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You just proposed a great filter, short lived civilizations. If civilizations lasted for billions of years or their AGIs did the same, we’d have a lot higher c
by dougmwne 3y ago
You just proposed a great filter, short lived civilizations.
If civilizations lasted for billions of years or their AGIs did the same, we’d have a lot higher chance of them expanding to fill the galaxy and converting the surface of all 8 planets and major asteroids into AGI probes and compute.
- lazide 3y agoThat’s not what I’d consider a great filter in the usual usage. We’ve only had ~10k years of recorded history. If we can’t make a meaningful dent somewhere outside the solar system in another 10x that amount of time, I doubt we (or anyone) ever would. A civilization doesn’t have to survive a billion years (do you know how long that actually is?) to not be ‘short lived’.
- dougmwne 3y agoI would define short lived as the difference between dying out in a local star cluster or continuing to expand till the heat death of the universe. A long-lived and expansionary civilization will eventually reach us, even if it takes 1k years to hop from star to star. A short lived civilization will never reach us.
- lazide 3y agoNone of the situations you’re giving are based entirely off longevity - they use longevity as a factor of another equation. A billion year old civilization that isn’t expansionary will never reach us either. Or one that doesn’t want to spend the energy ($$$) if other cheap energy forms we’ve speculated aren’t possible or as inexpensive/portable as would be needed. They could just as easily be happy being billion year old zen masters, and we’d never know - even if they had warp drives. They’d still exist though, and if we ever wanted to find them I guess we’d be able to do so. But we’d never know about them proactively.