this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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Astronomy
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What if the planet used to have intelligent life but they blew themselves up accidentally?
It would be interesting if the answer to the Fermi paradox was that every advanced lifeform accidentally blows themselves up.
That's the Great Filter. Basically, no intelligent life can survive past a certain point because they end up offing themselves. Pretty much what we're about to do ourselves.
There are other explanations, ofc. Maybe there's a galactic moratorium on contacting new space faring civilisations.
If you're willing to discard the conclusion that we're an early civilisation, then it's reasonable to think that old civilisations have had plenty of time to decide whether or not to contact us.
There are quite a few different takeaways you could draw from that. My personal favourite is that they want to recreate the "early universe" experience for us because it's an important process for civilisations to go through.
It doesn't HAVE to be that intelligent life is its own doom, but it does seem increasingly likely.