Our filter is … ourselves
Yeah that’s kinda the point. That Intelligent life will eventually invent a way to eliminate itself is probably an extremely human concept though.
I’d rather say our filter was/is the carboniferous. We have too much energy for our technology level.
We have a lot of available energy everywhere when you think about it … it’s not the energy, whether abundantly available or not, around us that is the problem … it’s in how we use and abuse it all.
The problem is not the things we use, or create, or have access to, the problem is us.
It was that bad.
What if the Great Filter is explained by civilizations gradually declining in reproduction due to societal and climate factors, leading them to stagnant or collapse before they can reach interstellar exploration?
There are already countries experiencing population decline which suggests this could be a real, observable trend.
Let’s be honest though, the ruling class would never allow it. They would ensure reproduction by force, if necessary.
It’s certainly a thought experiment, though.
That is a very human centric way to approach it. For starters, we don’t even know if other life has to be carbon based, let alone in which environments it exists. There could be an entirely different ruleset to their reproduction and of course their society. And even ignoring all these things, they could simply advance a lot faster, outpacing climate change and declining populations. Heck, we could be outpacing these problems if we never stopped puring endless ressources into space travel, but alas, capitalism deemed it unworthy.
Yes, as a human, i usually have human-centric thoughts.
You are right, of course.
Sorry for sharing my thoughts.
Don’t apologize, I didn’t mean to invalidate your thoughts. Until we’ve found other life, everything is possible. Maybe they all are slightly different humanoids with similar problems. In fact, many theories about why we haven’t found anything yet are based on the very same assumption.
I just meant to add some additional food for thought.
I once made feta, blueberry and rosemary stuffed chicken thighs… My captive guests would have felt very comforted by this comic that night.
Some things shouldn’t be overcome.
Under the skin, I suppose? I’ve done that with boursin, then wrapped in bacon and roasted for about 30 minutes. Really nice dish
A theory I’ve been writing into a fiction for a while is that Earth is just the oldest planet with life on it and Humans are the most technologically advanced species in the universe. The reason nobody has contacted us is because the rest of the universe is still basically in the caveman stage. Of course, my story is set like 1000 years in the future, after we have FTL spacecraft and start finding alien life on other worlds to know this. Also: Things don’t turn out well for the aliens.
Sounds like a good story. A lot of SF has a forerunner civilization concept, but I can only think of a couple that present anything about their early stages.
Hopefully I actually finish something other than a bunch of worldbuilding that ultimately doesn’t have any stories set in it…
One of my DMs ran a campaign in his world, specifically to have a story because he had been world building for 6 years at that point. Might be something to consider, obviously you’d probably need a system other than D&D, but there are loads of Sci Fi systems out there that could probably be adapted to your world.
That’s also how the first Dragonlance novels were written.
There is actually some real theories, i think kurzgesagt covered or at least mentioned it that makes a mathematical case for us to still be in the very early stage where advanced complex life can possibly form.
Maybe not the first, but one of em.
NOPE! It’s a cyberpunk dystopia. We’re spreading crapitalism across the universe, like a plague!
The other thing I’m trying to do with this is have non-human primary character heroes in a world where humans exist, because I’ve never seen that in other fiction before. Avatar (the James Cameron film) was close; but the protagonist is still technically a human.
So Warhammer 40k but the emperors original crusades before the Horace heresy?
That’s what your first paragraph brought to mind lol.
Thing is, the universe is really really really fucking big and old. There might have been a million other super advanced societies throughout the universe space and throughout the universe life, but the chances of us knowing about them would still be negligible.
There are tens of billions of planets just in the milky way, most of them probably at least 5 billion years old. And there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe, if not trillions. The nearest one is 25,000 light years away. Do the math.
The chances of life existing elsewhere are pretty much 100%. The chances of us ever knowing about it are pretty much 0%.