Algorithmic bottlenecks in evolution: Genetic code, symbolic language, and the Great Filter hypothesis.

Authors

Mikhail Prokopenko, Nihat Ay, Angelica Breviario, Roland M Crocker, Paul C W Davies, Pauline Davies, Darren Dougan, Roland Fletcher, Michael Harré, Marcus G Heisler, Zdenka Kuncic, Geraint F Lewis, Ori Livson, Vivienne Reiner, Jaime Ruiz Serra

Published in

Physics of life reviews. Volume 59. Pages 96-119. Sep 06, 2026. Epub Sep 06, 2026.

Abstract

The Great Filter hypothesis proposes that the emergence of technological societies capable of interstellar travel depends on a small number of exceptionally hard and highly improbable steps. Traditional versions of this hypothesis enumerate such "hard steps" along the trajectory from inanimate matter to complex technological societies, but diverge in their explanations for why these particular steps should be so improbable. The theory of Major Evolutionary Transitions also faces challenges in identifying which steps should be considered universally "hard" across different evolutionary pathways. In contrast, we argue that two deeply structural obstacles dominate the evolutionary landscape: the coding threshold associated with the origin of the genetic code, and the language threshold associated with the emergence of symbolic communication. We examine the developmental precursors of both transitions and analyze the underlying algorithmic bottlenecks: points at which evolving systems separate code from function, while entangling them within information hierarchies. Using a game-theoretic analysis of coupled signaling and coordination dynamics, we then argue that the corresponding multichannel games may exhibit saddle-type equilibria whose stable manifolds define narrow evolutionary paths, making the transitions intrinsically difficult to traverse. We conjecture that the so-called Great Filter is best understood not as a sequence of isolated improbable events, but as a nested structure of tangled information hierarchies. Under this conjecture, the rarity of advanced societies follows from the difficulty of crossing these coding thresholds in a competitive noisy environment. This hypothesis reframes the Great Filter as an algorithmic property of evolving systems, suggesting that only a small fraction of life may ever traverse the path toward technological societies capable of interstellar travel.

PMID:
42732728
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 14 Sep 2026.

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