this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
144 points (95.6% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27036 readers
1219 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Bluetreefrog@lemmy.world
candyman337@lemmy.world
TheSaneWriter@lemm.ee
TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com
candyman337@sh.itjust.works
Asudox@lemmy.world
can@lemmy.ca
lemmy_bot@lemmy.world
beefbaby182@lemmy.world
asudox@discuss.tchncs.de
ModeratorCan@lemmy.world
144
What do you think the Great Filter is? (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago by Cryophilia@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
229 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. As a 2015 article put it, "If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

Personally I think it's photosynthesis. Life itself developed and spread but photosynthesis started an inevitable chain of ever-greater and more-efficient life. I think a random chain of mutations that turns carbon-based proto-life into something that can harvest light energy is wildly unlikely, even after the wildly unlikely event of life beginning in the first place.

I have no data to back that up, just a guess.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Honorable mention: we haven't detected alien probes, because intelligent alien societies haven't begun consuming the galaxy with exponential numbers of self-replicating robotic probes, because that's just a really bad idea:

Simple workarounds exist to avoid the over-replication scenario. Radio transmitters, or other means of wireless communication, could be used by probes programmed not to replicate beyond a certain density (such as five probes per cubic parsec) or arbitrary limit (such as ten million within one century), analogous to the Hayflick limit in cell reproduction. One problem with this defence against uncontrolled replication is that it would only require a single probe to malfunction and begin unrestricted reproduction for the entire approach to fail – essentially a technological cancer – unless each probe also has the ability to detect such malfunction in its neighbours and implements a seek and destroy protocol (which in turn could lead to probe-on-probe space wars if faulty probes first managed to multiply to high numbers before they were found by sound ones, which could then well have programming to replicate to matching numbers so as to manage the infestation).

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oh my god, that's such a stupid and simple way to kill a galaxy, but also what a great plot twist that would make in a story. Like the big reveal over why the galaxy has always been at war with itself. Exactly the kind of nihilism I'd expect from an Altered Carbon or its ilk.

Thanks for sharing!

[–] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You might like the paperclip maximizer thought experiment

Also an excellent clicker style game called Universal Paperclips

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2 points 5 months ago

Thanks I have heard of this kind of problem before, just not in an adversarial space war context, with like opposing forces

[–] notabot@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

There's an easier and more reliable way to limit replication; don't hive them the means to create a small but essential part, and instead load the first probe woth many copies of it and have each replica take a set percentage.

For instance, have the probe able to replicate everything but its CPU, and just load up a rack of them on probe 0. Every time it replicates itself it passes half of its remaining stock to the replica and they both carry on from there.