FYI: I mis-stated the "Great Filter" hypothesis, because the filter could either be before or after the point where humans currently are, so it's kinda wrapped up in both the first and the second parts. It could either be that civilizations don't last long (they hit the filter) or that life doesn't evolve into civilizations (the filter is before we are right now (maybe just at multi-cellular life)) and we could thus be long lived, but would be very rare. It just seems more likely to me that, since we /do/ exist, if there is a filter, it would be in the future. But we only have a data-set of one, so there isn't really a way to do more than guess.

@placeholderdoe

Жыл бұрын

To me since we exist but can’t find any proof of any other life existing past earth, then the filter was before us. But given how the world is now, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s coming up soon

@michaelmayhem350

Жыл бұрын

The surest evidence that aliens exist is that they haven't contacted us.

@omnijack

Жыл бұрын

I propose that a sufficiently advanced civilization would be indistinguishable from nature. Which would make the concept of interstellar communication a very different sort of challenge.

@CorwynGC

Жыл бұрын

Why would you think that there is ONLY ONE great filter? We know for sure, of at least one; don't let your planet get hit by a giant rock. Go watch Isaac Arthur to see tons more.

@PieMoe

Жыл бұрын

I was about to mention in a separate comment, we could've already passed the filter. In fact, if a "filter" is the answer to the Fermi Paradox, and life has had enough time to occur multiple times, it might be likely that it's somewhere before the radio. As you put it, it took civilization-bearing life on Earth vanishingly little time to get to where we are, only about 20k years from fire to broadcast signals that can be picked up from very far away (yes, the transmission will be basically garbage from lightyears away, but it will still be emissions clearly in parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that planets don't emit naturally). So, either the filter is before radio, or life hasn't had enough time to occur to reach it yet (alternatively, the frequencies we assume other civilizations will broadcast on might simply be indistinguishable from natural radiation).

Life on Earth existing for 28% of the history of the universe absolutely blows my mind.

@vlogbrothers

Жыл бұрын

Right? Why doesn't anyone talk about that?

@pamelaroundy9814

Жыл бұрын

And I don't think people really realize we are a small percentage of that 28%.

@vanessapierson4913

Жыл бұрын

someone please do the math of what percentage of the history of the universe humans inhabit. way way way way less than 1%, right?

@mortenlgaard8462

Жыл бұрын

The thing that breaks my mind is that from the first dinosaur to the last is longer than the time from last dinosaur to us

@katw2254

Жыл бұрын

What !??!? What that is crazy!!

I kind of like the idea that there are some really thoughtful, respectful aliens out there that are just like "We don't want to disturb the others. We'll leave space for them." Sort of like the quiet companionship of the universe.

@gbprime2353

Жыл бұрын

Or they took a look at our society and say "they're not ready, wait til they stop fighting themselves first."

@RainaRamsay

Жыл бұрын

+

@hughcaldwell1034

Жыл бұрын

Making Earth the house party of teenagers blasting their music at all hours.

@whysosirius2

Жыл бұрын

‘The Quiet Companionship of the Universe’ would make a great book title

@untappedinkwell

Жыл бұрын

@@whysosirius2 It would!!

you ever meet someone later in life and you’re like “phew, I’m so glad you didn’t meet me earlier when I was a mess”-that’s how I feel about not meeting aliens yet. I don’t want them to see us like this.

@sexyscientist

Жыл бұрын

Yes, give us a million years to get our shit together, if we have that many.

@gavinwilson5324

Жыл бұрын

Here's a comforting thought, though: maybe they're just as much a mess as we are. Maybe the first aliens we meet will also be going through a climate crisis, or heck, maybe they'll be in the middle of a world war. I think it would be wonderful to know that, not only are we not alone in the universe, we're not alone in our struggles either.

@jama211

Жыл бұрын

@@gavinwilson5324 I hope for their sake (and ours) that they aren't having a war - it could also indicate that there are solutions to these problems. But not being alone in our struggles would be a silver lining if they were I guess.

@NYKevin100

Жыл бұрын

@@gavinwilson5324 It's so frustrating when sci-fi portrayals of aliens are all like "you humans have in-group-out-group social dynamics? That's so *weird!*" as if it isn't a completely standard evolutionary thing (it's just selfish gene theory as applied to societal development). The aliens should be animals like us, not gods.

@sexyscientist

Жыл бұрын

@@gavinwilson5324 Are you saying a world war is worse than climate change?

