“One grim suggestion is that there is a Great Filter that is still in front of us”
Is this really the case? As I understand it, the existence of a Great Filter implies that a parameter in the Drake equation has an extremely small value. It could be a parameter which for us is already in the past, e.g. the probability for the development of life. In this case the filter would be behind us. Or is this unlikely because of some anthropic reasoning? In other words, if SDO have shown that the existence of a Great Filter is rather likely, it would require a further argument to show that the filter is more likely in our future than in our past.
Yes, exactly, SDO does not claim anything about the filter beyond that universes with one are very likely, provided we take their probability distribution for the parameters in the Drake equation, so it’s not surprising that we might be the only ones in the observable universe. The filter can be anywhere relative to us.
“One grim suggestion is that there is a Great Filter that is still in front of us”
Is this really the case? As I understand it, the existence of a Great Filter implies that a parameter in the Drake equation has an extremely small value. It could be a parameter which for us is already in the past, e.g. the probability for the development of life. In this case the filter would be behind us. Or is this unlikely because of some anthropic reasoning? In other words, if SDO have shown that the existence of a Great Filter is rather likely, it would require a further argument to show that the filter is more likely in our future than in our past.
Yes, exactly, SDO does not claim anything about the filter beyond that universes with one are very likely, provided we take their probability distribution for the parameters in the Drake equation, so it’s not surprising that we might be the only ones in the observable universe. The filter can be anywhere relative to us.