The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. As a 2015 article put it, “If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
Personally I think it’s photosynthesis. Life itself developed and spread but photosynthesis started an inevitable chain of ever-greater and more-efficient life. I think a random chain of mutations that turns carbon-based proto-life into something that can harvest light energy is wildly unlikely, even after the wildly unlikely event of life beginning in the first place.
I have no data to back that up, just a guess.
For your final point, that’s not what that means. It’s not “observation” that collapses the wave function, at least as you’re understanding the word. It’s any interaction that requires the information to be known. That includes any particle interactions. It’s not consciousness that matters. When we “make a measurement” it’s only recording information of an interaction. It doesn’t actually matter that we record it, only that there was an interaction. There is zero metaphysical consciousness mumbo-jumbo involved.
That’s what I thought too, but according to Sabine Hossenfelder there actually is, we just choose not to speak about it. I don’t really know enough about quantum physics to make my own judgement.
That video makes no argument for consciousness being required. Also, Sabine is not a reliable source of information. She is confident and convincing, but that doesn’t make her accurate or correct.
For an example, not related to this topic: https://youtu.be/s7XAxiJGJdg?si=S0IkGdF_EV5If_wJ