I've been watching vlogbrothers on and off for about 10 years I think. It's not the optimism alone that brings me back. It's the informed optimism. It's easy to be pessimistic with proof or be optimistic naively but it's difficult to find evidence that things are getting better. You two have always shown me that rare combination and have given me hope in some very scary times. DFTBA, Hank and John 🖖

@sapphinese

Жыл бұрын

Thank you for putting it into words. Informed optimism is so meaningful and effective at creating hope.

@seekittycat

Жыл бұрын

It's like Waymond's line from Everything Everywhere all at once. "You think because l'm kind that it means I'm naive, and maybe I am. It's strategic and necessary. This is how I fight."

@lunachopin69420

Жыл бұрын

I think this idea so often (sometimes so intensely that I CRYYYY) without making it words that go in order and I’m glad you frickin said it

@dianapenasaran5850

Жыл бұрын

oooh thank you, now I have name for it -- informed optimism. Indeed, it's easy to be pessimistic with proof, or to be optimistic naively

@abhaysastry6976

Жыл бұрын

+

but now how will the people in the airport think that you're crazy :/

@vlogbrothers

Жыл бұрын

Oh don't worry, they could all still see me.

@skylerwitherspoon

Жыл бұрын

@@vlogbrothers oh great that's a relief (except not really skfkjk I would hate that if I were you. almost feels worse than just making a video not in a booth)

@yarnyness5431

Жыл бұрын

+

@amykathleen2

Жыл бұрын

I’m glad I’m not the only person seeking information on the airport pod. Frankly I have more questions about the airport pod than about aliens.

@samsontheladle

Жыл бұрын

​@@amykathleen2 same, I've seen enough kursgezagt that my need for aliens content is met. Airport pod? What is it? Why is it there? Is it specifically for video making? For work? Why does it have color wheel? Are there many in the airport or just one? Who put it there? Whyyyy

I'm always impressed with how hopeful Hank is about humanity.

@hopegold883

Жыл бұрын

Yeah. It’s refreshing to hear that maybe “we” are deciding not to take up all the available space. I’m used to hearing “we” are destroying the planet.

@osmia

Жыл бұрын

+

@gregbartlett851

Жыл бұрын

@@hopegold883 Maybe the beginning of us deciding not to take up all the available space is the realization that we have been destroying the planet.

@NWPaul72

Жыл бұрын

And he's been places, he's seen humanity. And since he's smarter than me, I can assume he sees something I don't and coattail on his optimism! 🙂

@purplezart

Жыл бұрын

i love it when people who seem intelligent and well-informed are also optimistic. it's such a relief!

My favorite theory was just that, compared with the projected age of the universe, we're just early - perhaps one of the earliest, and that makes it a quiet race against beings from other worlds.

@philiphockenbury6563

Жыл бұрын

We get to be the ancient forerunner species.

@nolestrono

Жыл бұрын

@@philiphockenbury6563 duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude

@2nd-place

Жыл бұрын

@@philiphockenbury6563 This makes me want to send Voyager style vessels out in every direction except etch all kinds of weird markings into golden discs on board that doesn't make any sense at all just to confuse everyone and make them try to figure out the "language of the gods" or whatever. Like the Voyager discs were trying to communicate math and science to make sense of things. These discs would look intelligent but have no meaning at all and oh man their scientists would work on them for centuries banging their big old bug eyed alien heads against the wall. The ultimate troll, that's the forerunner I want to be. Maybe some stupid race will interpret it as a religion and form a covenant with other species who adhere to their ideology...

@kiiturii

4 ай бұрын

this is entirely possible but math says it's extremely unlikely

If you consider the life expectancy of the universe and how relatively early we popped up, it’s seems very possible we’re the first. Maybe in hundreds of billions of years the Fermi paradox will make more sense but to me now, it’s always seemed like we showed up too early to a party and then asked “where is everybody?”

@itsDaedrin

Жыл бұрын

That's been my theory for the better part of two decades. Life existing in a way that vaguely resembles anything on earth, would have had to be a relatively "recent" thing, given how water and a lot of other stuff needed for life, would have had to cool down. The ancient ones in sci-fi? That's us. We're the progenitors. Hopefully the younger races get to learn from us directly and not from some ancient tablets.

