I mean, had we gone to nuclear power immediately as soon as we could, we likely wouldn't be where we are today. The window isn't that narrow. But there are definitely certain aspects of our ape brains that make us likely to extinct ourselves.
Most other possible filters aren't as tricky. Sure stars explode, planets get hit by asteroids, and species go extinct, but those are pretty much chance events.
The hilarious part of it all is that we have a sample size of 1(and almost not even one since we haven’t hit the filter yet).
As an analogy, you need to have fire insurance, but most houses in your neighborhood don't burn down (unless you live near wildfires which for the purposes of the analogy I think we can exclude.)
I think the pessimistic argument goes something like this. There is at least one great filter, probably more. Through extreme luck, we have gotten past all but one of them and are very close to the last. We may very well be the only advanced technological civilization in our galactic cluster, and if we don't extend into space soon we are at high risk of being extinct or facing societal collapse.
It's an imperfect analogy, but what I'm saying is: If I have a lot of neighbors, I don't really care if they all have fire insurance. If I'm the only house in the neighborhood, I really need fire insurance.