5 ms·

I hope I will grow old enough for one to see a proper confirmation of life out there

pfdietz 3y ago
That would be bad news. I hope we never have proper confirmation of independently arisen life out there (or, worse, intelligent life out there.) It would imply the Great Filter is likely to be ahead of us, so humanity would likely be doomed.
- NegativeLatency 3y ago
  You can choose to believe that we’ll make it past that event, and even do things to help your community and neighborhood in that spirit.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    If we run into another intelligence it is strong evidence we haven't made it past the Great Filter. Sure, you can choose to believe the opposite, but that's pure wishful thinking.
    - contravariant 3y ago
      That makes no sense to me. If there wasn't a great filter we would expect to find more intelligent life, if there were we would expect a much smaller probability of intelligent life. If an event makes an observation less likely then conversely such an observation also makes that event less likely, not the other way around.
      - pfdietz 3y ago
        The thing that has to be explained was why Earth was left alone for 4.55 billion years so we could evolve. Something prevented intelligences from colonizing it and exploiting it (and everywhere else we can see in the universe, as far as we can tell). That thing is called the Great Filter. Its existence is not in question, since we evolved. If we run into ETs that means intelligence must be extremely common (and mobile, since we ran into it) so the filter has to be very VERY effective. The most benign Great Filter would be in our past, if life or intelligence is very difficult for the universe to create. If it's not in our past, it's in our future, and it's going to clobber us with almost no chance of escape (after all, if we're not special, we have no better chance than any of the potentially vast number of ET civilizations it has already hit.)
      - generalizations 3y ago
        It's not a question of if there's a great filter. It's a question of whether or not we're already past it.
- api 3y ago
  It shows no such thing. The Fermi paradox is fun but it explodes into such a massive tree of possibilities that are all untestable that it’s just that… fun. It could be that as we explore the universe we find a ton of microbes but few or no other nearby complex lifeforms with any form of intelligence. This would imply that Earth is a special environment for fostering stable complexity, in which case the great filter is still behind us. BTW there are reasons to think Earth might be special: it’s got this nice magnetic field, a huge moon that reduces bombardment, a thick radiation shielding atmosphere, volcanic activity enough to replenish that atmosphere and the landscape, a reasonably stable climate, is not tide locked to its star (as many planets likely are), and orbits a friendly star that doesn’t throw tantrums and blast us with gamma rays. (The sun appears to be a cute fuzzy waggy little puppy as stars go.) We just don’t really know.
  - DrFalkyn 3y ago
    I believe a survey of planetary systems showed that the gas giants were more common closer to the stars (hot Jupiters), and they tended to eject the rocky inner planets. Our solar system might be exceptional because of Saturn preventing Jupiter from migrating inward. Also the collision of Earth with the other body that eventually formed the Moon, as violent and destructive as it was when it happened, may been a big reason why the Earth is tectonically active (which also is the reason for the magnetic field, which helps keep our atmosphere intact) and the presence of the Moon also gives us tidal forces which may have been necessary for abiogenesis, The collision of such a large object at the right time of planetary evolution may have been a low probability event. OTOH, alternatives have bene proposed. The moons of the "hot Jupiters" could get similar benefits as the Moon and the remnants of the collision gives Earth In particular, it is known that the moons of Jupiter experience substantial tidal forces.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  > It would imply the Great Filter is likely to be ahead of us How?
  - russdill 3y ago
    It would imply that life basically evolved everywhere in the universe but pretty much never establishes a long lasting high tech civilization.
- Supermancho 3y ago
  > That would be bad news. I don't think so. We already know there is a filter for our race. The sun is one terminus, sometime after the earth is uninhabitable to human life (due to ecology). So there's nothing to lose but some time.
  - DrFalkyn 3y ago
    We know one filter. But to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we don't know about the filters we don't know about. Something akin to a gamma ray burst (not that exactly, since we do know about it but something like it) So the Great Filter theory is one way to reason about the filters we DON'T know about
    - Supermancho 3y ago
      There's a couple of filters we know, I think. Habitability/survival, physics for travel existing, locality to others.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
az09mugen 3y ago
The most probable candidate for now is Europa with an incoming NASA mission [0]. Because within the solar system among the 3 potential candidates to host life in an ocean under thick ice sheet. Maybe we will find traces of old life on Mars. IMHO, the only other way to have confirmation is to recieve a "hand-crafted radio signal". [0] : https://europa.nasa.gov/ https://europa.nasa.gov/

That would be bad news. I hope we never have proper confirmation of independently arisen life out there (or, worse, intelligent life out there.) It would imply the Great Filter is likely to be ahead of us, so humanity would likely be doomed.

