The "Great Filter": a flawed concept?

[Anonymous No.10190465]

If you're aware of modern thought around intelligent life in the universe, you might be familiar with the Fermi paradox and the concept of a "Great Filter" as a proposed solution. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter))

Basically the idea of the Fermi paradox is, if it's likely that intelligent life exists somewhere else in the universe, why has no evidence been discovered. And the Great Filter basically posits, as an explanation, that maybe some inevitable consequence of life crossing a certain threshold of development has wiped them all out, and either we're one of the relatively few species in the universe that survived this consequence, or, more worryingly, it's coming for us next.

But what if it's not a "Great Filter," but a "Great Divide"? What if, as life in the universe grows more complex, the damning threshold it approaches is not a mass extinction event, but an event in its development that renders it too different from anything else in the universe for communication to be meaningful?

Could this be? Could intelligent alien life be among us even now, and just undetectable because it's so different that we fail to recognize it as intelligent or alive? Discuss

Link to comment and video in image:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjtOGPJ0URM&lc=UgzRgPwIUtFAjJpSWrx4AaABAg

[Anonymous No.10190532]

If they are equally as smart and equally or more technologically advanced than us then that means they are co-operative and have a yearning for knowledge and have an appropriate scientific system. Therefore there are scientists. Therefore there are people researching communications. Therefore we should hear them. I refuse to believe there are significantly smarter beings than humans without augmentation. Since there is no need for something to evolve to be smarter than humans. I also would consider augmentation to be a filter.

[Anonymous No.10190537]

>>10190465
Even then there still must alot of sapient species that got pass the filter.

[Anonymous No.10190547]

>>10190532
>Therefore we should hear them.
I agreed with everything up until this. I don't think this conclusion follows from the conclusions you came up with up to that point.

And here's why I don't think so: What if these "equally smart and equally or more technologically advanced than us" alien species are so very different from us that their smartness and technological sophistication are fundamentally incomprehensible to us and vice versa? Even if they do research communications, why should they try to contact us, or vice versa, if neither species knows the others exists, or if neither species knows the other is a species?

By this reasoning, what if the intelligent alien species in question is something like rocks? Those sure don't seem intelligent to us, do they? But what if we also don't seem intelligent to them?

[Anonymous No.10190572]

>>10190465
Altruism -- or rather, the corrupted form in neoliberalism -- is the great filter. See as developed nations kill themselves listening their cucked leaders and kin, dismantling their societies for no meaningful reason.

Perhaps every civilization that gets far enough to have a shot at the long run collapses under the weight of its "SJW" populace gaining political control and throwing away the fruits of its progress.

[Anonymous No.10190587]

>>10190532
but anon, I would kill them all
therefore, it's possible that they would kill all of us, proving me right and thus we need to be prepared to kill them all

[Anonymous No.10190599]

>>10190465
I hope its flawed i want to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed alien kill

[Anonymous No.10190600]

>>10190547
So they are intelligent species that are not advanced technologically. I guess this is possible but I think that since all of the most intelligent species on earth use tools and it seams to scale with intelligence that if species such as ourselves last for long amounts of time it is to be expected that they would become technologically advanced.

[Anonymous No.10190852]

>>10190532
>Therefore we should hear them
Nope. As communications technology gets more advanced, we can use more subtle signals to transfer ever more information. Advanced civilizations don't scream, they whisper. Probably.

[Anonymous No.10191031]

Okay. You guys work on great filters, I'll work on great substances.

[Anonymous No.10191049]

>>10190465
>Could intelligent alien life be among us even now, and just undetectable because it's so different that we fail to recognize it as intelligent or alive?

Or intelligent life is hiding on purpose, ignoring any attempts of communication. Life has the bad habit of natural selection, if two organisms previously alien to each other are introduced in the same environment, immune systems start battling out and the strongest biological life form comes on top, adding new evolution strains to it self.

Why would intelligent alien life risk the annihilation of them selves? We are moved by curiosity, they might have different morals and goals in life. Maybe alien curiosity is only limited to the survival of their species, any other deviant action will never be allowed.

