The Fermi Paradox: Firstborn
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- As ancient and vast as the Universe is, it seems like some alien race arose in the galaxy long before us, but who rose before them? What would the cosmos be like for the first civilization to arise, and what if it is us?
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Credits:
The Fermi Paradox: Firstborn
Episode 242; June 11, 2020
Writers:
Isaac Arthur
Editors:
Darius Said
Jerry Guern
Produced & Narrated by:
Isaac Arthur
Cover Art:
Jakub Grygier www.artstation...
Graphics:
Jeremy Jozwik www.artstation...
LegionTech Studios
Music:
Lombus, "Cosmic Soup" lombus.bandcam...
Aerium, "Waters of Atlantis" & "Fifth Star of Aldebaran" / @officialaerium
Markus Junnikkala, "A Memory of Earth" www.markusjunn...
Miguel Johnson, "So Many Stars" / migueljohnsonmjmusic
Could you imagine everyone else getting to the party and humanity is already drunk?
Typical.
You mean shitfaced to the point that they point to the barn wall and scream, "Fuck You!" and then proceed to run full force into said barn wall knocking themswlves out? Yeah, I believe it.
Yeah, but we've turned the Oort Cloud into this giiiiiiiiant bong, and we're ready to pass it. Here ya go, little tentacle-critters, take a nice big hit! :)
@@kevincrady2831 😂🤣😂👽👍
They wouldn't have been old enough to drink anyways haha.
@@kevincrady2831 why must it always be tentacles? Curse you, hentai! *shakes fist* 😉
Humanity: FIRST!
The Universe: Nobody cares.
Humanity: Yet!
Humanaty: Creates millons of millions of alien civilizations.
@@rommdan2716
That's stupid. If we create them then they're not alien.
@@theuncalledfor You do not have children do you:-)
@@theuncalledfor no people will evolve different on other planets enough time and we can call them alien and we could engineer our own aliens if there is none
@@Bruh-hq1hx "Fook, there are no aliens! We'll make some, then be especially cryptic heh heh heh."
> Be the first civilazation on the Galaxy.
> Discover FTL drive.
> Become a Fanatical Purifier.
It's inevitable, sapients compete in the same ecological niche
@@GodActio Not necessarily, and even if that's the case cooperation is almost always the better option. If even 1 individual of a species we obliterated survives he will be back in a few thousand years and will have probably written down or told his offspring about the genocide, so it might be possible that they sneak a nuke onto earth which would cause thousands or millions of deaths, so you have to be careful about angering even primitive species
Stellaris?
@@dipborah7978 Yes
@@lukasstaar6860 hard to survive an RKM that blasts your planet apart... or one trillion RKMs that shotgun your entire solar system
I wake up to Issac Arthur on my birthday? This is one of the best gifts I could get.
Happy Birthday David :)
@@isaacarthurSFIA Thank you :)
Happy birthday. Same day as my niece
"When the universe was forged in the crucible of the Big Bang, our mighty race was already 17 years old." - Lord Nibbler
@@abhiprakash74999 Futurama
@@abhiprakash74999 It's something Leela's pet said in Futurama.
It finally happened. I accidentally hit the dislike button. 😱 fortunately I realized in time and was able to switch it to a like. Seems (at the time of writing this) 18 other people also accidentally hit dislike but didnt notice. 😥
Thats ok Cody! Everyone makes mistakes. You, your parents, your parole officers 😜
What do you mean it FINALLY happened? What about those times you hit it and didn’t realise you did?
@@SuperYtc1 we call that a negligent dislike. What a jerk! Grab your pitchforks!
Google won't censor it unless it's about "The Administration"
Isaac: I am so grateful that you tackled this. For several years; I have considered this the most-likely explanation. The universe is old... and it isn’t. For enough carbon to be available for complex life (or Si), things seem to just be getting started.
If memory serves, the universe is only about 13 times the age of Earth.
@@cptncutleg more like just 3 times. The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. The universe is 13.8 billion
@@cortos_9733 observable* The universe could be way bigger and we would never know.
