Many people think that humanity will keep its current pace, and continually move forward until we start alien alliances, wars, or trades. It isn't wrong to think this way, but the theory of The Great Filer stands in the way of our progression, blocking us off or even sending us back. The Great Filter is essentially a hypothetical roadblock to halt our technological or evolutionary progression. The cause of this theory being even thought of in the first place is the fact that space seems almost completely dead. This could either mean that life is extremely hard to come by, or something is stopping it from progressing. There are two types of filters; One that is either ahead, or behind us.
Behind
If the filter is behind us, that means we must have gotten past an evolutionary or progressive step that somehow has an extremely low chance of being passed. To find out what step we might have missed, we have to go all the way back to our beginning. A theory for the beginnig of human evolution is that we started from cells. Not just any cell though. The only reason we could’ve got to our current state was if the cell, instead of living its whole life living the normal way eating everything it could, it joined with another being, a mitochondrion, so it could be able to expabd and keep developing. While it’s possible that billions of other being in the universe could’ve done this too, the reason alien life hasn’t been discovered yet might be because we are the only species that’s able to reach such a complex state.
Ahead
If a filter was really ahead of us, then that means it must be such a huge roadblock that it killed millions, if not BILLIONS of species before us. A filter ahead of us would be a discovery or change so easy to create, but also so dangerous that no other species that has discovered it has been able to handle it perfectly. Essentially, the filter ahead of us would be humanity’s own stupidity. The filter could be already happening in global warming, or pollution, or even space travel. It really could be anything that we use everyday, but haven’t even realised it yet. This is why finding Alien life would be so bad. The higher the intelligence of alien life. the worse it would be for us, as this would mean a more gigantic filter is ahead of us.
Behind
If the filter is behind us, that means we must have gotten past an evolutionary or progressive step that somehow has an extremely low chance of being passed. To find out what step we might have missed, we have to go all the way back to our beginning. A theory for the beginnig of human evolution is that we started from cells. Not just any cell though. The only reason we could’ve got to our current state was if the cell, instead of living its whole life living the normal way eating everything it could, it joined with another being, a mitochondrion, so it could be able to expabd and keep developing. While it’s possible that billions of other being in the universe could’ve done this too, the reason alien life hasn’t been discovered yet might be because we are the only species that’s able to reach such a complex state.
Ahead
If a filter was really ahead of us, then that means it must be such a huge roadblock that it killed millions, if not BILLIONS of species before us. A filter ahead of us would be a discovery or change so easy to create, but also so dangerous that no other species that has discovered it has been able to handle it perfectly. Essentially, the filter ahead of us would be humanity’s own stupidity. The filter could be already happening in global warming, or pollution, or even space travel. It really could be anything that we use everyday, but haven’t even realised it yet. This is why finding Alien life would be so bad. The higher the intelligence of alien life. the worse it would be for us, as this would mean a more gigantic filter is ahead of us.