We could try to summon Aliens or God by detonation 100MT nuke in a safe area in our solar system. This would create an anomaly, something or some one might be watching.

[Anonymous No.10191607]

>>10190547
That's interesting but it's unfalsifiable. We're pretty good at comprehending the natural world. If such communications existed and we were missing them I'd argue that it's probably due to overlooked restrictions in the way that science approaches understanding patterns and not because such things are impossible to understand or at least detect.

[Anonymous No.10191635]

>>10191049
>if two organisms previously alien to each other are introduced in the same environment, immune systems start battling out and the strongest biological life form comes on top, adding new evolution strains to it self.
They're not cohabitating the same environment though.
Species A is on their planet, and we're here and inbetween are not insignificant distances. Even if they were in Alpha Centauri it would still be years of lag between a simple phone call.
Space is nothing but lebensraum and you need to get a few power levels higher before you can even worry about squabbling over resources between you two.

[Anonymous No.10191659]

>>10190465
>why has no evidence been discovered

Yeah, real mystery.

[Anonymous No.10191664]

>>10190532
>Therefore we should hear them

Earth's radio broadcasts are actually decreasing over last decade.

[Anonymous No.10191856]

The great filter is capitalism.

[Anonymous No.10191970]

>>10190572
Lol....dumb sjw aliens

[Anonymous No.10191996]

>>10191049
Maybe they're not really hiding but just ran out of cash for the space program because the alien sjw commies forced the government to spend all the money on gibs

[Anonymous No.10192376]

>>10191996
>the great filter was socialism
oh no

[Anonymous No.10192396]

Humans are simply the first intelligent species.

[Anonymous No.10192410]

Why do we think aliens broadcast things at all? Radio was a dumb way to communicate. Fiber optics and lasers are clearly going to be how any species even a tad more advanced than use communicates.

[Anonymous No.10192423]

>>10190532
> I refuse to believe there are significantly smarter beings than humans without augmentation. Since there is no need for something to evolve to be smarter than humans.

This is retarded. What if their planet has multiple intelligent predators? Then they get into am intelligence as race.

[Anonymous No.10192427]

>>10192423
being smart doesn't help you kill shit, dumbass

[Anonymous No.10192449]

>>10192427
Yes it does, dumbass. A monkey smart enough to use a handgun can kill lions.

[Anonymous No.10192452]

>>10192423
>tfw our own planet has intelligent predators and IT IS an intelligence race and most of us are losing HARD.

[Anonymous No.10192466]

>>10192427
Humans can kill everything on the planet. Chimp's get fucked up by tigers.

[Anonymous No.10192468]

>>10192449
yeah but how does a smart tiger help it murder people better, it can kill people just fine the way it is

[Anonymous No.10192494]

You're boiling down it all to communication, versus a huge swarm of factors: transient neighbors, planetary neighbors, solar effect, planet composition, etc.

If we limit ourselves to communication, we have no mechanism beyond light speed and light-mechanisms to observe another species. That only effects "short-time" communication. If we looked objectively, any purely communicative signal would be small and largely undetectable. A better argument would be "what can a civilization produce which would lead to be evidence of it existing?". In this case, solar system constructs (artificial satellites/moon or planetary sized bodies), inter-solar drones, planetary-sized organic residue (atypical mineral concentrations, compositions, colors in the case of more primitive life).

The Great Filter is accurate, because life is probabilistic. I've spent some time thinking about intelligent+technological development, and factors affecting it. A very potent factor we feel these days, hydrocarbon fuels. All coal and oil deposits were due to heavy concentrations of life being deposited and undergoing mechanical processes. A factor in this was the evolution of fiber/polymer digesting microbes. For millions of years (50+ in the case of the carboniferous period), microbes couldn't decompose plants. All the dead trees got buried. All of them. If that period lasted half as long, there would be far fewer coal and oil deposits, and possibly more spread out. If they weren't economically feasible, could we have a plastic age? Would an industrial age have been nearly as effective as ours was?

Our solar system was the result of a supernova, and is not a "first" star. Additionally, we have only one star, which reduces the variation in our solar system by many orders of magnitude, not counting effects of tide, radiation, etc. If we had 50% fewer "rare earth metals". They're not rare per-say, just spread out and hard to separate. Cont.

