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peter_hurford comments on The Octopus, the Dolphin and Us: a Great Filter tale - Less Wrong
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Comments (233)
From the article:
That doesn't sound like it admits the possibility of twelve, independent, roughly equally balanced filters.
You're being uncharitable. "[It's] likely [that X]" doesn't exclude the possibility of non-X.
If you know nothing about a probability distribution, it is more likely that it has one absolute maximum than more than one.
Maybe I am being uncharitable, but when Sophronius asks "[c]an somebody explain to me why people generally assume that the great filter has a single cause?" and you reply "I don't think anyone really assumes that", I have to admit that I've always seen people think of the Great Filter in terms of one main cause (e.g., look to the poll in this thread where people choose one particular cause), and not in terms of multiple causes.
Though, you're right that no one has said that multiple causes is outright impossible. And you may be right that one main cause makes a lot more sense. But I do think Sophronius raises a question worth considering, at least a bit.
At least in other Less Wrong posts and comments on the topic, the question is usually presented probabilistically, as in "Does the bulk of the great filter lie ahead of us or behind us?"
Though, it is usually not specified whether the writer is asking where the greatest number of candidates gets ruled out, or the greatest fraction. Maybe there are ten factors that each eliminate 90% of candidates prior to the technological civilization level (leaving maybe a hundred near-type-I civilizations per galaxy), but one factor (AI? self-destruction by war or ecological collapse? Failing to colonize other worlds before a stray cosmic whatever destroys your homeworld?) takes out 99% of what is left. In that case nearly all the great filter would be behind us, and our odds still wouldn't be good.