this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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I'm beginning to think that Homo sapiens sapiens are not the good guys.
We're the best at using our intelligence for stupid shit
We're just intelligent enough to fuck everything up.
Yep. That’s the Great Filter concept. Certain stages on the evolutionary path may lead to extinction, and only the smartest species are able to pass the filter unharmed. In our case, the discovery of fossil fuels and nuclear weapons may be those kinds of stages.
Imagine what happens if we pass this filter and become an intergalactic species. Maybe one day we’ll start tinkering with technology capable of destroying a star, galaxy or the entire universe. If we are smart enough to squeeze energy out of the very fabric of space, we might also be dumb enough to cause the entire universe to collapse or something like that.
It’s a proposed solution to the fermi paradox. The idea is that we don’t see aliens out there in the stars, because they all nuked themselves to oblivion at some stage. Maybe they never reached the stars, before they destroyed their home planet. Maybe they blew up their own star and didn’t reach another one in time. Maybe their entire galaxy got sucked into a home-made black hole.
"Will detonating this nuclear bomb set the atmosphere on fire?"
"Meh, probably not."
Will this antimatter reactor consume the entire planet?
Meh, probably not.
What if it is the accumulation of filters that no one can pass?
People get wrapped up in speculation about which stage may be the great filter, but it’s not as if they end. They just keep adding up. We need to keep passing all the filters we already pass plus all the filters yet to come
That’s a very good addition. The old filters are still there and any one of them could still come back and bite us. However, when better technology becomes available, the older filters become less and less of a problem. Let’s take the bioweapons as an example. At the moment, we can develop cures and vaccines, but that technology has its limits. Perhaps one day our biotech is advanced enough that stopping a bioweapon from harming the citizens is as trivial as updating some software and changing a few passwords. Likewise, the climate catastrophe becomes less and less of an issue if the species is no longer bound to a single planet, but can also thrive in space.