【注1：文中出现的中括号指的是引用的其他作者的言论，中括号中内容是作者名字及文章发表年代】平龙认
【注2：文中小括号是原文带括号的内容，黑括号是本人自己做的注释】
The Great Filter - Are We Almost Past It?
大筛选【大过滤】——我们在其中走了多远？【这个翻译是最符合文中意思的】
Sept. 15, 1998
1998年9月15日
by Robin Hanson
Robin Hanson著
Humanity ems to have a bright future, i.e., a non-trivial chance of expanding to fill the univer with lasting life. But the fact that space near us ems dead now tells us that any
given piece of dead matter faces an astronomically low chance of begating such a future. There thus exists a great filter between death and expanding lasting life, and humanity faces the ominous question: how far along this filter are we?
人类似乎有着光明的未来，这里对“光明未来”的定义是：有着不错的机会（而非渺茫的机会）不断扩张到整个宇宙并永续文明。但事实是，我们附近的宇宙一片死寂。这事实告诉我们，从无生命的物质进化出生命并走向这样的光明未来的几率是如此之低。在无生命与持续扩张的生命之间存在着这样一张大的筛网，而人类也面临着一个严峻的问题：我们在这场大筛选中已经走了多远？
用卡纸做花Combining standard stories of biologists, astronomers, physicists, and social scientists would lead us to expect a much smaller filter than we obrve. Thus one of the stories must be wrong. To find out who is wrong, and to inform our choices, we should study and reconsider all the areas. For example, we should ek evidence of extraterrestrials, such as via signals, fossils, or astronomy. But contrary to common expectations, evidence of extraterrestrials is likely bad (though valuable) news. The easier it was for life to evolve to our stage, the bleaker our future chances probably are.
结合生物学家、天文学家、物理学家和社会学家们提出的标准，我们观察到的筛选应该并没那么严苛。因此应该至少有一个标准是错的。为了找出哪出错了并为我们的选择提供更多信息，我们应该重新审视每一个领域。比如说，我们可以通过信号、化石或天文发现等手段去寻找地外生命存在的证据。但与人们普遍的期望完全相反，发现地外生命的存在可能是坏消息（即使是很有用的消息）。如果生命越容易进化到我们这个层次，我们的未来前景就越暗淡。【应该简单理解成“地外文明的存在尤其是等于或高于我们文明等级的文明存在，将占据人类文明未来的生存空间，阻碍人类向宇宙中的扩张”。】
Introduction
绪论
书愤教案Fermi, Dyson, Hart, Tipler, and others [Finney & Jones, Dyson 66, Hart 75, Tipler 80] have highlighted the relevance to SETI (the arch for extraterrestrial intelligence) of the "The Great Silence" [Brin 83] (also known as the Fermi paradox), the fact that extraterrestrials haven't substantially colonized Earth yet. What has not yet been sufficiently highlighted or adequately analyzed, however, is the relevance of this fact for
much bigger choices we now make.
Fermi，Dyson，Hart，Tipler等人都高度重视SETI（地外智慧生物搜寻【组织名，也指寻找外星人的这项活动】）与“大寂静”的关联（也叫费米悖论），即为什么还没有外星人实质地接触地球。而还没有引起人们足够重视或充分分析过的方面是，这一事实与人类文明将面临的重大选择之间的联系。【即人类将走向何方？人类现在选择的道路能否挺过大筛选？还是最终逐渐走向自我灭亡？】
杜传旺The Great Silence must force us to revi a standard view in one or more area of biology, astronomy, physics, or the social sciences. And some of the revisions strongly suggest that humanity be much more wary of possible disasters. To clarify the points, this paper will first review how our standard understandings in the areas would lead us not to expect a Great Silence, and will then consider a variety of possible revisions we might consider.