@@foty8679 We don't know exactly how large the universe is, but we do know how old it is. Firstly, we can figure it out using the cosmic microwave background radiation. Secondly, we can use the cosmological constant to determine how long it would take observable spacetime to collapse into a singularity. Because the universe expands at a constant rate everywhere, even if there is universe beyond what is observable to us, we can still calculate reverse expansion/collapse. Therefore, we know for a fact that our universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old.
It's the phosphorus you gotta worry about. See his other video
The idea that we are the Old Ones is kind of uplifting. The very real possibility that we are the only sentient life or one of the few in the Milky Way gives us a very special purpose. The struggles we've had, all the lessons learned, successes, failures, pain and suffering, and even the wars we've fought very well could be for the younger ones. The possibility that someday our histories could be studied and learned from by younger civilizations could be the answer to our particular "Why are we here?" is inspiring to me.
The thought of us being the wise Precursors is kind of terrifying. And hilarious.
All precursors feel that way!
And lonely.
The more you know the more you find out to know. The larger the island of knowledge the longer the border of wonder
If it makes you feel better, for now we do not qualify to be precursors. Maybe in some hundreds or thousands of years we might qualify (our current technology is just too primitive)
I would have to say terrifying and sad actually.
"There is no growing bubble of darkness to indicate an expanding first-born civilization"
*Looks at Bootes Void*
*excusemewhatwasthatyoujustsaid*
@@waytoohypernova bootes voide is a section of space that is relatively empty or is missing 90% of the observable matter found in other quadrants of space .
@@johnathannadeau3285 I would like to add that Bootes Void is consistent with models of the universe and is probably nothing to worry about...probably.
@@pyramear5414 And Dyson swarms would be very bright in the infrared unless all that waste heat is directionally disposed of.
Barnad 68 seems like a great place to hide a civilization tho.
The future of the universe is always more interesting than the past. We can already guess what the beginning looked like. I'm of the opinion though that there are end points where we zoom out and a big portrait can be displayed through its self-constructed genius. Now with time not being linear, it's possible to view this poster or at least parts of the poster in the early stage. Perhaps we are so early we can make out what the work is going to look like. Either way, zooming out you will see a cluster of life, but it's all guess and no science.
Stuff will keep colliding and eventually our universe will structure differently than just galaxies and empty void. All will conjoin into feasible organics and we will not even look like molecules under a scope.
TFW the Firstborn are a bunch of psychic frogs that obliterated the galaxies spirit realm in their war with a bunch of soulless robots and their star gods.
I thought it was psychic slugs*
oh no
Wow, I need to starting reading more French history, that sounds pretty cool. xD
Who doesn't love a good old fashioned war in heaven
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!
When you work from home, the only day of the week that matters is ArThursday
When you work from home it gets hard to remember what day it is. Luckily we have Isaac Arthur to remind us that it's Thursday.
Ro Jaws that’s why I’m watching on Friday 🤷🏽♀️ I can’t manage to consistently know the day
I'm writing a book based on this concept, this is the dose of scientific input I needed to flesh it out
Let us know of your progress !
Gl.
Plug it
how is your book coming along
@@demounit on hold for the moment, writers block.
Drink and snack acquired.
Dammit. I'm out of instant coffee.
Hello from your up above neighbor ⬆️🙋🏼♂️
Good news, I found the coffee. ☕️
I absolutely fucking love this TH-cam channel… The only thing that bothers me is when he says to grab a snack I don’t know why, but for some strange reason I can’t stand the word snack..
Then grab your sack, ships’ about to launch
A wise being when asked: "Are there other civilizations?"
Being: "Yes"
Then why are we alone?
Being: "Because they are alone too..."
No.
@@jimmyshrimbe9361 Yes?
@@Ixions Yes.
Very true
28:29 “To be the first is both a great opportunity and a great burden. And as of now, it seems plausible that it is our opportunity and our burden.”
This is some advice that we as a species would do well to heed. If we are the first, as it appears to be, then we are obligated to set a good example for those who would come after us.
As I said in my comment:Of all the Fermi Paradox explanations, THIS is the most frightening! We have the potential to BLOW IT on a Cosmic Scale. We are the first even 0.5 (or 0.05) on the Kardeshev scale and we blow it by not surviving or not making it off the planet. This is scary.
