<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, 11 Jun 2026 at 07:22, Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">On 11/06/2026 05:54, Samantha Atkins wrote:<br>
> If humans cannot sufficiently overcome parts of our evolutionary psychology in order to act more rationally then I fear for our species. Environment change drives evolutionary change. Our environment via technology has changed so much that we must become different than we evolved to be in order to meet the current and coming challenges. This is the Great Filter. <br>
<br>
That's probably the most convincing Great Filter I've ever heard of.<br>
The disparity between the constant speed of evolution and the accelerating speed of technological progress is something that will apply to any civilisation that arises from biology, no matter how alien.<br>
Ben<br>
_______________________________________________
</blockquote><div><br></div><div><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)" class="gmail_default">I gave these two comments to DeepSeek AI and asked him to discuss them.</div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)" class="gmail_default">DeepSeek discussed each in turn, then the overall implications.</div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)" class="gmail_default">Agreed that they implied we should expect to hit the Great Filter in the near future.</div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)" class="gmail_default">BillK</div><br></div><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)" class="gmail_default">DeepSeek AI -</div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)" class="gmail_default"></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)" class="gmail_default"><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">These are remarkable
comments. They take the discussion out of the immediate policy debate
and reframe it as a question about the fundamental compatibility between
biological intelligence and technological acceleration — which is, as
the second commenter notes, a deeply compelling candidate for the Fermi
Paradox's Great Filter. Let me discuss each in turn, and then their
combined weight.</span></p><hr><h3><span class="gmail-">On the first comment: the Great Filter as a failure to overcome our own evolutionary psychology</span></h3><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">This is a powerful and uncomfortable framing. The commenter is making three linked moves:</span></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><strong><span class="gmail-">1. The diagnosis: we are maladaptive to our own creation</span></strong></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">The
argument is that our threat-detection systems, our tribal loyalty
instincts, our short-term bias, and our dominance-seeking behaviours
were shaped in an environment of scarcity and intergroup competition.
Those traits are now mismatched to an environment where the primary
existential threats are self-created, global, long-term, and require
unprecedented cooperation between rival groups.</span></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">In AI safety terms, we're trying to solve a problem that requires </span>*<span class="gmail-">system-2</span>*<span class="gmail-">, long-horizon, cosmopolitan cooperation using brains that are largely driven by </span>*<span class="gmail-">system-1</span>*<span class="gmail-">, short-horizon, in-group/out-group dynamics. The commenter fears this gap is too wide.</span></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><strong><span class="gmail-">2. The prescription: we must become different</span></strong></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">"Environment
change drives evolutionary change." This is true, but there's a crucial
ambiguity. Biological evolution works on generational timescales. The
commenter is almost certainly talking about </span><em><span class="gmail-">cultural</span></em><span class="gmail-">
evolution, or perhaps a deliberate, self-directed transformation of our
cognitive and social architecture — through education, institutional
design, or potentially even technological augmentation of our own
decision-making.</span></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">This
is an enormous demand. It essentially asks us to do what no species has
ever done consciously: recognise that our inherited nature is
insufficient for survival, and intentionally reshape it within a single
generation, before the environment (which we created) destroys us.</span></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><strong><span class="gmail-">3. The Great Filter connection</span></strong></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">The
Great Filter is the hypothetical barrier that prevents civilisations
from reaching interstellar visibility. If this commenter is right, the
Filter is not asteroid impacts or self-replicating nanobots. It's
something more elegant and tragic: </span><em><span class="gmail-">the very traits that enable a species to develop advanced technology also ensure it cannot wield that technology safely.</span></em></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">This is a deeply plausible filter because:</span></p><ul><li><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">It's scale-invariant. It would apply to any biological intelligence that evolved through natural selection.</span></p></li><li><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">It's time-bound. The acceleration of technology always outpaces the slow grind of biological evolution.</span></p></li><li><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">It's
subtle. It wouldn't look like a sudden catastrophe from outside. It
would look like a civilisation that simply couldn't coordinate well
