Like, we’re destroying the one place we know is a sure bet on where we can prosper if we keep it healthy, but instead the world’s richest man is trying to expand to other planets while this one’s ability to sustain life is in jeopardy. IMO that makes us potentially a very stupid species compared to a species that doesn’t really care about meeting other aliens because they value the life on their own planet far more than we do.
A Great Filter needs to explain why we don’t hear radio transmissions from alien civilisations.
space big explains it pretty clearly tbh
Also dark forest theory
I think the only reason this theory exists is because it’s kinda spooky and fills us with dread.
If such a civilisation existed with the power, intention, and tech to zoom around killing off other species:
I think it exists based on the behavior of creatures we’ve observed…
Does it?
The Fermi Paradox which proposes the great filter suggests that despite the vastness of space we should still be able to detect radio waves from other civilisations.
The question of the great filter would not be posed, if we were unlikely to detect other civilisations because of the expanse of space.
Inverse square law. We’re probavly bombarded by millions of alien signals. They’re just not very loud
Oh wow you’ve cracked it. To think there are great physicists like Frank Drake who have made this search their life’s work, and pondered this very question for decades, and you’ve deduced the solution with your astonishing intellect. Bravo.
It was a thought experiment meant to provoke discussion at the time, not a rigorous theorem. Check the
fccoefficient, there’s much debate about its value and definition of detectability.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
You’re aware Drake was one of the instigators of the SETI program right? He spent a significant portion of his life on a project that would have been pointless if you are correct.
You may have just upset every scientist in the room at the suggestion that people only expend time on money on science that will only produce positive results
At the relevant distances, it could be that sending a message that would arrive as anything that stands out above the background noise of the universe would probably require a mono-directional transmission directed at a specific target, which would require a lot of specific effort that a smart enough species may see as not worth the resources. Frankly, we’re smart enough to know there is alien life out there somewhere without needing to see it for ourselves, and until our planet is much healthier and our species less chaotic, what would be the point of trying to contact it?
What if it’s like us but worse?
And as others have mentioned, a smarter species would likely try to hide, maybe even trying to capture as much ambient RF leaving their planet as they can so we don’t find them by accident.