NegativeLatency 3y ago
You can choose to believe that we’ll make it past that event, and even do things to help your community and neighborhood in that spirit.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  If we run into another intelligence it is strong evidence we haven't made it past the Great Filter. Sure, you can choose to believe the opposite, but that's pure wishful thinking.
  - contravariant 3y ago
    That makes no sense to me. If there wasn't a great filter we would expect to find more intelligent life, if there were we would expect a much smaller probability of intelligent life. If an event makes an observation less likely then conversely such an observation also makes that event less likely, not the other way around.
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      The thing that has to be explained was why Earth was left alone for 4.55 billion years so we could evolve. Something prevented intelligences from colonizing it and exploiting it (and everywhere else we can see in the universe, as far as we can tell). That thing is called the Great Filter. Its existence is not in question, since we evolved. If we run into ETs that means intelligence must be extremely common (and mobile, since we ran into it) so the filter has to be very VERY effective. The most benign Great Filter would be in our past, if life or intelligence is very difficult for the universe to create. If it's not in our past, it's in our future, and it's going to clobber us with almost no chance of escape (after all, if we're not special, we have no better chance than any of the potentially vast number of ET civilizations it has already hit.)
    - generalizations 3y ago
      It's not a question of if there's a great filter. It's a question of whether or not we're already past it.
api 3y ago
It shows no such thing. The Fermi paradox is fun but it explodes into such a massive tree of possibilities that are all untestable that it’s just that… fun. It could be that as we explore the universe we find a ton of microbes but few or no other nearby complex lifeforms with any form of intelligence. This would imply that Earth is a special environment for fostering stable complexity, in which case the great filter is still behind us. BTW there are reasons to think Earth might be special: it’s got this nice magnetic field, a huge moon that reduces bombardment, a thick radiation shielding atmosphere, volcanic activity enough to replenish that atmosphere and the landscape, a reasonably stable climate, is not tide locked to its star (as many planets likely are), and orbits a friendly star that doesn’t throw tantrums and blast us with gamma rays. (The sun appears to be a cute fuzzy waggy little puppy as stars go.) We just don’t really know.
- DrFalkyn 3y ago
  I believe a survey of planetary systems showed that the gas giants were more common closer to the stars (hot Jupiters), and they tended to eject the rocky inner planets. Our solar system might be exceptional because of Saturn preventing Jupiter from migrating inward. Also the collision of Earth with the other body that eventually formed the Moon, as violent and destructive as it was when it happened, may been a big reason why the Earth is tectonically active (which also is the reason for the magnetic field, which helps keep our atmosphere intact) and the presence of the Moon also gives us tidal forces which may have been necessary for abiogenesis, The collision of such a large object at the right time of planetary evolution may have been a low probability event. OTOH, alternatives have bene proposed. The moons of the "hot Jupiters" could get similar benefits as the Moon and the remnants of the collision gives Earth In particular, it is known that the moons of Jupiter experience substantial tidal forces.
pavel_lishin 3y ago
> It would imply the Great Filter is likely to be ahead of us How?
- russdill 3y ago
  It would imply that life basically evolved everywhere in the universe but pretty much never establishes a long lasting high tech civilization.
Supermancho 3y ago
> That would be bad news. I don't think so. We already know there is a filter for our race. The sun is one terminus, sometime after the earth is uninhabitable to human life (due to ecology). So there's nothing to lose but some time.
- DrFalkyn 3y ago
  We know one filter. But to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we don't know about the filters we don't know about. Something akin to a gamma ray burst (not that exactly, since we do know about it but something like it) So the Great Filter theory is one way to reason about the filters we DON'T know about
  - Supermancho 3y ago
    There's a couple of filters we know, I think. Habitability/survival, physics for travel existing, locality to others.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

az09mugen 3y ago

The most probable candidate for now is Europa with an incoming NASA mission [0]. Because within the solar system among the 3 potential candidates to host life in an ocean under thick ice sheet. Maybe we will find traces of old life on Mars. IMHO, the only other way to have confirmation is to recieve a "hand-crafted radio signal". [0] : https://europa.nasa.gov/ https://europa.nasa.gov/