NASA says humanity can avoid the ‘Great Filter’ by increasing maturity, understanding on earth

A team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has developed a theory as to why we haven’t encountered aliens yet.

In a paper Five NASA researchers introduce the “Great Filter” theory, stating that while other civilizations may have existed throughout the history of the universe, they all wiped themselves out before contacting us.

The theory expands to suggest that we, too, are on track to wipe ourselves out — or “filter” ourselves. On the plus side, if we come to understand that, or even how other civilizations have destroyed themselves, we can avoid the same fate.

The team begins the article: “Evidence of life should exist in abundance in our galaxy alone, and yet in practice we have produced no clear confirmation of anything beyond our own planet.” So, where is everyone?

“The silence of the universe beyond Earth reveals a pattern of both human limitation and steadfast curiosity.”

“We hypothesize that an existential disaster could be lurking as our society evolves exponentially into space exploration, as the Great Filter: a phenomenon that wipes out civilizations before they can meet, which could explain the cosmic silence.”

The theory suggests that despite there being a high probability of other intelligent life forms out there, each of them essentially self-destructs before making meaningful contact with other planet inhabitants.

The authors of the not-yet-peer-reviewed study write, “The key to successfully crossing such a universal filter for humanity is…to identify those traits in ourselves and neutralize them beforehand.”

The Great Filter theory was first proposed in the late 1990s by Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University.

In September 1998 Hanson wrote“The fact that our universe appears to be essentially dead suggests that it is very, very difficult to create advanced, explosive, sustainable life.”

“Explosive,” as Hanson did, meant a civilization that would allow for cheap spaceflight and the potential colonization of other planets.

Hanson argued that there is something, or many things, that prevent intelligent, thriving life forms from surviving on their home planet long enough to expand meaningfully to others.

The California-based co-authors of the recent study — including Jonathan Jiang, Philip Rosen, Kelly Lu, Kristen Fahy, and Piotr Obacz — present the theory that whatever existential threats life on Earth faces, life elsewhere could be too. faced.

Those threats include uncontrollable events such as an asteroid hitting the planet, as well as threats that they believe could act as self-inflicted civilization killers. Those include a nuclear war, another deadlier pandemic, artificial intelligence gone out of control and climate change.

That kind of human “dysfunction,” as the study calls it, can “snowball quickly into the Great Filter.”

While extinction could come quickly and furiously, the researchers write, they suggest increased human maturity could avert the latter filter.

“History has shown that competition between species and, most importantly, cooperation has led us to the highest peaks of invention. And yet we are prolonging notions that seem to be the antithesis of long-term sustainable growth. Racism, genocide, inequality, sabotage…the list is growing,” the study reads.

Greater understanding on the planet between groups, societies and civilizations — in addition to some significant technological advances — should improve our chances of overcoming the Great Filter, according to NASA scientists.

But Hanson himself somewhat disagrees with that part of the theory.

He told the Daily Beast that he believes that more centralized control and governance is not the answer.

“Actually, I see excessive centralization of governance as the likely contributor to our future Great Filter,” he told the outlet.

He believes that the more decentralized we are, the more likely some of us will survive a terrestrial event.

If individual groups of people – such as those engaged in private space travel, for example a pandemic that crushes humanity, or some other event that ends civilization – manage to survive, they could theoretically continue to exist as part of colonies on Mars or the moon .

Robin Hanson, an economics professor at George Mason University, initially put forward the Great Filter theory in the late 1990s, but disagrees with some of the conclusions the NASA team has drawn. He believes that more centralized governance will accelerate destruction, rather than increase our chances of averting it.

The California NASA team is led by Jonathan Jiang, who helped formulate the theory that, in part, argues that greater human understanding and groups working together will help prevent the Great Filter from happening on Earth.

Others in the field simply believe that the Great Filter theory doesn’t make sense.

Seth Shostak, a California-based astronomer at the SETI Institute, told the Beast: “The Great Filter theory depends on the supposed observation result that there is none.”

But that conclusion is far too premature. We’ve just started searching.’

Wade Roush, a science teacher and author, said the theory feels “overly deterministic.”

It’s as if “the Great Filter is a physical law or a single looming force that confronts every emerging technological civilization,” he said. “We have no direct evidence of such a power.”