4 ms·

We are provably not beyond the great filter. At least one great filter lies tangibly in front of us: ecological sustainability. Barring several fairly large ch

by api 12y ago

We are provably not beyond the great filter. At least one great filter lies tangibly in front of us: ecological sustainability. Barring several fairly large changes to our energy and resource systems, our civilization is mathematically and physically guaranteed to collapse within the next 200 years at most. That's not a hypothetical filter. It's a real one that we can see, and we are not past it.

zachalexander 12y ago
This is a great point – which I would paraphrase as, let's not worry about cosmic filters when we have a very tangible filter in front of us – but it doesn't follow that we're "provably not beyond the great filter". The Great Filter is just the thing that explains most of why intelligent life is (or seems) so rare in the universe. It could be true, for example, that some cosmic event kills life before it becomes technological 99% of the time (= Great Filter), and also that, say, 60% of technological civilizations destroy themselves via destroying their environment.
- api 12y ago
  Given that we have only one known example of intelligent life, we are the only thing we can base any predictions upon. Given that we have a provable filter in front of us, I think it's reasonable to assume that similar situations might occur elsewhere in the universe: (1) An intelligence reaches a critical intellectual mass and begins to utilize the free resources that are present in its environment. (2) In doing so it grows and develops exponentially. (3) By the time it develops far enough intellectually to realize the problem -- exponential growth built on finite non-replenishable supply -- it's already too late. We seem to have realized this problem around 1950-1970, and we have done very little about it so far. That's because huge complex systems are hard to change, and all the incentives point the wrong way.
  - zachalexander 12y ago
    Sure, but that's just a case for "ecological sustainability is a reasonable candidate for the GF based on what we know about ourselves." Which is a weaker statement than "we are provably beyond the GF". Provable implies strong evidence and certainty.
Animats 12y ago
Painfully true. Human civilizations go back about 3000 years. Industrial civilization only goes back about 200. Being able to make a significant dent in the planet's natural resources goes back less than 100 years. Few nonrenewable resources have a remaining supply measured in hundreds of years.
privong 12y ago
> We are provably not beyond the great filter. At least one great filter lies tangibly in front of us: ecological sustainability. > Barring several fairly large changes to our energy and resource systems, our civilization is mathematically and physically guaranteed to collapse within the next 200 years at most. Would you mind elaborating on this or posting some links with more evidence for this? As stated, your claim seems reminiscent to previous claims that humanity would soon not be able to grow enough food for the projected population. So far, unexpected scientific advances have managed to increase food yields substantially, and we can now effectively produce more than enough food to feed people (though we clearly have issues ensuring that food gets to everyone who needs it). So I wonder what is different now, that makes this looming catastrophe "provable" and "mathematically and physically guaranteed". I agree that humanity is facing significant challenges (e.g., climate change), but I think the claim of "guaranteed collapse" is not as well established.
- api 12y ago
  "your claim seems reminiscent to previous claims that humanity would soon not be able to grow enough food for the projected population" This is a cautionary tale about something that stock market traders know well: never try to call the top of a bubble. You'll just look like a fool, and if you bet on it you will lose all your money. The "Population Bomb" crowd in the 70s and the peak oilers of today tried to do just that: to call the top. They were not wrong about the underlying realities, but they were absolutely wrong about the timing -- which is nearly always the case. Bubbles almost always go higher and further than anyone ever expects or imagines. We're exponentially growing on the back of finite resources that we are consuming without replenishing. That's a bubble. I don't know when it will pop, but it will. Question is what happens then, and will we have enough alternatives available to keep going or not? On the counterpoint side: Life faced a similar situation prior to the advent of photosynthesis. It was growing exponentially and consuming chemical resources that would have been depleted. Had photosynthesis not evolved in time, life would have likely mostly died out and retreated to small colonies around a few hydrothermal vents. That might have been one of the first great filters. We seem to be past that one.
  - 12y ago
furyofantares 12y ago
If that's provably a great filter, you must have proof that there is only a tiny percent chance that we will have fairly large changes to our energy and resource systems. Is that what you are claiming?
ArkyBeagle 12y ago
There is absolutely no guarantee of collapse. Per capita, people live cleaner year by year whether they make "ecologically sound" signalling choices or not. Within the last 50 years, this has been very profound. It's too early to say, but my money's on population crashing first. 100 years ago, you could see nearly anyplace a large population at something approaching the Malthusian limit; that's much reduced now. The sore spots are worse but there are fewer of them. And something like a Haiti is extremely path dependent - it takes several improbable events conspiring to make one; so they can be unmade. Jared Diamond's "Collapse" pretty much convinced me he was not just wrong but flat and 100% wrong. Through his writing , I learned to not only disapprove of apocolyptic narrative but how to counter it. I would not be surprised of there were big, resource-oriented wars on the horizon but I doubt that'll lead to collapse, and I attribute those more to things like monetary policy and the odious politics of debt than human nature in the raw. It's difficult to explain just how violently wrong-headed people were in the 20th Century to create the big disasters.
- api 12y ago
  "people live cleaner year by year" I'm not talking about cleanliness. That's a quality of life factor but ultimately it's not what's important. The important thing is supply, mostly of energy. (It's also important to note that to a great extent the West has cleaned up its environment by outsourcing polluting industries to Asia, Africa, and South America.) Last I checked we still got more than 80% of our energy from fossil fuels. That has changed very, very little in the past 50 years. My grandparents drove a gasoline car, my parents drove a gasoline car, and I drive a gasoline car, and the power grid where I live is powered by 60% natural gas and 15% coal. Where I grew up it was almost 100% coal, same as it was three generations ago. We were supposed to be driving EVs powered by fusion reactors by now. If you're rich you can buy solar panels and an EV and convince yourself there is no problem, but until that stuff falls geometrically in price to the point that it achieves mass adoption it's a luxury toy that will make no impact. Either that or the future will require that 90% of humanity be reduced to medieval subsistence-level poverty. That's not quite the collapse some have predicted, but I highly doubt that sort of neo-feudal civilization is going to go to the stars. So it counts for the Fermi Paradox. The universe may be filled with such small, limited, planet-bound intelligences. I'm slightly encouraged by an apparent Moore's Law in solar, but storage is now the bottleneck. I'm also very cynical about technological advancement outside of IT and a few other narrow areas. I agree with Peter Thiel that basically all major technological advancement outside of computers and some biotech stopped around 1970. Cars, planes, power plants, etc. are all basically the same today as they were then.
facepalm 12y ago
A lot of people might die, but that alone doesn't imply that civilization goes away.
- jimmcslim 12y ago
  Maybe intelligent ife is the universe is in fact quite abundant, but having followed the trajectory we are on and exhausted all its natural resources that would support becoming extra-solar civilisations, they collapse back to simpler, less technological agrarian societies?

