For every evil-genius there are thousands if not millions of good-geniuses. Evil tends to look like Hitler and Stalin, not Einstein and Turing. It won't be a 14-year-old that brings the world to its knees. It will be old men (and women, I suppose) spewing hate and lies from their Oval Offices.
plutonorm 5y ago
It seems fairly obvious to me that the vast majority of civilisations will wire head themselves and disappear into virtual worlds of their own making. It takes a very rare soul to forsake eternal bliss and an eternal world of your own creation. Most civilisations will have just enough of a life support to keep the machines running. They might be spurred into action each time a sun burns out, but other than that why bother with the outside world?
- wildermuthn 5y ago
  I really like this idea, especially since it plays well with Simulation arguments. But unless there is some kind of inception-like time distortion occurring in a Simulations-all-the-way down scenario, then disappearing into virtual worlds is not eternal. Eventually every star will burn out. I think that at least some people (and when you're dealing with galactic timescales and spaces, this means a lot of people) would stay in reality to figure out how to get around entropy and heat-death. So even though we might very well be in a simulation of VR-checked-out civilizations (or even if we aren't), I would expect to see some people in our simulation/reality fighting against the parameters of the simulation/reality that puts a time-limit on existence.
- matheusd 5y ago
  You only need a single Elon Musk and a bit of tech infra slightly better than ours for a civilization to Von Neumann its local galaxy (and possibly its affectable universe).
  - taneq 5y ago
    In what way is a von Neumann machine not alive? Wouldn’t this just change the chemistry?
    - plutonorm 5y ago
      Exactly, I think life is probably a von Neumann probe. What is the easiest way to spread yourself through the galaxy? Throw bacteria and parcels of your genetics out into the void. Easy and low cost. What about radiation you say? I'm sure there are ways to engineer a survival rate > 0. It also follows: If it is possible that one civilisation spreads itself in this manner, it is likely that we are decedents of that civilisation. Simply because there will be many more copies of the original civilisation with a penchant for spraying their seed around than other kinds of civilisation.
esarbe 5y ago
> This makes intuitive sense too — an early Great Filter simply has to stop life from occurring, I'm not so sure why this supposed to make intuitive sense. Life is a gradient, so any metabolic process that happens on a energy gradient can be considered 'alife'. I really don't see how an early Great Filter would work - are you going to stop energy gradients from happening? I've read -- will try to dig up the source -- that -- at least simple life -- is pretty much a given since -- even though it creates pockets of lower entropy -- allows for the most paths to thermodynamic equilibrium. In my opinion a late filter makes more sense. That is; any species that evolves in the confinements of competition for resources and natural selection is -- due to the requirements that competition for resources creates -- necessarily unable to properly transition to a steady-state mode with no competition for resources and no (or limited) natural selection. The reason for that is that the transition phase from competition for resources to the steady-state phase is simply too short. I'm convinced that this is what we are currently seeing with Humanity on a global scale; even though there's no need for competition for resources, we're still biologically and socially 'programmed' to compete with each other for resources, mates and habitats. (Biologically, all humans are more closely related to each other than -- for example -- any two chimpanzee tribes. We are not very diverse, genetically.) That inability to quickly change a species 'modus operandi' to a steady-state model together with the immense power multiplication of technology and cooperation that make it possible for civilization to literally dominate their ecosphere, I don't see how any species is ever going to survive that threshold. The result of that inability to switch to a steady-state model and the powers achieved - tools and cooperation are the ultimate exploits! -- is simply extinction by habitat destruction. I think that the current observations quite neatly match this.

gfxgirl 5y ago

I'm fairly confident the great filter is ahead of us. It won't be long (20-50yrs) until any hacker minded 14yr old can create a virulent virus in their bedroom and release it to the world when their girlfriend/boyfriend dumps them or just for the lulz. And that's just one of the many ways coming where any average person can decide to ruin the world. It's already possible today for a single rich person, if they wanted to, to destroy the world. I don't remember exactly how. Something like buy 1k airplanes and have them seed the atmosphere IIRC. Those kind o things get cheaper and cheaper until their in reach of your average joe