“大寂静”的事实强迫我们对生物学、天文学、物理学和社会学中的一个或多个领域的标准观进行修正。有些修正会强调对于潜藏的大灾变的警惕。为了解释清楚这些观点，本文会
先检视一遍这些领域里现有的标准观能否导向一条避免“大寂静”的路径，然后提出一些可供考虑的修正方案。瑜珈入门
Life Will Colonize
生命的本能是扩张【三体2中提出的宇宙文明公理：文明不断增长和扩张】
So far, life on earth ems to have adapted its technology to fill every ecological niche it could. Previously stable populations and species have consistently expanded into newly-opened frontiers. All known life ems to have a "dispersal pha" to encourage colonization, with non-trivial mutations and xual mixing to encourage exploration of new technologies [Tipler 80].
到目前为止，生命已经通过自己的适应调整能力占满了地球上每一个能被占据的生态位。【楼主正解】已有的稳定的物种和种群会不断向新的疆域扩张，直至其数量与生存空间再次达到平衡。所有已知生命物种都有一个“扩张阶段”，这一过程中会出现重大的变异、重组来获得更强的生存能力。
Similarly, humanity has continued to advance technologically, and to fill new geographic and economic niches as they become technologically feasible. For example, while imperial China clod itlf to exploration for a time, other competing peoples, such as in Europe, eventually filled the gap.
相似地，人类也在不断进化【生理方面和科技方面】，并随着不断提高的适应力和科技水平不断填充新的“地理位”和“经济位”【即地理上的和经济上的生存空间】。举个例子，当年中华帝国【清政府】选择了闭关锁国，一段时间后，其他的竞争者如欧洲人，逐渐占据了这些生存空间。
This phenomenon is easily understood from an evolutionary perspective. In general, it only takes a few individuals of one species to try to fill an ecological niche, even if all other life is uninterested. And mutations that encourage such trials can be richly rewarded. Similarly, we expect internally-competitive populations of our surviving descendants to continue to advance technologically, and to fill new niches as they become technologically and economically feasible.让我试试
这一现象很容易用进化论的观点解释。总的来说，要试图填充一个生态位只需要一个种群中的几个个体就足够了，即使没有其他任何生物物种一起来填充。而基因突变将为这种尝试带来巨大的有利因素。相似地，我们可以预期未来的人类后代也会在内部竞争的推动下继续发展科技，并在科技和生态条件的允许下填充新的“位”。百无聊赖的近义词
Colonization has been a consistent experience with life on Earth over the long run, and our best understanding of human social systems suggests this will continue. While humans evolve within complex co-evolving organizational, cultural, memetic, and genetic systems, all of the systems show long-term tendencies to make u of reproductively-uful resources.
殖民扩张是地球生命长期以来一直延续的行为，而基于我们对人类社会系统发展的理解，这样的趋势仍然会继续下去。随着人类的进化发展而演化出来的复杂的组织结构、文化、模因以及基因遗传系统，都会显示出利用对繁衍有利的资源的长期趋势。
中班户外游戏Thus we should expect that, when such space travel is possible, some of our descendants will try to colonize first the planets, then the stars, and then other galaxies. A
nd we should expect such expansion even when most our descendants are content to navel-gaze, fear competition from colonists [Benford 81], fear contact with aliens, or want to prerve the univer in its natural state. At least we should expect this as long as a society is internally-competitive enough to allow many members to have and act on alternative views. After all, even navel-gazing virtual reality addicts will likely want more and more mass and energy (really negentroy) to build and run better computers, and should want to spread out to mitigate local disasters [Zuckerman 85]. A million years is a cosmologically short period, yet it is much more than enough for historic population growth rates (> .001%/yr.) to overwhelm fundamental physical limits on the amount of computation possible within the obrvable univer [Zaslavskii 96]. This remains true even using black holes for negentropy and quantum computers for computation, each of which squares the available resources relative to standard approaches. Thus we have good reasons to expect unud resources to be colonized on cosmological time scales, even if we find other civilizations to communicate with or to "teleport to" [Scheffer 94].
