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JoshuaZ comments on Is our continued existence evidence that Mutually Assured Destruction worked? - Less Wrong Discussion
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If nuclear war is the Great Filter it may take a while. One could conceive for example if it takes on the order generally of a few hundred years to get substantially off-planet from when one develops nukes (note that this requires among other details no near Singularity) then it starts looking a lot more plausible. Similarly, global governments may not be stable in that time frame.
Note also that there's been discussion here of how much the age of the planets could matter, and whether planets where intelligent life arises earlier are more likely to wipe themselves out (from easier access to uranium 235), and the consensus seemed to be that this was not a significant enough different to be a major part of the filter. See discussion here when I last brought it up.
Possibly an explanation for the great filter, but if it only applies after we move off-planet, then it doesn't explain why we survived our own cold war on our own planet (and means we are still at risk of hitting the great filter ourselves, and not a rare technological civilization among the stars like we thought.)
We haven't gotten strongly off planet yet. We survived our first encounter with nuclear war, that doesn't mean that it won't still happen. Indeed, more groups now have access to nuclear weapons. By many estimates the US currently has close to first strike capability on Russia and China, but that may change as China improves its military. And as technology improves, making nukes becomes easier, not harder.
Well, this is essentially just the question of whether the Filter is largely in front of us or largely behind us.