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

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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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I feel like the grabby aliens concept is honestly something we already knew and just hadn’t acknowledged. When we’re surprised at how “early” we are, we’re really just saying that we’re surprised to (maybe) be one of the very few grabby aliens.

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.

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.

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

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.

It would be very interesting to see younger alien species evolve and grow, going through the same or similar struggles as we did and are currently. Maybe poking them on occasion for a bit of fun and to see their reactions. Making sure their nukes won’t work if the worst happens and someone gets a bit too trigger happy when looking at each other. Then, eventually, welcoming them to the stage and introducing them to the universe and it’s wonders. I hope we have someone like that, looking out for us.

I think we have to contemplate the hypothesis that intelligent life at the human level is extremely rare.Suffice it to note that intelligent life like us has not appeared on Earth in billions of years.And even then, it was just a species that emerged and that almost went extinct.

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.

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?

I really like this kind of storytelling. You parsed an academic paper and presented in a way that makes it incredibly accessible and super cool to watch. sub++