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How about this possibility: the Great Filter is now! We entered it, perhaps, when we developed sufficient collective nuclear weapons capability to wipe out mos

How about this possibility: the Great Filter is now! We entered it, perhaps, when we developed sufficient collective nuclear weapons capability to wipe out most or all human life; we won't be out of it until the major threats our civilization poses to the biosphere have been resolved.

epaulson 12y ago
Even if we wipe ourselves out tomorrow, that still means that a civilization was able to broadcast its existence for about 80 years. If the Great Filter is now or ahead of us, that at least implies that pre-filter civilizations can be advanced enough to signal their existence. At some point our signals will be too weak for anyone to pick up or distinguish from cosmic background noise, which probably limits the radius of the sphere of stars that can hear us, but anyone inside that sphere gets at least 80 years to be listening to potentially hear us. So, even if civilizations only last for say 100 years on average, and you can only hear other civilizations within N light years, if N is big enough eventually someone should hear someone, and if N is really big enough, somewhere in that 100 years everyone should hear at least one other someone.
- fixedd 12y ago
  I've written about this elsewhere, but I'll chime in here too. The largest radio telescope we have (the 305 meter diameter Arecibo) would need to have it's sensitivity increased by around two orders of magnitude JUST to pick up our TV/FM/AM signals from outside the solar system. If we move into the narrowband signals then, depending on the source-strength, it could pick up signals at up to a few thousand light years... if it happened to be pointed in exactly the right direction at exactly the right time. You'd have to build an absolutely monstrous dish to be able to detect any of our signals at even the center of our own galaxy (much less at the other end)... I haven't run the numbers on it, but I doubt it's physically possible to build a receiver large enough. Add to that that they're highly directional devices and I think you'll find the "N" in your scenario is actually a startlingly small number.
has2k1 12y ago
I'll add another guess. A resource crunch, i.e. we simply use up the required resources before we figure out how to explore our planetary neighbourhood. e.g When we figure out that a helium engine is possible, very efficient and very safe, we no longer have sufficient quantities left.
Lrigikithumer 12y ago
A lot of people consider nuclear annihilation a big threat but I'm not too worried about tbh. I mean if you think about it, every major player has got a trigger to end all life at any given point, doesn't it seem reasonable that at some point you invest a lot of money into systems that can safeguard and prevent this type of catastrophe. I know a lot of people may consider the governments dangerous and selfish but they aren't stupid, major players have definitely got systems in place to neutralise these threats. At least they do in my optimistic viewpoint.
- has2k1 12y ago
  Nuclear weapons are hard enough to build that they require a coordination of resources and knowledge, so there is an amount of level headedness among those that build them. A pessimistic view follows that, if some technology in our future is as destructive yet it be simple to build then that is a candidate for a filter. In essence, if it exists then we are just sitting ducks.
- rwallace 12y ago
  I would like to share your optimism. But then I read about things like the US nuclear launch codes being set to 00000000 for quite a few years, or an incident when survival versus Armageddon depended on the judgment of one man [1], and I have to conclude that human governments should not be in possession of nuclear weapons. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

epaulson 12y ago

Even if we wipe ourselves out tomorrow, that still means that a civilization was able to broadcast its existence for about 80 years. If the Great Filter is now or ahead of us, that at least implies that pre-filter civilizations can be advanced enough to signal their existence. At some point our signals will be too weak for anyone to pick up or distinguish from cosmic background noise, which probably limits the radius of the sphere of stars that can hear us, but anyone inside that sphere gets at least 80 years to be listening to potentially hear us. So, even if civilizations only last for say 100 years on average, and you can only hear other civilizations within N light years, if N is big enough eventually someone should hear someone, and if N is really big enough, somewhere in that 100 years everyone should hear at least one other someone.

fixedd 12y ago
I've written about this elsewhere, but I'll chime in here too. The largest radio telescope we have (the 305 meter diameter Arecibo) would need to have it's sensitivity increased by around two orders of magnitude JUST to pick up our TV/FM/AM signals from outside the solar system. If we move into the narrowband signals then, depending on the source-strength, it could pick up signals at up to a few thousand light years... if it happened to be pointed in exactly the right direction at exactly the right time. You'd have to build an absolutely monstrous dish to be able to detect any of our signals at even the center of our own galaxy (much less at the other end)... I haven't run the numbers on it, but I doubt it's physically possible to build a receiver large enough. Add to that that they're highly directional devices and I think you'll find the "N" in your scenario is actually a startlingly small number.

has2k1 12y ago

I'll add another guess. A resource crunch, i.e. we simply use up the required resources before we figure out how to explore our planetary neighbourhood. e.g When we figure out that a helium engine is possible, very efficient and very safe, we no longer have sufficient quantities left.

Lrigikithumer 12y ago

A lot of people consider nuclear annihilation a big threat but I'm not too worried about tbh. I mean if you think about it, every major player has got a trigger to end all life at any given point, doesn't it seem reasonable that at some point you invest a lot of money into systems that can safeguard and prevent this type of catastrophe. I know a lot of people may consider the governments dangerous and selfish but they aren't stupid, major players have definitely got systems in place to neutralise these threats. At least they do in my optimistic viewpoint.

has2k1 12y ago
Nuclear weapons are hard enough to build that they require a coordination of resources and knowledge, so there is an amount of level headedness among those that build them. A pessimistic view follows that, if some technology in our future is as destructive yet it be simple to build then that is a candidate for a filter. In essence, if it exists then we are just sitting ducks.
rwallace 12y ago
I would like to share your optimism. But then I read about things like the US nuclear launch codes being set to 00000000 for quite a few years, or an incident when survival versus Armageddon depended on the judgment of one man [1], and I have to conclude that human governments should not be in possession of nuclear weapons. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov