Given all the mistakes we have and continue to make in our efforts to conquer our fears of what each other are doing on this planet, how are we going to evolve to the next plain unless we do some serious GM work on what we are, this is the way it is. We must create our own modified species to continue our journey through time and space,this species will be us, that is the way it will be. One of the more successful species here on earth is clearly that of the great filter and that is the Duck Bill Platypus all it lacks is our so called intelligence. Through our very short history here, we have always obsessed with conjoining species, through our hieroglyphs, our mythology and our sciences, this must be the way we ourselves are put together and that would be why we keep trying in order to get back to the true and perfect being we are to be. As we create a self that is capable of time travel and the establishment of an engineered species capable of existing in other environments currently unfriendly to this existing form. Sorry we may be looking into a window of the past when we seek what was of Mars, this will only excel the urgency that we already perceive. Lets get on with it we've got a long ways to go.
Another plausibility is that we're in the midst of a grand plan orchestrated by the God of the bible.
I see from comments here that religion and science are not far apart, i.e., advanced intelligent life that observes us but has the technology not to be discovered. This sounds very much like religious arguments that God exists but has set the path to his discovery through faith based on the historical and scientific evidence we have.
Many of the posts refer to intelligence and how aliens or even future mankind could be 10000 times smarter than people today. And, due to this higher intelligence their motivation may not be understandable to us today. God could be this highly advanced alien life form who seeded the earth for his own purpose, seeking what God perceives as the best attributes from his creation, namely those listed in ch. 13 of Cor. At least with this theory there is more at hand to investigate.
The "Great Filter" could be any number of things, or, maybe not relevant at all due to all the unknowns. We just do not have enough information to make a logical decision, and, based on many posts here, we may not obtain this information for thousands or millions of years.
If you look at the direction our own technology has taken over the past 50 years, the greatest advances haven't come in making big things bigger, but in making small things smaller, more complex and more efficient. A computer that was once the size of a basketball court and consumed more energy than a hundred homes can now fit in the palm of your hand and be powered by a single AAA battery.
We've seen no comparable technological advancement in any other field. Compare and contrast with, say, fusion power. Not only are we no closer to practical fusion, if anything the challenge appears to grow tougher and tougher the more we try. We're more likely to develop highly efficient, inexpensive solar panels in my lifetime than we are to make fusion practical as a power source.
There's now serious talk of atomic - and even sub-atomic - computing devices, a seemingly infinite regression, a universe to explore and exploit inside every atom. Instead of voyaging to outer space in massive starships, we're traversing inner space and developing information processing and materials technologies with which we could - theoretically - replace our existing organic bodies and minds with far more sophisticated synthetic systems.
Imagine a civilization with computer technology so advanced they could store every book, every piece of recorded music, every film in something the size of a sugar cube. With the ability to replace the computing power of the human mind with a device that could fit on the head of a pin. Such technology certainly isn't as far fetched as mighty fusion-powered space cruisers, based on how far microprocessor technology has come over the past 50 years.
I think the reason why "they" aren't here is because "they" aren't traveling. There's no need. At some point any technological civilization out there downloads itself into its ever more sophisticated computing devices and leaves the real world for a virtual one of its own design. They aren't interested in reality, or if they are, they have the remote sensing technology needed to bring reality to them. They certainly aren't going to slog for decades or centuries across the universe, burning up tons of resources just to visit some rock when they can simulate it with perfect accuracy from the comfort of their virtual living rooms. I mean, if you had a holodeck at your house which allowed you to travel anywhere in the world at any time and see and interact with anything you want, would you bother to actually travel there instead? Of course you wouldn't. Why spend 8 hours sitting on a stupid plane when you could be in Paris or Fiji in 10 seconds.
The Great Filter isn't the result of some technological tragedy, it's the byproduct of technological triumphs. They aren't here and they aren't coming not because they can't, but because they don't need to. Highly advanced technological civilizations are the ultimate couch potatoes.
Do not discount the Singularity. It may be that once a certain technological threshold is reached, the Great Filter becomes corporeal existence. And it happens at such great speed that these civilizations leave little spoor. Go ahead, I dare you to extrapolate a marginally possible future 100 years from now, let alone a thousand. Great way to get around the speed of light, too. (Wouldn't it be funny if our corporeal frailties survived the transfer? Such transcendent beings might long for the good old physical days. That's the universe for you.)
On the other hand, I had a biology teacher who posited that the less-intelligent a person was, the easier it was for them to be happy and that evolution may choose for this. Not much spoor here either. Thats thuh, uh, yooniverse 4r U.
Should we find life evolved on Mars, but died out; or that its busily swimming around the hydrothermal vents of Europa and in the seas of Titan, but has never evolved into anything smart enough to have a conversation with us, then I think the case mounts for the great filter laying behind us. After all, on multiple occasions life would have evolved around a G class star, but only once would it have bothered to invent space probes, suggesting the probability of inteligent life evolving is somewhat smaller than that of life in general evolving. (And one's finger might start to point towards the moon and the habitable zone, as the great filter.)
OTOH if we find no evidence of life anywhere in the solar system, then one could infer the great filter lies in front of us. After all, life may be unlikely, but there are still sufficient G dwarfs in the galaxy that it should have evolved somewhere. So we might argue life has evolved, but has been dispensed with by the great filter, which might one day gobble us up too.
So I'd argue exactly the reverse.
PS: the numbers are stars are misleading - some of the hottest star are very short lived (just 1 million years on the main sequence). While some of the longest lived stars will be deficient in the elements necessary for life. And finally, given all the hot jupiters, small rocky planets may not be as common as we think.
Such as "intelligence" being an evolutionary dead end? In the simplest terms: Why are we here?
To eat... Why?
To make more. Isn't that what life is all about? Isn't it the "goal" of evolution to do these two things with an ever greater efficiency? Yet, what do we do? We kill, we poison, we pollute; sure, but looking on the bright side, the higher the level of wealth and technology, the lower the birth rate. The longer the life span, the greater the health, the more time we find "to make things better." Like "proper diet and exercise," like "emotional wellness," like genetic screening. We are not diversifying, we're condensing. We're gradually coalescing into an homogenized ideal, a downward spiral that can only become more pronounced with advancing technology. And everyone wants "better," but "better" can't be "better" if it ain't "better" than the Joneses, if you catch my drift...
Yet if one still thinks of "filters," how about all that methane at the bottom of the sea? So much that it could bubble up and literally ignite the atmosphere, and no one can say for sure why it just doesn't go and do that. Then we'd see some real "global warming," rather than the political scam being bandied about... How about a rock? What's the chance of a K-T type asteroid hitting right now, prematurely ending my rant? About seven thousand percent from what I hear... And did I hear "Mayan?" Aren't we all supposed to be dead in four years? Maybe not, but the basing of history on catastrophic cycles has a couple of proponents due to arrive any time now. One being the reversal of the magnetic poles, which is likely to reset the evolutionary clock; and then there's the Galactic Broom sweeping away all complications every twenty-six thousand years... I mean, the more one learns, the more one wonders how we're still here, never mind them. Which is to say... Shame on you, sir! (Meaning the author) There's plenty of scientific potentials based upon current, real-world variables to get depressed over if one is so inclined, but to sincerely hope against discovering life beyond this ball of mud (an unknown variable) just to avoid some vague, blue-sky doppleganger... that ain't science, that's superstition. Shouldn't you be in church or something? Kidding. I enjoyed the article and the four hours of thinking it inspired. I just don't agree with hoping against discovery.
I apologize if this idea has been brought up in a different thread: perhaps life on Earth is the result of a von Neumann probe. I suspect that this impacts Dr. Bostrom's argument.
lazertat
2
Simply put.... are we not primative aliens
We must create our own modified species to continue our journey through time and space,this species will be us, that is the way it will be.
One of the more successful species here on earth is clearly that of the great filter and that is the Duck Bill Platypus all it lacks is our so called intelligence.
Through our very short history here, we have always obsessed with conjoining species, through our hieroglyphs, our mythology and our sciences, this must be the way we ourselves are put together and that would be why we keep trying in order to get back to the true and perfect being we are to be. As we create a self that is capable of time travel and the establishment of an engineered species capable of existing in other environments currently unfriendly to this existing form.
Sorry we may be looking into a window of the past when we seek what was of Mars, this will only excel the urgency that we already perceive.
Lets get on with it we've got a long ways to go.