@TheWeeaboo except we would likely remember the past and think that was us do we wait or do we say hello it won't hurt to say hello or just make it clear they aren't alone
The right side of history is the alive side of history. We're yet to reach a point where our existence is secure. Thanks, tiny hats
@Benedict Mannheim Who's to say it wouldn't hurt? Now I'm not referring to the misguided conception of star treks no contact views. But there are some legitimate points such as wether the contact causes some species to take hostile expansion view of the cosmos due to it requiring them to be eliminated before they mature enough. It's a stretch for sure but our basis for making such calls right now is from the view of the young species.
No need to set example if there is no one to set example for.
Knowing humanity, that may well be the "example" we set to all those come after us.
14:25 "In sci-fi we’re often seen as the descendants of such ancient critters, in one fashion or
another, but rarely does that fashion include saying our creation was from someone flushing their space toilet and dumping their septic tank on Early Earth.
Presumably because it is not a very dignified origin story."
Interestingly that's exactly how life was created on Earth as described in "At the Mountains of Madness" by H.P. Lovecraft.
but yet it's so much more validating for someone to come from completely nothing, only to make everything theirs.
No, it's not. In that story life on earth is intentionally crafted by the Elder Things, who lived there for a long time.
Interestingly that is a complete fabrication of your own mind and not true at all (and it also sounds nothing like Lovecraft, rather sounds like the hitchhiker).
Here is a quote from the fandom Lovecraft wiki: "More than a thousand million years ago, the Elder Things came to Earth. They created the Shoggoths and other artificial bio-forms which eventually evolved into Earthly vertabrates, including Humans. Over the next hundreds of millions of years, the Elder Things endured wars with the Flying Polyps, Mi-Go, their own Shoggoth creations, and Cthulhu and his Cthulhi, which each held some territory on Earth for a time. (HPL: At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow Out of Time) "
I would love it if people could stop lying about just everything without any reason whatsoever.
Sci fi Precursors “We have been watching you from a distance, guiding your development and protecting you from the dangers of the cosmos. Your development has progressed far enough that we can now welcome you to the galactic community.”
Human Precursors - “ha ha spaceship go BRRRRR.”
Human precursors: HEY FOLKS!! U want space travel?!
@@rommdan2716
"We'll bang, ok?"
-First words spoken by the Human diplomat 'Commander Sheperd' to the Tara'El
Human precursers: "Weeeeeee"
Human precursers after becoming a silent empire and seeding life across the entire cosmos, waiting millinia and going back to see how eveything is going, "Weeeeeeeee"
@@GodActio Hey, at least we are the fun uncle not a stuck up snob like most precursors in s-f.
- Hey boys and girls...wanna see my new star maker 2000? And this is my new space cruiser 50, and no, despite what Janet is saying I am not overcompensating for anything!
- Yay uncle is so cool!
- Hey uncle could you give us anti matter tech...
- You know you are a bit agressive young one, I really should not, but hey, do not be stupid with it, it sometimes tend to go well what can I say, not everyone can make it. How the rest of you are doing?
- We are fine, no one liked that dick.
@@JM-mh1pp want to make your own aliens give them a flat world then give them resources to build cool stuff and then watch them be cool
Right now, some alien is watching Isaac say "We may very well be the first!" and laughing.
*"forst"
Why would they laugh at that? Even if we're not first, chances are we are one of the earliest Technological species in our region of space, so the alien will understand
@@tinamoul he's joking, but you're right.
What if that's the first signal they receive?
Giving them proof that THEY are not the first like they thought.
Jajaja
How do they understand english tho
We're in a multiplayer game right now but no one else is here yet.
I was thinking about using this approach for a sci fi story with humans being the elder civilization, so this helped point out some issues and ideas that need considering
Also, Space police sounds both cool and a bit funny
Isaac is the best thing that had and could have happened, ever
It’s Space cops 👮♂️ if you’ve watched Southpark 😅😂
To be fair, I imagine if you timetraveled back a century or two and described the term "world police" to literally anyone back then, they'd think you're joking too. "Space police" seems like a bigger version of the same.
The Space Police probably wouldn't like me going to primitive worlds to convince the locals I'm a messenger of the gods, So they're no fun.
