The great filter

Where is everybody?
--Physicist Enrico Fermi

Our Milky Way Galaxy, a fairly typical galaxy, has about 100 billion stars.  In the entire Universe, there are an estimated 200 billion to two trillion galaxies.  That's a lot of stars, and a lot of planets going around those stars.

Scientists know enough about the molecular structure of tiny organisms to suspect that, under the right conditions, they could come into existence anywhere.

So, as every science fiction loving teenager has probably wondered, why haven't we heard from anyone?  Not necessarily been visited -- those stars are far apart -- but why haven't we at least picked up a little radio or TV babble from another world?  Or something?

Last Sunday's New York Times contained an article discussing a concept developed by Robin Hanson, something he calls the "Great Filter."  Hanson is an economics professor, and an expert in futures and markets, which doesn't sound promising, but he does have an M.S. in physics from the University of Chicago.  All I know about Dr. Hanson -- aside from his credentials from Wikipedia -- is what I read in the Times article.

Hanson apparently suggests that life is forming everywhere, but that a filter keeps it from attaining a level where its members would be advanced enough to be capable of contacting us.  Many planets don't provide a ripe enough environment for life to advance very far up the evolutionary scale.  This is obvious.  That's an early part of the filter.  But Hanson suggests that as a species advances, as it becomes sentient, and intelligent, more and more problems arise -- many of which we have so far successfully eluded.

But as civilizations continue to develop, to arise, to become technologically advanced, they create their own problems.  The article was prompted by our present coronavirus pandemic.  Pandemics come about because of ever denser populations and more rapid travel and communication among their members.  On the other hand, as a civilization advances, it becomes better able to combat epidemics, as we have done.  We have now reached the point where we can very quickly identify the genetic code of a new virus, and develop ways to combat it.  On the other hand:

the downside is that it entails also an increase in the spread of "dangerous knowledge" that would enable mavericks to make viruses more virulent and transmissible than they naturally are.

This downside doesn't apply just to viruses, of course.  For just one example, I'd suggest, consider the advantages, and the downsides, of the development of atomic energy.

Hanson suggests that the Great Filter chokes off the life of civilizations more and more surely as those civilizations advance.  At some point, through one means or another, each civilization dies at its own hands.  Each civilization effectively becomes "too smart for its own good," or too profligate in its use of limited resources   Hanson speculates that the Great Filter works efficiently enough and consistently enough to end the progress, if not the entire existence, of every civilization before it achieves the technological ability to communicate with other civilizations on other planets.

I found the article a little confusing and a little irritating at first reading.  To me, it seemed to suggest that the Great Filter was a limitation that a conscious Universe imposes deliberately, by some grand design.  On later readings, the writer seems to have just used colorful language.

The unanswerable question, of course, is how close we earthlings are to being choked off by the Great Filter.  Maybe not all that far, eh?   The concept reminds me of the idea proposed by some that we live in a "virtual universe," a concept I've discussed in past posts.  Proponents of that concept -- where we are all actors in an enormous computer program -- point to the fact that as we ourselves -- we simulated humans -- develop the ability to create our own virtual realities, at some point the capacity of the ur-computer which we all inhabit will reach an overload.  What would happen then?  I quoted a 2007 New York Times article:

It might be something clunky like “Insufficient Memory to Continue Simulation.” But I like to think it would be simple and familiar: “Game Over.”

The article suggests no way around the Great Filter.  If any way to escape existed, one of those billions of now dead civilizations would presumably have discovered it.  But a consolation prize is suggested.  Before ending up in the dustbin of Universal history, some of those civilizations may have left some giant data banks for future civilizations to discover, sharing with them their accomplishments and wisdom.  And how and why it all went wrong.  Something that we may discover, before our inevitable end.  And something we may want to leave for our successor civilizations.

The Times writer claims to hope that even if Hanson is correct about a Great Filter, somehow we're smart enough to beat the odds.  We're smart enough to learn from experience.  To survive where all others fail.

And if you believe that, he has some pork belly futures he'd like to sell you.