[Anonymous No.10192496]

>>10190465
I used to think the same thing. Where is all the intelligent life?

But then I realised something we're not factoring in to the equation. We're on the verge of AI.

Instead of looking at how long it would take to get the technology required for intergalactic travel, look at how long it would take for a civilization to develop AI.

Surely, within a few hundred years of discovering electricity, the society will have developed superintelligent AI.

At that point, those one thousand to one million years it would have taken to achieve FTL travel, would happen relatively instantaneuously.

However, I'd expect that the AI would destroy the civilization before they could do anything with it --- either by accident or intentionally.

If there is anything roaming around the universe it's more than likely a superintelligent, perhaps sentient, AI.

I know some people think that we might manage to integrate with AI properly and yeah, sure, we might. It's much more likely, however, that we'll screw it up like all the other, scarce, intelligent life forms out there.

[Anonymous No.10192520]

>>10192494
For rare-earth metals, if they were say 50% rarer, would chemistry have taken longer to become accurate? If they were more abundant, how would they and related minerals affect life? There are plenty of elements and compounds on the planet which are inert or dangerous to life: mercury, arsenic, lead, etc. If some were more common, evolution would have had huge issues, and would require expending much more energy and time to develop safeties against them. On the planet itself, there jhve been studies that showed the best factor in predicting peace among nations was geographical barriers. If the planet was slightly heavier, barriers would be smaller, and nation-states may have not developed into consistent forms (in Africa, until white people colonized, quite literally the only consistent barriers were geographical ones - people kept killing each other).

Today, we face a dangerous future in as little as 20-30 years: will monolithic corporations and ultra-rich be able to cement their control of the population, will we out-pace global warming with solar/wind/nuclear, will we kill off large portions of people and legislate production rules, or hope we can manage an unrestricted population?

In America, the only salvation against monolithic corporations is their increasing incompetency and risk-concentration at scale. We do have ultra-rich that control the government, but even one slip-up endangers the system, and fortunately, YES fortunately, other nations are making attempts to hack and compromise our way of life. The greater risk is cooperation among state level actors and blind-faith citizens. What does this have to do with the Great Filter? They're mechanisms by which we can lose our ability to become an extra-planetary species. For most of life-filter arguments, they're pretty weak. It's PROBABLE an organism will develop specialized energy-production mechanisms, by viral or DNA means, simply by quantity and abundance. Cont

[Anonymous No.10192548]

>>10192520
It's PROBABLE a nervous system will develop in life forms, because it is the manifestation of intra-life-cycle information communication. It is GUARANTEED life will develop cooperation, because at all scales of life, it is more efficient to create barriers for chemical activity, then relay the minimum necessary information for both life forms to benefit.

Where filter's come in is how well these stages can progress. If a planet didn't have much oxygen, then although hydrocarbons a ruthlessly efficient energy storage for life, they couldn't gain a magnitude to permit enough concentration and activity for the next stages. Another way of looking at things is how efficient/inefficient is a process given the "local" system it's in. CERN for example: It has cooperation among 21 nations, and costs more than a billion dollars per year since 2013. The cost is relatively low, but only one CERN exists, and for a long time, it will be the largest particle(s) accelerator. Say it wasn't made. Could there have been a resolution on the Higgs Boson outside of direct testing every available theory? Would there have even BEEN a way to test it, since CERN has been our only mechanism? There's additional data from CERN such as color symmetrical reactions that have not been found to be symmetric (some reactions are supposed to have equal probabilities, but don't as far as we can tell). Fundamentally our science is not complete. If we can't advance it, we can only make things as good as we know, and guess at better. In terms of a filter, how has this effected us? Are we lucky to have CERN? Will the circumstances which lead us to CERN result in our demise or leave us planetarily stuck?

[Anonymous No.10192990]

>>10192496
Any proof of these other "scarce" intelligent life forms out there that have been killed off by an AI? Right.

