Fermi’s Paradox and the Great Filter
Filed Under: Science, Speculative Fiction
The interesting astro-related blog Centauri Dreams had a post the other day discussing one of my pet topics, Fermi’s Paradox. The latest discussion and solution to be offered comes from Robin Hanson by way of Nick Bostrom, and the idea is being referred to as the “Great Filter.” This is kind of a meta concept, an idea concerning probability: we see no advanced life in the universe, so there must be some filter event that destroys/eliminates intelligent life. Here is Bostrom’s explanation:
The filter consists of one or more evolutionary transitions or steps that must be traversed at great odds in order for an Earth-like planet to produce a civilization capable of exploring distant solar systems.
So is this filter event in our relative past, or our relative future? Have we already passed through it, or is it yet to come? Bostrom believes that the Great Silence is a good thing, and means that we’re past the filter event. If we find complex life, then we should be concerned that the event is yet to come.
As a SF writer, this stuff is a gold mine. I’ve read quite a few novels and short stories that dance with the Paradox. It’s a very important question, and it really lights a match in the boiler beneath my imagination.
For instance, I was wondering this morning, while thinking about the Great Filter, if the reason behind the silence out there might somehow be a result of the fundamentals of quantum mechanics, of which I have very little understanding of, so you’ll have to forgive me if I mangle something.
It’s observational bias that I keep turning over in my mind. The idea that we change the results of an experiment just by observing them. Is it possible that once one “observer” species evolves, it’s very existence is the filter that prevents other life from evolving? Our observation changes the universe? I don’t feel like I can explain this idea. I need to read up on quantum mechanics and its implications to develop this line of thought further.
Comments
04-30-2008
Jeremy,
In Firefox, the comment box is below the “best posts” and stuff. I had to hunt for it in this page. Also, the text box goes into the pictures — my setting, but maybe you can control it somehow?
Anyway, GO RIGHT NOW AND BUY GREG EGAN’S NOVEL QUARANTINE. Save yourself months of pain. I started writing a novel off this idea in 1998 or 1999 and then it was pointed out to me Egan had done it, and better than I ever would have done. (Best to read the whole trilogy it’s part of — all funny speculative QM stories. I think I actually started rewriting Egan’s Distress first, actually. And yeah, that’s the basis of the story of mine that I think you read long ago.
You might also like Stephen Baxter’s Manifold books, each of which is set in a parallel universe with a different “solution” to the Fermi paradox, setting the filter at different points in the past and future and, er, meta-past.
And of course, Stross’s Accelerando has some funny observations about bandwidth as a filter that doesn’t eliminate life, but filters out lots of so-called intelligence just the same…
04-30-2008
That’s odd. What version of Firefox on what platform (Mac, PC?)? The comments are beneath the related posts by design, but the text box on my firefox in about 30 px wider than the comments themselves, and shouldn’t run into the previous photos at all. It doesn’t for me, but if you give me the info above, I can probably track down that problem.
I should clarify that I’m not actually writing anything about Fermi’s Paradox, or quantum mechanics, actually. Greg Egan is a good example of why (and you’re the second person today to recommend that one to me in relation to this post. Pretty good book?). I find that any idea I think of has been done better by someone else. I just really find the subject fascinating and read up on it when I can. I have read several of Baxter’s Manifold books, and I think they were actually what exposed me to the idea of the Paradox in SF for the first time. I’m not terribly well-read these days, especially when it comes to novels.
04-30-2008
Yeah, Egan’s QUARANTINE is worth a read.
It’s a common misconcpetion though that there needs to be a conscious observer. There just has to be a measurement, some interaction, in effect, that forces stuff to be there and behave. The new age crap movie WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW? takes advantage of people’s poor understanding of quantum mechanics to promote a lot of silliness.
08-06-2008
Jer,
For some reason the followup comments ended up being filtered so I didn’t see them.
I’m in Firefox 3.0 in Linux, but the problem isn’t there. Maybe it was a gacked load? Sometimes my own site gets gacked when I load it, no idea why.
Mike,
God I hated that movie. Hated, hated, hated. What the Bleep do we know? Well, a hell of a lot more than when we were relying on bleeping high priests to bleeping tell us the bleeping truth about bleep.
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