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Hot take: the Great Filter is the fact that we're actually alone as an intelligent species in the universe. Occam's Razor and all that.
by otabdeveloper4 3y ago
Hot take: the Great Filter is the fact that we're actually alone as an intelligent species in the universe.
Occam's Razor and all that.
- mistercow 3y agoThat’s not an explanation. It’s a restatement of what the great filter is trying to explain.
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoOccam's Razor says that we don't see any aliens because none actually ever exist. Anything else is, alas, wishful thinking.
- root_axis 3y agoOccam's Razor would suggest we just don't have the technology to detect them, you'd need extra reasoning to explain why earth is unique among thousands of trillions of planets.
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago> ...you'd need extra reasoning to explain why earth is unique among thousands of trillions of planets It is unique by definition, because we happen to live on it. There is no need to reason or explain anything, because it is a simple fact.
- root_axis 3y agoThat meaning of unique doesn't have anything to do with the conversation at hand.
- mistercow 3y agoAgain, that’s not an explanation. An explanation would explain why aliens don’t exist despite apparently ample opportunities for them to.
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoYou are begging the question and reasoning circularly. There is absolutely no evidence that there are "ample opportunities" for aliens to exist. Default assumption is that there aren't.
- sfink 3y agoI don't think Occam's Razor is that helpful in explaining why I can't find my glasses in a pitch black room. A better explanation is that it's dark. There may well be other good reasons, but Occam's Razor says to stick with it being dark. Other stars are a long ways away, and intelligence-generated signals mostly dissipate into the cube of that distance. Also, the vast majority of stars are far enough away that intelligent life would have had to evolve a lot sooner in order for the light to have already reached us. Occam's Razor is going to look at those before working out the more complicated questions of how common life and intelligence actually are.
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoOr maybe intelligence only exists here on earth. Any explanation for its uniqueness would be as evidence-free and tortuous as evidence for it's non-uniqueness. (Given that we have zero evidence one way or the other.)
- solardev 3y agoMaybe the actually intelligent species created this universe as a zoo to keep us safely tucked away so we don't eat their kids. Then they had some massive layoffs and couldn't afford faster than light vacations for a while :(
- etskinner 3y agoThat doesn't really follow Occam's Razor. That would require assuming that we're special in being the only planet/solar system/galaxy where life happened, even though the conditions are right in lots of places
- Jerrrry 3y agoOccam would presume, as most do, that we are the first sufficiently advanced, detectable, species to leave the gravitational well we were born in, and the first in the observable universe, so far. There is more to the universe than what we can observe, our light cone is a fraction of the expected higher bound, assuming a finite universe. We are also one of the first generation of planets with heavy elements - decreasing the odds of a species originating before us. But the universe will be around for a long, long time; Far, far longer than it has so far. We may be the first, but to assume a filter at this point is an anthropomorphic bias so ingrained it's nearly impossible to cognitively self-reflect on.
- throwanem 3y ago200 billion galaxies in the observable universe, 100 billion stars just in this galaxy, and this one star among those quadrillions being the only one with intelligent life - this by you is the simplest explanation?
- bluGill 3y agoAre we the only intelligent life or not. Both Yes and No answers would be astonishing, though for different reasons. The question however is unknowable: the speed of light compared to the size of the universe is just too slow. We have every reason to believe most intelligent species will rise, develop, and die off (as their star dies!) and we never find out about them - either the signals never reach us before our star dies, or they have already passed us by.
- WithinReason 3y agoIt would just mean that life is improbable, which is perfectly plausible.
- throwanem 3y agoPlausible, sure, but such a vast improbability itself requires what would have to be quite a complex explanation.
- WithinReason 3y agoWhy? It could be simply statistically unlikely, nothing complex about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
- throwanem 3y agoOne out of many quadrillions doesn't seem like much of a sample size, for the kind of statistical analysis you imply.