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Originally Posted by eburacum45
We have been considering the Great Filter at Orion's Arm for quite some time. Bostrom has the right ideas; there are a number of critical periods in the development of a civilisation which might filter out most, or all, potential contenders.
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I disagree that Bostrom has the right ideas, of course.
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But most of the time I tend towards thinking that civilisations are very rare, and the Filter is in our past.
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That's the big mistake that Bostrom makes. There is no such thing as a Great Filter that exists only at a single critical juncture. We have plenty of evidence that it does not--our own earth fossil record shows all sorts of time lines and possibilities. We all are aware of the possibility of our own annihilation that could occur if a large body impacted the earth, or would have occurred had the impact already have happened, for another instance.
Assuming that a Great Filter is either in our past, or in our future, but not both, is a horrible mistake. By that, I mean first that it is a totally unsupported assumption, and second there is a lot of evidence to the contrary.