If ethics are completely subjective, then one path chosen by a intelligence may be neither better nor worse than another. In a world that is indifferent to a choice of stops, values may be perpendicular to outcomes. We know the words: Something goes. If it feels fine, do it.
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The Fermi conundrum was one of the first 20th-century indications that this theory might be misleading. Given the prevailing beliefs about the likelihood of life in the universe and the likely level of technological development, according to Enrico Fermi, the cosmos ought to be emblazoned with the names of superior beings, such as electric signals, Dyson spheres, von Neumann probes, etc.
Where are they? There should have been Times Square, never the silence.
The idea of a Great Filter, some sort of barrier that intelligences could n’t overcome with just technology, was raised during the subsequent discussion. Nick Bostrom, in an interview, was asked how he would relate to the revelation of living or historic life on Mars. Bostrom responded that he would not be all that concerned if the objects were remnants of basic society, but that he would be really involved if they were the remains of a more developed civilization. The Great Filter was behind us, according to basic wreckage. But advanced remains, like the revelation of abandoned starships, meant it was also before us.
At the end of World War II, strategists were shocked by the revelation that tech alone could not tell technologies what to do. Oppenheimer, watching the fire of the Trinity check display over the New Mexico plain, later wrote:” I thought of a collection from the Bhagavad Gita: Now I am become Death, the battleship of universes”. Current means, unfettered by ends, may create questions that were intractable by science only. One had to grow the axiom set from the moment of the absence of a cautious response.
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I had the honor of spending two years studying under Tom Schelling, one of the owners of the proper idea of punishment, for the Nobel Laureate. The training was repeatedly disregarded. The only thing standing between man and death in the atomic age is selection. For the first time in human history, ability was not a constraint, but goal.
The Great Filter was a spiritual evaluation, an honest check. There was no such thing as a good choice. Of course, it went without saying that the check was stochastic. Being in position with God or whatever you wanted to call it, making the right social alternative generally, not on your own, worked. Biblical Jobs, who were virtuous but also grieved, do also exist. However, if one were to wager, the odds would favor the society that made the right social choice and matched it with something out there, whatever it was.
But what is the proper moral option? What is out there? Whatever method of inquiry man could develop, answering that question has been the domain of religion, history, and idea for thousands of years, both organic and classic. But it was not an idle issue, a useless interrogatory, or futile debate, things present skeptics felt was beneath them. It is arguably the most significant problem ever. Once we were seeking. Then we “know” the responses. Or would we? In T. S. Eliot’s brilliant way of asking it:
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If you came this approach,
Taking the path that you are most likely to take
If you arrived at nighttime like a shattered prince,
If you arrived by evening without knowing what you were looking for
The yew-tree and the rose’s instant are both historical events.
Are of similar length. A persons without background
Is no redeemed from day, for history is a style
Of classic times. But, while the mild fails
On a wintry day, in a private chapel
Background is today and England.
