How the 'Great Filter' could explain why we haven't found intelligent aliens

[Admin]

One possible reason why we haven't found any intelligent life in the cosmos the Great Filter argument, which says that very few civilizations make it to the advanced spacefaring stage.

How the 'Great Filter' could explain why we haven't found intelligent aliens : Read more

 

[Xoo]

I would argue that the missing requirement is energy at a lower level of technology: without fossil fuels, say, on Earth, there could have been no advanced technology. What are the chances of a random planet having the conditions to create coal or oil? I'd say pretty low, at which point, you'd be stuck around the technology of the 16-1700's.

 

[Classical Motion]

Intelligent life is life that is required to create what is needs. Intelligent life is totally dumb life. Lack of knowledge is the only reason for creating. And only humans are born ignorant. All others are pre-programmed.

We come into this world naked. We have nothing. No hide. No claws. No hooves for escape. No fangs. No camouflage. And most important of all, no knowledge. We are not sure of anything. Except that we can be eaten. And we feel pain.

We are creators. We have to be. We have to create and make everything we need.

Intelligence is the degree of creating. And the degree of choice. Recognizing a future.

We create concepts too, to replace that lack of knowledge. To make some kind of sense of this.

But so far, no one has seen the light for what it truly is.

 

[Hildy]

To me, two things stand out. Desire and Perspective.

Desire - A galactic spanning civilization has to want to be galactic spanning. The only civilization we know of was built on conquest and colonialism. Surely other, more peaceful, civilizations arise in the cosmos who are content to stay in their own backyard. Besides, if you have the technology to create a generation ship, why launch it? Just use it as a space habitat in your own solar system.

Perspective - Spanning the galaxy would take multi-millennium year plans which seem unlikely when most species (ours and extraterrestrial) evolved from individuals whose planning started with "what's for dinner?"

 

[Moonwatcher]

One possible reason why we haven't found any intelligent life in the cosmos the Great Filter argument, which says that very few civilizations make it to the advanced spacefaring stage.

How the 'Great Filter' could explain why we haven't found intelligent aliens : Read more

We have an example size of one. Us. It is hard, in fact impossible, to fathom any conclusions from a sample of one. Everything these "thinkers" conceive is based on thin air, mere conjecture at best.

 

[Gerold]

Perhaps “Where?” is the wrong question. It should be ‘When?”
Our ability to navigate or communicate with the stars is commensurate with our ability to destroy ourselves. Intelligent life may be just a short flash-in-the-pan with vast periods of time between.
So, when is other life? Probably long before we were here and long after we’re gone.

 

[mikem12188]

Maybe we're not as smart as we think we are.

 

[Dave Wells]

Fantastic article. Perhaps another obstacle is the problem with communication. We have only been sending out radio signals in the past 100 years, so it's possible that other advanced civilizations have been sending out signals but they have not reached us yet.

 

[rod]

"But seriously, where is everybody?"

Apparently they are not at these exoplanets documented now. So far, exoplanets documented today, none are confirmed with life on them, little or big, smart or not so smart

7367, https://exoplanet.eu/home/

5788, https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/index.html

 

[Bango_Skank]

One possible reason why we haven't found any intelligent life in the cosmos the Great Filter argument, which says that very few civilizations make it to the advanced spacefaring stage.

How the 'Great Filter' could explain why we haven't found intelligent aliens : Read more

Well, the answer depends on how fast you're moving. At relativistic speeds, it might just take a year or 2 to make it across the galaxy. No telling what our protagonist explorers might find!

 

[Classical Motion]

Faster than light speeds would have to be straight lines. No time to turn. If anything is in the way of that line, all the matter and you would be fragmented far beyond CERN.

My latest numbers say that the MW is about 110 thousand light years in diameter. There might be newer numbers. 110,000 LY. Assuming a symmetrical disk.

It would still take a lot of time to transverse. If one could find a clear path. The paradox is that we only know where the stars use to be, not where they are now. ANY plot is a true shot in the dark.

