That's ok. Insignificant numbers are more than enough to colonize an entire galaxy on geologic timescales.
The thing about the "Great Filter" is that it is great. If you can even imagine an exception for your candidate filter, then it's not great enough.
Do that sort of stunt as much as you like, it won't become something more. It's like trying to jump over a building by hopping a bunch. You can hop one time or one billion times, you won't clear the building because after each failed hop you're back to square one.
Such a small group of people, armed with current genetic engineering and future artificial means of reproduction, could bring with them enough genetic diversity and reproductive capacity to reach colonizing scale.
You can hop one time or one billion times, you won't clear the building because after each failed hop you're back to square one.
Despite the first part of my reply, this point about minimum activation energy is relevant to a lot of contexts, from escaping poverty to switching careers, from getting fit to overcoming medical conditions. This is a pretty good analogy that I might use in the future.
The hard part I think is "playing factorio IRL" on a planet we weren't evolved to cope with. Bootstrapping industry sufficient even to create additional shelters would be very challenging. Maybe we could practice this on Mars.
I don't mean this as a personal attack, but that gets the idea dangerously close to the theory of unfalsifiability.
Personally I am more inclined to the believe that we haven't heard any radio signals from space because you don't run a multi-galaxy civilisation on light-limited transmissions.
Invent the ansible and then maybe we will find the galaxy theming with life.
If 1 per billion wants to expand, out of a population of 8 billion, you have 8 expansionists. If each of them breaks the social conventions and have twice as many offspring as the sustainers (and if the desire is heritable), after 30 generations they’re now equal in number to the sustainers. Cambridge University is in the order of 30 generations old.
https://isogg.org/wiki/How_long_is_a_generation%3F_Science_p...
This is the inverse of the intended interpretation. By "probably x decades early", I mean "at least x decades early". I did not mean "it has probably not happened".
The singularity is not guaranteed to happen and with a high confidence has not already happened.
I've noticed this since the advent of texting. Not since the advent of social media. It's absurd to me honestly that someone would prioritize someone on their phone over the person who took the time and effort to physically be present and engage with them that day.
>I really miss sitting around the backyard with friends talking
I do as well. But it makes me wonder now, if people always have been flakey and unwilling to hang out with new people. I swear when I was a kid, asking someone to hang out or do something was easy, even if you met them one time. It's almost as if unlimited media and instant communication halts people from pursuing anything with other people unless they have something they dont.
You know, that could be.
I'll present a meta-hypothesis. Diversity is generally dangerous and global communications/global movement drives everyone closer to hazardous behavior. Without the filtering of slow tempos, things get sporty.
I'm not sure I agree. For the most part of humanity, we have been at war, murdering each other, enslaving each other, and numerous other atrocities... Including nearly a nuclear war.
The reduction in in person communication is due to the increase in global communication... Which I think is a net benefit. Social media is a bump in the road, and my hope is that we'll overcome the likes of Twitter soon.
But that's not even what this article is about, its discussing the spread of misinformation and social media being full of low information content.