Quote:
Originally Posted by hhEb09'1
I disagree that Bostrom has the right ideas, of course.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.
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I totally agree. I think he is in error to talk about a single Great Filter.
He is right when he talks about filters being critical points that must be passed for life to move on to a new form or level of complexity. However rather than a single Great Filter we should see instead an accumilation of critical filters. The emergence of complex single cells was just one that had to be passed and maybe on very few worlds life gets beyond this point. Likewise the move to multicellular life might be another critical filter which life on many planets fails to progress beyond.
I think he is also to ready to dismiss the emergence of intelligent hominids as though that happened so quickly it was almost inevitable. I believe that here he has overlooked some crucial factors. Maybe once a large brained, social, omniverous, ape like mammal with versitile hands had evolved then it was perhaps that the road to humans was fairly quick and inevitable. However that particular combination of factors had to come together in a precursor species which itself needed to be forced to adapt by environmental change but was not challenged by such a severe environmental challenge that it became extinct. Big brains without the physical means to make and manipulate tools do not make technological species. Likewise manipulatorary appendages without the memory and processing power to direct them in new directions will also produce nothing new. I strongly suspect that having all of these factors come together at the right time could itself be quite a rare event and could therefore be yet another critical filter. Other factors also need to come into play does the species live long enough to pass its knowledge on to the next generation and does it take any role in raising of that next generation. If not then each generation will start from "square one" unable to build upon the knowledge and skills of its parents.
Now of course once again we only have our earthly sample of one to draw on. But assuming we are trying to identify the critical hurdles that must be overcome for the existence of a technological species anywhere then they too must achieve the combination of processing ability, memory and manipulation in order to invent and use tools for the advancement of technology. We must also accept that while we cannot predict how an intelligent alien species might view us, view each other or view the universe as a whole it is only fair to assume the purely biological processes that lead to natural selection and speciation are as similar on their planet as the chemistry that seems common across the universe. Therefore for a technological species to emerge elsewhere they need not have two sexes or have lived in trees or have hairy bodies but they must be able to store and retrieve large quatities of information about their natural surroundings and not only have the ability to imagine alternative ways of doing things they must have a suitable body form that allows them to turn their ideas into something physical. If no one species evolves with all of those then it will remain as just part of it's planet's wildlife and will produce no civilisation.