If aliens existed we could readily see copious surface engineering in galaxies: "The germs of existence [on] earth if they could freely develop themselves would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years"(Malthus) https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html … https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2012/01/23/rethinking-setis-targets/comment-page-1/ …
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Many early events in the origins and early history of life are astronomically improbable. e.g. copious handwaving still required to try to describe how nature could go from comet stuff to even the simplest autocatalytic set of nucleic acids, not to mention ATP, proteins, ...
By contrast, there are no known highly probable existential risks (e.g. large-scale nuclear war is neither highly probable nor if it happened an actual existential risk to our species), so "the Great Filter is ahead of us" is an explanation of vastly lower probability.
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Interesting. I see large scale nuclear war in the future as highly probable. Why do you think not? Isn't there a "Moore's Law of destructive technology"--cost of violence greatly decreasing year after year?
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To make a difference in this discussion it has to be 99.9999999999% or more probable, give or take a few 9s.
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Got it
End of conversation
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There are *certain* existential risks, depending on the timescale. At large timescales, you have GRBs. At smaller tscales, you have local existential risks, starting with supervolcanism, against which we can do exactly nothing for centuries to come, bar quick colonizing Mars.
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Also something I found rather striking is the luck of having Jupiter as a "gravity shield" that basically slingshots asteroids away from Earth. Although it may come to pass that similar gas giants are a common occurrence in exo-systems...
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