Will we grab the universe? Grabby aliens predictions. 

Reaf my story. I have two i know of always in my room and i think they want fun or they will disrupt simple task for kicks. Like they are bored teens

Could you do a video taking into a count the fact that space expands faster than light, and so it is possible for FTL technology to exist? There are already models for FTL, maybe you could work with those to tell us how grabby aliens would expand then, or what would happen if different civilizations didn`t use FTL at All.

@@samueltrusik3251 i think its beyond light. I put it as they breath o2 and compatible with h20 but they are here with us just different frequency. Ive had some beyond pranks in my life growing up with dad on hollywood sets to mom in Air Force and one was having firect speakers as a kid wonder where what how so it freaked out 7 y.o. me than the waves started and random things happen. A lot. Look at my page on the blurry video. I have tons of them but rest have sounds of domestic violence(not gna post that) but look up Tesla whittier los Angeles electric dome. Another level since civid and my hz hits below 20 for hours. Yes its freaky

@@samueltrusik3251 The only way to expand faster than light is to hitch a ride on the expansion of space itself.

have you seen Anton Petrov videos about that the milky way exist on a borders to a vast emptiness

I thought the same.

Beware the tall empires.

Literally though! Haha

I agree

@@maestreiluminati87 I like to build tall. Less territory to defend and its a lot harder to invade the few planets I have.

lmfao fr (for real)

@@omaki82036 the translation is killing me lol

That would make for a great short story

Halo lore?

@@dueinuremom5082 (laughing out loud)

I’m also a grabby alien!

@@labyrinthzone9397 light at the end of my tunnel

Bark bark bark ❤️💚💙

All dogs go to heaven, and I'm glad there are other dogs here.

I'm just learning to bark myself.

Perhaps not in scheme of things, and with other parameters controlling more and less stringently how large or small the others are. A larger range also gives more confidence that an actual point will lie within those boundaries making it oddly more accurate. In a way. More RELIABLE anyway.

@@michaelhoste_ You're exactly correct. This is how it needs to be.

Kind of like how we throw around measurements like light year or a billion light years 🙂

Yeah it puts whole new meaning to "Star Wars" in non movie sense... civ clashes would be incomprehensible

@@prolamer7 ww2 was already incomprehensible. 40,000,000 people died in a span of about 5 years, try comprehending how many bullets where fired, how many rooms where fought over, how many man hours where spend patrolling, advancing, nervously scouting the perimeter. the deeper you dig the more you realize that we have already reached a scale that is incomprehensible

This is what I thought as well! Glad to see this channel before it gets mega-big

Sold. And Subbed.

Isaac is more of science fiction. I see this as Kurzgesagt meets Cool Worlds!

@@sshkatula Well, if you see Isaac as hard Sci fi, we can get along :P

@@sshkatula That works too! But Isaac has a _ton_ of excellent material on Fermi Paradox / Dyson Dillemma.

only 1 in 5000 youtubers become grabby, however the current subscriber count of 32.7k indicates that the current chance is around 1 in 100. gl!

Lol 😂

Mine! Mine! Mine!

Lol

i'm grabbing this comment for myself and colonizing youtube

Then we bring them some grabbed freedom 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲

Then we gave them some native American treatment.

This made me laugh more than it should 😂

I hope for the sake of the rest of the hypothetical galactic community we never become grabby.

@@SaltyMaudbecome??

grabby dog

Oh, hi cobblah!

I know what you did last night

aye oh

Colored alien Shibas

Earth Shibas are still the cutest

Grabbies come in all forms. Think “Crab People”.

I'd be totally ok with meeting aliens like these as a "first contact"

It seems more like the antithesis of the "firstborn" solution.

Though considering that an estimated 99.9 percent of all species that've ever existed have already vanished just on earth, there's no assurance that a similar percentage of all *_'intelligent'_* species in the galaxy might not suffer the same fate. Heck, even our own species can't get past petty Tribalism yet.

@@miniverse2002 Well, not really, since the firstborn hypothesis merely argues that humanity is first in this galaxy. It’s a pretty logical extension of its argument to assume that all observers are firstborn in their galaxy.

@@miniverse2002 How?

Can we consider it a breakthrough? Both theories are very anthropocentric. Even the hard steps...

Assuming a self replicating Von Neuman probe could be built along with a ship with 100 tons of material, half of Mercury should be enough to colonize all of the visible universe. The theory is to send robots to do the colonizing, so we would not actually go to the other worlds, but new people would be grown on those worlds natively by the machines. Assuming planets are common, we will never run out of resources on any world, because even one planet contains millions of years of material, and we have at least 7 nice piles of material to harness, in our system alone.

