5 ms·

It's correct. There is still a filter somewhere that explains the Fermi Paradox. So finding evidence of primordial life on Mars would just mean that the filter

by csee 5y ago

It's correct. There is still a filter somewhere that explains the Fermi Paradox. So finding evidence of primordial life on Mars would just mean that the filter exists somewhere between that primordial life and somewhere ahead of us. That is bad, because it increases the probability that the filter is ahead of us by eliminating the possibility that the filter was behind that primordial life.

shawnz 5y ago
If we assume that the great filter is ahead of us, then we were already a better lower bound. If it's behind us, then who cares?
- csee 5y ago
  If it's at all possible that it's behind us (which I believe it is), then this finding would be bad, because it necessarily shifts probability density into our future. Probability density must sum to 1. So eliminating one large chunk of possibility will necessarily increase the odds that the filter is in our future.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    Yes, thank you for fleshing out what I meant.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    Unless, for example, we were to find Mars had and has single cellular life. That might increase the likelihood that the filter is at the single to multicellular phase by enough to offset the bad news that the filter is not the abiogenesis step.
  - riffraff 5y ago
    > it necessarily shifts probability density into our future why? if the filter is "move from unicellular to multicellular" it would have wiped out life on Mars but Earth somehow made it. It shows there's at least one step behind us which is "hard" (while showing there's another one which is "easy").
  - dependsontheq 5y ago
    I think one thing to keep in mind is that we haven't been here for very long. And as a technological society that is able to be detected or detect something we have been here for something between 70 or 5 years or 0 years depending on the definition. So the great filter is something that hinders us to detect detectable civilizations. But we are at the moment not totally sure if we are already detectable. So per definition the great filter has to be in front of us as long as we wouldn't be able to find ourselves.
floxy 5y ago
"Dissolving the Fermi Paradox": https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 >The expectation that the universe should be teeming with intelligent life is linked to models like the Drake equation, which suggest that even if the probability of intelligent life developing at a given site is small, the sheer multitude of possible sites should nonetheless yield a large number of potentially observable civilizations. We show that this conflict arises from the use of Drake-like equations, which implicitly assume certainty regarding highly uncertain parameters. We examine these parameters, incorporating models of chemical and genetic transitions on paths to the origin of life, and show that extant scientific knowledge corresponds to uncertainties that span multiple orders of magnitude. This makes a stark difference.
- chairhairair 5y ago
  This paper seems to get posted in most Great Filter discussions now. I don't find it very convincing - or I'm not sure why it is worded so strongly. It seems ultimately like just another opinion piece dressed with a bit more math than the topic usually gets. My statistics chops might just not be up to snuff, but the authors are ultimately just choosing their own numbers (probability distributions in this case) and plugging them in like everyone else. We still don't know the values of those parameters. The Fermi paradox exists only given "optimistic" guesses for those parameters. The authors choose "pessimistic" distributions and declare the problem "dissolved".
  - exdsq 5y ago
    Sandberg and Ord are based at the same institute as Bostrom who popularized the Great Filter, if that has any effect on your opinion of the piece. They tend to work on pretty wacky things mind you, I had a discussion with Sandberg on whole brain emulation once and Ord champions donating to fairly sci-fi sounding charitable organizations (including his own, the future of humanities institute).
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    The problem I personally have with the Fermi paradox is that it essentially works if you assume that every non-zero probability is one, and justify that with there being enough chances for life to get going that it's bound to happen. Except... there really isn't all that much slack. Another point that I don't see addressed much is the possibility that interstellar travel may just simply be impossible: that building machines that can travel to other stars, let alone ones that are capable of hosting a colonization process, are just simply not within the realm of materials that can actually exist.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Only if it had evolved independently during this step. Which is not certain either because we know big asteroid impacts can transfer material to other planets. But I think the whole Fermi Paradox is a bit chauvinistic. It's assuming all life is like us, and ending in a colonisation explosion. Like our way is the only possible way. Maybe other aliens do manage to reach a balance with their environment instead of screwing it all up like we are doing? After all, never-ending growth is simply impossible. It always reminds me of Agent Smith's speech from the matrix :) But we as humanity have a habit of defining things around us in our own terms. We thought earth had to be the centre of the universe. Perhaps here we're also wrong and most life is just not like us?
- cout 5y ago
  How do we know never-ending growth is impossible?

