great filter

[Anonymous No.11573465]

Why dont we see any other life or evidence of it? Why no galactic empires sending signals around?

Is something going to wipe us out or are we the first ever advanced race to make it this far?

Are we going to colonize the galaxy or are we doomed?

[Anonymous No.11573467]

>>11573465
space 2 big
space 2 dark
can't check
if we go there everything will be moved out of the way anyway

[Anonymous No.11573479]

>>11573465
>Why no galactic empires sending signals around?
This very moment an ant is asking another ant if there are bigger ants on the mountain and why aren't they sending pheromone trails out to others

[Anonymous No.11573482]

>>11573467
But cant a galaxy of our size be colonized in about 5 to 6 million years? We should be seeing life everywhere

[Anonymous No.11573486]

>>11573482
lmao where did you get that number from a video game?

[Anonymous No.11573504]

>>11573486

Hart, Michael H. (1975). "Explanation for the Absence of Extraterrestrials on Earth". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. 16: 128–135. Bibcode:1975QJRAS..16..128H.

They basically said that even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.

[Anonymous No.11573505]

>>11573465
The simple fact is, it's not economically possible to have a galactic empire. Maybe one day we will see a Dyson swarm. But that's it. Not to mention dark Forest is probably true

[Anonymous No.11573513]

>>11573465
There is, you just ignore the evidence found within *some* UFO reports. It is only natural the more highly advanced civilizations would find us first, not the other way around. Also, radio transmissions across space for communication is a meme and SETI is a waste of money.

[Anonymous No.11573516]

>>11573486
Check this out


https://youtu.be/UjtOGPJ0URM

[Anonymous No.11573517]

>>11573504
>They basically said
This isn't something you can just have a big think about and come up with a number. How do they even propose a civilization survives a few million years?

[Anonymous No.11573519]

>>11573504
Traversed does not mean colonized my guy. You can send a metal tube full of people/sperm and egs across the galaxy but they will all end up dead before they get to the end.

[Anonymous No.11573529]

>>11573516
I think the assumption it makes that life-forms would naturally want to leave a planet is really fucking stupid. It's the same argument people make about evolution; "why aren't we super tall and strong and everyone is a genius", because natural selection isn't a ladder. These aliens could be completely happy on their planet sitting around eating and fucking (or whatever alien equivalent) for billions of years if the environment is feasible, it's about whatever works not leaving the planet. That is not what every organism is destined to do. Honestly, it's probably not what we as a species are destined to do.

[Anonymous No.11573537]

>>11573505
Why the fuck would you build Dyson spheres/swarms instead of highly advanced and compact fusion systems? If you can engineer and build colossal systems like Dyson envisioned one would imagine you could figure out fusion and perfect it. I think the Dyson sphere idea will end up being remembered as an extreme expression of mans parasitic materialism on a grandiose scale.

[Anonymous No.11573539]

>>11573517
Heres the paper.
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1975QJRAS..16..128H&db_key=AST&page_ind=2&plate_select=NO&data_type=GIF&type=SCREEN_GIF&classic=YESIm reading it now myself

[Anonymous No.11573550]

>>11573537
Because you have all this energy being radiated into space that you're not gonna be able to use if you don't build a Dyson Swarm. Plus, it's not too dificult to turn a Dyson Swarm into a Shkadov thruster, so you can crash stars into eachother in order to harvest the energy from supernovae and farm black holes.

[Anonymous No.11573551]

>>11573465
>But once self-propagating systems have attained global scale, two crucial differences emerge. The first difference is in the number of individuals from among which the "fittest" are selected. Self-prop systems sufficiently big and powerful to be plausible contenders for global dominance will probably number in the dozens, or possibly in the hundreds; they certainly will not number in the millions. With so few individuals from among which to select the "fittest," it seems safe to say that the process of natural selection will be inefficient in promoting the fitness for survival of the dominant global self-prop systems. It should also be noted that among biological organisms, species that consist of a relatively small number of large individuals are more vulnerable to extinction than species that consist of a large number of small individuals. Though the analogy between biological organisms and self-propagating systems of human beings is far from perfect, still the prospect for viability of a world-system based on the dominance of a few global self-prop systems does not look encouraging.

[Anonymous No.11573554]

>>11573465
>The second difference is that in the absence of rapid, worldwide transportation and communication, the breakdown or the destructive action of a small-scale self-prop system has only local repercussions. Outside the limited zone where such a self-prop system has been active there will be other self-prop systems among which the process of evolution through natural selection will continue. But where rapid, worldwide transportation and communication have led to the emergence of global self-prop systems, the breakdown or the destructive action of any one such system can shake the whole world-system. Consequently, in the process of trial and error that is evolution through natural selection, it is highly probable that after only a relatively small number of "trials" resulting in "errors," the world-system will break down or will be so severely disrupted that none of the world's larger or more complex self-prop systems will be able to survive. Thus, for such self-prop systems, the trial-and-error process comes to an end; evolution through natural selection cannot continue long enough to create global self-prop systems possessing the subtle and sophisticated mechanisms that prevent destructive internal competition within complex biological organisms.