Well, you sure are one of the clever ones; and with an informed and smart reply/comment like that, I think you're ready! Ready, that is, for: the Lex Fridman podcast where he interviews Robin Hanson (the author of the paper this theory is based on and who was referenced throughout). You're in for a treat! 😄 I actually saw that first and was like 😳 ...wait; WHAT?! 🤯 (then found these videos for a helpful breakdown!; )

@@sprinkle61 This also means that the inverse is true. It would take nearly the same amount of energy to break a planet apart like mercury as it would take to colonize the known universe. Not to say it can't happen, but all the the energy expended in all the nuclear tests we've ever done as a species has only ever released about an equivalent of 2.5 magnitude 9 Earthquakes. Keep in mind that a planet can withstand orders of magnitude more energy than that before being forced apart. Taking apart half of Mercury seems simple because it's close, but we would likely expend more resources/energy taking it apart than we would get out of it. Sure there is a lot of "mass" energy to be had there, but most of that would be un-usable for fusion or fission, even in a universe where humanity had 100% efficient fusion and fission. The issue is that only certain elements have the potential to generate usable amounts of energy in the first place, and many elements are already stable, requiring more energy to be expended in fusion/fission than we can get out, even at 100% efficiency. This isn't an engineering problem, but a physical constraint. Additionally by removing the mass from Mercury, we are changing the rotational energy in our own solar system. We can't just pick up a planet and move it without slowing down the suns' rotation, or expending a TON of energy speeding up another planet. Sure we might not care about this as Mercury is a tiny fraction of the total rotational energy of the solar system, but we do need to find the energy to move it in the first place. One rocket leaving Mercury's orbit isn't a big deal, but with enough to move the entire planet this energy loss becomes not insignificant. Keep in mind, I'm not talking about the obvious energy to get a rocket into space, but the additional energy to break the orbit as well. The last statement about us "having 7 nice piles of material to harness in our system alone" is language reminiscent of language used in the industrial revolution that legitimized dumping crude oil into rivers, and pumping radioactive coal smoke-stacks into the atmosphere. I get that what you said was a hyperbole about the amount of mass we have in our solar-system, and not condoning the destruction of Earth, but it needs comment. While to us, as a planet bound species, having the entirety of the solar system to work with seems like a lot, it is still finite, and exponential population/resource growth is a tried and true principle. We once thought oil and water reserves would never run out, yet the later could be a very real reason to leave Earth in the first place. This use of resources first, and thought about sustainability isn't solved by introducing more resources: that just leads to more growth. Another question that is asked is why should we move? Either we have run low on resources, and it is a move of desperation, or we see a massive financial incentive, or we are doing it for the sake of 'adventure'. The first reason is not indicative of good planning, or successful recolonization. I mean if we mess up badly enough to need that, we aren't going to work out anywhere else, or do a good job with the transition. The second reason requires two way communication and collection of resources, i.e. trade. In a capitalist society this would benefit from growth and fast growth. They wouldn't set up independent civilizations, but attempt large-scale colonialism, and would want exponential growth to increase the market. The last reason is beautiful, and human, and is the least likely. If it did happen, it wouldn't happen fast, and it couldn't be driven by short-sited colonization profits, and it would struggle with recruitment, resources to get started, etc, and would struggle each time it wanted to travel further. But that last one also has the most potential to spread the farthest. @sprinkle61 I realize this runs the risk of 'internet tone' so just know, none of the above is a personal attack or anything :) I think it's fair to say we both love talking to friends and family about this stuff

I like this comment a lot, but am a bit confused by it. Is the core idea that excessively grabby aliens would not maximize for expansion? Maybe introducing a new term would clarify things. I would assume "maximally grabby" = maximizing for expansion. It seems like your argument is that a more-grabby species would expand less. This is an oxymoron based on the definition I'm using. If what you mean by "grabby" is "species that maximizes for population," I would argue that 100% population maxing would probably get you within in an order of magnitude of 100% expansion maxing (as in, if you 100% max for population, you probably expand to at least 10% of maximum potential). I think this because a larger population would need more resources, and expansion would be a logical way to attain these resources. For example, a swarm of self replicating drones could be built to bring more and more resources from new areas of space to populated areas, or populating new areas would also by definition constitute expansion. If you're arguing that 100% population max would result in less than 10% of max expansion, I would disagree that this is likely. If you're arguing it would result in 50% of max expansion, I find this a lot more plausible. If by "grabby" you mean "competitive/wasteful", then I agree that a competitive/wasteful species would expend resources on internal power struggles rather than expansion, or destroy resources such that they cannot be used/reused on expansion respectively. I agree that these traits could plausibly result in expansion less than 10% of max. For example, an extreme nuclear war could result in far less than 10% of max expansion being achieved. I also agree that a species that maximizes for something other than population or expansion might plausibly attain less than 10% of possible expansion. For example, a "quality over quantity" species might find that for whatever reason space expansion does not increase happiness as much as other competing methods. However, it seems very plausible that a "quality over quantity" species would in fact find expansion to be in alignment with quality of life maximization. For example, self replicating robots could be used to obtain greater and greater quantities of resources from new areas of space, and these resources could be used to improve quality of life. More resources has been very strongly associated with higher quality of life for human history so far, so it seems unlikely to change. Maybe new resources could be spent on researching human or animal psychology, creating new technologies that grant humans access to new, good experiences, prolong human life, and so on. I guess my argument is that unless civilization on earth is destroyed by competition/wastefulness/asteroid/etc or its goals change in an unforeseeable and seemingly unlikely way, there will be probably be a good reason to achieve at least 10% of potential expansion.