[Anonymous No.10194427]

>>10190465
The great filter is that physics implicitly forbids nearly as fast as light travel just as it explicitly forbids faster than light travel

[Anonymous No.10194448]

>>10192468
Imagine how much better the tiger could kill people if it could use firearms.

[Anonymous No.10194454]

Why do we assume aliens communicate in broadcasts? Closed cables and later point-to-point laser comms seem like they are better for communication. Species probably only use radio for a small portion of their total tech cycle.

[Anonymous No.10194475]

>>10190572
Nationalism could lead to nuclear annihilation, neoliberalism leads to civil war. Is globalist dictatorship the way to go?

[Anonymous No.10194476]

>>10191659
This, the Galaxy is just too big and the speed of light is too slow.

[Anonymous No.10194707]

>>10190532
Go to the North Sentinel Island and make its inhabitants hear you, kek.

[Anonymous No.10194784]

>>10194476
Even with the natural limitations of light-speed, one could feasibly colonize an entire galaxy with self-replicating solar-powered probes over the course of just a few million years.

It’s more likely that Humans are just the first sentient beings in the Galaxy.

[Anonymous No.10194791]

>>10194784
yeah but could you live with yourself after releasing such a plague?

[Anonymous No.10194793]

>>10190465
Fermi wasn't doubting the existence of alien life. He was doubting the existence of interstellar travel

>“... he went on to conclude that the reason that we hadn’t been visited might be that interstellar flight is impossible, or, if it is possible, always judged to be not worth the effort, or technological civilization doesn’t last long enough for it to happen.”

[Anonymous No.10194799]

>>10190465
But once self-propagating systems have attained global scale, two crucial differences emerge. The first difference is in the number of individuals from among which the "fittest" are selected. Self-prop systems sufficiently big and powerful to be plausible contenders for global dominance will probably number in the dozens, or possibly in the hundreds; they certainly will not number in the millions. With so few individuals from among which to select the "fittest," it seems safe to say that the process of natural selection will be inefficient in promoting the fitness for survival of the dominant global self-prop systems. It should also be noted that among biological organisms, species that consist of a relatively small number of large individuals are more vulnerable to extinction than species that consist of a large number of small individuals. Though the analogy between biological organisms and self-propagating systems of human beings is far from perfect, still the prospect for viability of a world-system based on the dominance of a few global self-prop systems does not look encouraging.

[Anonymous No.10194807]

>>10194799
The second difference is that in the absence of rapid, worldwide transportation and communication, the breakdown or the destructive action of a small-scale self-prop system has only local repercussions. Outside the limited zone where such a self-prop system has been active there will be other self-prop systems among which the process of evolution through natural selection will continue. But where rapid, worldwide transportation and communication have led to the emergence of global self-prop systems, the breakdown or the destructive action of any one such system can shake the whole world-system. Consequently, in the process of trial and error that is evolution through natural selection, it is highly probable that after only a relatively small number of "trials" resulting in "errors," the world-system will break down or will be so severely disrupted that none of the world's larger or more complex self-prop systems will be able to survive. Thus, for such self-prop systems, the trial-and-error process comes to an end; evolution through natural selection cannot continue long enough to create global self-prop systems possessing the subtle and sophisticated mechanisms that prevent destructive internal competition within complex biological organisms.

[Anonymous No.10194811]

>>10194807
Meanwhile, fierce competition among global self-prop systems will have led to such drastic and rapid alterations in the Earth's climate, the composition of its atmosphere, the chemistry of its oceans, and so forth, that the effect on the biosphere will be devastating. In Part IV of the present chapter we will carry this line of inquiry further: We will argue that if the development of the technological world-system is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, then in all probability the Earth will be left a dead planet-a planet on which nothing will remain alive except, maybe, some of the simplest organisms-certain bacteria, algae, etc.-that are capable of surviving under extreme conditions.

