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If the solution to the Fermi Paradox is that there's a great filter that prevents many advanced civilizations from sticking around long enough to be observable,
by nwah1 1y ago
If the solution to the Fermi Paradox is that there's a great filter that prevents many advanced civilizations from sticking around long enough to be observable, then we hope that the filter is behind us rather than in front of us.
The more common that life is, the more likely it is in front of us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
- kjkjadksj 1y agoThe elephant in the room here is that advanced intelligent life as we understand it is some inevitable step in evolution. A random walk of mutations on top of mutations lead us to this and only because the environmental context favored adaptions toward intelligence in the case of our species at the time. This is probably why most sci fi is not written by evolutionary biologists.
- soiltype 1y agoEr... No that's not a meaningful critique. There's no framework that doesn't assume it's a random process. The point is to find out how likely each step is to occur, randomly.
- kjkjadksj 1y agoEven the Kardashev scale is based on the assumption that unfettered economic activity as humans conceived of it in the mid 20th century would be a common enough phenomenon to classify, including shoehorning in our wildest science fiction ideas. Only the most unscrupulous of our species probably want to maximize production of widgets beyond the limits of this planet to the point where a Dyson sphere must be built. Would a Buddhist monk have any interest in that for example, or are their metrics of “productivity” more metaphysical perhaps? Or someone considering preserving a system and not exceeding what it is capable of sustainably offering? How about a blue whale, do they have an increasing energy demand per capita as well?
- soiltype 1y agoHow does this respond to my previous comment? In trying to respond to this, I completely forgot what the context was.
- sillyfluke 1y agoYes, but as time goes to infinity there will eventually be an environment context and mutation path that will result in something that has a similar level of intelligence. In fact, this makes the preoccupation with humans escaping a Great Filter all the more childish. Even on a single planet the species that will evolve from humans by the time Earth is swallowed by the sun will have less in common with humans than we do now with single cell organisms. Internalize that fact a little bit. Once you realize it is absurd to talk about the human species being preserved as is to the end of time, you will understand the silliness of this obsession. Cause after that point you might as well believe in a deity. If it makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside, it suffices to hope that only single cell organisms survive the Great Filter, since given enough time it might lead to something that is as intelligent or more intelligent and kind than humans. Embrace the silliness. The answer to "Why should we humans spread to other planets?" need only be "Why the fuck not?" That is, unless you want to fund your rocket company. In which case you have to make people believe in a deity.
- Razengan 1y agoThe Fermi "Paradox" is based on so many naive self-referencing assumptions it's ridiculous that it's considered so seriously so often.
- AIPedant 1y agoPutin and Xi fantasizing about immortality via 3D-printed organs quite starkly illustrated that many adults do not understand the difference between science and science fiction.
- mr_mitm 1y agoI don't even understand why people call it a paradox. A paradox has no obvious solution. This one has many obvious solutions, the most obvious one that the premise is faulty: perhaps life is not common at all.
- benbayard 1y agoThat's part of the Great Filter answer to the Fermi paradox. Though, I agree, it's not really a paradox. If the great filter is true, the first filter is life forming at all. We hope that the filter is behind us and that's why intelligent life in the universe seems rare, rather than ahead of us. If life is common, but intelligent life is uncommon, that's concerning because it makes it more likely that the filter is ahead of us. Meaning, something like, once an organism has control over the whole planet there's something that prevents them from going to multiple planets.
- credit_guy 1y agoThere is another premise that is faulty: that the answer to "where's everybody" is that "since we see nobody, there is nobody". But for all we know the planets around Alpha Centauri may be teaming with life, and there would be no way for us to detect that. If only 1% of the solar systems in our galaxy host intelligent life, then the number of intelligent life forms would be truly mind-boggling, yet we wouldn't be able to detect a whisper of their presence. For the simple reason that space is also mind-blowingly vast, and all signals decay with the square root of the distance.
- 1y ago
- Qem 1y agoIf the origin is not independent, that doesn't necessarily change the position of the filter.