The only safe way to explore the galaxy quickly is with a superluminal EM teleporter.

But if we could understand mass and matter, the only need to explore would be curiosity. Not as a needed solution. Space travel shouldn’t be necessary.

And besides breaking distance and time is only a dream. I want is all it is. We envy the idea.

 

[JJ/B]

Maybe we're not as smart as we think we are.

Would truly intelligent life want us to find them at our current state of development?

 

[arturner29]

This question is based on the assumption that intelligent alien civilations must be like us, with a desire to go out and 'colonize' the entire galaxy or universe with no concern for other life that might already be there, or could potentially arise. The fact that we don't see any of those galactic colonizers with their photon torpedos aimed at us from giant military fleets ready to conquer and destroy just means there aren't any (or they haven't got here yet ... ). It doesn't mean intelligent species aren't abundant. It could mean that the universe filters out those who would desire to go and 'colonize' other planets. Species with this attitude just don't make it. How has that colonizing attitude worked out for us so far? Depends on who you ask I suppose, hmmm, how about asking the native north americans, australians, africans ..., or all the species of animals and plants we are currently eliminating, or the planet itself, you know, our home. Only a bunch of complete idiots would destroy their entire planet and dream about doing the same thing over and over and over again to all the other planets in the universe, and then wonder why nobody else is here doing the same thing to us. Then we declare since 'they' aren't here colonizing us, they don't exist, or call it a paradox and endlessly debate it! Yup, I'm convinced, we are alone!

 

[ChrisA]

I would argue that the missing requirement is energy at a lower level of technology: without fossil fuels, say, on Earth, there could have been no advanced technology. What are the chances of a random planet having the conditions to create coal or oil? I'd say pretty low, at which point, you'd be stuck around the technology of the 16-1700's.

Fossil fuels made it easy. But without them we would have been using renewable energy. Maybe wood and charcoal and then water power. Or maybe if there fossil fuels were even easier to dig up we would have burned them at a faster rate and destroyed the planet.

I suspect that intelligence is far rarer than we think. Smart enough aliens would use mirrors to make solar heat, or windmills or whatever. But there are simply no smart aliens close enough for us to notice.

 

[bwana4swahili]

One possible reason why we haven't found any intelligent life in the cosmos the Great Filter argument, which says that very few civilizations make it to the advanced spacefaring stage.

How the 'Great Filter' could explain why we haven't found intelligent aliens : Read more

I suspect we're simply too technologically incompetent to detect other intelligent life forms in the galaxy/universe. Or they don't want to be detected by aggressive homo sapiens.

 

[ChrisA]

I suspect we're simply too technologically incompetent to detect other intelligent life forms in the galaxy/universe. Or they don't want to be detected by aggressive homo sapiens.

That can't be the reason because the universe is so old that by now it should be filled to overflowing with the remnants of thousands of civilizations. By now, every single place they could have been would be occupied, not once but by several civilizations.

It can't be that they don't want to contact us. "They" should have existed for billions of years before our Sun was born. So our inability to see then is not the result of one civilization not wanting us to see them but thousands of such civilizations, most of which were long gone before the Earth formed all independently decided to cover their tracks.

That is so unlikely. A better explanation is that these civilizations never existed.

It is just plain dumb and wrong to make up elaborate explanations when there is a simple explanation -- there are no aliens. We see no aliens for the very same reason we see no pink flying unicorns.

 

[Joexo]

the universe is so old that by now it should be filled to overflowing with the remnants of thousands of civilizations. By now, every single place they could have been would be occupied, not once but by several civilization

Couldn't also be the case that civilizations are so incredibly rare that maybe one or two happen per galaxy?

I don't see why we should assume that it's either none or thousands.

 

[arturner29]

We see no aliens for the very same reason we see no pink flying unicorns.

