Interesting, but I would have two more things to add :
Both dolphin and octopus seem to be a “dead-end” for the purpose of technological civilization. The main reason for that, I would say, is that there are water-based, and water-based makes early civilization much harder (tools are harder to make and use underwater, you can’t make fire, …).
Evolution from common predecessor to dolphins and octopus aren’t completely independent from our evolution. They are all dependent on Earth being globally stable enough. Gravity strong enough to hold the atmosphere (unlike Mars), big Moon that stabilize the climate, the Sun being globally constant in heat (it’ll not stay so for very much longer at cosmic scale), the Earth being far away from nearby novas, …
So I far, I think that’s mostly where the so-called “Great-Filter” lies, not in a single filter, but that evolving technological civilization takes a lot of time, it requires a lot of trail-and-error and the process can end up in many dead-ends, and for it to finally succeed, it requires a very long time of stable conditions, which aren’t that frequent.
If you take the last picture, I wouldn’t put a single great red line, but I would put many yellow lines (as there are) each adding lots of time to the “average” development speed. And some very early factors (like a big Moon) influencing how hard some of those filters are. For technological civilization to happen, you need the planet to stay stable enough until all the yellow filters are passed, and that’s just very rare, because it’ll lose its atmosphere like Mars, and gets blasted by a nearby nova, or its star will become too warm, or …
It also comes to mind that evolving is a kind of unstableness. For example the energy innovation introduced oxygen into the air certainly filtered out a lot of development paths. This wasn’t that much due to external circumstances. We didn’t survive the cold war of oxygen.
Also how long do dolphins and octopusses have time to come up with current human level intelligence until considered “filtered out”? I would recorn they would still have atleast a couple ten million years left.
What if the reason we got so far was because we didn’t evolve that rapidly and could thus develop more enduring traits ie we were boring? A planet that evolves to from one chemistry to another might do a lot of work on keeping the basics of kinetics going but not really getting deep in any branch or spend time adapting to circumstances that come about in a unique way that won’t be repeated. That migth up the level of danger from AI. The AI might do more damage than simple extinction of humans it can to some extent try to dial the clock back on evolution. If that kind of “negative progress” is possible giving arbitrary time won’t force an inevitable progress state.
Anyone know any basis to believe that non-progressive or anti-progressive evolution could overshadow progressive evolution?
Also how long do dolphins and octopusses have time to come up with current human level intelligence until considered “filtered out”? I would recorn they would still have atleast a couple ten million years left.
We don’t know much about the evolutionary history of octopuses—they’re practically nothing but soft parts and don’t fossilize well—so it’s hard to say exactly how long the clade’s been around. Our best guess is that they diverged from the vampyromorphs sometime in the Devonian, or ~360 mya (!), though of course octopuses of that era might not have been very smart.
Given the clade’s modern diversity, though, octopuses seem likely to have been fairly intelligent as animals go for a very long time. That’s suggestive of a soft filter of some sort; two possibilities might be their short lifespans (octopuses rarely make it five years, and die soon after mating) or the fact that they’re largely solitary animals. Some squid, however, are more social.
Cetaceans are a much younger clade, having evolved from wolf-like ancestors (albeit more closely related to cows) in the Eocene. And their intelligence is probably younger still; if encephalization quotient is anything to go by, archaeocetes were dumb as rocks. Unfortunately, most cetacean species are poorly researched, cognitively speaking, so we can’t nail down the evolutionary timeline with precision.
Also how long do dolphins and octopusses have time to come up with current human level intelligence until considered “filtered out”? I would recorn they would still have atleast a couple ten million years left.
Personally, I would consider them “filtered out” if and when they go extinct. So they may still have quite a bit of time left.
Interesting, but I would have two more things to add :
Both dolphin and octopus seem to be a “dead-end” for the purpose of technological civilization. The main reason for that, I would say, is that there are water-based, and water-based makes early civilization much harder (tools are harder to make and use underwater, you can’t make fire, …).
Evolution from common predecessor to dolphins and octopus aren’t completely independent from our evolution. They are all dependent on Earth being globally stable enough. Gravity strong enough to hold the atmosphere (unlike Mars), big Moon that stabilize the climate, the Sun being globally constant in heat (it’ll not stay so for very much longer at cosmic scale), the Earth being far away from nearby novas, …
So I far, I think that’s mostly where the so-called “Great-Filter” lies, not in a single filter, but that evolving technological civilization takes a lot of time, it requires a lot of trail-and-error and the process can end up in many dead-ends, and for it to finally succeed, it requires a very long time of stable conditions, which aren’t that frequent.
If you take the last picture, I wouldn’t put a single great red line, but I would put many yellow lines (as there are) each adding lots of time to the “average” development speed. And some very early factors (like a big Moon) influencing how hard some of those filters are. For technological civilization to happen, you need the planet to stay stable enough until all the yellow filters are passed, and that’s just very rare, because it’ll lose its atmosphere like Mars, and gets blasted by a nearby nova, or its star will become too warm, or …
That is a very valid point. It will be interesting to see the climatic stability of other Earth-like planets in the galaxy...
Have humans broken the “chain of stability”?
It also comes to mind that evolving is a kind of unstableness. For example the energy innovation introduced oxygen into the air certainly filtered out a lot of development paths. This wasn’t that much due to external circumstances. We didn’t survive the cold war of oxygen.
Also how long do dolphins and octopusses have time to come up with current human level intelligence until considered “filtered out”? I would recorn they would still have atleast a couple ten million years left.
What if the reason we got so far was because we didn’t evolve that rapidly and could thus develop more enduring traits ie we were boring? A planet that evolves to from one chemistry to another might do a lot of work on keeping the basics of kinetics going but not really getting deep in any branch or spend time adapting to circumstances that come about in a unique way that won’t be repeated. That migth up the level of danger from AI. The AI might do more damage than simple extinction of humans it can to some extent try to dial the clock back on evolution. If that kind of “negative progress” is possible giving arbitrary time won’t force an inevitable progress state.
Anyone know any basis to believe that non-progressive or anti-progressive evolution could overshadow progressive evolution?
We don’t know much about the evolutionary history of octopuses—they’re practically nothing but soft parts and don’t fossilize well—so it’s hard to say exactly how long the clade’s been around. Our best guess is that they diverged from the vampyromorphs sometime in the Devonian, or ~360 mya (!), though of course octopuses of that era might not have been very smart.
Given the clade’s modern diversity, though, octopuses seem likely to have been fairly intelligent as animals go for a very long time. That’s suggestive of a soft filter of some sort; two possibilities might be their short lifespans (octopuses rarely make it five years, and die soon after mating) or the fact that they’re largely solitary animals. Some squid, however, are more social.
Cetaceans are a much younger clade, having evolved from wolf-like ancestors (albeit more closely related to cows) in the Eocene. And their intelligence is probably younger still; if encephalization quotient is anything to go by, archaeocetes were dumb as rocks. Unfortunately, most cetacean species are poorly researched, cognitively speaking, so we can’t nail down the evolutionary timeline with precision.
That’s an awesome name X-D
Even better, the sole living representative of the order is Vampyroteuthis infernalis, lit. “vampire squid of Hell”, says Wikipedia.
Personally, I would consider them “filtered out” if and when they go extinct. So they may still have quite a bit of time left.