I don't think you realize what it means to have resources in a post-scarcity, matrioskha brain-building civilization. Even if you take every planet in our solar system, (a lot of resources from our perspective) that is nothing compared to a single star at the center of it all. To have a thousand stars in your civilization? A million? Resources are not the issue.

this didn't occur to when watching the first video, but this time around seeing the 3D sim of civilizations expanding in the sphere made me realize what you're suggesting. Maybe being grabby is not so good. Maybe it can actually lead to self-destruction of a civilization and takes others down with it. and maybe that's why we haven't met any grabby aliens yet.

@@surviveinc I think the idea is every civilization to exist would technically be grabby, and the ones that aren’t, simply never got to exist. if we assume, alien’s exist, we have to apply what we know about evolution.The traits learned from it, would most likely be replicated in every life form.

@@surviveinc being Grabby leads to you expanding, expansion leads to needing a way to communicate across LIGHT YEARS. Most likely the problem with becoming Grabby is you can splinter your civilization leading to self destruction through competition. If Grabby aliens can still control a galaxy it'd require beating the hard step of communication across absurd distances.

@@logansmith2703 Keep in mind when they say "Human Civilization", they are just referring to humanity and our descendants as a whole. Future Humanity's not going to have any type of unified political, cultural, or economic system. Each colonized star system would be largely independent anyway, only trading with its closest neighbors. The Human race itself is probably going to quickly diverge into countless different species and sub species once we start expanding into space.

Either a civilization is grabby or it is not grabby. You have to pick one.

It's less over your head because the idea comes from an economist, not a physicist. He's using probability, not quantum mechanics.

@@ArawnOfAnnwn Physicists: rolling in their graves at the implication that quantum mechanics is not about probabilities

Wait, this is LESS over your head than space time?? I feel so much more lost on this... But probability makes my head hurt 😞

It is, I remember there was about half the amount of subscribers a few days ago Edit: the subscriber count has increased by 600 in the past 10 hours

MY MAIN GOAL IS TO BLOW UP 🦈

It's about time the algorithm favored content creators who put in effort versus garbage clickbait

let me know I know how to blow stuff up

Are we going to need the bomb disposal squad here?

I think if an intergalactic alien civilization existed anywhere near close enough to us to contact us in the next 10,000 years - we'd have detected their presence by now. Sadly it seems we are the first intelligent race in at least the Milky Way which is really disappointing. I'm sure we'd all love a "The Culture" like Utopian civilization to arrive in their giant ships and save us from ourselves but such a thing is like waiting for the Second Coming of Christ, there's no evidence for it whatsoever :-(

@@mikesully110 or lets do our best and become that super advanced aliens that saves others.

@@joimy95 Even better!

The “get rich or die trying” theorem

The time frame for grabby aliens happening and what you describe are very far away from each other on the timeline.

Yes. But that’s really far away. It does take into account the expansion of the universe.

It seems to me that the model isn't worrying about expansion. They're just modeling the growth of grabby civilizations for a fixed volume over a given time. They could refine the model to include expansion of the universe, but it feels like the outcome would be roughly the same, no?

@@SamThird I'm pretty sure that it does play a role on the level of galaxies. You can always spread through your galaxy really fast, but more and more galaxies become unreachable all the time. I would have to look up how quickly that happens, though. Btw writing this comment I found out that the wikipedia page on intergalactic travel is really pitiful.

Yes, we explicitly take into account the expansion of the universe. Recall that in the simulation shown, the size of the ball is much smaller at the start than at the end.

... You missed the point where it was a guessing estimate of the rate of growth of civilisations, not a literal fact based expansion

@@MrMan-np9jg I realize that there could be a thousand in our galaxy and we wouldn't see them easily. But it just doesn't make sense that primitive worlds would be ignored, a prime directive would be near impossible to enforce without filling our system with their military. As for why I take my hypothesis seriously, it's because everyone takes the idea that aliens avoid us like they're elves and we're orcs seriously, and I hate that

Dude, that's where all the valuable content is. I've bee listening to unpopular audio books for months threw lockdown. have you ever seen the top content on an anonymouse browser window? It's horrifying!

Yeah it's rare for people to think about aliens correctly.

@@MrCmon113 absolutely correct! Although to be fair, most of us don't actually who we are going to meet out there, so any ideas are currently " technically valid" until that day comes when we are cable of interacting with said alien people.

Now you get to say you were an original subscriber to all the noobs

You're missing out. My favorite channels are pretty much all sub 100k. That's where the passion is before they find the click driving formula and it becomes for profit instead of a passion project

OK. I swear I never do this. It's kinda embarrassing but i can't help myself Was he sined, or co-sined? sorry for the tangent

Robert Miles? Same name as the musician and producer who wrote "Children", my first love in music when I was a child. Unfortunately, he died in his 30s. Bloody cancer!! Aka, Roberto Concina.

