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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]

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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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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I think that for a technological civilization to rise, you need some things to line up. First, life has to be evolved enough to have animals, beings with a brain. Then, a species has to evolve intellence to become a tool making species. This species also has to become the dominating species on the planet. Meanwhile, extinction events, ice ages, climate change and population bottlenecks are always influencing the evolution process.

This is for me the great filter, to have all these conditions line up perfectly for an intelligent, tool making species to evolve and thrive.