We see no aliens (from advanced technological civilizations) because:

1) They are here and we can't/haven't detected them because we don't recognize advanced alien technology.
2) They aren't here but they are out there and we haven't been able to detect them, either because we don't recognize the evidence of them, we don't know what the evidence would look like or our tools for looking aren't advanced enough to detect them.
3) They are here, we can detect them but nobody knows what they are. Some UAP sightings are unexplainable, but that's just it, they can't be explained, they can only be guessed at what they might be.
4) They are here, we can detect them, some of us know what they are, but any detections are ridiculed, covered up, and denied, by those in power/those who know
5) They don't exist anywhere in our galaxy close enough for us to detect, but they do exist in other parts of our galaxy, they either have no interest in coming here or communicating with us, or they are coming and we just need to wait for them to get here.
6) They don't exist anywhere else our galaxy but do exist in other galaxies, but they are too far away to detect
7) They don't exist anywhere else in the universe

It's not as simple as you suggested. You only pick 7) because that is your preference and anyone who picks it would stop looking, right? And if you do continue to look, why not do it with an open mind instead of a preconcieved illogical belief.

Lack of (general public) evidence for advanced aliens does not logically lead to the conclusion that they don't exist.

"Carl Sagan's quote, “Absence of Evidence does not mean Evidence of Absence” can be simplified to mean that the lack of evidence for the existence of something does not necessarily prove that it does not exist at all."

Do we actually know what an advanced civilization would look like? Extrapolating the one example we have (us) to greater and greater technology, that we recognize, obviously isn't working in terms of finding advanced intelligence elsewhere in the universe.

Wasn't it Arthur C. Clark who said that a sufficiently advanced civilization would be indistinguishable from nature. What would a civilization a billion years in advance of us look like? If you saw it would you recognize it as an advanced technological civilization?

Below is an interesting article with the following suggestion:
“In this light, the Sustainability Solution to the Fermi Paradox contains a philosophical takeaway: it tells a story of the convergence of the technosphere with the planet’s pre-existing conditions, rather than the story of replacement or dominance,” Likavčan writes.

Instead of humans being primary, or even existing life being primary, it’s planets that are primary. So a technosphere is only sustainable when it expands or strengthens a planet’s genesity. That puts efforts like SETI, and our understanding of our own civilization’s trajectory, in a new light.

Advanced Civilizations Could be Indistinguishable from Nature

Can civilizations really expand technologically until they build Dyson Spheres? Or do they need to conform to biospheres to survive?

www.universetoday.com

 

[ChrisA]

Couldn't also be the case that civilizations are so incredibly rare that maybe one or two happen per galaxy?

I don't see why we should assume that it's either none or thousands.

Let's assume the number is small, let's say just two. (us and them) But going on just pure chance probability, any civilization should be much older than Earth's. We are so new that we have only a few thousand years of written history. In a galaxy that was billions of years old before the Sun even existed, most other civilizations should be much older than we are.

It only tasks one civilization to colonize the entire galaxy using only non-science-fiction slower-then-light travel. We have to conclude that either (1) there was never even one other civilization or (2) travel between stars is impossible.

Again you only need one alien civilization and 200 million years and then signs of them should be every place you look.

 

[bolide]

It isn't just a question of whether any other intelligent life, capable of interstellar communication, exists. It's a question of whether it exists at the same time as us, and in a location where we could find it in that time frame. An alien civilization that is impossible for us to detect is indistinguishable from none at all.

 

[arturner29]

Let's assume the number is small, let's say just two. (us and them) But going on just pure chance probability, any civilization should be much older than Earth's. We are so new that we have only a few thousand years of written history. In a galaxy that was billions of years old before the Sun even existed, most other civilizations should be much older than we are.

It only tasks one civilization to colonize the entire galaxy using only non-science-fiction slower-then-light travel. We have to conclude that either (1) there was never even one other civilization or (2) travel between stars is impossible.

Again you only need one alien civilization and 200 million years and then signs of them should be every place you look.

