Beware future filters

Abstract

Though we can now see over 1020 stars that are billions of years old, none has ever birthed a visible interstellar civilization. So there is a great filter at least that big preventing a simple dead star from giving rise to visible colonization within billions of years. (This filter is even bigger given panspermia.) We aren’t sure where this filter lies, but if even 10% (logarithmically) of it still lies in our star’s future, we have less than a 1% chance of birthing a wave. If so, either we are >99% likely to always forever more try to and succeed in stopping.