According to the Fermi paradox, there are multiple filters and a great filter that civilizations have to pass to keep evolving. What are these barriers?
In: 17
Okay, instead of giving specific examples let’s first think about a definition:
A great filter is any requirement, obstacle or scenario that is likely to happen no matter the origin point, and that if not worked out successfully has the potential to inhibit a formation of a civilization before it gains the ability to communicate it’s own presence to other such civilizations. This is the technical explaination of the term, but in simpler words it just means anything that might happen that results in an alien civilization either not forming, not achieving technological progress, regressing in progress, or completely dying off before they are detectable by us – if you assume that the answer to Fermi Paradox is that “other civilizations capable of communication don’t exist” then the great filters are possible reasons as to “why they don’t exist” that can be universally applied to most hypothetical alien life scenarios.
There are several categories of great filters depending on which stage of intelligent civilization development we are talking about:
– Complex life never forms: the leap from prokaryotic to eukaryotic life is extremely rare, leap from cellular to multicellular is pretty rare, leap from simple autotrophs to more complex organisms is rare, leap from complex life to intelligent life is pretty rare.
– Intelligent life never forms civilization: most intelligent life forms in the universe stay as hunter-gatherers, agricultural societies die out to new illnesses before they get a chance to spread.
– civilizations never go technological: most civilizations stay at the tribal level, most environments in the universe lack resources necessary for technological progress(for example oil or substitutes), most civilizations face the “roman cycle” achieving a certain level of progress too fast then crumbling under themselves losing that progress
– Technological civilizations kill themselves off before achieving communication: all civilizations are prone to war and as such they kill themselves off with weapons of mass destruction, there is a dangerous technology in our future that we are not aware of that is deadly if created that destroys most civilizations, there exists a point of technological singularity where we can’t control our progress anymore and it takes us over, there is a point of reverse singularity that lays before us achieving the ability for long distance communication resulting in it simply being not possible, natural technological progress leads to exploitation of the biosphere and global climate change resulting in civilizations making their planets inhospitable.
Latest Answers