by api 12y ago

zachalexander 12y ago

This is a great point – which I would paraphrase as, let's not worry about cosmic filters when we have a very tangible filter in front of us – but it doesn't follow that we're "provably not beyond the great filter". The Great Filter is just the thing that explains most of why intelligent life is (or seems) so rare in the universe. It could be true, for example, that some cosmic event kills life before it becomes technological 99% of the time (= Great Filter), and also that, say, 60% of technological civilizations destroy themselves via destroying their environment.

api 12y ago
Given that we have only one known example of intelligent life, we are the only thing we can base any predictions upon. Given that we have a provable filter in front of us, I think it's reasonable to assume that similar situations might occur elsewhere in the universe: (1) An intelligence reaches a critical intellectual mass and begins to utilize the free resources that are present in its environment. (2) In doing so it grows and develops exponentially. (3) By the time it develops far enough intellectually to realize the problem -- exponential growth built on finite non-replenishable supply -- it's already too late. We seem to have realized this problem around 1950-1970, and we have done very little about it so far. That's because huge complex systems are hard to change, and all the incentives point the wrong way.
- zachalexander 12y ago
  Sure, but that's just a case for "ecological sustainability is a reasonable candidate for the GF based on what we know about ourselves." Which is a weaker statement than "we are provably beyond the GF". Provable implies strong evidence and certainty.

