I don't think life is rare, nor photosynthesis, but complex life might be. A planet needs to be really thriving with life for it to be worth it to go down the path to something like animals

But I think the bigger filter is much stranger.

Humans are a hive-like species. We're not just social - we're insanely interdependent, we don't function on our own and yet we've ended up in this place where we (often) try to individually succeed, even at the cost to our community

We're greedy enough to want the stars, yet interdependent enough we could only swarm over them in endless numbers

There's many problems with the fermi "paradox", but personally I think one of the largest is assuming all species would spread like a cancer blotting out the stars

A more individualistic and long lived species might instead be careful explorers, taking what they need and leaving little sign of their passage. A more communal species might be careful and control themselves to not destroy pointlessly. They might also feel no desire to contact other species

We're just the right mix to want everything a star could give, and to want to find others at great energy cost

Capitalism I can imagine how capitalism could be inevitable. I can't imagine enough controls on it to make it sustainable

If there really is a cosmic web and information flows through it, the other solar system will know that we're coming to destroy another world, but it will have developed defensive techniques against a known disease, humans. The same our immune systems does to known viruses.

I went a bit creative with this one.

The Dark Forest theory is a great answer to this paradox. Anyone more advanced has a rational choice to exterminate all competition. We haven’t found any other advanced life because it hasn’t shown up and killed us yet.

Fear. Right now we're on the edge of facing fear or succumbing to it

There's a lot of possibilities.

My top contender would be a desire to explore, which probably requires consciousness. Given that we have pretty much no idea what leads to consciousness, it can be guessed (dubiously) that if it arose more easily then we'd have an explanation by now. It could be that it's an extremely rare phenomenon, and there may even be other planets with "intelligent" but mechanistic beings that act entirely for their own survival and don't build civilizations or explore much.

Second would be intergalactic and to a lesser degree interstellar travel. If we assume both 1) intelligent civilizations are extremely rare and 2) faster-than-light transportation is impossible, it could be that everyone is just too spread out to make contact.

Third, and the one I most feel is right but it requires pretending I understand quantum physics (which I don't) and probably offending many that do, is the notion that the concrete universe is not large but small and has no objective existence independent of our respective perceptions, and any part of the universe that's invisible is a mere wave function that will only have concrete reality upon our perceiving it. I make the further dubious assumption that conscious beings can't be part of the wave function. So there.

One dope-ass 2 pole analogue ladder filter

Exponential functions. Seriously. You meet crisis after crisis, each having a risk of ending civilization, but that risk never goes away. It keeps multiplying and multiplying, until you realize the risk curve is approaching a vertical line

Your answer doesn't make sense.

"Photosynthesis" is a positive development for life. The great filter must be a negative development: it's a filter or a barrier that keeps life from achieving long term extra terrestrial survival.

So "climate change" would be an answer. Or "fuel depletion" (to which photosynthesis may be a solution). But the filter is the mechanism by which life forms are prevented from progressing.

I'm starting to wonder if its LLMs. An AGI is something we would be incredibly cautious around and is really no more likely to be psychopathic than any other living thing, the vast majority of which are not. LLMs on the other hand are pushed into every role techbros can shove them into while having less understanding of what they do than a housefly, the potential for damage is immense if someone decides to put one in charge of something important like infastructure or weaponry.

I think most lifeforms will have more pressing matters than wasting large amounts of time an energy blasting signals in to space for no reason, or listening to the sky.

Maybe those civilizations that waste more energy chasing aliens die off sooner due to wasting resources on sci-fi bullshit and ignoring their real problems at home.