Great Filter

This article is about an implication of the Fermi paradox. For the music album by Tub Ring, see The Great Filter (album).

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.[1][2] The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.

The concept originates in Robin Hanson's argument that the failure to find any extraterrestrial civilizations in the observable universe implies that something is wrong with one or more of the arguments (from various scientific disciplines) that the appearance of advanced intelligent life is probable; this observation is conceptualized in terms of a "Great Filter" which acts to reduce the great number of sites where intelligent life might arise to the tiny number of intelligent species with advanced civilizations actually observed (currently just one: human).[3] This probability threshold, which could lie in the past or following human extinction, might work as a barrier to the evolution of intelligent life, or as a high probability of self-destruction.[1][4] The main conclusion of this argument is that the easier it was for life to evolve to the present stage, the bleaker the future chances of humanity probably are.

The idea was first proposed in an online essay titled "The Great Filter – Are We Almost Past It?". The first version was written in August 1996 and the article was last updated on September 15, 1998. Hanson's formulation has received recognition in several published sources discussing the Fermi paradox and its implications.

  1. ^ a b Hanson, Robin (1998). "The Great Filter – Are We Almost Past It?". Archived from the original on 2010-05-07.
  2. ^ Overbye, Dennis (August 3, 2015). "The Flip Side of Optimism About Life on Other Planets". New York Times. Archived from the original on September 19, 2019. Retrieved October 29, 2015.
  3. ^ Hanson 1998: "No alien civilizations have substantially colonized our solar system or systems nearby. Thus among the billion trillion stars in our past universe, none has reached the level of technology and growth that we may soon reach. This one data point implies that a Great Filter stands between ordinary dead matter and advanced exploding lasting life. And the big question is: How far along this filter are we?"
  4. ^ Bostrom, Nick (May–June 2008). "Where Are They? Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing" (PDF). Technology Review. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 72–77. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-12-24. Retrieved 2008-06-19.