Seriously! As soon as he starts talking, I'm thinking I'm about to learn about AI safety! It sounds exactly like him.

@@cartermclaughlin2908 I look Fourier to C where this is going. Up and down, I predict.

@@willd4686 Not sure if I'm just misunderstanding your comment, but it sounds like you're not fully convinced that it actually *is* him. But I can assure you with 99.8% probability that it is indeed the case.

Your general suspicion of pure theory I think is correct. However, I don't think your specific critique of the grabby aliens model holds. One does not need to assume that any particular species will be grabby, only that some will. If any are, it will eat up everything in its sphere of the universe basically. Also, looking at evolution on earth, it seems likely that any life form that survived for long periods of time on any planet would be selected for survival and reproduction. This behavior is, in essence, grabby. Also the only advanced civilization we have evidence for, us, seems to be grabby. That should inform our prior about what the generic advanced civilization would be like. Small sample size obviously, but still it's the only evidence we have and it makes sense to use it.

@@corylong5808 I think that to not be a pully civilization, one would find themselves quickly outcompeted in any sort of conflict by a pully civilization which is able to coordinate production and action. An only grabby civilization would quickly find itself outcompeted in resource acquisition and utilization by a pully one. There is some consideration to be made that pure expansion would be a priority for a civilization, as this might maximize the amount of resources the civ is able to access by an increase in the radius of their sphere of influence, but the capacity to increase the radius of influence is strongly limited by the amount of resources contained already within their utilizable zone and the degree to which those resources are put to use in expansion by the implementation of increasing technological capacity and strategic communication. It seems certain to me that a civ which focuses on bringing the most systems possible under its control within the smallest zone possible would one-day outpace the expansion of a grabby civ that doesn't attempt to order the distribution of its holdings. The only challenge to this dynamic would be if the rate of expansion of a grabby civ is great enough to preempt the arrival of that tipping point in pully civ supremacy.

@@corylong5808 but if I can make it to the center of the galaxy, all I have to do is concentrate my waste into the central mass, increase the density of the galactic core, and mother nature takes care of the rest for me. No energy expended, besides the disposal of waste (which is a necessary cost no matter how I go about dispersing my civilization). I guess one does suffer from the power law which diminishes the efficacy of gravity over distance, as opposed to say magnetism. But I stand by the idea that a civilization which has expanded to some significant portion of a galaxy would have massive incentive to manipulate the distribution of the resources and systems within their control. As I am a very stupid being in comparison to these hypothetical beings, I can not imagine what that might look like, but I can imagine that the difficulties of ruling a civilization on the order of a galaxy would suffer from the same organizational challenges which have always plagued our terrestrial civilizations. Entropy is the enemy of all living things.

There is no "far flung reaches". The civilization expands through all of that space and when they built a dyson swarm around each and every star, they can also easily make sure that none of the planets brings forth a civilization independent from theirs. Whether the descendants of such a vast civilization remain coherent is another question. This video seems to focus more about how many people get to experience being a new independent civilization.

The coherence of a civilization has no bearing on their grabbiness. evidence of a constantly civil-warring multi polity empire looks the same at the scales discussed in this video in regards to altering the universe as one that is not. The entire earth has been 'grabbed' by humans and is irrevocably shaped by us. But we are by no means coherently governed or cooperative.

you dont need coherence to be a grabby alien, a couple of mormons may decide they want to colonize trappist system while a couple of martians decide they want to colonize kepler 186. Countries like America was colonized by a small amount of people and from there they expanded to become the America we know of today. Also it doesnt have to be a quick expansion you only colonize if you need to. I see space as an ecosystem with trillions or quadrillions of human descendants or artificial creations(drones, probes, A.I.)

Sophons are stupid and I hate them.

That's a classic right there. It's solution to the fermi paradox is one of my favorites as it's so obvious yet so enthralling

Really, pog?

@@justburb4811 Who’s pog?

@@LexusFox Pogo less one vowel?

To even expand at all, a civilisation would have to be highly advanced. But you would think that the earlier stages of expansion would be much slower.

@Sonic Hedgehog You might be right. There are ways one CAN go faster on paper but it might not be practically possible. Antimatter engines can get you to 70% of c, but how you'd get that much anti matter and how you would safely store it is a major problem with no known solution. The laser highway system is the ONLY way you can do so that WOULD work for sure. It amounts to setting up a bunch of laser batteries on a path toward a star. You shoot them at your ships solar sail as it speeds by. These can get you up to 99% of c. In theory you would use these lasers to clear out dust along the path, because hitting even a grain of dust would would cause the same damage to your ship as a 100 megaton nuke. Also you need to have the system set up already, so you'd have to use nuclear fusion to get to the star first and set it all up along the way for future ships to use.

On the other hand, for colonisation over thousands or even millions of years - our galaxy is 100,000 ly across, so the absolute minimum lifetime of a galaxy-grabbing civilisation is 100,000 years - we can’t make assumptions based on current limits. If warp technology become practical anytime in the next 1000 - 10,000 years, we would still be on track to attain 50%-99% speeds in the relatively ‘early’ stages of growth.

