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

Ignores possibility of the Singularity

[jmorris42]

The guy dismisses the possibility that most civilizations evolve in some direction other than midlessly colonizing every star they can reach.

After all our own civilization has pretty much lost interest in anything beyond putting up more geostationary TV transmitters.

What if most evolve beyond physical forms? What if most lose themselves in virtual realities. What if many simply don't bother leaving their own solar system because the speed of light proves to be unbreakable and they aren't interested in planting colonies that will have little or no contact or impact on their own civilization?

Or what if we just got lucky and got a galaxy to ourselves?