@phillyphakename1255

Жыл бұрын

We know that stars take X billion years to lifecycle, and we know we are in the 3rd or 4th star since the big bang. If life can only come on the 4th star, once they cool down, get smaller, have the bigger elements, etc, why are we expecting life a long long time ago? We came about pretty quick. Sure, maybe the asteroid could have hit a few million years earlier to open up the niche, but evolution takes a long ass time.

@anthonyx916

Жыл бұрын

@@phillyphakename1255 Give or take a million years is huge for us humans but almost nothing on cosmic time scales. Earth might be among the earliest of worlds to host life, but there's still plenty of room for technologically advanced civilizations to emerge millions of years before we did. Maybe we are the first, but I think that's a pretty big "maybe".

@Robert399

Жыл бұрын

@@anthonyx916 But for single-cellular life on Earth to evolve into multi-cellular life did take ≈ 3 billion years.

In a stunning turn of events, you can tell from the aqua speckled walls behind Hank that he is in an airport

@N3rdfightermom

Жыл бұрын

nope, not quite the same ring

Jeez, I've been wrestling with the concept of the Fermi Paradox for like 2 decades and you just waltz in here and make me feel all better about it in under 4 minutes. Love you Hank

My struggle with the Fermi Paradox is that I always think ‘some species has to be first, why can’t that be us?’ And then why is there a paradox at all.

Extremely stastically improbable hypthesis, but I like this one the most for some reason: humans are not (or rather, will not be) alone, but we are the first. Life may be abundant in the universe, but most of it simply hasn't gotten to this point yet.

@NWPaul72

Жыл бұрын

There's also a nonzero chance that there are currently species at about our level of development on planets we can see, but the light lag has us viewing their primordial past. Whenever I'm looking at celestial photos, someone always reminds me that this was how it looked millions or billions of years ago. We can never know what all is really going on out there.

@chaerodactyl

Жыл бұрын

life on Earth did start developing around the early period in which the universe was "calm" enough to not immediately obliterate it, and we've dodged and endured many mass extinction events that could have become complete erasures. I think it makes sense that civilizational life would be just beginning to burgeon across our pocket of spacetime. we need to figure this out so we can set a better precedent

@alexmdoe7102

Жыл бұрын

I was just about to comment something similar. We humans have sent space probes out beyond our solar system already after all. They just haven't had anywhere close to enough time to get to another civilization out there yet. Good chance the same applies to potential aliens as well.

@alexanderwhitney464

Жыл бұрын

Statistically improbable, but if life is so extremely rare than our existence is about as statistically improbable, so when given two extremely unlikely outcomes I choose the happier one.

@chrisott9018

Жыл бұрын

I think this is statistically more probable than any of the other explanations I've heard. Our sun is probably no more than a third-generation star. First-generation stars didn't have any of the heavier elements required for life, and second-generation stars probably didn't have enough, so it's possible the sun was the first generation of stars capable of creating/supporting life. Of course, if we are the first ones, that means we have an important responsibility...

There's also the chance that the aliens got ahold of Voyager's golden record and decided they hate our music taste, so they're ignoring us until we have better taste :(

@bigbundle3223

Жыл бұрын

This is like The Prime Directive if it was created by Terry Pratchett instead of Gene Roddenberry.

@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721

Жыл бұрын

We humans brought this upon ourselves. We made the mistake of not including the Beatles on the record.

@MattMcIrvin

Жыл бұрын

They asked us to send more Chuck Berry and we didn't respond, so the hell with us.

I super like this perspective. Another proposal I like is that we haven't found aliens just because we haven't found them. Explorers have been combing the vast sea for hundreds of years before we found Antarctica. In fact, Neptune was discovered before a human landed on Antarctica. So maybe like, finding aliens is just harder than we think. Maybe the 60 or so years we've been genuinely looking just isn't really enough, and with a bit more time (a century or two) we will.

@hamm0155

Жыл бұрын

That could be true but assumes something like Hank’s scenario to also be true as the standard story says if there are many civilizations and they have hundreds of millions of years they would be here and we wouldn’t have to find them.

@kiiturii

4 ай бұрын

antarctica is also uninhabited therefore it makes no noise and just waited for it to be discovered, looking for another civilization would be different. Also like you said, Neptune was discovered before, so maybe it's just easier to look up into the sky than to find an icy continent in almost uninhabitable terrain before satellites were a thing

The idea that hasn't been described directly in the video, but has been hinted at, is the "Dark Forest" hypothesis. And I love that Hank just goes: "It doesn't have to be a Dark Forest. It might just be a Picnic Zone." 😊

@DanielForrester

Жыл бұрын

Ever read Roadside Picnic lol?

