The great filter
Post last updated 3 hours, 2 minutes ago
Some of you might already be familiar with the concept of the great filter, but for those who aren't: it says there exists a barrier in the evolution of intelligent life that prevents majority of species from becoming advanced enough to be detectable by other intelligent life in the universe. It's one of the possible solutions to the Fermi paradox, but astrobiology is not what I want to talk about now.
The great filter I'm thinking about is regarding the path of thoughts from your mind to the external world. You most certainly know the feeling of thinking you have one of the most clear, concise, revolutionary, valuable insights or ideas and when you try to verbalize or write it either nothing comes out or it's a pale shadow of what it should've been. A barrier stops great thoughts from really seeing the light of the outer world.
This barrier is actively culling what I thought to be a wonderful stream of ideas into a some chopped sentences and semi-coherent blabbering. It's both fascinating and a bit frustrating to observe it.
Thought not all hope is lost, I think. Where we still haven't found any other intelligent life, we can surely find people that passed this great filter, even if not completely. Just read or listen to any of the classics, both in literature and music, or try to observe the rationale of any of the great scientists, or contemplate any of the great movies or photographs or paintings ever made and you'll surely get a glimpse of what it means to get past the great filter.
And the best part of it all? With practice, the filter loses more and more power.
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