Talk:Great Filter

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This page was the subject of a VfD debate on April 16, 2005. The decision was to merge and redirect to/with Fermi Paradox. See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/The Great Filter for discussion. Mackensen (talk) 05:18, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Peer reviewer

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Counterargument?

The whole section seems to be a counterargument against the FP, not the GF. --Michael C. Price ^talk 08:04, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. Can you be specific so that I can address your concerns? Viriditas (talk) 09:32, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I disagree, too. There are a whole class of "solutions" to the Fermi paradox that support the Great Filter, or at least do not contradict it - good planets are rare, it's hard for life to arise, life seldom becomes complex, complex life seldom becomes intelligent, intelligent life always self-destructs, and so on. But there are lots of FP solutions that contradict the GF, that argue that *both* life is common and our future is not bleak. These are the scenarios that should be called out in the counterarguments section. LouScheffer (talk) 13:20, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

This link gives several possibilities:

https://mindmatters.ai/2020/11/the-aliens-exist-but-evolved-into-virtual-eeality-at-a-nanoscale

It may well be, not necessarily as depicted in the article, that, given the vastness of space and time, that alien life, or us, are only around and willing and able to communicate, for a very short period of time. Therefore, life would just be like a blip that blinks briefly, in the time scale of the universe, and happening to be around when that blip is detectable is extremely unlikely, and these blips might be numerous, but over billions of years, absolutely negligible in terms of their availability to being found. That doesn’t seem so odd at all. So these civilizations would exist, but be lost to history, due to the “needle in a haystack” situation; you could not find the evidence, at least not without extremely powerful instruments, which we do not have, and you couldn’t count on being in the right place and time to find that evidence. That also leaves out the other theories in the article, such as aliens becoming super small, or that we are in a simulation, which probably can’t be proven. Any way you look at it, we are only scientifically proficient for a few hundred years; look how fast we change. Absent self-destruction, how different will we become? As some sci-fi has said, we might become as uninteresting to advanced aliens as bacteria or lesser life forms. People are just looking at this in the wrong way. Still, we could get lucky and stumble upon something, but might take a very long time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.181.192.29 (talk) 08:57, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Also:

https://www.space.com/25325-fermi-paradox.ht — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.181.192.29 (talk) 09:18, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Stephen Hawking's time travellers party

Any potential paragraphs where we can add about Stephen hawking's 2009 party, where he made a declaration inviting all the space and time travellers to come join that party. But noone joined at the specified time, so it tells that maybe no other extraterrestrial Life has achieved space or time travel, or they simply are not interested in joining that party Securearth (talk) 11:34, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

2024 comment

The Great Filter has since then been exactly identified to emerge from the generalization of the following utmost imperative macro-ethical argument and its billions of years far-reaching implications on all civilizations:

Premise 1: Evolution of life on exoplanets or solar system ice moons, if it happened or were to be caused as consequence of being risked to be caused, intentionally so or by accident, would entail an - by orders of magnitudes unprecedentedly - enormous amount of eventual far-future wild animal suffering.

Premise 2: Evolution can unfold in millions of different ways.

Premise 3: The window of possible outcomes from such evolution processes (between best and worst versions of evolution) in terms of well-being or suffering is extremely large, i.e. the interval size of the total summed up suffering is gargantuan.

Premise 4: Absolutely any form of near-future introduction of microbes to planets or moons likely leads to an intolerably/unacceptably sub-optimal or negative outcome for an enormous number of animals eventually emerging from these microbes, leading to incompensatable scales of suffering.

Conclusion: Humanity at any costs, including even MAD, must prevent/avoid so-called interplanetary/interstellar microbial forward contamination for centuries, or it loses its moral justification for its own continued existence based on utilitarianism, the fundamental ethical principle, together with the rational, unbiased-compassion-requiring but non-negotiable trolley problem solution logic.

Furthermore, all advanced alien civilizations must hide or otherwise by plain visibility across the cosmos, they risk misleading immature civilizations (e.g. ones that they could never reach) to rush towards outer space and make the above astronomically grave mistakes, crimes happen.

For further context, the internationally binding Outer Space Treaty's Article IX strictly prohibits harmful forward contamination.

(Just ignore all the nonsense beneath.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.192.195.234 (talk) 01:54, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

So you're saying that all intelligent life eventually agrees not only on the ethical point but on how best to serve it? —Tamfang (talk) 18:43, 5 February 2025 (UTC)