Halo used this in It’s story with the forerunners turning out to be human (I dont consider anything from 343 to be cannon)
What if life is so rare that it only happens once every billion universes
Then there will be no "second"
Now I have performance anxiety
I suppose a species which concluded they were probably it, and that intelligent life arising on its own in any area was so slim they were probably it and it alone, might feel way more need to do it right :)
@@isaacarthurSFIA I'm curious what you think of the ethics of intentional panspermia to mitigate against the possibility of life being forever wiped out in this situation - should we intentionally seed life to Europa as a 'second chance' for life in case we lose space travel capabilities?
@@sirgog yeah i agree and its a good idea
Elon musk often says that humans are valuable if there arnt aliens
@@isaacarthurSFIA love that train of thought but they may feel less need to do it right if there's no one else to judge you or even good naturedly compete against.
Chicken and the Egg: In Spaaaaace
Surprise ending: it was the egg. Assuming you had a line drawn between what we would classify as a chicken, and what they evolved from, that would mean somewhen there was a not-quite-a-chicken which laid an egg with the first what-we-would-call-a-chicken, which was a chick, not a chicken. In an egg. Hence, the egg was first. In spaaaaaace.
Well, they'd be hard pressed to be somewhere else.
The first thing I thought of when I saw the title 'Firstborn' was the Arthur C. Clarke/Stephen Baxter novel by the same name. Hopefully those type of 'Firstborn' never notice us.
David Brin wrote a series "Startide Rising" It involved Aliens who had all been raised from semi intelligence to full space faring species by a previous race, all the way back to the First Race, that had long since disappeared, with a promise to one day return. Good series if you like space opera and conflict on a multi-galactic scale.
I love the use of "critters" its so whimsical -- extra points dude!
I've always assumed that us humans are the first in the galaxy and that we will see the rest of it.
It's possible. But then again Milky Way is almost as old as the universe. And this still doesn't explain the other galaxies.
Piss off, we know you’re hiding those aliens from us.
That’s a very human stance to take
i always love the concept of far-flung future scenario where the relics of ancient civilization once known as human, scattered across the galaxy for others to discovered
@@BioSoundTrack Look into All Tomorrows if you haven't already. Alt-Shift-X did a great summary of it and Beware the Qu did a pretty good audio book. Both here on YT.
This is my preferred non-supernatural answer to the Fermi Paradox.
have you seen the Phosphorus Problem? thats mine.
*I don't think I've heard anybody float this, but it might be fun to think about anyways. Something like 95% of the universe is supposed to be dark matter/dark energy right? And we can't actually see or interact with dark matter to my knowledge. So what if the answer to the Fermi Paradox was that Humanity is simply one of the only sentient species to be made of matter, and the vast majority are instead comprised of dark matter? In this way, we may be truly surrounded by other civilizations that we may simply never be able to know about or interact with.*
Sure but still there is more than enough regular matter that statistically there should be life we could recognize.
Lovecraft's Ancient Ones may be made of Dark Matter.
@Taiwanlight Inspiration for the wormhole aliens of Deep Space 9 fame, as posited by the physicist Leonard Mlodinow.
@Greg Lloyd with how little we truly know about dark matter its possible
schlock mercenary
Let's just hope the first born isn't the BORG
if that is the case, then any resistance to this fact is futile! Lol
We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.
Firstborg civilization....
@@setlerking All your base are belong to us
@@fuknrowdy someone set us up the bomb!
Or we could even have a number or nearly simultaneous "firstborn", but if they are all are at around the same state of development, the vast distances makes it impossible to detect each other.
I am thinking my early limiters on life->intelligence starts with the flux of cosmic rays...I am assuming that early universe was nasty with the destructive brilliance of many early and huge stars and their respective events, and it will calm down over time, especially as the light from the young universe disappears beyond the horizon. And then there is the local GRB shooting gallery problem, we are the lucky duck so far.
The next would be star spin/size; the smaller the stars are the less shielding, the more spin, the more flares they generate. So a good sign of an intelligent civilization, would be a statistically large number of slow spinning stars...so far not good Sol's spin is very rare afaict.
