The not so great filterS or my take on the Fermi paradox

Photo by Hristo Fidanov from Pexels

After reading the great WaitButWhy (WBW) article on the Fermi paradox (that I really really recommend reading), my girlfriend and I had a nice evening walk during which we debated the different assumptions and theories mentioned in the article. So the below sums up our take on it.

The WBW article is basically exposing two opposing theories:

1. The Great Filter theory: there are no signs of higher (Type II and III) civilizations because there are no higher civilizations in existence. Somehow, there is a Great Filter that most civilizations cannot pass. This Great Filter could be behind or ahead of us poor humans.
2. Type II and III civilizations exist but we just haven’t heard of them. There are many plausible explanations exposed in the article, from us being too dumb to understand or detect any presence, to governments actually hiding their existence.

Both theories are interesting and reasonably grounded (if anything can be when we talk about the Fermi Paradox…) however our discussion and debates lead us to the below questions:

1. What if there was not a single Great Filter but many not so great filters ?
2. Why would these two theories be mutually exclusive ?

Let me briefly explore each point.

1. Not so great filterS

Instead of a single Great Filter, we are wondering why there would not be several not so great filters. So the game would not be over for every civilization at a single point of their evolution but it could happen at different stages of their development. Maybe going from prokaryote to eukaryote was one of these filters, maybe a second one is the risks brought by a developed civilization (be it pandemic risks, nuclear war risk etc, i.e. more extreme/tail risks) and maybe there are other filters in the future that we don’t have any idea about… yet. Each of this filter could have a very low probability of being passed and the cumulative probability of passing them all would be very low, as low (or lower) as the one of passing a single Great Filter.

2. Two theories which are not mutually exclusive

So, there could be many not so great filters and it could be that other civilizations have passed these filters, some of them passing more filters than us, some others less. Then the question arises as to why would they not get in touch with us or why aren’t we aware of them?
Well, the various explanations provided in the WBW article are all holding here. The civilizations which are at the same stage as us in some remote galaxies have no way of detecting or contacting us . And it could be that the more advanced civilizations just don’t care about us, as us with ants or that they are trying to get in touch but we are too dumb to understand anything.

TLDR

I really don’t see why there would be one Great Filter and not several not so great filters. At the same time, these not so great filters do not exclude the possibility of other civilizations having passed some of them and just not being able or trying to get in touch with us.

Please share your thoughts in comments!