The Great Filter is a civilization-scale event or circumstance that would prevent a species from colonizing space or ever meeting other species — perhaps of even continuing to exist. The filter could be a chemical bottleneck that prevents the formation of RNA that jump-started evolution, or a geophysical roadblock to the production of oxygen, which enabled multicellular creatures. But the filter could also be nuclear war, or a world-destroying asteroid, or global warming, or a malevolent artificial intelligence gone amok. Or, even, a vicious pandemic. ... NYT
Can you imagine Trump's reaction if he were told a mile long meteor went off course and was headed straight for earth in 60 days? "First I have to finish building the wall" or claiming no problem it will probably hit China - or even sending up a missile to try to steer it to China.
Are we seeing an example of The Great Filter as we are in the midst of a trifecta - 1919 pandemic, 1930s great depression, 1960s civil strife? All we are missing is a BIG war like Vietnam or a BIGGER nuke war, but I have faith that Trump might manage that - with his ending nuke treaties and wanting to explode nukes again. But I have faith in Trump who I believe narcissist as he is doesn't want to see the world go on without him, thus doing anything he can to make global warming as bad as he can. It's not only the oceans rising -- people can move. It's the heat where humans can't live above a certain temp. Venus anyone? But that might take too long so let's speed it up.
There have been a number of great extinctions on earth due to natural causes - I think 5 so far - and we ourselves are viewed as the 6th extinction - some would say we are an unnatural cause but I disagree - we are just another animal and what we do to cause our own extinction is basically acting naturally - which is selfishly to favor our genes and species.
Anyway, even without a Trump, there are theories that we face extinction due to many factors. Known as The Great Filter, the theory is based on the idea that there are probably billions of planets in the universe with conditions for life - so-called Goldilocks planets.
The Fermi Paradox
Famed atomic scientist Enrico Fermi asked, "Where is everyone?" In billions of years where civilizations probably arose way before our time, there are no signs. He asked this in the early 50s and nothing has changed. But we are young - really civilization only goes back 5-6000 years and the very existence of our type of humans goes back only 70,000 years, a truly remarkable short period of time for one species to so dominate a planet - wherein lies the seeds of our destruction. View the pandemic as nature striking back. All ancient civilizations on earth all fell and our time may be at hand.
But the filter idea is that any civilization either falls due to natural events (a meteor - ask the dinosaur civilization) or inevitably creates its own conditions for failure and therefor has a shelf life - possibly a shelf life that never goes beyond before reaching the ability to reach out.
The filter idea is explored in The End of the World podcast: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-end-of-the-world-with-josh-clark
which devotes each episode to another filter, some farfetched but others very real. Over population and nuclear war are obvious but he also deals with a robotic takeover where artificial intelligence wipes us out as useless.
We are on the verge of reaching out as evidenced by the recent astronaut blastoff but every day we are seeing more evidence of some coming collapse - maybe the best we do is going back to living in caves. Or Mars. I think people like Elon Musk are serious about Mars because they see a finite end coming to human civilization -- if you want to get a brilliant glimpse read Kim Stanley Robinson's massive 3 volume series - Red, Green, Blue Mars.
The NYT is fueling the concept with articles on the disappearance of species and the rain forest, and on the great filter with some intriguing ideas:
Can humans survive without bees, for instance? The unleashing of that killer wasp from Japan in this country might doom us all on its own.
Or another meteor - Some dinosaur was probably thinking he had it pretty good the day before 65m yrs ago. Can you imagine Trump's reaction if he were told a mile long meteor went off course and was headed straight for earth in 60 days? "First I have to finish building the wall" or claiming no problem it will probably hit China - or even sending up a missile to try to steer it to China.
Artificial intelligence is a threat - The Terminator where machines no longer need humans. Disease, loss of resources resources, exploding suns - even a massive sunspot could wipe us out. Nuclear war, pandemics, civil unrest, end of resources (fresh water), climate change, a leader of a powerful country who helps bring most of the above in play. There is a podcast that goes into the various collapse of civilizations here on earth - It's called Fall of Civilizations and in some cases over the top leaders played a significant role in degrading society to a tipping point. But overall I never think individuals play the dominant role -- things move in a certain direction like a glacier and can't be stopped. Like if anyone thinks going back to Paris Climate will be enough - right now a meteor seems to be the most painless.
If you are not depressed enough here are links.
Mass Extinctions Are Accelerating, Scientists Report
Five hundred species are likely to become extinct over the next two decades, according to a new study.
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