Thirdly, a stable planetary orbit, precession, and wobble etc, for a reasonably consistent amount of light and heat, at least keeping the world in the habitable zone. An active stable magnetosphere for coping with flares and cosmic radiation...apparently Earth's is not geo-historically perfectly stable, and this may account for the long periods of simple life forms; the Moon seems to be a rare double planet phenomenon, as is an inner system relatively clear of destablizing giant planets.
I suspect we are among the earliest of species even capable of going the distance...still gotta keep the fingers crossed too.
I think you have it mostly.
I would disagree with, " the Moon seems to be a rare double planet phenomenon, as is an inner system relatively clear of destabilizing giant planets." I do not think our extra Solar planet detection is nearly good enough to make that assessment. Especially concerning how rare the Moon is. Being able to see even earth sized planets in distant systems isn't really in the current tech, much less if that planet would have a moon. If you just look at our four inner planets the chance of a significantly sized moon is 25%.
@@lejibus fair critique...I would add LAWKI needs continental drift, and we know next to nothing about this in any kind of exoplanet.
So many anti-humanity coments in this video...
Come on guys, I know that all those "humanity sucks" statements sound deep and badass in movies and such, but in reality they are just realy inacurate.
Yeah it's unfortunate and ironic, since they're negative attitude is contributing to the problem they're complaining about.
This annoys me to no end
Decades of misguided environmentalism and “social critique” have made misanthropy fashionable. I believe this was deliberate. If you hate your fellow man, you’ll hate other people’s freedom and want for totalitarianism. Same reasons religions have original sin: we’re deeply flawed, so we must defer to a “higher power”, conveniently only accessible via human middle-men. We should all be on team Human.
Couldnt agree more. Too many academics these days seem to hate humans.
I agree with you. We're flawed creatures but we are also capable of seeing our own flaws, learn from them and become better. That is part of what makes humans awesome. We have no guide to whatever this thing is that we call existence. We just have to figure it out together in the time we have left in our lifetimes. We're conflicted in nature and (most of the time) make an effort to do the right things. Considering all that I think we're not doing bad at all. Is there room for improvement? Yeah, plenty. So we should continue to improve both as individuals and a species, and stay freakin awesome. Go humans!
I find this premise to be a more appealing twist on "Humans are the Aliens." Being "ancestral aliens" or "alien ancestors" in itself has that appeal, regardless of our flaws.
Drawing circles around a certain movie franchise without even referencing it once. I actually liked this attitude:
- mention it,
- come on, say it once,
- he said engineers, it's coming,
- ?
- wa!
IA: "NEVER!"
This is my preferred Fermi paradox solution. It passes the ‘smell test’ for me.
It seems literally cosmically unlikely that life is just rare, and given the time scale of the universe we became intelligent remarkably early. Life stayed single celled on earth for the majority of the history of earth life.
just wait 'til we become cyborgs lol
I've always disliked the idea of aliens coming around and razing random planets from time to time, as the LIFE on those planets does one thing really really well... it keeps the chemistry of life on the surface of the planet. Granted your K2 species are likely capable of just creating all the phosphorus they'd ever need. But I could imagine a scenario where a planet is just culled from time to time of a good amount of its life just to get some of those chemicals.
"And because in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere.
They became farmers in fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped.
And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed."
who would've thought that Arthur C. Clarke wrote about us...
So there's no civilization to call us NEWBORN? xD
yes, but we get to call every single other civilization "newborn".
But they will call us boomers.
Ro Jaws we'll get used to it.
@@rojaws1183 They may call us that once...but certainly not twice.
- Jim what happened to star buster 3000?
- No idea Tim... probably lost in transit, you know how it is, a star here or there...who counts those right?
@@rojaws1183 big boomers
Been binge watching all these videos. Its nice to hear what most people drag out into boring lectures in a more concise and entertaining form.
That's the one. We are first born.
Humanity could very well end up playing spore on a galactic scale, seed intelligence across space and time. Awesome !
"Dumping their septic tank on an early Earth" that's probably exactly what happened. It makes more sense than other origins of life.
Then where do you think that life came from?
When the video mentions a war between Kardeshev 3 civilizations, my mind went to the Lensmen series, when the Eich attempted to attack Arisia... And get told
"We are a civilization as much older than you as we are more capable. A ratio of millions to one!"
