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I'm confused by the argument here; is the argument that 'humanity could not arise once the universe has been taken over by grabby aliens, so a possible explanat

I'm confused by the argument here; is the argument that 'humanity could not arise once the universe has been taken over by grabby aliens, so a possible explanation of finding ourselves existing so early in the history of the universe is that this will be the only opportunity'? But if the universe will soon be filled with gajillions of grabby aliens, who's to say that we couldn't have been born as grabby aliens instead of humans? In fact if there will be so many of them, isn't the fact that we're not grabby aliens ourselves evidence that there will be no grabby aliens? I feel like there is some implicit assumption about 'who you are likely to be born as' that I'm not getting here. Do I need to assume that I could only have been born as a human for the argument to go through?

ben_w 3y ago
It's saying there's a good chance we'll be one of the grabby civilisations. Or at least, it doesn't rule it out. Non-grabby aliens aren't visible in this model; given the distances, "grabby" is the only way to change the environment enough for current human tech to even notice something unusual.
- qnleigh 3y ago
  But if we'll become a grabby civilization, then there will presumably be at least trillions of humans born in the distant future who will live all throughout the universe. Isn't it that an extraordinary coincidence to find oneself born among the first few billion? Incidentally, Carl Sagan used the above line of reasoning as a sign that human civilization was going to collapse before a few more doubling times.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > Isn't it that an extraordinary coincidence to find oneself born among the first few billion? The weakness of the mediocrity principle is we're in a lot of categories, and we can't be near the middle of all of them at the same time. This paper makes one particular assumption about what's a good set of things to be mediocre about; I think that's the weakest part because it's so easy for intuition to mislead there. So I could invert your surprise: No more so than finding yourself in the last of a few trillion things that evolved into humans.

ben_w 3y ago

It's saying there's a good chance we'll be one of the grabby civilisations. Or at least, it doesn't rule it out. Non-grabby aliens aren't visible in this model; given the distances, "grabby" is the only way to change the environment enough for current human tech to even notice something unusual.

qnleigh 3y ago
But if we'll become a grabby civilization, then there will presumably be at least trillions of humans born in the distant future who will live all throughout the universe. Isn't it that an extraordinary coincidence to find oneself born among the first few billion? Incidentally, Carl Sagan used the above line of reasoning as a sign that human civilization was going to collapse before a few more doubling times.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > Isn't it that an extraordinary coincidence to find oneself born among the first few billion? The weakness of the mediocrity principle is we're in a lot of categories, and we can't be near the middle of all of them at the same time. This paper makes one particular assumption about what's a good set of things to be mediocre about; I think that's the weakest part because it's so easy for intuition to mislead there. So I could invert your surprise: No more so than finding yourself in the last of a few trillion things that evolved into humans.