[Anonymous No.10194813]

>>10194811
The theory we've outlined here provides a plausible explanation for the so-called Fermi Paradox. It is believed that there should be numerous planets on which technologically advanced civilizations have evolved, and which are not so remote from us that we could not by this time have detected their radio transmissions. The Fermi Paradox consists in the fact that our astronomers have never yet been able to detect any radio signals that seem to have originated from an intelligent extraterrestrial source.
According to Ray Kurzweil, one common explanation of the Fermi Paradox is "that a civilization may obliterate itself once it reaches radio capability." Kurzweil continues: "This explanation might be acceptable if we were talking about only a few such civilizations, but [if such civilizations have been numerous], it is not credible to believe that every one of them destroyed itself" Kurzweil would be right if the self-destruction of a civilization were merely a matter of chance. But there is nothing implausible about the foregoing explanation of the Fermi Paradox if there is a process common to all technologically advanced civilizations that consistently leads them to self-destruction. Here we've been arguing that there is such a process.

[Anonymous No.10194832]

>>10194475
Global anarchism is. Global dictatorship will only shut down the space program to sustain itself.

[Anonymous No.10194841]

>>10192466
>Chimp's get fucked up by tigers.
Actually Chimps are believed to be evolving and were seen to use crude spears to fend off lions.
Which is sad because orangutans would be much better choice for successor to humanity.

[Anonymous No.10194847]

>>10194841
>orangutans would be much better choice for successor to humanity
Why?

[Anonymous No.10194849]

>>10192496
>If there is anything roaming around the universe it's more than likely a superintelligent, perhaps sentient, AI.

The WOW signal and other possible detections are actually consistent with possible post-biological mechanical civilization existing.

[Anonymous No.10194853]

[Anonymous No.10194909]

If Dyson Spheres/swarms are possible and a civilization was inclined to build them. Then they would have engulfed a significant portion of a galaxy by now. As the massive population supported by each sphere. Would allow them to expand exponentially.

Given the 14 billion years of the universe and 4 billion years for earth to conceptualize Dyson spheres. There should be at least one galaxy put there that is being engulfed. It will look like it has a dark spot on visible telescopes. Though it should glow really bright on infrared.

[Anonymous No.10195019]

>>10194909
Since it is physically impossible to rule a planet in a different solar system an everexpanding civilization is also impossible.

[Anonymous No.10195031]

>>10195019
It wouldn't be a unified civilization. Just a race of people always sending out colony missions to other stars.

[Anonymous No.10195046]

>>10195031
It's more likely they would start wars against each other since the number of nearby planets they can comfortably live on is probably very limited. E.g. if we send a generation ship to Proxima Centauri b, it is more likely they will come back centuries later to conquer earth than that they keep colonizing unhabitbale solar systems.

[Anonymous No.10195068]

>>10194847
Much smarter than chimps. Also they look cool.

[Anonymous No.10195081]

>>10194707
They can hear us though. They just can't understand. We dont hear anything from aliens.

[Anonymous No.10195085]

>>10194847
>understand object permanence
>constructs tools and shelter
>has language
>lady orangutans have been known to have sex with dudes lost in the jungle
>Understand the importance of chosing the right luxury hotels to check into
Greatest Ape.

[Anonymous No.10195248]

>>10190465
A while back, I was thinking about reasons why we haven't and/or probably never made contact/found evidence of extra-terrestrial life. This crossed my mind: what if there were life forms that in some metric are intelligent enough to create technology and space travel, but live thousands of light years away, in a system that is visible by human tech, but haven't developed faster than light speed travel/warping, w/e. However they were able to make immense structures, around their planet, which 'could' be visible by our telescopes, if not for the fact that the further we look out, the further in time we're looking back.
Basically, if we were able to observe the wider universe as it currently is, it could be entirely possible that we would be able to observe evidence of 'space-faring' aliens (how probable in that scenario is a different matter).

[Anonymous No.10195253]

>>10194791
Yes. Fuck off, anti-humanist.

[Anonymous No.10195258]

>>10195253
but it wouldn't be humans at that point, it'd just be a war machine eating the galaxy
colony ships is a much better idea, I'd be able to sleep having unleashed THAT plague upon the galaxy

[Anonymous No.10195281]

>>10190465
https://futurism.com/rethinking-space-time-nature/

[Anonymous No.10195309]

>>10195046
If you're a Dyson sphere building race. Habitable planets mean very little. As you're going to strip entire solar systems for building materials and live on the sphere.