"simple_language@yahoo.com" yahoo.com> writes:

[BIG SNIP]

You could have put a bit more effort into that and shorten it a bit... So
what you're saying is: The universe seems to be quite void of visible
alien civilizations these centuries and you hope that the reason is that
life getting started is very improbable, so we are already
beyond that Great Filter and have nothing to fear now and automatically
get promoted to Galaxy Leader very soon?

I would say: Life is quite common on planets with the right environment
for it (judging from the fact that it didn't take long for life to pop
up here). But I think complex and even intelligent life is much rarer.
Our planet is about one billion years away from dying (when our sun will
start to expand) and if complex and intelligent and technological adept
life would've taken one or two billion years longer to appear (it took
quite a while already, with long periods of nothing really new appearing
at all) it would have gotten into a tight race between that and Earth
turning into a dry, hot rock with no trace of life at all anymore.

And then there's the question if life, once being intelligent and
technology-wise rising to what we're going through now, can *sustain*
that long enough to survive natural resources (like fossil fuels) going
dry. After all to go the stars or even to send signals powerful enough
to be recognized you have to keep that up for a while and this means
using the available resources of a planet wise enough to tap into space
resources as long as your planet isn't totally stripped down. *This* is
another Great Filter. Looking at what happens down on Earth right now I
wouldn't bet on us making it through that filter. And maybe the last
life that made it through this did it a few millions years ago and isn't
there anymore. This would explain much without making us in any way
special. Maybe we're just too common an example of life. There could
have been a lot of planets going trough that now and then, flaring up
troughout the billions of years for a moment, going into space a bit,
sending stuff and noise and going dark again. We are still being in a
state of rising brilliant light, not knowing if this a rising sun or
just a flash of light irrelevant in the great shape of things.

So I think that life is common, complex life rarer, intellligent life
even rarer and life that is intelligent enough and sane enough to
*sustain* a technology age over millions of years without collapsing is
extremely rare. Easily rare enough that in our galaxy there're long
times between each such civilizations, long enough that each of them
looks up and finds the skies silent and empty. And asking itself "what's
the reason for the skies being that empty?".

I hope that we find that life is common and the Great Filter lies yet
before us. This way we might be prepared to the fact that all hardships
that life and mankind went through will be tiny against the things we'll
have to struggle against in the next centuries. "We" (whoever that is)
will have to get used to the fact that we have to manage our future to
survive and to not only survive but to make progress and to get over
whatever our planet has to offer. And the sooner we get the fact that
the currently wide open window is about to start closing very fast, the
better.

I think that either we will be launching spacecrafts and satellites a
hundred of years from now (which will mean we got over it) or we will be
heading back fast to being just another kind of animal roving that
planet for a short time, and no one out there will ever know or care.

And I have no doubt that such tragedies are more common than the
powerful aliens you're looking for and that there were many civilizations
which were on the right way and which had some worldwide networks
including things like Usenet and that this very discussion has happened
millions of times all over the universe already...

Jochem