Until we figure this out for sure, it would be prudent to act as though the Great Filter is in our near future because this would be tragic and yet we might be able to do something about it. Besides, if the Great Flder is somewhere in the period from the start of life to multi-cellular life, this would be greatly comforting but doesn’t necessarily prevent us from destroying ourselves anyhow.

Now, as I see it, the problem with the TSA is multi-fold. Of course, they are massively maldistributing their resources relative to the actual source of risks. But secondly, and importantly to iour discussion here, their extensive passenger screening program was implemented only after great tragedy. For existential risks, this would come too late. And yet we have this perpetual penchant for being unwilling to take action before a predictable event occurs. e.g. After 9/11, was there really no one in the TSA who imagined that an underwear bomb was a real possibility?

Let’s not kid ourselves, there will be no international law being enforced which will prevent some idiot from developing the first free-floating, self-replicating chemical or nanobot. Sovereignty, liberty, money, or hope for the benefits of advanced technology will prevent such a law from being universally passed or enforced.

However, our experience with the TSA does offer some hope. They have implemented procedures which have largely reduced or perhaps eliminated certain risks. Closed, strong doors to the cockpits would be one good example. Some of these measures have been implemented not after a great tragedy but after a “near-miss”.

My questions is this, “Can a ‘near-miss’ be safely and intentionally created so as to create the circumstances necessary for the implementaton of reasonable measures”? Even measures that buy us a few more years time may be all that we need to finishing developing an off-Earth self-sustaining colony.

For example, say we are to the point where desk-top nanofactories are just becoming a reality. We stick one of them in a CDC Level-4 containment lab and intentionally run it to produce chemicals of ever increasing size. Then we have some way of measuring whether one of those chemicals is a self-replicating ecophage. BUT, it’s contained. Armed with the knowledge that the desk-top equipment poses an real existential risks, laws are implemented to ensure that all such devices are not sold on the general market. If this happens in 2050, perhaps it could buy us 10 years in which a lunar or martian base could be completed.

However,

I am aware of the protocol for embedded links. However, the first time I loaded this page, it appeared on my screen in black and white with no formatting or discernible links in the text. I could not see them but do now.

So, for those who offered friendly help, thank you! For those who snarked, shhhh! And for those who did both, well, take a bit from both of my articulations. (smile!) — or, to indicate my web savvy :-)

Nothing would be more convenient but the idea that extraterrestrial forms of higher intelligent life did not send information to humans because of a different IQ. Its level will be only a negotiable barrier against the compatibility of communications. So a different routine — thinking and other intellectual procedures, might be even more incompatible.

Nothing is so easy in reality. Software experts can observe that AI is becoming scientifically and economically influential while digital computing is always different from GAI with FAI.

Nothing has replaced humans as the leading force in science and economics. Despite of calculus, data transfer, and further varieties between computers and humans — except their communications over computer networks, the routine of intellectual procedures is incompatible.

Nothing seems to be more mathematical routine but the cooperation between a thinking supercomputer and a thinking economist. The economist does the typing and gets the result in printing. Within the procedure, human intervention does not bend a CPU for parallel processing the level a human brain does.

Humans have no reference to alien intelligence in motion. They even do not know much about the virtues of motion inside the brain of elephants, whales, and whatever crosses their path for the creation of alternative medicine and dogfood.

Political correctness has killed more Americans so far than our enemies have, military excepted. Yet even our military has been affected. Guns were not allowed on the base at Ft. Hood.

We hope that color-blind people will take a closer look, because our hyperlinks are not underlined. Just because of the lower contrast between white and yellow letters, we also hope that color-blind people are actually reading this on white background (instead of black). If not, we hope, someone will teach them computers, like how to use the Switch to White function on the right upper part of our site.

http://www.usability.gov/articles/newsletter/pubs/022010new.html and http://www.usability.gov/articles/newsletter/pubs/052007news.html despite of the referring source’ low credibility.

(FWIW, I had assumed that the first commenter was claiming that the Examiner was not a sufficiently credible source.)

We are within a few decades of being the intelligent life described in this blog post. So this gives us some info on which we can make an educated guess. Our fossil record shows that life occurred pretty much the second the Earth cooled so the theory there is no life out there as described in the comment by Alf is very likely wrong. As to whether all life out there is stupid as described by Chris in the first comment, or is invisible, not multicelled, doesn’t like to explore, etc. is at least up to debate.

So far all theories that we are special haven’t panned out. We now know that it doesn’t look like the Earth is the center of the universe or that the Sun and the stars are orbiting the Earth. So the odds are that out of the 100 billion trillion planets out there, we are not special and others have developed intelligence, etc. So it is a very good question what happened to them.

As the TSA has shown, governments tend to be incompetent in protecting us against threats. The TSA can’t even tell the difference between a souvenir magnet and a deadly weapon. (A task that a 6-year old could handle.) So when we have designer bioweapons and self-replicating nanoweapons, what do you think will happen to our civilization? Our dead universe shows what will happen if we sit back and just wait for the government to “protect us”.