Why Life On Mars May Foretell Our Doom

Hugh Pickens writes "Nick Bostrom has an interesting interpretation on why the failure of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) for the past half-century is good news and why the discovery of life on Mars could foretell our doom. Bostrom postulates a 'Great Filter,' which can be thought of as a probability barrier and consists of one or more evolutionary transitions or steps that must be traversed at great odds in order for an Earth-like planet to produce a civilization capable of exploring distant solar systems."

Comments

Fermi Paradox

[__aanonl8035]

In a way, he is just restating the Fermi Paradox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations.

Re:Ignores possibility of the Singularity

[cplusplus]

After all our own civilization has pretty much lost interest in anything beyond putting up more geostationary TV transmitters. Only because it's outrageously expensive and really really hard to keep people alive in space. If space travel were as cheap and easy as a walk in the park, we'd be EVERYWHERE.