@@michaelhoste_ Agreed. The possibility of new tech in the future can change everything. I'd be frankly amazed if physics allows for ANY faster than light method of space travel, but I can't discount it as a possibility.

@@lastsilhouette85 Are you familiar with the Alcubierre (theoretical) warp drive and several other practical offshoots that require vast amounts of energy to create a bubble of compressed spacetime containing a ship - where space is compressed in front and restored behind - allowing the ship to not so much ‘travel faster’ than light but to ‘change spaces’ more quickly than would normally be allowed. Physics seems to allow for ‘travel’ by manipulating the metric of space, the main goal in practice being to either reduce the amount of energy required or to harness the amount needed (which is a LOT). I used to believe that the only way to the stars was the long way, but a lot seems to have changed in the last 15 years or so.

1. Pretty sure later in the video they say that K is based off of assuming we could be statically anywhere on the graph, but anyway, why assume we aren't average? 2. It assumes grabby civilizations prevent other *grabby* civilizations, which they definitely would. If you're a powerful intergalactic empire you're not exactly going to let a new empire rise from inside you, you're (sadly) probably going to get rid of them while they're weak. (Or they'll join your empire) 3. Fair enough.

Peter Turchin is a psycohistorian IRL. I'm sure he can find a spot on his staff in Trantor for Hanson tho

So much better than videos that move at a snail’s pace, and with so much more information that you can always go back and watch again (and again ..and again, if necessary!)

LOL!

This!!!!

"Woahlds" -I.A. All love no hate for Isaac. It took me awhile to get past his speech impediment. It's also improved tenfold.

Im not so sure that you will be exploring those happily. You'll most likely be enslaved.

So make sure to live a LONG time.

@@insight_lolubad 😂😂😂

@@insight_lolubad …not if we kill them all.

Even If it wasn't what makes u think ud be a part of it? Look at what Musk and Bezos are doing now. Ur not part of that. They will only get more and more effective and there's no reason to believe you or I would be part of their experiments and exploration. If u, a lowly peasant, were born a million years later do u really think it'd be any different? What's the chances of ur family line entering the classes of the elite? Ur destiny is locked to the land my friend. Embrace it.

Hah. Cool observation

Or more like life in general. Once life gets going on a planet it will spread all over and any new life that spontaneously comes into being will be quickly consumed by the older life forms. I guess the same can be said about multicellular life too. If a single celled organism mutates into a multicellular organism now, it will have near impossible task of competing with the already existing multicellular organisms, after all they have over 500 million head start. But then again, i believe all civilizations will become "crabby civilizations" if they have the technology to do so.

@@puppeli How do viruses survive, then? You see, there is a strategy.

*Time to copy their entire civilization* you mean. Reaffirming the original hypothesis.

It doesn't need to be a cohesive 'civilization' as we think of them for the model to work. 'Civilization' can be a stand-in for 'a technological species'. Human beings are an expansionist species that spread itself across every continent over the course of a few tens of thousands of years without ever being a cohesive civilization. The expansion pattern was carried out without any grand design simply by small tribes individually deciding to move to regions adjacent to themselves, repeatedly, over the course of generations. I do think an interstellar civilization would be pretty obvious. That's been the experience of life and technology on this planet. Even photosynthetic bacteria completely and permanently changed the atmosphere of the Earth. The lights of our cities are visible from orbit at night, we've transformed vast swaths of the globe into farmland & pastureland, our general tendency is to transform natural resources into that which is useful to us unless it has strong aesthetic, religious or cultural value (nature preserves). Even as we get more resource efficient, we generally plow this efficiency into greater production & resource utilization rather than trying to minimize consumption. The fact we'll have more efficient solar panels in the future doesn't negate the expansionist drive to reproduce, build ever more space habitats and ultimately dismantle planets and asteroids to build a Dyson swarm.

​@@AlexM-wq7in Yeah, though the divergence in biology, technology, politics and more would leave the constituent parts virtually alien to each other save for a past common point of origin. That does serve the purpose of the term in this instance, but it's loose on an astronomical scale. Also in terms of visibility of scale, I just don't know. Popular speculation about dyson swarms and other methods of expansion noticeable to our primitive methods and short search time rely on a lot of assumptions about what is possible and practical. Why build trillions of sollar panel stations with inefficient microwave transmitters when fusion power would probably come first? We just need more information to get any proper answers, that's why I love this study and support more science and exploration, they both make steps to solve that beyond unsubstantiable speculation.

