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The Great Filter theory suggests humans have already conquered the threat of extincti
It’s difficult to not be pessimistic when considering humanity’s future prospects. Many people would agree that it’s more likely than not that we’ll eventually do ourselves in. And in fact, some astrobiologists theorize that all advanced civilizations hit the same insurmountable developmental wall we have. They call it the Great Filter. It’s a notion that’s often invoked to explain why we’ve never been visited by extraterrestrials.
But there is another possible reason for the celestial silence. Yes, the Great Filter exists, but we’ve already passed it. Here’s what this would mean.
Before we can get to the Great Filter hypothesis we have to appreciate what the Fermi Paradox is telling us.
The Fermi Paradox and the Great Silence
The so-called “Great Silence” is the contradictory and counter-intuitive observation that we have yet to see any evidence for the existence of aliens. The size and age of the Universe suggests that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs) ought to exist — but this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.
The Great Filter theory suggests humans have already conquered the threat of extinction Despite much of what popular culture and sci-fi would lead us to believe, the fact that we haven’t been visited by ETIs is disturbing. Our galaxy is so ancient that it could have been colonized hundreds, if not thousands, of times over by now. Even the most conservative estimates show that we should have already made contact either directly or indirectly (such as from dormant Bracewell communication probes).
Some skeptics dismiss the Fermi Paradox by suggesting that ETI’s have come and gone, or that they wouldn’t find us interesting.
Unfortunately, most solutions to the FP don’t hold for a number of reasons, including the realization that a colonization wave of superintelligent aliens would likely rework the fabric of all life in the cosmos (e.g. uplifting), or that these solutions are sociological in nature (i.e. they lack scientific rigor and don’t necessarily apply to the actions of all advanced civilizations; all it would take is just one to think and behave differently — what astrobiologists refer to as the non-exclusivity problem).
There have been many attempts to resolve the Fermi Paradox, including the herculean attempt by Stephen Webb in his book, Fifty Solutions to Fermi’s Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life.
But one solution stands out from the others, mostly on account of its brute elegance: The Great Filter.
The Great Filter
Conceived in 1998 by Robin Hanson, the GF is the disturbing suggestion that there is some kind of absurdly difficult step in the evolution of life — one that precludes it from becoming interstellar.
http://io9.com/5970501/the-great-filter-…extinction
2012-12-23 15:17:21
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