3 HN users recommended this explainer3 months2018–2024score 3
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN links it as a concise, accessible explainer whenever the Fermi paradox or Great Filter comes up, though one commenter criticized its lack of source attribution.
A short Kurzgesagt animation explaining the Great Filter, the idea that finding alien life might be bad news because it implies something usually destroys civilizations. It connects the concept to the Fermi paradox.
“There is also a good video from Kurzgesagt explaining the great filter” (HN, 2023)
How long did it take modern humans to completely colonize Earth, such that there are few places you can go on Earth and not meet any humans? Less than 10k years for sure. If we become a space-faring civilization, how long will it take us to colonize the galaxy, such that there are few places you can go and not find evidence of humans around? Not more than a million years or so. So if intelligent life -- capable of becoming a space-faring civilization -- is common, why is the galaxy not colonized already? Kursgesagt has a good video on this: [this video]
I think it comes down to the fact that it appears in 10,000 - 1,000,000 years (very soon relative to earth's birth) humans will be able to colonize nearly the whole galaxy using von Neumann probes[0] It would not require technology much more advanced that we have now. If life evolved on a planet a billion years before earth, why haven't they colonized the galaxy? Kurzgesagt recently published a video covering the idea of the "Great Filter".[1] The idea is that there must be something (some "filter") preventing life from colonizing their galaxy. [0]: [link] [1]: [this video]
reminds me of the "Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell" youtube video "Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter"[0] that discusses many of the same ideas! [0] [this video]
Discusses similar ideas about civilizations and the Great Filter
We can't detect life at our stage of development from afar, or from earlier stages, but things that extremely advanced civilizations build like dyson spheres can't be hidden really. The issue is that the universe is extremely old compared to how long it took for earth to develop life. It's ample time for civilizations to develop technologies extremely far more advanced than ours. So why isn't there a single civilization that's so advanced that it builds these things? So there must be some "filter" that prevents civilizations from doing that, whether they are alive or dead. Maybe they just don't want to, but then ALL of them have to not want to do it, which would be weird. If we detect life close to us, it makes it more likely that there is tons of life around the galaxy, which makes it more likely that the filter is ahead of us. If we detect no life close to us, it makes it more likely that the filter is past us. See this Kurzgesagt video about the topic: [this video]
This article reads alarmingly similar to the Kurzgesagt video about the great filter ( [this video] ). Of course, the Great Filter isn't a new concept, but provided that this is an argument made by somebody other than the person who coined the term (that was Robin Hanson I believe), combined with the fact that I read almost the entire article before then going on to find the video, I find the two too similar to write it off to simple chance. There have been criticisms of Kurzgesagt in the past, one I can recall being the following, in video form ( [link] ). I've now found out that the original video was retracted and the creator issued a public apology ( [link] ), in addition to Kurzgesagt committing to performing more scrutiny over their videos and citing their sources wherever possible. I do applaud this last step on their part, and I understand that you have to admit that the Great Filter video was published back in 2018 before this commitment was made, but something about the lack of attribution throughout the video doesn't sit right with me, still.
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