Do 'Grabby Aliens' Solve The Fermi Paradox?

There are many possible solutions to the Fermi Paradox but a few have risen to particular prominence - including the "Grabby Aliens" hypothesis. Today, we'll explore what this solution proposes, what it assumes, and ultimately three reasons why I personally don't think it's right.

Written & presented by Prof. David Kipping. Edited by Jorge Casas. Special thanks to Robin Hanson for his discussions with me on this.

THANK-YOU to T. Widdowson, D. Smith, L. Sanborn, C. Bottaccini, D. Daughaday, S. Brownlee, E. West, T. Zajonc, A. De Vaal, M. Elliott, B. Daniluk, S. Vystoropskyi, S. Lee, Z. Danielson, C. Fitzgerald, C. Souter, M. Gillette, T. Jeffcoat, J. Rockett, D. Murphree, M. Sanford, T. Donkin, A. Schoen, K. Dabrowski, R. Ramezankhani, J. Armstrong, S. Marks, B. Smith, J. Kruger, S. Applegate, E. Zahnle, N. Gebben, J. Bergman, C. Macdonald, M. Hedlund, P. Kaup, W. Evans, N. Corwin, K. Howard, L. Deacon, G. Metts, R. Provost, G. Fullwood, N. De Haan, R. Williams, E. Garland, R. Lovely, A. Cornejo, D. Compos, F. Demopoulos, G. Bylinsky, J. Werner, S. Thayer, T. Edris, F. Blood, M. O'Brien, D. Lee, J. Sargent, M. Czirr, F. Krotzer, I. Williams, J. Sattler, B. Reese, O. Shabtay, X. Yao, S. Saverys, A. Nimmerjahn, C. Seay, D. Johnson, L. Cunningham, M. Morrow, M. Campbell, B. Devermont, Y. Muheim, A. Stark, C. Caminero, P. Borisoff, A. Donovan & H. Schiff.

REFERENCES

MUSIC
0:00 - Tamuz Dekel - Quiet Pull
2:55 - Joachim Heinrich - Horizon
4:13 - Joachim Heinrich - Stjärna
6:41 - Hill - World of Wonder
7:43 - Chris Zabriskie - The Oceans Continue to Rise
9:33 - Hill - Arctic Warmth
12:21 - Hill - Northern Boards
15:39 - Hill - Fragile
19:10 - Hill - The Meek

CHAPTERS
0:00 Grabby Aliens
6:43 StoryBlocks
7:47 Hard Steps
12:00 M-Dwarfs
15:30 Philosophical Issues
18:05 Conclusions
19:10 Outro and Credits

#GrabbyAliens #FermiParadox #CoolWorlds

[kevinamery]

Us being "early" might be unexpected or unlikely, but by definition it cannot be impossible: *someone* has to arrive first, and there's no law of physics that actively blocks us from being that someone. As a person whose last name begins with "A", I have a lifetime of experience being the first person in roll-calls, so while it's true that *most* people's names get called somewhere in the middle I'm here to tell you that being called first is not prohibited. The fact we haven't seen civilizations emerge a trillion years from now around m-dwarf stars has less to do with probability than it does with us just not having waited long enough yet.

[john_michael_white]

Couple of fellas sat around a post-harvest Mesopotamian campfire, 11, 000BC, sharing a fermented drink or two.
"I know this agriculture lark seems to be paying off, but I'm fairly certain we're about to die."
"Why's that?"
"Well we've been hunting and gathering for tens of thousands of years now, and we've been farming for a few years. If it's a successful future strategy, what are the chances that we're among the very first few to try it?"
"Good point, especially when you consider that a successful civilisation based on agriculture could support many hundreds of times the population that hunting and gathering does. That makes it even less likely we're amongst the first few to farm. Statistically it seems fairly certain we're about to die."
"Yep." <sips fermented drink>

[riccardovacca]

The oversimplification of the Gigantic task that is space travel is always mind blowing. Imagine trying to meet a person that it’s walking at 828000 km/h and gave you the position he was 30 years ago in a space that is 99.9% empty

[TDMHeyzeus]

One little thing that always sticks in my mind when I think about this is that life on Earth actually very nearly ended during the Permian mass extinction. This is the time before the time before the dinosaurs, when terrestrial vertebrates were dominating the earth for the very first time (and the dominant animals were actually proto-mammals rather than reptiles), and it very nearly all ended right then and there. Its always seemed like just another one of those locks we were lucky to slip through. Just a bit more vulcanism and our ancestors might've perished before they even had a chance.

[alexdenton]

My personal take is that if the unobservable universe is super large or infinite, then we're just dealing with a sampling problem. We have no clue about the distribution density of life as a whole in the same way if you lived in the desert and had never seen a jungle, you might well assume the world is largely barren. Aliens might be super abundant in other parts of the universe, whereas our region might well be the cosmic boondocks just based on sheer randomness. Even if you take our own observation bubble as is, the speed of light produces a cosmic picture of a distant past that is vastly different from what things actually look like in the present, and you don't have to travel very far before this becomes a significant problem. Other parts of the galaxy, never mind the universe, could be extantly colonised and we wouldn't know it for millions of years.

[admiralhunchback]

By "grabby ailens" i completely thought that it meant aliens with grabby hands, like we have

[FridayFables]

The mere thought of being born into a relatively early universe is both inspiring and horrifying. We could spend our whole existence improving technology to such incredible depths, yet continue drawing conclusive evidence that alien civilizations just aren't out there, or aren't visible.