@@spacecanuk8316 Yes, this is true, but also irrelevant for the purposes of explaining why we are early & don't see other civilizations. So long as they maintain the trait of being "grabby" they will prevent new civilizations from emerging in the star system they colonize (or more perniciously will wipe out existing pre-grabby civilizations in order to colonize new systems). The giveaway that there are no other advanced civilizations in our lightcone is the presence of a seemingly natural universe that doesn't look dramatically altered by intelligent agents. All the solar energy that isn't captured by solar cells is essentially wasted, just as every asteroid or planet that isn't mined and processed into useful items (e.g space habitats, computer AIs), is wasted (from the perspective of expansionist advanced civilizations). 99.8% of the mass-energy in the solar system is in the Sun. However future civilizations access such mass energy, they would not simply let it go unutilized by letting it remain in its natural form. If efficient fusion reactors were invented, the optimal growth strategy would simply be to dismantle the star for its hydrogen to feed such reactors (plus all the other heavy metals & volatiles you'd get). That pattern of expansion would be just as visible as a the creation of countless dyson swarms. I agree that visibility resulting from inefficient processes (e.g radiowave leakage) is unlikely for advanced civilizations. But it's hard to see how there wouldn't be visibility resulting from the sheer scale of power generation and resource utilization we would expect from expansionist civilizations.

@@AlexM-wq7in Dismantling a star would increase its lifespan. Hmm, there are a lot of red dwarfs.

If a civilization can be grabby with or without compact and efficient technology, then it's almost guaranteed that it would not be. You can see this as describing a hard step, which would increase the amount of time it would take a civilization to become grabby. A civilization that has a wider range of technology to choose from increases their probability of passing this hard step faster than a civilization which *must* be non-noticeable. Therefore the likelihood of a grabby civilization existing is tied to its noticeability, as non-noticeable grabby civilizations would become grabby later than noticeable grabby civilizations. We can even describe the amount of non-noticeable technologies compared to the whole category of technologies with a ratio that we can call *W,* where W = Non-noticeable Technology/All Technology. The higher W is, the sooner we must assume that non-noticeable civilizations can be grabby, and the lower our chance of being early. The lower W is, the later non-noticeable grabby civilizations can exist, and the higher our chance of being early. Therefore, seeing as we have not observed any aliens (grabby or not) and we are not special, it would be more likely that we are simply early and that grabby civilizations spread fast, because a non-noticeable civilization would likely have already prevented us from existing according to the ratio W. The higher W is, the less likely we are to be existing, and the more special we would be. Because of this, grabby aliens are much, much more likely to be noticeable than invisible.

At that point is it really "us" tho. I mean how much do u have in common with the ancients let alone the cro magnons? Not much aside from the physical and even that there are vast differences. What do u think ull have in common with a "human" a million years from now let alone ten million years?

@@juanmccoy3066 Makes me wonder.

@@juanmccoy3066 Probably nothing, but at least we still exist, and thats enough for me

@@juanmccoy3066 It's very likely that more than a few of us will be able to answer that question directly, if it ever gets asked. As in, one of our might-as-well-be-alien descendants can just straight up converse some human that's been digitized or made immortal or cloned from a brain template with stored memories or whatever.

In the Season 2 episode "By Any Other Name", Kirk met Kelvans from the Andromeda Galaxy whose intent was to rule over the Milky Way.

Let me address your second counterexample first. Then, these habitats require energy. Furthermore, thermodynamics requires that a certain amount of their usable energy becomes unusable (ie entropy increases). In short, either their waste energy becomes a black hole, or is radiated away as black body radiation. Assuming that they cannot survive at stellar temperatures, which I believe is a fair assumption, they will therefore need to radiate heat away, and thus will have a visible signature on the universe: somewhere that has high amounts of low-frequency light output, but low amounts of high-frequency light output. But where would they get the energy in the first place? Probably from stars (either directly, by using the heat and light output by the star, or indirectly by siphoning off matter from the star to perform fusion or more exotic energy generation). So, they would probably either utilise stellar lifting (removing matter from their star) or construct a Dyson sphere or swarm. In either case, the low-frequency light output should be visible. Thus, your second counterexample does not address the assumptions or logic of the Grabby Aliens theory. Even if aliens built their own artificial habitats, they can still be grabby. Next, your first counterexample. Suppose that the aliens prevented information regarding them reaching humanity. That's a big task, by the way, as it requires that it mask all electromagnetic radiation that have or will reach humanity, but more importantly, they will need to send replacement information that obeys the laws of physics, excluding any possible observation that includes them. If we looked at their star, not only do they need to prevent us from seeing whatever infrared radiation is being given off as a necessary side-effect of energy use, but they'd also need to send an image of their own star, with the necessary spectral lines, and also include wobble of the star as planets orbit it, and include the periodic dimming as planets pass in front of it, etc. Not only would the inhabitants of that one star need to do this in all directions (since their emissions would only reach us in a very long time, they can't predict whether we exist on this star system or if any other star systems have life that could detect them), they'd also need to mask all emissions that would involve doing that. They'd need a higher energy-per-mass output than fusion (as they cannot be more massive than the star system they inhabit, otherwise gravity would detect them), they'd need to somehow prevent all of the waste energy from exiting (which probably would involve a black hole), and they'd need to force inhabitants of all other star systems from sending information to us, even accidentally. Considering that they might not be even able to communicate with the other civilisations before we spot them, this means that *all* civilisations must mutually decide to hide themselves as best as possible. Thus, your argument is, "in the case where all alien species mutually and successfully hide themselves from each other, and also there was never a slip from any civilisation that we can detect, the premise of the grabby aliens theory is false". And, while that argument is correct, I suspect that the probability of all alien species both deciding to hide and successfully doing so would be ridiculously low, so as to be ignorable in the context of this theory. For your third counterexample, either the non-grabby aliens colonising the volume utilise the energy in that volume, or they do not utilise the energy in that volume. If they did utilise the energy in that volume, they'd probably be visible, contradicting observations. Areas of the sky would have higher amounts of low-frequency light than physics would predict, and lower amounts of high-frequency light than physics would predict. So, we can presume that such non-grabby aliens would not utilise the energy in the colonised volume. However, since they must somehow prevent grabby civilisations from colonising the volume, they must be able to either prevent colonisation through diplomacy or through force. Since they aren't harvesting the energy of the colonised volume, but the grabby aliens are, the grabby aliens would have a much larger energy budget for the conflict: the non-grabby colonisers would have such a large energy disadvantage, it'd probably make halberdiers fighting an aircraft carrier ten miles offshore, with bombers dropping nuclear bombs, look like a fair fight. In short, they cannot prevent colonisation through force. Thus, they would need to prevent colonisation through diplomacy. However, since the grabby aliens have such a great advantage in energy, they'd probably decide to fight for the volume. They might not even consider it a conflict, since the defending aliens can't even hope to threaten the grabby aliens. It's like picking up a stack of 100 dollar bills off the top of an anthill: you might get a couple of bites, but it's worth it. So, the grabby aliens would probably just colonise the non-grabby aliens' volume as if they weren't there. Therefore, non-grabby aliens defending a volume from grabby aliens appears to be either impossible or contradict our observations.