I just need to see some alien Jerry springer drama. (We found intelligent life, but its cheating on it's a wife with it's cousin!)
*its
This was my favorite video in a while!!!! I also feel that this is the best answer too. We may not be the absolute first , but imagine that we are #10 and we are evenly spaced in our galaxy. We are still so far away that they still haven’t heard our signals.
Personally, my opinion is that we as a race are likely to be one of the first, if not THE first, races to achieve enough intelligence to consider the idea of expanding past our home planet.
This mostly comes from something I had heard once, don't remember where, but someone had once said this to explain the universe's age. (Please note, I don't remember the quote fully, so I'll probably get some things wrong.)
"If we where to take all of time, from the big bang to right now, and put it all in one year, then the dawn of humanity would be on December 31st, at 11PM. But, if we took all of time from the big bang, to the heat death of the universe, then right now would be January 1st, at 3AM."
18thborn comment! Im so early, it seems i have some youtube-comments equivalent of Fermi paradox - if the internet is full of users, and lots of them use youtube, then where are all the comments?!
Anyone here knows about the show, Terra Formars. In that story, humanity terraforms Mars by releasing moss and cockroaches. Apparently, Mars will start to warm up and absorb the sunlight because the surface is covered in dark colors. Cockroaches will eat the moss, expand their living area and the carcasses will make the moss grow in even thicker.
500 years later, Mars now has a stable atmosphere, large bodies of water (More like large lakes than seas) and moss as the only plant life. There's also the now Humanoid Cockroaches, but excluding that, would this method work in our world?
We are the cosmic horrors that come from the early days of the universe. Just remember, WWCD "What would Cthulhu do?"
North Carolina? Well ok
I notice the idea of coincidentally simultaneous overlap - that given similar conditions, two separate but similar events can occur at approximately the same time. On Earth, that we know of, several instances of domestication happened this way, as well as invention. If the similar circumstances in the universe's case are size, age, averages in temperature, radiation, element dispersion, planet formation, etc., it is possible if unlikely that two civilizations could arise in a few relatively narrow window somewhat near to each other.
I'm not a simple man. I see Issac Arthur, I click.
Great video as always. Being the first is a thought as strange and scary as being the only ones. A huge responsibility if this is true!
Let's get to work.. we need to build all those abandoned million years old FTL relays, weird ruins on planets and mysterious artifacts on the moons, for other civilizations to find later and ponder about.
I was the seventh to like this video. Seven is my favourite number. This channel is without doubt my favourite.
I like turtles
I was the seventh to like your comment
Autism
I think the "Use them together, use them in peace" thing was only in the film
Here's a thought, early civilizations nuked each other to death over who was the first civilization and that's why we haven't found any alien life
17:28 The ideal solution is to use an organic computer. You just have to make sure it doesn't get destroyed at the last second to make room for a freeway.
all is fine if you have your towel
I like watching your channel, Issac because you extend my thinking and don't let me forget that I am one person with infinite possibilities. Thank you for allowing me the belief and think beyond my own mind.
My favorite Fermi paradox solution!
I don’t know, ever since I’ve been into astronomy 🔭 I’ve seen some strange things in the sky. I know how to identify satellites 🛰 and the ISS and the velocity at which the cross the sky. BTW I love your channel and never put on CC, you speak very clearly.
so, you saw something in the sky and didn't know what it is and jumped to conclusion that it probably some aliens from space which traveled light years and now spy on us?
The idea of an expanding civilization's outer wave of colonization being (relatively) technologically backwater doesn't actually seem very plausible. Since as gone over in other episodes there's going to be some limit to technologic advancement. So unless a civilization enforces a ban on AI it starts to seem difficult for a technological disparity to stick around for long.
Since AI on scales like a Jupiter brain should be able to do subjective billions of years of scientific theorizing, simulating and thinking in very little actual time. Similarly colonization ships could house some extremely large AI to run during voyages advancing tech.
So it would seem like an expanding civilization would tend to plateau before very significant inter-stellar expansion, simply because for a partly digital civiization time in which to make advancements can be practically produced on demand (and people have incentives to stay on the cutting edge).
