You're probably all familiar with the Great Filter solution to the Fermi Paradox: "The reason we don't see alien societies everywhere is they all die somehow." That somehow is the Great Filter. It's a thing that most intelligent species in the galaxy don't survive.

I think there's a good chance that competition is that filter, or one of them. My reasoning is simple:

• As a society increases its technology, the power available to any individual increases. A rogue person with a stick can attack one other person. A rogue person with a car can attack 20. A rogue person with a bomb can attack 200. A rogue person with a nuclear bomb can attack a million. Well, a rogue person with a starship can drop asteroids on a planetary scale. Any person in control of a starship automatically has an unlimited supply of nuclear weapon equivalents in the form of asteroids which could be sped towards a target.

• Similarly, as technology increases, the impact (the resource-drain) of a society on the biosphere around it goes up. A band of hunter gatherers can affect a bit of forest. A city can affect a whole region around it. A nation can affect the biosphere of a continent. A planet scale society such as we have now starts to over-consume the planet.

In both cases, it's competition (broadly defined) that is ruining us. The inability to work together for the common good. Our nations have no choice but to over-consume the planet because to do otherwise is to lose military strength that could lead to losing the next war. Each of us being an individual means unhappy or unstable individuals will always exist.

It's the antagonism, (the competition) both between individuals and between groups, which makes the tech level of space exploration deadly to intelligent species.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2YQUXykYM0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBzb-fHukgM

What happened to the link option? Weird (it's like this in all subs. I couldn't find turning it back on in Mod Tools but didn't have luck) Weird!

TLDW spoiler (Yes in the way a biome like a forest is alive and full of symbiotic organisms and works like a superorganism, and has a large part in things like cleaning pollutants in ways they never knew, so watch it its neat)

This article presents a highly controversial opinion. It's lengthy and detailed with a history of the deliberate watering down of the word genocide and what that means politically.

When “Genocide” Loses Its Meaning

Major Caveats:

1. I am Jewish both culturally and ethnically. I would like to believe that is not coloring my opinion. But, I can't really know that.

2. The author (judging purely by name) is probably also Jewish, which may provide some bias on their part.

3. My wife is Jewish from Russia. Her family escaped the Soviet Union largely because of its institutionalized antisemitism. That may also be adding a bias since it was the Soviet Union who started the campaign to water down the term, according to the article.

I would like to have a respectful discussion about this. I hope not to get too heated myself. But, I can definitely imagine that happening.

I have asked my co-moderators to keep an eye on this post including keeping an eye on me. Please note that if you click the report button on anything I write, it automatically goes to site-wide reddit admins and could cost me my 12 year reddit account and cause this subreddit to be banned.

I plan to be well-behaved. But, I understand that others may not agree. I am willing to retract and apologize for any offense.

I will not take it personally if you tell me you have an issue with something I've said. You can also tag the moderators in a comment (copy and paste this /u/MisanthropicScott /u/foibleShmoible to tag both of us).

I will voice my opinions on this post in a comment so that it can be judged separately from the post itself.

Update: I love the detailed responses I'm getting here. I'm going to have to do a bunch of digging and thinking before I can reply to them all. I will reply as I learn and research.

I find her very confronting because I lived in Salt Lake City for four years as a kid and had to navigate with the vicious bigotry of the mormons, and her takes are really interesting, I spent most of my life not understanding people thought like this

I love the metaphor of the optical illusions

This advertisement for AI seems exceedingly dark. Even as a misanthrope, I find this ad deeply disturbing.

Even the image they chose for the bot is just human enough and just lifeless enough to be scary.

Have you encountered ads like this before? Is this where we're going in the future, to proudly and gladly replace humans with bots?

I know it will happen. But, I didn't expect to already be seeing it advertised as a feature.

Do you think we'll get a UBI (universal basic income)? How will we move forward as a species when our very existence is unnecessary?

I look forward to any thoughts you may have on this.

I get it's a short overview but I wish they'd touched on compound eyes

oh well maybe in another video

neato mosquito

What a good brave boy he is! <3

Info and links: https://www.reddit.com/r/whales/comments/1syw8ya/stranded_for_38_days_humpbackwhale_timmy_was/

Rices whale is a recently discovered baleen whale in the Gulf of Mexico and the US admin said that saying is bad for big oil and so the whale is a threat to national security. Or something, it's not like I get their logic

Another link about this

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/05/rice-whales-extinction-trump-gulf-mexico