Any civilization that doesn't become grabby just gets overwhelmed by a civilization that does become grabby. So even if there are a hundred non-grabby aliens, just one 'grabby' alien is needed to take over their galaxy. Because a non-grabby alien, by definition of it not expanding much, wouldn't be powerful enough to stop a grabby alien. Things naturally fall into line from there, literal natural selection for grabby aliens.

I think it is incredibly unlikely for any technologically advanced tool-using civilization to be anything but very similar in nature to humans, as I believe drives to cooperate, compete, improve and expand are all needed to get to the kind of technology that even allows exiting a planet's orbit. To address your other objections, I think it is very true that some "grabby" civilizations might avoid planets where life or intelligence exists, but a new planet developing life or intelligence by itself still means a grabby civilization didn't get to it first. Any "spared" planets/sectors/galaxies would just become smaller grabby civilizations or temporary holes in the civilization, depending. A more interesting point, imho, is the question of whether or not "system-jumping" and "galaxy-jumping" might be something that stops several grabbys for quite a while. I think a system-wide civ or a galaxy-wide civ sound like fairly reasonable suggestions as points at which some "pseudo-grabbys" might get stuck in-between being planet-bound and constantly expanding through the universe.

These civilizations you describe would become space american natives and be genocided.

That is a probability. Seeing aliens before we are capable of being interstellar would be incredibly horrible... it increases the chances of a "great filter" happening in the future. Let's cross our fingers.

On the contrary, you need mutual competition to expand. Not high degrees of cooperation. Look at the space race, for example.

@@absta1995 yeah I mean by the time you have colonized the belt it’s going to be very easy and very tempting to throw rocks

@@absta1995 100%. Most of people in first world countries don't understand that the one who doesn't try to expand, conquer, or suppress others loses in an eternal race

@Lalleland , I assume that for such civilizations, it would be easier to engineer themselves to live in other worlds than terraform

I don't think that makes any sense. Faster species have an evolutionary advantage. A species that would take a week to respond to a predator would simply be eradicated. A competitor to homo sapies that would think twice as fast (but otherwise be identical) would out-think us, etc. Faster is better, so there is a constant push for speed, until you run up against obstacles in reality itself (it's simply not possible to run much faster than a cheetah), or various local optima. Not that speed is the ONLY thing that matter, but it matters.

Fear space. 😨

You made good point that no one(except me, of course) have considered. The answer is that speed is not linear(which should be accounted for in further models on this topic) -- as civilization advances(kinda exponentially, to be exact), its FTL capabilities get better and better and colonization ships can fly for longer periods of time. So as at first expansion rate is extremely slow, in 10 thousand years it can surpass the speed of light by great margin. And our planet has a tasty biosphere(no terraforming required!) that would justify a long flight for aliens(which would mean they would have arrived before humans came into existence) And yeah, my personal opinion is that our descendants may "resurrect" us, but we are not meeting conventional sentient aliens(conscious oceans or atmospheres are possible)

yeah, once a member of a species has become bionic, or fully robotic, has overcome aging and death, has reached a level of intellect where they can individually create advanced technologies, has the technological capabilities to heal or repair itself, has the technology to travel anywhere in space and time instantaneously, i imagine you wouldnt be part of a civilization anymore. You would just be this omnipotent entity that is just seeking to experience as much of the vast universe as possible.

