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I wonder if the Great Filter is really a series of social issues such as these. We spend 5000 years becoming better at warfare, hundreds of thousands of years i

I wonder if the Great Filter is really a series of social issues such as these. We spend 5000 years becoming better at warfare, hundreds of thousands of years in tribal conflict, and suddenly the winning move is not to fight but to trade and build. We changed our environment so that we’re no longer adapted for it. The geophysical environment, too, is another challenge, another Malthusian trap. Maybe once a civilization reaches a certain level of power, it has one chance: either evolve to make it to the stars, or kill itself off in a burst of violence.

tuatoru 5y ago
I think the Great Filter is lazy thinking. There are threats at all times, not just the One Big Event That Decides Everything. Edit: If there are, say, 200 (independent) events, each of which your progress to the stars has a 90% chance of surviving, then your chance of making it is less than one in a billion. There are always 200 events between you and ownership of the galaxy.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Well, multiply those by another 100, and you may be going somewhere, there are enough stars much older than the Sun on our galaxy alone to turn a 1 in a billion chance into almost certainty. But then, good luck finding even 10 events that could possibly kill all humans with a 10% probability.
  - tuatoru 5y ago
    11 major asteroid strikes. You're welcome. Edit: Yes, a bonus one for "good" luck. But, the example I gave was an oversimplified model that gets across the point that threats are always there, and a long-enough chain of unnoticeable threats is sufficient, so the "Great Filter" postulate is unnecessary. I was not claiming that "200 independent events" is literally how the universe works. It was just a rhetorical device.
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      Earth has been hit by about half of that since life started here. Make our experience unusual enough and the average about 10000, and you'll get a Great Filter out of asteroid impacts. You know, when a physics Nobel Prize winner makes some statement about probabilities that the entire community recognizes as insightful, it's usually not simplistic.
- strken 5y ago
  The entire Fermi paradox is lazy thinking. We have no idea what the base rate of a given planet or galaxy evolving life is, because we have an exactly n=1 sample size to study. Every attempt to tackle the Drake equation sticks hilariously vague estimates into the parameters, based on hilarious shaky logic.

tuatoru 5y ago

I think the Great Filter is lazy thinking. There are threats at all times, not just the One Big Event That Decides Everything. Edit: If there are, say, 200 (independent) events, each of which your progress to the stars has a 90% chance of surviving, then your chance of making it is less than one in a billion. There are always 200 events between you and ownership of the galaxy.

marcosdumay 5y ago
Well, multiply those by another 100, and you may be going somewhere, there are enough stars much older than the Sun on our galaxy alone to turn a 1 in a billion chance into almost certainty. But then, good luck finding even 10 events that could possibly kill all humans with a 10% probability.
- tuatoru 5y ago
  11 major asteroid strikes. You're welcome. Edit: Yes, a bonus one for "good" luck. But, the example I gave was an oversimplified model that gets across the point that threats are always there, and a long-enough chain of unnoticeable threats is sufficient, so the "Great Filter" postulate is unnecessary. I was not claiming that "200 independent events" is literally how the universe works. It was just a rhetorical device.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    Earth has been hit by about half of that since life started here. Make our experience unusual enough and the average about 10000, and you'll get a Great Filter out of asteroid impacts. You know, when a physics Nobel Prize winner makes some statement about probabilities that the entire community recognizes as insightful, it's usually not simplistic.
strken 5y ago
The entire Fermi paradox is lazy thinking. We have no idea what the base rate of a given planet or galaxy evolving life is, because we have an exactly n=1 sample size to study. Every attempt to tackle the Drake equation sticks hilariously vague estimates into the parameters, based on hilarious shaky logic.