@TinyShaman

Жыл бұрын

@@DanielForrester Well, being Russian, I most certainly have. 😊 It is a funny play on words, I'll grant you that. Not the "picnic" I meant, of course. However, now that I have read your comment, "Picnic Zone" sounds somewhat darker, sort of like "The Twilight Zone". 😂

I remember a quote that either we are alone in the universe or that we’re not, and both possibilities are equally terrifying

@B-503_Yukikaze

Жыл бұрын

Attributed to Arthur C. Clarke, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

@sylvy16

Жыл бұрын

@@B-503_Yukikaze yup. It has also been famously misattributed to carl sagan cause arthur clarke said that quote in an interview with sagan

@auakaga

Жыл бұрын

Whether we are alone in the universe as “the pinnacle of all the species that exist” or not, the very fact that we fulfil the necessary and sufficient conditions for life to keep flourishing on Earth in any sort of meaningful capacity is extraordinary. It blows me away. It nails me to the wall every time I stop to think about it. And that’s even while we are particularly flourishing in spectacular fashion at the moment. We’re literally cutting off the branch on which we as a species are sitting and collectively call “our home”. There’s the terrifying part.

@WolfbloodJakeWilliams

Жыл бұрын

If you look into a river, and know there should be fish there, but you see no fish, then maybe they're camouflaged. And if they are camouflaged, what does that tell you? There's something to hide from.

@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721

Жыл бұрын

I prefer a different quote: "And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'cause there's bugger-all down here on Earth!"

I like your last idea a lot more than I enjoy "The Dark Forest" theory (the theory in the description). Maybe other alien species have found each other or are aware of each other but are sufficiently advanced in their philosophies and long-term thinking that they can coexist without stepping on each others' toes...or whatever toe-like appendages they may have.

I think you can combine the "great filter" idea and Hank´s idea very well: when a civilization gets to around our point, it either learns not to take up all available space (and - to be hard headed about this part - to enforce "not taking up all the space" on it´s close relatives) OR it gets filtered. Really curious to see which one we do.

To me there's always been a 4th option: We only truly understand us. As such we tend to assign our traits to any unknown being. The thing is, we went through very specific, complex string of events over time that shaped everything about us, including bodily functions and thought processes. Prioritizing survival is the only thing I struggle with possibly being different. I've had several people tell me "Well, survival where all these negative things originate", and I do agree....In our case. Bodily functions dictate what you need to survive, we need things like food, water, and oxygen. Having on hand inventory made things a lot easier when we needed it, which turned into stockpiling. Stockpiling lead to "If they're stockpiling all of this, there wont be much, if any, left for us" and that lead into fighting over resources that we may never truly even need. There's a whole loop of needs shaping thought process shaping needs. Our bodily functions evolved to fit our environment. Which means that ultimately our environment shaped our needs and thought processes. I believe there is probably another way for life to start, and it could be pretty much anywhere in the universe, but the life forms that come from a vastly different environment would have vastly different needs and it could be possible that they end up with needs that would somehow never put them in competition with each other for them. It's still possible they could evolve an intelligence that works like ours, but with out the base level conflict of needs, they would probably think about pretty much everything in ways we couldn't even conceive. Who knows, maybe they start realizing that space could be at a premium in the future and instead of immediately thinking of ways to hoard space or "reducing the amount of beings using up the space" They think something like "How can we make more space" (I mean in terms of physically construct, because I know someone out there immediately thought make more space equates to freeing up the currently used space) Maybe they actually found a way to do it and it involves interdimensional planes...The possibilities are kind of endless. It's not a very hard thought exercise to me, especially considering that evolution doesn't have intent, its is nothing more than very long series of lucky mistakes. Edit: its 2 am and it just dawned on me that this may just be an incoherent mess no matter how much it makes sense to me right now.

@ToboCastit

Жыл бұрын

That's interesting :) You're right that people who come from another world may be very different from us. I would point out though that intelligence is a tool to overcome hardship--the laws of nature tend to be "use it or lose it"--so it is very unlikely that a species would evolve intelligence without ever having had to face hardship or scarcity.