@@jdogsful ç

@@jimmcneal5292 A civilization will never advance to the point of FTL travel as it is physically impossible. Causality itself forbids it.

Exactly what I think. Maybe there is an advanced civilization 1miilion LY out, and who had begun industrialization at the same time time as us, and will this build megastructures at the same time as us. However, we wouldn't know, not without getting closer, which has to be done at FTL.

That was the point about spreading speed. Grabby civilizations would likely arrive here shortly after they became visible.

Yeah I was thinking the same

Its a problematic theory all around

but bacteria are way simpler than humans. looking at human empires, we can see that they don’t typically last too long. they only exist for about a century or 2 before rapidly deteriorating

@@wren_. Good point

@@wren_. but we're making an argument for civilizations which is a much more complex thing than a individual Empire. Chinese civilization has existed for more than 2,000 years though almost no Chinese Empire has lasted for more than 300. If civilization is the culture language and history of a people that will Outlast any individual or collection of governments unless destroyed by a more powerful civilization. I think it's very likely that if aliens exist I think we're in a very small pool of life forms that are capable of advanced civilization and I think it's very likely if a planet has the capability of developing advanced civilizations like ours more than one species is going to occupy that place which is probably going to mean that resources can't be developed for a long enough period of time because competition will be high and competent so that no one will be able to gain the advantage to take advantage of their place on the timeline.

@@valer119 So you think the great filter is behind us, and that’s why we haven’t found any intelligent alien life yet?

@@wren_. multiple choice filters. For a species like us that are the Apex predator and producer on the planet we have one set of filters for another species that is dealing with multiple species that are capable of complex civilizations there's a different set of filters which is either complete domination over all other species or peaceful collaboration. Personally I think the reason why we haven't seen many aliens is because we haven't really been looking for that long. I've always thought of intelligent life being probably super common in the universe relatively speaking but intergalactic civilization being hyper rare I mean human beings are not the only species on the planet to use tools to create language the communicate with each other and to fight and complex Wars I mean ants do many of these things but they don't like poetry. I think the universe is filled with a bunch of species that are closer to ants than they are to people as far as social complexity. I think when it comes to us we're beyond most major filters really it would take a massive cosmic event to wipe our species out and to destroy all of our technological gains. Really it comes down to a question of is the goal of the species interstellar travel or is the goal an internally consistent and peaceful Society.

In the Foundation series, the Human Galactic Empire rises and falls before alien life is encountered, and then it goes unrecognized as a representative of a grabby Andromeda civilization. To be continued, except that Asimov departed this mortal coil.

You don’t need FTL communication if your civilization is expanding at fraction of the speed of light. All colonies (at least the closest ones) will continue communicating with each other, but the speed of information transfer will be like speed of small Roman chariot, moving and spreading the news across the gigantic Roman empire. P.S. of course all empires die and fall apart, but if we talk about civilizations (and not about cosmic empires), then we should take into consideration that advanced and grabby civilizations (their cultures and technology) will continue developing, spreading and becoming the dominating part of other civilizations. The whole western civilization (and global as well) is mainly based on ancient Roman civilization, despite the death of empire itself.

@@dmytroivashchenko3047 definitely check out Matt's talk on it, without FTL the empire breaks cohesion at large scales, a message takes too long to get from one end to the other. An 'emperor' will be dead before he gets a reply to his first command.

@@McMurchie Civilizations do not need emperors to function. A military is not reliant on presidents to give every order, as each collective unit is recursively self-sufficient. Essentially, the argument that no such civilization could exist breaks down when you look at system theory. Asynchronous decentralized systems both exist and are used today in our own world.

@@fellowish fancy words for 'systems that don't change aren't impacted by distance' pretty much disproven by all human history. We always splinter, environments force it. A decentralised empire...isn't an empire, unless it communicates updates. Assuming zero change, is akin to saying humans are independent from their environment - they aren't.

@@McMurchie An _empire_ isn't a decentralized system, it is centralized. Do you understand what I was meaning? How a civilization functions is dependent on its environment. Distance is a topology a civilization interacts with. The solution to latency and asynchronicity is not by centralizing. Civilization is not dependent on centralization. The solution is decentralization of system structure. You can see splintering as an outcome of inherent latency and asynchronicity associated with distance. However, splintering is *uncontrolled* replication of structure. Controlling the self-replication of these systems is how decentralized structures develop, such as with blockchain technology, or federated server protocols. Why do you assume that civilization is dependent on centralization?

have you ever heard of free will and it's power on a spiritual-pansympantic level?

@@fotiostrigonidis1698 Gesundheit.

Not necessarily. We might be in an alien Natural Reserve. Just like humans allow other species to live in untouched spaces for ethics sake.

@@WillMauer Doubtful. How would a peaceful alien species that makes 'nature reserves' develop when anything that expands would just out compete them?

Aliens with a markedly content disposition to thier expansion are almost certainly destined for annihilation/and or absorption. The Species that don't move from their home world will ultimately become the playthings of those who do... The Grabby Civilizations.