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this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2024
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Ask Lemmy
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Yes. I'm a guy, and I would love to get a girl's take on this.
Do you think Fermi's "Great Filter" is not necessarily that a civilization destroys itself, but that it discovers a way to destroy the Universe?
Like, maybe the fabric of our reality is more fragile than we realize, and the reason we don't see "aliens" is that the universe doesn't get old enough for intelligent life to meet.
Of course, this assumes we are in a statistically "average" Universe, since presumably there could be a Universe in which intelligent life co-evolves within the same solar system.
I've always felt like a lot of the assumptions in Fermi's Great Filter feels off. Like, the way we talk about "intelligent life" feels iffy, both in astrophysics and other fields. I'm not great at articulating this, but if you're one for video essays, Dr Fatima Abdurrahman recently made a video that captured much of what I'd struggled to say on this. (https://youtu.be/_tw0aqmnmaw)
I can't guarantee I'll watch that video, but I can guarantee I intend to watch it when I can.
Generally speaking, though, I do agree that most people's idea of "intelligence" is very anthro-centric, if that's what you mean.
No pressure to watch the video, especially as not everyone enjoys consuming content in that form.
Anthrocentrism is part of what I mean, especially if we consider that historically, colonialism has had a lot of power to draw the line between who "counts" as fully human or not. A depressingly common motif is the cyclical logic of "this is what we understand human intelligence to be" -> "these people do not have the signifiers of human intelligence that we understand" -> "therefore these people aren't intelligent" -> (those people are less likely to be considered as the general understanding of 'intelligence' expands and evolves).
Yeah, the sociological side of "quantified" intelligence has a whole host of issues.
Personally, I think you're really close to the answer but with an important distinction. The great filter is an hyper aggressive species that does not want to deal with a potential cold war with a different species with technology as advanced as their own. They already launched their doomsday armageddon weapon at us after detecting our existence, probably from something like our farthest satille, Voyager 1.
It could take generations for the bomb heading to our sun or stealth asteroid heading directly for us to actually connect. But it's arguably in their best interest not to even chance us becoming militarily on par with them.
Statistically there is alien life out there somewhere, and whichever one got to interplanetary weapons first would have everything to lose by allowing an equal to exist.
My question for you is, why do you want a female perspective on this? Idk, doesn't seem like something that gender would effect.
No offense intended, but do you identify as male? I can't even be having this conversation if you do.
๐
I do not. Heck, the thread is about asking the other sex, I wouldn't have answered if I was a dude.
Phew okay. In that case, I do agree that a hyper-aggressive species could be the Filter, though it's worth noting that our radio signals have actually reached further than our furthest probe, so I would go off that when doing round-trip destruction calculations. I love Mass Effect's take on this idea (though I haven't played 3).
As for why I asked women: Mostly because I thought the non-sequitur was funny.
I believe that science, math, are more inextricably linked to philosophy than people tend to think.
While my idea is particularly half-cocked, the Great Filter theory is an important question for us as a species to answer. If evidence ever came to light that there is some challenge awaiting us that could wipe out our species, it would behoove us to at least be aware that such a challenge exists - even without necessarily knowing any specifics.
I gotta admit, I really wanted to like 3BP on Netflix, but imo they added way too much "personal drama". It's like they intended to sprinkle it on and the lid came off the container lol. It was worth it just to see the ship though.
Fyi, math and science is philosophy. Science is how philosophy started to actually get answers to the questions it was asking(the scientific method) and math is one of the languages it did it through. The Cult of Pythagoras was a group that believed all answers could be found through numbers and math.
Philosophy helped birth both of those fields.
Agreed. I was never a "math kid", so when I got to university, I was very surprised that a large part of what I learned in my math courses was actually philosophy.
That shift in paradigm instantly made me interested in math, weirdly enough. Turns out I love math, I'm just not a fan of numbers, haha.
You mean like what if species at a certain level of development start fucking around with zero point energy and trigger false vacuum decay?
Actually it's entirely possible it's already happened. There are lots of galaxies so far away their light will never reach us if it's emitted now, and vacuum decay travels at the speed of light AFAIK
Nonbinary btw
That's exactly what I mean. Like, even if a civilization set out at near-light speed a long time before triggering a vacuum decay, the decay would just catch up to them and wipe them out before they could reach us. It's a theory absolutely rife with holes, but it's an interesting possibility.
I'll gladly accept nonbinary!
Interesting thought, but there is no evidence for this, right?
No, just theories, the great filter being one of them.
If you're interested, here's an article that breaks down the "Great Filter" theory pretty well imo:
https://www.astronomy.com/science/the-great-filter-a-possible-solution-to-the-fermi-paradox/
I think the intent was humor, where the question was weird because it had nothing to do with gender or experiences related to a particular gender
You should join the circus with that incredible skill at leaping.