We have to conclude that either (1) there was never even one other civilization - that wants to colonize the entire galaxy or (2) travel between stars is not impossible - extasolar objects like Oumuamua
do it all the time, just hitch a ride on one of those going in the direction you want. These two conclusions are based assumptions that at least one civilization currently exists and has ability and the desire to colonize the entire galaxy, and if it exists it would have already done so. There are 4 assumptions in that statement, based on guesses not facts. Travel between stars can be done with the technology we have now, it would just take a long time, but as you mentioned it could be done in several hundred million years, or a fraction of the age of the universe. Taking time into account, there could have been multiple technological colonizing species that have risen and fallen, before our planet was even formed. We might currently be the only one currently in our galaxy approaching that technology with that colonization idea in our minds.

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[Dave]

We should also consider our future. The start of the industrial revolution occurred not that long ago in the grand scheme of things. Today we have the ISS an interstellar ship that has been in orbit for decades. It has been great progress in a very short time. We will continue to build ships and look for life. We are just not quite there yet. Our telescopes are not that advanced. For all we know there is intelligent life on Proxima b. We will continue to grow in both a progressive way and on a social level. We have only explored the tip of the iceberg as far as the worlds out there. In time we will be where we wish to be. Intelligent lifeforms and advanced species are there . We have not found them yet. We need just a bit more time.

 

[Gibsense]

Despite other human species with larger brains not surviving, we are fortunate to be here, having once been reduced to just a few hundred individuals. Our sense of superiority is astounding, and the notion that we are the only intelligent species is simply incorrect. Killer whales, elephants, octopuses, and even crows display significant intelligence.

Intelligence is widespread and almost inevitable in a competitive environment. Our survival can be attributed to being in the right place at the right time and just barely making it through. Developing on land, having fingers, and other factors played crucial roles. While there are undoubtedly many more factors, these seem particularly evident.

Add in our fortunate Solar System, our large (!) moon, and our Star's position in the galaxy (popping out of chaos - even if we are about to dip in again) and it becomes less amazing to be isolated, but one thing trumps the lot: Evolution.

The belief that evolution has reached its ultimate peak is quite amusing. The idea that we are a mega pinnacle is laughable. We are about to see the emergence of the next step: AI/Machine Intelligence, Cyborgs, and genetically changed biologicals including ourselves.

So, generally, we look quite boring except to alien historians who might consider us to be on the cusp of birthing real life.

 

[bwana4swahili]

That can't be the reason because the universe is so old that by now it should be filled to overflowing with the remnants of thousands of civilizations. By now, every single place they could have been would be occupied, not once but by several civilizations.

It can't be that they don't want to contact us. "They" should have existed for billions of years before our Sun was born. So our inability to see then is not the result of one civilization not wanting us to see them but thousands of such civilizations, most of which were long gone before the Earth formed all independently decided to cover their tracks.

That is so unlikely. A better explanation is that these civilizations never existed.

It is just plain dumb and wrong to make up elaborate explanations when there is a simple explanation -- there are no aliens. We see no aliens for the very same reason we see no pink flying unicorns.

We just haven't found those pink flying unicorns (yet). As for aliens, lack of evidence doesn't prove anything other than the fact we just haven't found the evidence (yet).

 

[bolide]

We should also consider our future. The start of the industrial revolution occurred not that long ago in the grand scheme of things. Today we have the ISS an interstellar ship that has been in orbit for decades. It has been great progress in a very short time. We will continue to build ships and look for life. We are just not quite there yet. Our telescopes are not that advanced. For all we know there is intelligent life on Proxima b. We will continue to grow in both a progressive way and on a social level. We have only explored the tip of the iceberg as far as the worlds out there. In time we will be where we wish to be. Intelligent lifeforms and advanced species are there . We have not found them yet. We need just a bit more time.

The ISS is not an "interstellar ship." It's not even capable of leaving Earth orbit. Our telescopes are barely "interstellar," never mind our spacecraft.