Really the only plausible scenario where a tech disparity seems feasible is if research starts generating massively diminishing returns. Such that at a certain point only conscious stellar objects and megastructure sized scientific interments allow any progress to be made. Though even in this case you must also assume that the tech requiring Jupiter brains to develop isn't providing very diminishing returns so that the front colonization wave doesn't quickly (in astronomical terms) end up with a "good enough" tech level that stays like 90% as good as the inner systems.
Idea is based of fact that largest reach would have technology designed earliest. But if you ask my, idea of colonization itself is already backwarded. Because we can get everything relatively easily in space and there is actually lot what hurt development of civilization with distance. I personally think they most likely would not expand outside own homeworld or if they move, they current residence. Though they probably would send Van Neuman probes to at least catalog whole space around them.
@@TheRezro That is assuming humanity were to attempt to remain as one unified civilisation, which I find very unlikely. Today we have around 200 sovereign nations which exist because humans like doing things differently. Different language, different religion, different laws, different government etc. Some people are happier living lives that people in more advanced nations see as backwards. I imagine plenty of humans will want to colonise other worlds far away from Earth simply to build something of their own where they can live their lives differently, even if their new homes are less advanced than their old one, which I do not think is even a foregone conclusion.
Hell, one of the reasons they might leave Earth is due to the planet stagnating under an oppressive regime which prevents scientific progress. I certainly do not think humans would decide to stay on Earth just to keep humanity united under one civilisation; that is not what humans have done historically on this planet (e.g. colonists leaving Europe to build new nations in the Americas). Humans will go wherever they feel they can live the kind of life they want.
@13:00 about THE news propagating out in a wave, In a light speed barrier universe, ALL news would lag like that. Ive wondered how that would fragment future media or version of their comms/internet. Even when thats only a few light years, itll get messy pretty quick if you like to be caught up on any happenings within "the empire"
Hi. Sixth! Oh we have, we dismissed a 'rock' *that changed both speed and trajectory without any outside actor acting upon it* as just a rock.
I'm genuinely asking what you are talking about, when did this happen?
It wasn't travel fast enough to be an alien craft. It also change trajectory because the sun cause outgassing from the heat
Pondering and using ones imagination, is a truly wonderful gift. If mankind can imagine it, then it is possible.
Read the short story:
Big Ancestor.
to see how looks can be deceiving in regards to human evolution.
Humans in an alien youtube video: first
My answer to the Fermi Paradox has always been that we're just that special. So one of a kind that we're the very first piece of life that is reaching the point of colonizing space.
In fact, the aliens may be us when we become big enough. Some of us will evolve to adapt to the environments of other planets, and the results of that can be so weird that they can barely even be called human anymore.
HI Isaac, I remember a vid a short while ago where you explained your speech impediment. I find you have decent voice and have no problem understanding you, really starting to get into your channel. Funny thing, I can understand you better than a British narrator
My favorite Fermi paradox solution.
This should be interesting
Indeed it is interesting..
I like the idea of us being the precursor civilization
If we were first interstellar civilization in the universe, we have responsibility towards intelligent lifes. That is great ethic of the humanity.
@Robbi Rose Fanatical Purifier Intensifies.
Thanks for being in the military for us I’m gonna be going space force soon
If anyone ever asks if you're the Firstborn species, you say, "Yes!"
This chick is toast!
"....holy heck, little green critters!..." That sir, was hilarious!
The difference between a thousand year project.. and a 4 billion year project is the equivalent of doing one task for 10 mins..or one task for the rest of your life🤣 I love when this channel puts things into perspective!
That would make us Gods in the Universe, and to think my teachers said I wouldn’t amount to anything, in yr face teachers 😀
Let's build an alien. Might be easier than finding one.
Thanks A I! Really did the hobas far as decent entertainment
This explanation has always seemed the most plausible to me. Combined with how far away other civilizations could be and how long it would take light from them to reach us.
So, what I'm hearing is, is that we need to pull off the greatest prank ever in the history of Time.
Step 1. Build a ton of ancient-looking monuments. Make them oddly geometric and cover them in arcane symbols.
Step 2. We make it look like something horrifying happened. Leave signs of a battle, a desperate last stand, destroy a few lifeless planets and make it look like a cataclysm took place.
