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Comment by nullsense | Hacker News Reader

>Lets hope we make it through the great filter.

My thoughts on this are that oftentimes things at the extreme ends of the distribution are usually in some way, shape or form problematic. Compared to all other living creatures we know of, humans are right at the extreme tail end of the intelligence distribution, and the result is somewhat pathological when compared to other creatures. I think nothing that's north of a certain threshold required to make advanced technology can make it through the great filter without destroying itself in the process.

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My thoughts are that getting noticed by another culture is the great filter, so cultures make it through occasionally, but we will not notice them. "The benefits of not being seen"

Of all my concerns for humanity, excessive intelligence is not one of them...

Our earliest (and easiest to detect) transmissions should already be far enough away to be far below ambient noise I think/hope. So maybe we made it through unless someone starts shouting. Own-goals are also certainly a thing, but it would take a serious mistake to end all of us, or even set us back that far technologically on a geologic time scale.

>Own-goals are also certainly a thing, but it would take a serious mistake to end all of us, or even set us back that far technologically on a geologic time scale.

I must be a pessimist in this regard. I don't necessarily think it would take a serious mistake, rather just the nature of complexity itself will likely become a factor at some point and I can imagine certain scenarios playing out based off that.

When you compare the length of time of humanity spent pre-neolithic-revolution with the short ~14,000 odd years since, I can't help but feel our current trajectory won't see us reach hundreds of thousands more years into the future without a serious backslide in that time.

Humanity is pretty darn resilient, but the last few years have highlighted to me that modern day life is some weird fantasy land we've created for ourselves that has an expiry date at some point in the future.

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