The Enlightenment Filter: Discovery-Driven Civilizational Convergence and the Great Silence

The Great Filter is usually imagined as a barrier that technological civilizations fail to survive. This paper considers a different possibility: the relevant transition may be a discovery. The Enlightenment Filter Hypothesis proposes that sufficiently capable civilizations discover an independently discoverable fact X about physical reality that changes the value, feasibility, or meaning of outward expansion enough to suppress its persistent, conspicuous forms. The hypothesis requires convergence robust enough to withstand rare expansionist descendants. In a minimal model with M independent opportunities, each having probability q of generating a persistent, conspicuous expansionist lineage, a high probability of no such lineage requires Mq to remain small. Preference-based explanations must therefore justify an exceptionally small and persistently low q when M is large. This motivates consideration of physical constraints, dominance relations, or revisions of what expansion accomplishes, without establishing that such mechanisms are necessary or available. The discovery must also precede autonomous expansion or reliably alter already-expanding lineages. Reduced expansion and reduced detectability impose separate requirements. Earlier discovery-based filters and inward-development proposals provide the context. No known physical result currently satisfies the full requirements. The paper offers a conceptual hypothesis and a framework for evaluating discovery-driven explanations of the Great Silence.