Animats 12y ago

Painfully true. Human civilizations go back about 3000 years. Industrial civilization only goes back about 200. Being able to make a significant dent in the planet's natural resources goes back less than 100 years. Few nonrenewable resources have a remaining supply measured in hundreds of years.

privong 12y ago

> We are provably not beyond the great filter. At least one great filter lies tangibly in front of us: ecological sustainability. > Barring several fairly large changes to our energy and resource systems, our civilization is mathematically and physically guaranteed to collapse within the next 200 years at most. Would you mind elaborating on this or posting some links with more evidence for this? As stated, your claim seems reminiscent to previous claims that humanity would soon not be able to grow enough food for the projected population. So far, unexpected scientific advances have managed to increase food yields substantially, and we can now effectively produce more than enough food to feed people (though we clearly have issues ensuring that food gets to everyone who needs it). So I wonder what is different now, that makes this looming catastrophe "provable" and "mathematically and physically guaranteed". I agree that humanity is facing significant challenges (e.g., climate change), but I think the claim of "guaranteed collapse" is not as well established.

api 12y ago
"your claim seems reminiscent to previous claims that humanity would soon not be able to grow enough food for the projected population" This is a cautionary tale about something that stock market traders know well: never try to call the top of a bubble. You'll just look like a fool, and if you bet on it you will lose all your money. The "Population Bomb" crowd in the 70s and the peak oilers of today tried to do just that: to call the top. They were not wrong about the underlying realities, but they were absolutely wrong about the timing -- which is nearly always the case. Bubbles almost always go higher and further than anyone ever expects or imagines. We're exponentially growing on the back of finite resources that we are consuming without replenishing. That's a bubble. I don't know when it will pop, but it will. Question is what happens then, and will we have enough alternatives available to keep going or not? On the counterpoint side: Life faced a similar situation prior to the advent of photosynthesis. It was growing exponentially and consuming chemical resources that would have been depleted. Had photosynthesis not evolved in time, life would have likely mostly died out and retreated to small colonies around a few hydrothermal vents. That might have been one of the first great filters. We seem to be past that one.
- 12y ago

furyofantares 12y ago

If that's provably a great filter, you must have proof that there is only a tiny percent chance that we will have fairly large changes to our energy and resource systems. Is that what you are claiming?

ArkyBeagle 12y ago

There is absolutely no guarantee of collapse. Per capita, people live cleaner year by year whether they make "ecologically sound" signalling choices or not. Within the last 50 years, this has been very profound. It's too early to say, but my money's on population crashing first. 100 years ago, you could see nearly anyplace a large population at something approaching the Malthusian limit; that's much reduced now. The sore spots are worse but there are fewer of them. And something like a Haiti is extremely path dependent - it takes several improbable events conspiring to make one; so they can be unmade. Jared Diamond's "Collapse" pretty much convinced me he was not just wrong but flat and 100% wrong. Through his writing , I learned to not only disapprove of apocolyptic narrative but how to counter it. I would not be surprised of there were big, resource-oriented wars on the horizon but I doubt that'll lead to collapse, and I attribute those more to things like monetary policy and the odious politics of debt than human nature in the raw. It's difficult to explain just how violently wrong-headed people were in the 20th Century to create the big disasters.

api 12y ago
"people live cleaner year by year" I'm not talking about cleanliness. That's a quality of life factor but ultimately it's not what's important. The important thing is supply, mostly of energy. (It's also important to note that to a great extent the West has cleaned up its environment by outsourcing polluting industries to Asia, Africa, and South America.) Last I checked we still got more than 80% of our energy from fossil fuels. That has changed very, very little in the past 50 years. My grandparents drove a gasoline car, my parents drove a gasoline car, and I drive a gasoline car, and the power grid where I live is powered by 60% natural gas and 15% coal. Where I grew up it was almost 100% coal, same as it was three generations ago. We were supposed to be driving EVs powered by fusion reactors by now. If you're rich you can buy solar panels and an EV and convince yourself there is no problem, but until that stuff falls geometrically in price to the point that it achieves mass adoption it's a luxury toy that will make no impact. Either that or the future will require that 90% of humanity be reduced to medieval subsistence-level poverty. That's not quite the collapse some have predicted, but I highly doubt that sort of neo-feudal civilization is going to go to the stars. So it counts for the Fermi Paradox. The universe may be filled with such small, limited, planet-bound intelligences. I'm slightly encouraged by an apparent Moore's Law in solar, but storage is now the bottleneck. I'm also very cynical about technological advancement outside of IT and a few other narrow areas. I agree with Peter Thiel that basically all major technological advancement outside of computers and some biotech stopped around 1970. Cars, planes, power plants, etc. are all basically the same today as they were then.

facepalm 12y ago

A lot of people might die, but that alone doesn't imply that civilization goes away.

jimmcslim 12y ago
Maybe intelligent ife is the universe is in fact quite abundant, but having followed the trajectory we are on and exhausted all its natural resources that would support becoming extra-solar civilisations, they collapse back to simpler, less technological agrarian societies?