[Anonymous No.11573557]

>>11573465
>Meanwhile, fierce competition among global self-prop systems will have led to such drastic and rapid alterations in the Earth's climate, the composition of its atmosphere, the chemistry of its oceans, and so forth, that the effect on the biosphere will be devastating. In Part IV of the present chapter we will carry this line of inquiry further: We will argue that if the development of the technological world-system is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, then in all probability the Earth will be left a dead planet-a planet on which nothing will remain alive except, maybe, some of the simplest organisms-certain bacteria, algae, etc.-that are capable of surviving under extreme conditions.

[Anonymous No.11573563]

>>11573465
>The theory we've outlined here provides a plausible explanation for the so-called Fermi Paradox. It is believed that there should be numerous planets on which technologically advanced civilizations have evolved, and which are not so remote from us that we could not by this time have detected their radio transmissions. The Fermi Paradox consists in the fact that our astronomers have never yet been able to detect any radio signals that seem to have originated from an intelligent extraterrestrial source.
>According to Ray Kurzweil, one common explanation of the Fermi Paradox is "that a civilization may obliterate itself once it reaches radio capability." Kurzweil continues: "This explanation might be acceptable if we were talking about only a few such civilizations, but [if such civilizations have been numerous], it is not credible to believe that every one of them destroyed itself" Kurzweil would be right if the self-destruction of a civilization were merely a matter of chance. But there is nothing implausible about the foregoing explanation of the Fermi Paradox if there is a process common to all technologically advanced civilizations that consistently leads them to self-destruction. Here we've been arguing that there is such a process.

[Anonymous No.11573583]

>>11573465
maybe the ascension of a tier 1 to tier 0 society is shorter than we think?
has anyone ever thought of this? why bother with the effort of populating the galaxy if it's easier to ascend into infinite bliss? what's the point of living a relatively short life, even if extended to the maximum by technology, if you could simply live it out for eternity in pure unending happiness?

[Anonymous No.11573587]

It took a quarter of the lifetime of the universe to get our shit going on this garden world, and there were a million things that could've gone wrong. Why is it necessarily obvious civilizations should be abundant?

[Anonymous No.11573594]

>>11573583
You know, if you think about it this way. There is a future where, if we make it past the filter; where God and Heaven are real and every human consciousness can be "recovered" in some way then stored in the biggest SSD pleasure box ever that will remain active through heat death until it too dissolves into nothing somehow.

[Anonymous No.11573599]

>>11573550
That’s just some mad scientist shit right there. Why build massive solar arrays like that when you can just harness fusion directly in compact reactors, it would be a much less colossal and expensive endeavor, and would be possible far sooner than any Dyson system. I just think Dyson systems are ridiculous.

[Anonymous No.11573603]

>>11573587
Even by Milky Way numbers it’s not unreasonable to estimate a handful of technological civilizations. It would be rare and not even remotely abundant but with much potential to expand.

[Anonymous No.11573610]

>>11573587
there are an estimated 200–400 billion stars in the Milky Way (2–4 × 1011) and 70 sextillion (7×1022) in the observable universe. Even if intelligent life occurs on only a minuscule percentage of planets around these stars, there might still be a great number of extant civilizations, and if the percentage were high enough it would produce a significant number of extant civilizations in the Milky Way. This assumes the mediocrity principle, by which the Earth is a typical planet.

[Anonymous No.11573612]

>>11573587
because even if you consider the first 1/4 non-viable then the other 2/4 gap between then and now with the VASTNESS of just our one galaxy is so absurd that it makes no sense that it's empty without some kind of great filter.

[Anonymous No.11573628]

>>11573599
I bet you run games on minimum settings.

[Anonymous No.11573639]

>>11573465
We literally just haven't looked long enough and hard enough.

There is the distinct possibility that there could be at least simple microbial life on several other celestial bodies within our own solar system. We just need more data.

[Anonymous No.11573957]

>>11573465
>Are we going to colonize the galaxy
Maybe, but not anytime soon.
We can't even colonize the moon. Let alone other planets in the solar system.

[Anonymous No.11574033]

>>11573504
How would you sustain an empire over vast distances and no communication? Hiw would you even ensure that the ships retain enough knowledge to rebuild civilization and send another colony ship in a reasonable timeframe?

[Anonymous No.11574034]

>>11573504
How would you sustain an empire over vast distances and no communication? Hiw would you even ensure that the ships retain enough knowledge to rebuild civilization and send another colony ship in a reasonable timeframe? And how would you deal wuth the inhabitants evolving more suitable to their new home planet, possibly affecting intelligence in umpredictable ways?

[Anonymous No.11574036]

>>11573639
The point is, light from those civilizations/structures (if they really do exist) should have reached us by now. We're not detecting ANY signs of intelligent beings out there. That is not right.

[Anonymous No.11574038]

>>11573537
Because capturing the energy is cheaper and easier than creating artificial fusion and capturing its energy. You need to collect the energy either way and creating a reactor is an unnecesary extra step.

[Anonymous No.11574063]

>>11573539
One explanation they seem to miss is that planets are just not very interesting for highly advanced civilization. Perhaps colonizing planets from their perspective sounds just as absurd as living in a rainforest would seem to us.