I’m just imagining walking past one of these little pods at the airport and hearing some man inside enthusiastically explain about how we don’t have time to conquer the universe. A nice lil existential crisis before I get in the giant metal sky-bird

@RainaRamsay

Жыл бұрын

😂

@EirynKatherine

Жыл бұрын

I assume they have sound dampening but also I'm laughing so hard right now. 🤣

not me thinking Hank had brought The Format to a shower

The interesting take for me is that while civilizations are not necessarily rare, on a universe time scale, our existence is very much at the beginning. There's a lot of gas left in this thing! Civilizations may be a frequent thing, but we are just one of the first. We just showed up too early to the party!

The first vlogbrothers video I saw was A letter to the Aliens (and this reminded me of that) and here you are 11 and a half years later still making interesting videos.

That's an awesome take on the great filter I'd never heard before. It's funny we can run the numbers and think "hey life is inevitable" while simultaneously ignoring how those same calculations mean that life could take any number of forms. So aliens could either be undetectable to us, have no interest in meeting us, or have infinite other reasons for not being seen yet.

@danielgregory5259

Жыл бұрын

They’re in stealth mode, waiting for the right galactic funding opportunity

@gavinwilson5324

Жыл бұрын

The thing is, those calculations are specifically about life like us and civilizations like ours. Aliens could certainly take countless different forms, but there's a hard limit to how different they would be, as far as the Fermi Paradox is concerned. In fact, one of the calculations is just how likely it is that a civilization has radio technology (in other words, how likely it is they're detectable).

@williamfuller1170

Жыл бұрын

If the universe is nearly infinite and life has a nonzero chance of manifesting, then it is very likely that there is at least one alien civilization that wants to and can interact with us constantly.

There is something so poetic about us being the solution to the Fermi paradox. I can't stop thinking about it.

@osmia

Жыл бұрын

+

@RainaRamsay

Жыл бұрын

That was definitely a John-worthy quotable line

Hank, modeling your well-explained, persistent optimism is so helpful for so many of us. Thanks for doing what you do.

Okay, so this may sound weird and it could be I've had a rough day. But I'm teary eyed. I feel like I just got a glimpse at an actual purpose for humanity that I really couldn't buy into beforehand, other than the sound but vague "I mean, we gotta not give in to despair, so hope." Now I'm thinking "Oh man, not just Hope, but Knowledge, and Mercy, and Love, and Enlightenment and pushing humanity to disprove The Great Filter, we can last". Like, that's an assignment. That's almost a specific goal. That's special. Thanks for making this one. Also the lighting was good.

Just wanted to say I've often entertained the thought that "we are the answer to the Fermi paradox". I think Star Trek inspired me to think that. Seeing humans be the advanced civilization (most of the time) is a unique and worthwhile perspective. Thanks for the fun video, Hank.

I absolutely love the idea that we can reflect on our actions and make the deliberate choice to scale down. I've been feeling the desire to scale down in my personal life -- not aiming for the most, the best, or the newest things, but patiently accepting what there is, and declining what is unneeded. I'd love if this philosophy could increasingly spread through humanity, so we can just slow down.

@defj660

Жыл бұрын

That's awesome. Another thing which might be helpful would be to take recent inventions that are doing people harm and pull back a bit, find a midway point between nothing and everything so that while convenience decreases, we still keep enough function and reduce damage to people's lives. Letting go I guess, what you said.

@dianapenasaran5850

Жыл бұрын

I felt like this is a long-waited application of using two basic math operations proportionately: adding and subtracting.

I always feel so hopeful coming out of these videos, and it's happened again. Thanks as always Hank.

Love your takes on big topics like this. Thanks Hank

I love that last theory. Let's learn to not be loud and not take all the available space...

the idea that other human-like beings could have existed somewhere else in the universe - like many somewhere elses at many different times over billions of years - and went extinct is blowing my mind rn

@vlogbrothers

Жыл бұрын

Yeah, it's a lot.

@sushi926

Жыл бұрын

Consider we could have had civilizations on Earth and no trace left of them! Kurzgesagt video on that: kzread.info/dash/bejne/fYaq2JKKlNXbfbQ.html

@Brok3nC4rrot

Жыл бұрын

Or, _we're_ the first and oldest civilisational species and our galactic cousins evolutionary grandparents haven't even been born yet

@vanessapierson4913

Жыл бұрын

@@Brok3nC4rrot i was thinking about this - the likelihood that our civilization will have ANY overlap on the timeline is so infinitesimal…..

