Comment by borissk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by borissk | Hacker News Reader

Makes the Fermi paradox even more interesting and the hypothesis of a great filter more likely.

IMHO there's a fair chance we're past such a filter. The origin of life from simple organic matter (abiogenesis) may be extremely unlikely (although most researchers currently working on this say it was probably not that complicated). Or the origin of big, energy rich cell life (eucaryotes) was a very rare event (it did require colossal changes in a very short time frame). Or maybe the origin and survival of intelligence is the hard part.

But i think more likely the filter is ahead of us. Less than a century ago we invented nuclear weapons. Already had a few near misses on a civilization ending nuclear war. More and more countries are acquiring such weapons. And this is provided we got extremely lucky that separating weapon grade isotope of uranium from the naturally occurring ores on Earth surface is very hard. If it was easier for small dictatorships and organizations like Isis to get nukes we'd be probably back to stone age by now. And with the scientific and technological progress going faster than ever, sooner or later we will invent even more powerful weapons, that are easier to produce - which will make the survival of the human race problematic.

Honestly - I feel the filter is ahead of us, too. We have to contend with two major issues right now, that may determine the fate of our planet (and subsequently, the human race): climate change, and nuclear war. And soon, maybe AI? But I feel we are still quite a ways off for that.

Perhaps it's already here. In reference to a different thread about Japan's population decline, it is supposed there that advanced economies lead to population decline (via below replacement birthrates) and require immigration to sustain them. The problem is that those immigrants who choose to remain are that they or their decendents will eventually suffer the same below replacement birthrate. If everywhere becomes an advanced economy, then in theory, everywhere would suffer the same fate, and the great filter has won. But it's just a supposition, right.

This is a relatively easy problem to solve, give families more and more incentives to have kids. Personally I view this as a non-issue. If a population decline reaches a truly severe level, we'll just implement a more comprehensive solution

There’s a non zero chance of two great filters ahead of us, expanding sun or asteroid impact

Yeah, I was gonna say, I think catastrophes are a simpler example. Good chance of that or supervolcano, or any of the above.

There could be that if you bundle together all of these major events that either kill all, or set us back, that it takes more than 5-10 billion years to produce a civilization that can advance far beyond their planet.

The dinosaurs were close to 0.1 billion years ago, and they existed for 0.165 billion years. So repeat 100 tries and your luck runs out. Sorry if there's math or other mistakes.

Of course we haven't had 0.1 billion years of intelligent life, but 0.003 billion... I believe there were more than one extinction event in the 0.165B years of dinosaurs.

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