[Anonymous No.11575891]

>>11574036
What if a galactic civilization appeared ~100 years ago in a galaxy 100 million light years away? They'd be there, but we wouldn't know for literally millions of years. It is ABSOLUTELY right, or at least makes some sense, if you know literally anything about how time and distances work.

[Anonymous No.11575921]

People really overestimate mans capability in Astronomy. It was still widely suspected that Mars and Venus had developed civilisations a century ago and we’ve only seen for sure that other Stars have planets at all let alone habitable planets in the last 20-30 years and that radius of exoPlanet visibile Universe is a pinprick on a map of the Milkyway let alone the Universe.

[Anonymous No.11575932]

>>11575921

>It was still widely suspected that Mars and Venus had developed civilisations a century ago

back to /x/ and /pol/

[Anonymous No.11576782]

Not only is space fuck-all huge, it's also fuck-all young. We've been around for, what, some 12-14 billion years? When, among the 0.0000000000000000....1% of the known universe, we've seen stars that will last magnitudes upon magnitudes longer than that. Assuming some accelerated death of the universe doesn't happen.

Although unlikely, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say we're probably one of the first civilizations to exist.

[Anonymous No.11576789]

>>11576782
Everyone knows that atoms are shrinking, getting exponentially heavier, and the universe is infinitely old.

[Anonymous No.11576795]

>>11575932
What do you mean? He's right.

[Anonymous No.11578321]

>>11576782
>Although unlikely, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say we're probably one of the first civilizations to exist.
>humanity becomes the sci-fi precursors
That's fucking crazy to me

[Anonymous No.11578345]

>>11573529
>These aliens could be completely happy on their planet sitting around eating and fucking (or whatever alien equivalent) for billions of years

Some could. But all of them? Remember, it only takes one civilization willing to expand..

[Anonymous No.11578361]

>>11574034
1. very long lifetimes / immortality

2. there is no need to assume a centralized empire in the first place

[Anonymous No.11578364]

>>11575891
>What if a galactic civilization appeared ~100 years ago

Gross violation of mediocrity principle and thus extremely unlikely.

If there are alien civs out there, they are millions or even billions of years old.

[Anonymous No.11578369]

>>11576782
>we've seen stars that will last magnitudes upon magnitudes longer

Red dwarfs. May not be good for life.

[Anonymous No.11578370]

>>11578345
I would say most, in the entire universe. The chances there is an alien race advanced enough to own an interstellar empire in our own galaxy is super fucking small in and of itself. Because we have already received every wavelength humanly possible within this and several others.

If there is an interstellar race out there, it's definetly not in our galaxy and probably not in the next 100,000 galaxies next to us.

[Anonymous No.11578381]

>>11578370
>If there is an interstellar race out there, it's definetly not in our galaxy and probably not in the next 100,000 galaxies next to us.

So either intelligent life is extremely rare or something is killing them off..

[Anonymous No.11578392]

>>11578381
I'm thinking really really rare, and dying off.

[Anonymous No.11578442]

Oh my God, its the Humans, lets try to keep them out of our neighborhood

[Anonymous No.11578461]

>>11573465
I guess faster than light travel isnt easily achievable

>>11573505
Also this

[Anonymous No.11578746]

>>11573465
Sci-fi stories often have some sort of mysterious ancient civilization that's been around for way longer than most others and developed borderline-magic technologies. We're one of those except still millions of years before we actually become cool.

[Anonymous No.11578762]

>>11573465
The more I learn, the less I think we're actually an "advanced" species. Comparing yourself to a monkey or a worm can't really give you a good idea of how intelligent you are. It is all relative. With that said, I'm pretty sure we're doomed.

[Anonymous No.11578781]

>>11573957
2001: A Space Odyssey already gave us the basic idea for what is needed for colonization of anything other than new continents. We must becomes starchildren. I.e. we must first master that which makes us human before we can adapt to new environments in the cosmos. This is evolution not by random chance, but one governed by ideas, by computation, by the relationships between things, not by things themselves.

[Anonymous No.11579315]

>>11578781
>2001: A Space Odyssey already gave us the basic idea for what is needed for colonization of anything other than new continents. We must becomes starchildren. I.e. we must first master that which makes us human before we can adapt to new environments in the cosmos
Those scifi stories that only have scifi in thd background and instead deal with some retarded philosophical issues are the worst.

[Anonymous No.11579867]

>>11578746
Pretty sure this is actually the case.

We're kind of just on the dawn of realizing we can become a truly spacefaring civilization.

[Anonymous No.11580119]

>>11573465
Space IS time. Because the distances in space (and TIME) are so large then it is improbable that two advanced civilizations ever exist simultaneously.

[Anonymous No.11580326]

>>11579315
Can you give examples of tech based plot sci-fi media? I suggest for you the Europa Report

[Anonymous No.11580417]

>>11573465
we are the niggers of the interstellar race world

[Anonymous No.11580448]

>>11573505
based dark forestchad

[Anonymous No.11580602]

>>11578781
We basocally need to be able to survive long term in space, at which point there will be little reason for colonizing planeys, instead of staying in the comfort and safety of our ships.