taneq 5y ago
The Sum Of All Fears was partly about this. In that case it was atomic weapons being in reach of wealthy individuals, but the same principle applies. The barrier to entry is just getting lower every year. That experiment/art project with E. Coli on a penicillin gradient a few years back was terrifying.
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  Any links or more identifying info? Sounds interesting to me too.
wildermuthn 5y ago
You paint a compelling picture here. But if we extend this picture to a galactic timescale and space, then even a minuscule chance of surviving distributed technology would mean a galaxy full of intelligent life. So if we can imagine even a small chance of humanity surviving itself, then we’re no longer dealing with a Great Filter, but a Small (and in the aggregate, Ineffective) Filter. We don’t really have to imagine ourselves, since enough science fiction novels have already been written where humanity nearly extinguishes itself (sometimes multiple times) but then finally gets its act together. There would have to be something more fundamental than technological power being too cheap and widespread for a late Great Filter to get to 100% effectiveness. The only thing I can think of is that every super-intelligence checks out of our universe for some reason — that the ultimate end of technology is always effectively (if not literally) suicide. But this goes against the very nature of technology — to reshape existence to fuel the battle against entropy. Perhaps every Singularity sees that this battle can’t be won, and decides to call it quits? Maybe. But it seems more likely it would fight until heat-death itself. In fact, there’s a great short story about that too. If there’s hope in our imagination, I think it’s likely there’s hope in our reality too.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Or maybe the singularity realizes there's more to existence than indefinite propagation.
mannykannot 5y ago
Given the project that Fermi is most associated with in the public mind, I am a little surprised that he found his paradox puzzling.
wildermuthn 5y ago
To address your scenario concretely, though, technology advances generally – not just giving the power to destroy, but also giving the power to protect and restore. Covid and mRNA vaccines are a good example – globalization surely contributed to the pandemic, but the creation of the vaccine is also a product of globalization. If a single 14-year-old can create a virus, then thousands of 20-to-70-year-olds can create a vaccine even faster. I might be wrong about this, but I think intelligence and benevolence are more strongly correlated than intelligence and malevolence, and that as the world becomes more educated, it is also becoming more intelligent and more benevolent. An evil-genius is a trope because it is an anomaly. For every evil-genius there are thousands if not millions of good-geniuses. Evil tends to look like Hitler and Stalin, not Einstein and Turing. It won't be a 14-year-old that brings the world to its knees. It will be old men (and women, I suppose) spewing hate and lies from their Oval Offices.

plutonorm 5y ago

It seems fairly obvious to me that the vast majority of civilisations will wire head themselves and disappear into virtual worlds of their own making. It takes a very rare soul to forsake eternal bliss and an eternal world of your own creation. Most civilisations will have just enough of a life support to keep the machines running. They might be spurred into action each time a sun burns out, but other than that why bother with the outside world?

wildermuthn 5y ago
I really like this idea, especially since it plays well with Simulation arguments. But unless there is some kind of inception-like time distortion occurring in a Simulations-all-the-way down scenario, then disappearing into virtual worlds is not eternal. Eventually every star will burn out. I think that at least some people (and when you're dealing with galactic timescales and spaces, this means a lot of people) would stay in reality to figure out how to get around entropy and heat-death. So even though we might very well be in a simulation of VR-checked-out civilizations (or even if we aren't), I would expect to see some people in our simulation/reality fighting against the parameters of the simulation/reality that puts a time-limit on existence.
matheusd 5y ago
You only need a single Elon Musk and a bit of tech infra slightly better than ours for a civilization to Von Neumann its local galaxy (and possibly its affectable universe).
- taneq 5y ago
  In what way is a von Neumann machine not alive? Wouldn’t this just change the chemistry?
  - plutonorm 5y ago
    Exactly, I think life is probably a von Neumann probe. What is the easiest way to spread yourself through the galaxy? Throw bacteria and parcels of your genetics out into the void. Easy and low cost. What about radiation you say? I'm sure there are ways to engineer a survival rate > 0. It also follows: If it is possible that one civilisation spreads itself in this manner, it is likely that we are decedents of that civilisation. Simply because there will be many more copies of the original civilisation with a penchant for spraying their seed around than other kinds of civilisation.

esarbe 5y ago

> This makes intuitive sense too — an early Great Filter simply has to stop life from occurring, I'm not so sure why this supposed to make intuitive sense. Life is a gradient, so any metabolic process that happens on a energy gradient can be considered 'alife'. I really don't see how an early Great Filter would work - are you going to stop energy gradients from happening? I've read -- will try to dig up the source -- that -- at least simple life -- is pretty much a given since -- even though it creates pockets of lower entropy -- allows for the most paths to thermodynamic equilibrium. In my opinion a late filter makes more sense. That is; any species that evolves in the confinements of competition for resources and natural selection is -- due to the requirements that competition for resources creates -- necessarily unable to properly transition to a steady-state mode with no competition for resources and no (or limited) natural selection. The reason for that is that the transition phase from competition for resources to the steady-state phase is simply too short. I'm convinced that this is what we are currently seeing with Humanity on a global scale; even though there's no need for competition for resources, we're still biologically and socially 'programmed' to compete with each other for resources, mates and habitats. (Biologically, all humans are more closely related to each other than -- for example -- any two chimpanzee tribes. We are not very diverse, genetically.) That inability to quickly change a species 'modus operandi' to a steady-state model together with the immense power multiplication of technology and cooperation that make it possible for civilization to literally dominate their ecosphere, I don't see how any species is ever going to survive that threshold. The result of that inability to switch to a steady-state model and the powers achieved - tools and cooperation are the ultimate exploits! -- is simply extinction by habitat destruction. I think that the current observations quite neatly match this.