this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. As a 2015 article put it, "If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

Personally I think it's photosynthesis. Life itself developed and spread but photosynthesis started an inevitable chain of ever-greater and more-efficient life. I think a random chain of mutations that turns carbon-based proto-life into something that can harvest light energy is wildly unlikely, even after the wildly unlikely event of life beginning in the first place.

I have no data to back that up, just a guess.

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[–] RealFknNito@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Hard to determine with what we know. We haven't met any other intelligent species which suggests we've passed the filter. Yet, making that conclusion before knowing there are no others to meet is too presumptuous. But, if I were to guess, I'd think the filter is adaptability.

We're superior to animals for being able to use tools, live in radically different climates, and shape every spot on earth into a livable climate. Even on Mars, the moon, and space. How else would a species venture through space if they can't adapt?

That might be too general a concept for the question though.

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[–] DeanFogg@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

Fear. Right now we're on the edge of facing fear or succumbing to it

[–] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 1 points 5 months ago (3 children)

The Dark Forest theory is a great answer to this paradox. Anyone more advanced has a rational choice to exterminate all competition. We haven’t found any other advanced life because it hasn’t shown up and killed us yet.

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[–] theneverfox@pawb.social 1 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I don't think life is rare, nor photosynthesis, but complex life might be. A planet needs to be really thriving with life for it to be worth it to go down the path to something like animals

But I think the bigger filter is much stranger.

Humans are a hive-like species. We're not just social - we're insanely interdependent, we don't function on our own and yet we've ended up in this place where we (often) try to individually succeed, even at the cost to our community

We're greedy enough to want the stars, yet interdependent enough we could only swarm over them in endless numbers

There's many problems with the fermi "paradox", but personally I think one of the largest is assuming all species would spread like a cancer blotting out the stars

A more individualistic and long lived species might instead be careful explorers, taking what they need and leaving little sign of their passage. A more communal species might be careful and control themselves to not destroy pointlessly. They might also feel no desire to contact other species

We're just the right mix to want everything a star could give, and to want to find others at great energy cost

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[–] vxx@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

If there really is a cosmic web and information flows through it, the other solar system will know that we're coming to destroy another world, but it will have developed defensive techniques against a known disease, humans. The same our immune systems does to known viruses.

I went a bit creative with this one.

[–] Tramort@programming.dev 0 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Your answer doesn't make sense.

"Photosynthesis" is a positive development for life. The great filter must be a negative development: it's a filter or a barrier that keeps life from achieving long term extra terrestrial survival.

So "climate change" would be an answer. Or "fuel depletion" (to which photosynthesis may be a solution). But the filter is the mechanism by which life forms are prevented from progressing.

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One dope-ass 2 pole analogue ladder filter

[–] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago

I'm starting to wonder if its LLMs. An AGI is something we would be incredibly cautious around and is really no more likely to be psychopathic than any other living thing, the vast majority of which are not. LLMs on the other hand are pushed into every role techbros can shove them into while having less understanding of what they do than a housefly, the potential for damage is immense if someone decides to put one in charge of something important like infastructure or weaponry.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Exponential functions. Seriously. You meet crisis after crisis, each having a risk of ending civilization, but that risk never goes away. It keeps multiplying and multiplying, until you realize the risk curve is approaching a vertical line

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[–] oo1@lemmings.world -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think most lifeforms will have more pressing matters than wasting large amounts of time an energy blasting signals in to space for no reason, or listening to the sky.

Maybe those civilizations that waste more energy chasing aliens die off sooner due to wasting resources on sci-fi bullshit and ignoring their real problems at home.

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