this is bad. If we're the only life in neighborhood it is evidence that life is rare and we might already be past the great filter. If life is relatively common it makes the fact that the sky is silent fucking terrifying.
What do you think about the Anthropic Principle? Not only in the sense that the physics of the Universe is just right for complex life to exist, but also in the sense that if aliens 'got there first' we would never have been allowed to evolve to our current state? We don't observe alien civilizations because if they existed we wouldn't!
Life on Earth took almost 3 billion years to go from single-celled organisms to multi-cellular ones. 3 billion years is almost as long as the life of the Universe (~13.7 billion years). There's one data point that suggests that there was a big filter in our past.
Off-topic but I'm not sure where else to ask: Does Overcoming Bias have any organized index of posts remotely similar to LessWrong's sequences[1]? I'll probably just dive in and navigate via tags, but a more directed approach would be preferable.
it is possible that the consequences of the competitive tendencies implicit in natural selection, notably conflict and resource exhaustion, often destroy civilizations before they transmit a lot of radio. if this is very likely then it is likely true of us.