by csee 5y ago

shawnz 5y ago

If we assume that the great filter is ahead of us, then we were already a better lower bound. If it's behind us, then who cares?

csee 5y ago
If it's at all possible that it's behind us (which I believe it is), then this finding would be bad, because it necessarily shifts probability density into our future. Probability density must sum to 1. So eliminating one large chunk of possibility will necessarily increase the odds that the filter is in our future.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Yes, thank you for fleshing out what I meant.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  Unless, for example, we were to find Mars had and has single cellular life. That might increase the likelihood that the filter is at the single to multicellular phase by enough to offset the bad news that the filter is not the abiogenesis step.
- riffraff 5y ago
  > it necessarily shifts probability density into our future why? if the filter is "move from unicellular to multicellular" it would have wiped out life on Mars but Earth somehow made it. It shows there's at least one step behind us which is "hard" (while showing there's another one which is "easy").
- dependsontheq 5y ago
  I think one thing to keep in mind is that we haven't been here for very long. And as a technological society that is able to be detected or detect something we have been here for something between 70 or 5 years or 0 years depending on the definition. So the great filter is something that hinders us to detect detectable civilizations. But we are at the moment not totally sure if we are already detectable. So per definition the great filter has to be in front of us as long as we wouldn't be able to find ourselves.

floxy 5y ago

"Dissolving the Fermi Paradox": https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 >The expectation that the universe should be teeming with intelligent life is linked to models like the Drake equation, which suggest that even if the probability of intelligent life developing at a given site is small, the sheer multitude of possible sites should nonetheless yield a large number of potentially observable civilizations. We show that this conflict arises from the use of Drake-like equations, which implicitly assume certainty regarding highly uncertain parameters. We examine these parameters, incorporating models of chemical and genetic transitions on paths to the origin of life, and show that extant scientific knowledge corresponds to uncertainties that span multiple orders of magnitude. This makes a stark difference.

chairhairair 5y ago
This paper seems to get posted in most Great Filter discussions now. I don't find it very convincing - or I'm not sure why it is worded so strongly. It seems ultimately like just another opinion piece dressed with a bit more math than the topic usually gets. My statistics chops might just not be up to snuff, but the authors are ultimately just choosing their own numbers (probability distributions in this case) and plugging them in like everyone else. We still don't know the values of those parameters. The Fermi paradox exists only given "optimistic" guesses for those parameters. The authors choose "pessimistic" distributions and declare the problem "dissolved".
- exdsq 5y ago
  Sandberg and Ord are based at the same institute as Bostrom who popularized the Great Filter, if that has any effect on your opinion of the piece. They tend to work on pretty wacky things mind you, I had a discussion with Sandberg on whole brain emulation once and Ord champions donating to fairly sci-fi sounding charitable organizations (including his own, the future of humanities institute).
- jcranmer 5y ago
  The problem I personally have with the Fermi paradox is that it essentially works if you assume that every non-zero probability is one, and justify that with there being enough chances for life to get going that it's bound to happen. Except... there really isn't all that much slack. Another point that I don't see addressed much is the possibility that interstellar travel may just simply be impossible: that building machines that can travel to other stars, let alone ones that are capable of hosting a colonization process, are just simply not within the realm of materials that can actually exist.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Only if it had evolved independently during this step. Which is not certain either because we know big asteroid impacts can transfer material to other planets. But I think the whole Fermi Paradox is a bit chauvinistic. It's assuming all life is like us, and ending in a colonisation explosion. Like our way is the only possible way. Maybe other aliens do manage to reach a balance with their environment instead of screwing it all up like we are doing? After all, never-ending growth is simply impossible. It always reminds me of Agent Smith's speech from the matrix :) But we as humanity have a habit of defining things around us in our own terms. We thought earth had to be the centre of the universe. Perhaps here we're also wrong and most life is just not like us?

cout 5y ago
How do we know never-ending growth is impossible?