Step 3: Leave behind technological fragments and intentionally-garbled messages alluding to some sort of portent of impending doom.
Step 4: Leave the galaxy and take up residence in one of the satellite galaxies.
Step 5: wait for young species to find the clues left behind, become paranoid, and start wildly speculating as to Humanity's fate.
Step 6: When they least expect it, appear in their center of government as holograms, and claim that the Doom has now come for them.
Step 7: Rickroll.
Sadly my comment was not firstborn.
Last time I was this early there weren't any aliens.
Oh no! We are *that* precursor civilisation, akin to the ancients in star gate. That probably means we are the civilization that creates all the problems like killer Von Neumann machines and such forth. That the protagonist civilisation is going to have to fix.
which will propably also be us, or at least some evolution of us
if we are the precursors we have to build massive complex megastructures self reparing robots, and then vanish, in order to add some mystery to the galaxy
Incredible, Captions work perfectly 🥴
17:27 "maybe, though you'd expect them to use a computer simulation instead which might be ad elaborate and real, practically speaking as reality itself"
Oh, like the one that has been running our solar system for the past 4.5 billion years? :P
(I just hope that no clumsy janitor accidentally unplugs the computer we are running on, to plug in his quantum vacuum cleaner)
Just dont boil goats in their mothers milk. For some odd reason it makes New Zealand glitch out of existence and it has to be restored from a backup.
I can totally imagine a future inter-galactic war happening between two dumb civilizations both proclaiming: 'We are the Firstborn'.
Then both civilizations die, and a third civilization emerges and they think they are the Firstborn.
A nice plot for an inter-galactic comedy skit, worth pitching to my cosmic broker/dealer.
My own sci-fi setting has a loose variation of this, which I call "Firstborn Siblings". Humanity isn't THE first civilization to emerge. However, it is among the first, since conditions only got stable enough to allow life to evolve to inteligence relatively recently), And the galaxy is just so big, nobody came to say hello yet. Well, one civilization did, hundreds of years ago, and left a useful cache of technology, but that is beside the point (story stuff) - and they came in the same "wave" of civilizations. Which is, that this solution allows for the existence of other civilizations (which I need for a Mass Effect style story), while avoiding big technology differences (problematic), the "precursors of precursors" problem, and most of the Fermi paradox.
...what if galactic civilizations are terrified of Earth? After all, Great Cthulhu sleeps here. We might be in a quarantine zone thousands of light years big.
Isaac, I gotta be tell ya buddy.
I found your channel about 1or 2 years ago I think? And I love how you went from "sorry about my pronounciation" to 517k subscriber
I’ve been waiting for this one and BAM! Here it is. Only a minute in. 🙃
The universe is so young, life has really only been possible for a fraction of its 14b years. We started with our planet's formation at about 10by, planet's like ours have only been possible for another 2-4 billion years prior to earth, and considering its taken us this long, it's only logical to see we are one of the earliest possible (within the first ~8by since complex life COULD form based on the elements available, out of trillions of years the universe has left to produce life)
And this is all based on possibility, not probability. Even just 6by ago there were measurably fewer heavy elements, life could form, but we probably wouldn't have.
Interesting indeed to wonder. Are we the first? Or are we late to the scene? This should be fun to think about.
That bit about a Three Laws AI genociding alien races to protect humanity did happen in the Asimov's Foundation and Empire series.
It very well could be that there is a first, but they maintain a low profile, and if any doesn’t, they get wiped out. We just haven’t made enough noise yet to get noticed.
Isaac repeatedly uses the argument that even though some activity may be improbable, considering the vast number of civilizations (or life forms or whatever), then the improbable becomes inevitable. That doesn't really fly. If it's improbable, it may always be that way.
i think that when we are speaking as human been the firstborn, we should look back into history and how we end up here, how culture, politics, economic and science evolve, might give use a clear view on how things will keep evolving into the future
Here's something crazy to think about. If we really are the firstborn, then the monoliths that someday dot the universe will look *exactly* like the ones Arthur C. Clarke made because our future descendants might easily copy the design on purpose.
I don't think I want to live in a universe where humanity is the pinnacle of evolutionary development...
Just a few more Darwin Awards and we'll get there....