And we'll still keep looking out there anyway, because the search is what drives us in the first place.

[Maya_Ruinz]

I love how we as humans, a species that has not even broken out of our own solar system, is so confident about an idea that is at best just a blind guess. We don’t have the faintest idea about what could be out there, for all we know our galaxy is surrounded by alien life. If they have the technology to move across galaxy, let alone multiple galaxies, they have the tech to fool us and keep us in the dark.

[Daemonworks]

My response to the fermi paradox has always been that space is actually quite big, and our ability to perceive it is miniscule.

It's like finding it wierd that you can't see a tree that's five hours drive away, on a foggy night, without your glasses.

[konstantinavalentina]

I'm on the Subjective Rarity = time + distance boat.
Let's say every galaxy gets ONE technological civilization. 1. No all civilizations may expand. 2. Not all civilizations last. 3. Not all civilizations that do expand and last make a significant enough mark on their galaxy to be detected from any other galaxy. 4. Not all civilizations that expand, last, or leave a detectable mark have done so long enough ago for that signal to be detectable from any other nearby galaxy, and less so others beyond that. 5. Not all galaxies close enough to detect a detectable signal of a technological civilization have their own technological civilization to even detect a signal. 6. Not all technological civilizations in nearby galaxies that could detect a signal from a neighboring galaxy will exist at a time in their own history where they have the technology to detect that neighboring galaxy civilization signal.
It's a rough progression of nopes. All in all, there could be(and/or eventually) Billions of technological civilizations across the known universe, but, because the vast gulfs of both time and distance between galaxies, no civilization may ever exist at a time and distance such they may detect/observe even one other civilization in another galaxy.
Let's pretend there's a mirror "Earth" in our neighboring galaxy Andromeda. They're 2.5 Million years away from us, so, unless they've developed a space-faring civilization of significant enough impact to be detectable 2.5 Million years ago, before us, we're not going to see anything. If they're on the same level we are now, We to them and them to us are functionally nonexistent until about 2.5 Million years from now when our respective detectable signals reach us and/or them ... if anyone is still around to even detect either.

[tiagotiagot]

08:11 Evolution has nothing to do with complexity; many species have actually evolved to be simpler than their ancestrals. Evolution simply prioritizes reproduction.

[inverse_of_zero]

hi there, this is my first time visiting the channel, and i just subscribed. i don't see many 'academics' on youtube (with large subscriber counts - yours is approaching 1M soon!), so this is refreshing. i love the way you grab material from other sources (e.g. movies and other youtube channels) and then reference them with a watermark - i think this is a great practice! i like how you have done your own academic peer-reviewed research and have shared it with others, whilst also appearing approachable and 'human' in your presentation of the science. i am looking forward to watching more of your content :)

[tiagotiagot]

First time I've heard "Grabby Aliens" being called a "solution" to the Fermi Paradox; before this video it has always seemed like it was just a reinforcement of the paradox itself, showing logic leads to concluding we should indeed be seeing clear signs of aliens and yet we don't; in essence, just a more elaborate formulation of "where is everybody?"...

[TwentyNineJP]

"Future aliens are why we live in the past" is truly an incoherent idea.

If there are going to be sentient creatures, then someone has to be the first one. Sentient beings a trillion years from now won't be marveling at what a weird coincidence it was for *us* to be born so early.

[windmonkey]

Economists have a bad enough track record of predicting the future in their own field of expertise, I wouldn’t hold my breath expecting one to figure out the future of cosmology and alien life.

[testname]

These explanations that stray into metaphysics by being unfalsifiable are always interesting, but they reveal more about the people and cultures putting them forward than they do about the objective universe.

[MofoMan]

I like your videos. You don't blow smoke or try to provide false hope. But you're very thought provoking and your voice is so relaxing.

[evermoon]

I feel like the Grabby Aliens hypothesis presented in this video is not the same one I have heard before. I think in the version I was told, the reason we don't see grabby aliens isn't because they are spreading close to the speed of light, but because we are just early and no one is there and close enough for us to see.
We do not have to assume they can travel at near lightspeed to be grabby either. At 1% speed of light, a civilization can still colonize our whole galaxy in 10 million years, which is still very fast compared to the time for us to evolve. Grabby Aliens is basically saying that because spreading is so fast compared to evolution, an observer can only see either a pre-grabby local region where no one is out there, or a post-grabby region where everywhere is grabbed, and the intermediary state is very short compared to either of the two states. Also factor in the assumption that no civilization can emerge in an already grabbed region, then we would arrive at the conclusion that we could only be at a pre-grabby region, solving the fermi paradox.
I think this was the version I heard, and if not, at least this could be a plausible explanation nonetheless.

[FreakMC]

I'm having one of my many depressed days, stuff like this showing up lights it up just a bit more. Thanks for making these.

[danieldover]

One thing that I notice about Grabby Aliens is that it's very appealing. We want a universe that looks like Star Trek. The answers to the fermi paradox mostly boil down to either life can't colonize the galaxy (which kills a lot of fun SF, so that's no fun), or that there is no aliens (which feels unlikely, and also kills a lot of SF, so that's no fun). Grabby Aliens invokes suggests aliens are roughly at our level of development, and that we're all equally vying for a cool, galaxy-spanning empire and a vibrant, interstellar future that also has interesting aliens. That's fun SF! So, people find it appealing. This is not to comment on the validity of the theory! But why I think it became so popular.