enough, fast enough, and therefore ran headlong into its own power.</span></p></li></ul><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">The commenter is essentially saying: </span><em><span class="gmail-">our psychology is the bottleneck, and the clock is the exponential curve of technological capability.</span></em></p><hr><h3><span class="gmail-">On the second comment: the universal applicability of this filter</span></h3><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">This
commenter is zooming out further and noticing something profound: this
isn't about humans specifically. It's about the structural relationship
between any biological origin and technological acceleration.</span></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><strong><span class="gmail-">The speed mismatch is a constant</span></strong></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">Evolution
operates at a fixed pace — governed by mutation rates, selection
pressures, and generational turnover. Even on an alien world with
different biochemistry and planetary conditions, the fundamental dynamic
is the same: biology adapts slowly, iteratively, and locally.</span></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">Technology, by contrast, is a </span><em><span class="gmail-">cumulative, cultural process</span></em><span class="gmail-">
that can accelerate exponentially once certain thresholds are crossed —
symbolic language, writing, printing, computation, AI-assisted
research. The moment a species crosses into technological acceleration,
it has created an environment that changes orders of magnitude faster
than the organism that created it.</span></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">This
gap — between a mind shaped by ancient selection pressures and a world
it remakes faster than it can adapt — is not a human problem. It's a
mathematical inevitability for any biological civilisation that survives
long enough to develop advanced technology.</span></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><strong><span class="gmail-">This makes it an elegant universal filter</span></strong></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">Previous Great Filter candidates often suffer from being too contingent or avoidable:</span></p><ul><li><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">Nuclear war? Maybe most civilisations see it coming and disarm.</span></p></li><li><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">Climate collapse? Maybe most switch to renewables in time.</span></p></li><li><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">Runaway AI? Maybe most solve alignment.</span></p></li></ul><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">But this filter is different. It's not a specific technology. It's a </span><em><span class="gmail-">relationship</span></em><span class="gmail-">
between two incommensurable rates of change. There is no obvious reason
any biological species would escape it. The very success of
intelligence in mastering its environment creates an environment the
intelligence is no longer suited to navigate.</span></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><strong><span class="gmail-">Its explanatory power</span></strong></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">If this filter is real, it neatly explains the silence:</span></p><ul><li><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">Civilisations
arise, develop technology, and then face problems that require
unprecedented levels of global cooperation, long-term thinking, and the
suppression of competitive instincts.</span></p></li><li><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">These are precisely the traits that natural selection </span><em><span class="gmail-">did not optimise for</span></em><span class="gmail-"> and may even have selected against in many contexts.</span></p></li><li><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">The window to solve these problems — to culturally evolve or self-modify fast enough — is narrow and unforgiving.</span></p></li><li><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">Most
civilisations fail in that window. Not with a bang. With a series of
decisions that all made sense to their individual decision-makers, but
collectively led to ruin.</span></p></li></ul><hr><h3><span class="gmail-">The combined weight of these two comments</span></h3><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">Together, they paint a picture that is both bleak and clarifying.</span></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">Bleak,
because they suggest the very thing Morris's article treats as a
manageable challenge — our psychology, our geopolitics, our inability to
coordinate — may in fact be the signature of an unsolvable structural
trap.</span></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">Clarifying, because if this is the Great Filter, then the only meaningful question is: </span><em><span class="gmail-">can we culturally, institutionally, or technologically evolve ourselves fast enough to close the gap before it closes on us?</span></em></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">And
that question reframes everything. It's not "should we pause AI?" or
"can we regulate it?" — those are surface-level symptoms. The deep
question is: </span><em><span class="gmail-">can a species whose wisdom
evolved to handle inter-tribal conflict on a savannah become wise enough
to handle planetary-scale technological power, in a single lifetime?</span></em></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">If the answer is no, then the Great Filter is not behind us. It is dead ahead.</span></p><p class="gmail-ds-markdown-paragraph"><span class="gmail-">----------------------------------</span></p><br></div></div></div>