Humanity was born way ahead of its time. The reason is grabby aliens.

Considering the hurdles that simple dead matter has to go through before becoming an advanced civilization and that there might be habitable planets lasting trillions of years, humanity looks incredibly early. Very suspiciously so. Robin Hanson, who first came up with the great filter in 1996, offers a compelling explanation: grabby aliens. They are defined as civilizations that 1. expand from their origin planet at a fraction of the speed of light, 2. make significant and visible changes wherever they go, and 3. Last a very long time. Such aliens explain human earliness because they set a deadline for other civilizations to appear. Non-grabby civilizations like ours can only appear early because later, every habitable planet will be taken. This is a selection effect. Plus, grabby civilizations are plausible for many other reasons: life on Earth, and humans, look grabby in many ways. Species, cultures, and organizations tend to expand in new niches and territories when possible, and they tend to modify their environment significantly. In the video, we also delve into the plausibility of space travel. As always, you can support us on:

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Sources and further readings:

Note that the date is 1998, not 1996. According to Wikipedia, 1996 is the date of the first version of the paper.

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Music attribution

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Chapters:

0:00 - Overview
1:05 - The question behind the model
1:16 - The hard-steps model
3:16 - Estimating human earliness
6:53 - Grabby aliens explain human earliness
9:17 - Other reasons why grabby aliens are plausible
12:15 - Next video
12:22 - Become a patron!

[RationalAnimations]

This video has been the hardest to make so far, but my hope is that we'll be able to maintain this kind of quality and slowly improve further.

[petersmythe]

I mean, looking mildly early is ok. It's when we look so early that someone is gonna accuse us of manipulating our pearl and blaze rod drop rates that this is concerning.

[satortenet]

Drake: "There must be aliens somewhere!"
Fermi: "So, where are they?"
Hanson: "We are the aliens."

[TimZoet]

We always think about 'what if we found life on another planet?'
But I just had the thought of what if we find a mining probe working on a different planet. That would be even crazier. Not only did we discover other life, but they're more advanced than us.

[segevstormlord]

I have oft been a fan of the concept of "Humans are the ancient precursors."

[tonymcgray]

If you want to see the grabby aliens hypothesis in action, play stellaris

[RifterDask]

We do often overlook the fact that we haven’t always been alone. We used to share the Earth with other intelligent hominids, but they were all killed or, in the case of the Neanderthals, integrated and absorbed into our own species over time.

[ro]

It's so interesting that, in spite of all the media involving humans discovering ancient civilizations that knew great secrets about the universe, it's likely that *we* are that ancient civilization that some civilization will stumble across. We might be the ones that arrive and give others our secrets, because we're the only ones here as of now.

[TheInfamousOryx]

When your channel blows up and starts making merchandise I want all the grabby alien plushies. Which should be in a week or so. Really enjoying your work. Keep being awesome.

[dreamcanvas]

The biggest problem I have with the "grabby aliens" hypothesis is that it assumes interstellar civilizations would have resource desires and needs that directly conflict with our own. However this could be a flawed assumption for a number of reasons:

If it's possible for a species to travel light years away in some fashion, then given how empty space is, it's unlikely that they're explicitly dependent on planets for resources. Planets are infrequent, have high gravity and other hazards that mean they take HUGE amounts of conventional energy and effort to deal with.

Let's take water for example, which is the most essential substance for life we know of. Despite the fact that Earth has literal oceans of the stuff, for a space faring civilization it'd be far more efficient to mine planets and asteroids, or even simply harvest hydrogen and oxygen from nebulae etc., then to land on a planet massive enough to hold water and grab it from there.

Even if we assume ultra advanced future tech makes it *easier* to harvest water from an earth-like planet then it is today...why wouldn't it be even easier and more efficient to still get water from those other sources?

Additionally, it's plausible that microbiological life on any alien planets are a potential *extreme* hazard to any species that evolved on a different planet; because their mere metabolism might produce compounds that are highly-toxic to alien life from other planets. If there's not a credible, ultra-scientifically advanced way around this...then one would expect aliens to *actively avoid* at least any physical contact with other life-bearing worlds.

[Aesthics]

This channel is going to grow like crazy. Love the content!

[Neatling]

Fascinating stuff! I rarely find such a gem through YouTube recommendations. You did an incredible job explaining the model in a way your more casual space and science geek can understand.

[adamlytle]

I've come to suspect that being "grabby" in and of itself is one of the great filters. We don't see expansionist alien civs because that tendency tends to result in their own collapse before they ever escape their own gravity well in any sort of significant way. If you can last long enough to become space faring, you almost by default have learned to live within your own means.

[awesomesauce]

I'm often confused by why people think we should be communicating with aliens by now. Our earliest transmissions, if they've managed to maintain coherency at all, are only about 80 light years away. We've been discovering hidden tribes on Earth up to the past decade, so who's to say we just haven't been passed over?

[TheEagleFace]

I'm curious as to how much of the "early" factor may actually just be a component of distance. As the further away you look into universe the earlier you are also observing.

[AnomalyAlter]

The idea that we humans are amongst the few primordial species to arise in the universe is not frequently considered, though interesting
Of those whom believe we are not alone, it's far in a way common to depict our own race as the slowpokes of the stars. I believe the idea that we could be in first place with all our flaws is a scary one to some. More comfort in being able to look up at a race more competent than ourselves, whether that be to our betterment or detriment. Us holding the reigns? Like an unsupervised child swimming in the deep end of a pool.

[ataraxia]

I love Robs voice. It’s so calming for someone who I know mostly for talking about dangerous ai risk and easy to hype predictions of the future.

[jasonrist]

just the fact that a lifeform[us] can even fathom these concepts and quantify them is remarkable in and of itself

[ryanpmcguire]

A better way to put it: you come to a party and without looking to see who is there, you find that the snack table looks completely untouched. Therefore, you must conclude that either you are early or no one decided to come.

[kazehakai]

You see this a lot in 4x games like Civilization. If you start expanding too late all of the good spots will be taken so at best you'll have a disjointed empire with a few ok resources.