The thing that breaks my head about the conversation about timescales in the universe is that it would seem that time as a phenomenon needs to be experienced subjectively. This means that the concept of the earth existing for hundreds of millions of years in a state able to harbor life before the first organisms appeared kind of does not make sense. If indeed the great filter is that first jump to life, then the moment after the big bang to the moment before life appeared is an instant. Measuring years in our understanding of the ticking clock before life simply does not make sense to me.

(2008)