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
There are natural and physical barriers, like, the conditions on the planet have to be right for life to form in the first place. If it’s just a big toxic mess of nasty gases and nothing to sustain life, that’s a filter.
Then there’s the biological part, like stuff has to *evolve* properly for life to even get to advanced stages. If you have a colony of like 100 bacteria just chilling somewhere for a gazillion years and they never get the right combination of DNA to start evolving into fancier life forms, then that’s a great filter.
And another natural part, like even if stuff *does* evolve there’s no guarantee it doesn’t get erased when an asteroid decimates the planet or the star in its system explodes and there’s no more energy left for that life to grow from.
And then the technical aspect, even when all the conditions are totally perfect and things are progressing, there’s always the chance we fudge it up ourselves as “advanced beings” – could be a nuclear war destroys life as we know it so we go back a few hundred years and people never trust technology again to continue advancing, could be we destroy the environment and cause irreversible climate change.
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