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:

Robin Hanson’s paper on Grabby Aliens - updated since the one shown in the video: https://grabbyaliens.com/paper

Grabby Aliens website: https://grabbyaliens.com/

The Great Filter - Are We Almost Past It? https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/greatfilter.html
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

Dreams Become Real by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1500027

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Narration by Robert Miles: https://www.youtube.com/c/RobertMilesAI

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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!