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What do you think the Great Filter is? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

247 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

the internet. or some other mass communication methodology. we have developed it before we're responsible enough to have it. there are too many bad actors ready to take advantage of our innate biological tribalism. we'll kill ourselves before we reach very far into space.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536), Dutch Renaissance humanist:"To what corner of the world do they not fly, these swarms of new books?"

I think people were concerned about that kind of scenario since the invention of the printing press, if not the written word itself. Not trying to dismiss the destructive potential the Internet can and will have in the future, just pointing out, that this kind of fear is not new.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

thanks, this actually makes me feel better.

also like an old man yelling at clouds. but better, nonetheless.