I reread Bostrom's writings on the Great Filter concept recently and have been thinking about them. A rising tide lifts all boats, and apparently Dvorsky (and Bostrom) have been thinking about them too. Here's a great blog pice by Dvorsky on Bostrom's piece in Technology Review on the Great Filter concept.
http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2008/04/nick-bostrom-why-i-hope-search-for.html
I suspect the Great Filter is most likely in our future. It's interesting that Bostrom adds to the Great Filter candidate list high energy physics experiments. I think that may be especially compelling, because it's a natural progression point intelligent life would likely reach, as universal as the mathematical and astronomical language Carl Sagan thought to communicate to extraterrestrial life with, and one that would be a lure whether the intelligent life was warring or peaceful. Sort of an ultimate pandora's lure. It may even be that there's a portfolio of scientific inquiry experiments that can render planets or regions of the universe inhabitable, some of which are nonobvious that they'd cause such results.
Perhaps the best way through such a nearly impenetrable filter would be to study better those regions of the universe that seem uninhabitable for life, such as black holes, pulsing quasars, and "empty" space. Although we should except the grim, fatalist irony that these very studies may result in our future nonexistence.
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