@Ilamarea

Жыл бұрын

Thanks for that thought. Compassion to all these beings that already went through the process will brighten up my day. We aren't alone, even if we are.

That shift is something I really hope will happen and is something that feels very natural to me (the whole idea that we have the right to survive no matter the consequences just seems weird to me). But I do have to admit that it seems a very rare thought and it's hard to have hope that a shift like that will happen on a bigger scale. But hopefully in future generations it keeps shifting.

I still dig you guys! I feel like I have grown up with you all! Even though I’m comfortably old enough to be your guy’s mom, I had a delayed trajectory. So in a way, I HAVE grown up with you! You guys make such a difference!!! If you ever feel bleak about your thing, … you both have made a huge difference in many many lives. Mine, my kids (and there are a lot), my students (in the thousands now), and my patients (kinda new still-but someday in the hundred-thousands). All of the many types and kinds of videos you post end up somewhere on my teaching platform whether it’s kids, students, friends, whatever. Incredible work. Mad respect to you both and your team! ❤❤❤❤❤

This is such weird timing because I literally just woke up from one of the most vivid dreams I’ve had in the past few months, and it was about us meeting space aliens to find out the evolved to look basically the same as us. They just looked Italian.

@meadowl

Жыл бұрын

Theory: Italians are the final destination of all evolution

@NinaDmytraczenko

Жыл бұрын

It's a-me, A-lien 🤌

@gbprime2353

Жыл бұрын

Italien ?

@turistsinucigas

Жыл бұрын

@@gbprime2353 IT-alien

@Life_42

Жыл бұрын

They do have pizza... Pizzas do look like galaxies LOL

Interesting that you didn't mention the Dark Forest - Where everyone else is being _really quiet_ because something awful is out there killing off anyone that makes their presence known.

@vlogbrothers

Жыл бұрын

I just find it unlikely, see the description!

@DampeS8N

Жыл бұрын

@@vlogbrothers I don't think the Dark Forest implies malevolence, but if there is no warp travel, a civilization would know that _another_ civilization that could compete with them could arise faster than they could get to it if they don't stomp on the ant hill the second they see a sign of ants.

@akshatdubey7904

Жыл бұрын

this doesn’t make sense to me, because to know something to be so dangerous that you completely cease outward communication, you need *some* information. even two eyes in a bush odd enough for us to dart the other way, but we do see something. and if we’re not seeing even a single blip, it becomes highly unlikely imo that the dark forest thing is true.

@aaronbrottman9609

Жыл бұрын

everyone in this thread please read Three Body Problem and The Dark Forest. Some of the best science fiction and you WON'T regret it. It explains why malevolence is not necessary.

@nekrataali

Жыл бұрын

Dark Forest is a fun hypothetical, but I don't think it's likely. Any civilization capable of traveling the stars and making it off their homeworld is going to understand things like empathy and post-scarcity, which means they understand intelligence and the value of life. Even a carnivorous species would eventually understand pain and suffering. They would eventually understand there isn't a need to hurt others when there's so many asteroids and empty solar systems to harvest resources. You only get a Dark Forest if a predatory species evolves the need to travel into space and act purely on instinct with no self-awareness. They would have to be the Xenomorphs from Alien, the Tyranids from Warhammer 40,000 or the Zerg in StarCraft. And even then, we're talking about evolving the ability to travel between star systems through natural selection.

this is such a good hypothesis!!!! omg i never thought about that when it comes to the Fermi paradox but it's soooo good. Hank Green just posted another banger. love your content my guy

I haven't thought about the Fermi Paradox in a while but while you described it I formulated option 3 in my head and it was really satisfying that you landed on my gripe with the assumption of growth to end the video. Let's hope that option 3 is the way things are gonna go.

This filming setup is comfortingly intimate. The subject matter is also comforting

This is a beautiful way to frame it! Fermi Paradox discussions so seldom talk about the fact that even under reasonable assumptions, Civilizations would *super* far apart. Maybe there are lots of Civilizations out there, but traveling to distant star systems is... about as hard as it looks.

You mentioned a concept a while back that has resonated with me. The universe is a baby, and life has, for better or for worse, existed on earth for a sizable portion of that, when compared to how old the universe will be. Maybe life isn't that rare, but maybe, just maybe, we are one of the first.

Your third option reminds me of a lyric from George Watsky' song Theories "That there's a billion brilliant alien planets at leisure Smoking alien reefer The evolution of the mind's not the hunger to conquer Or to want or to seek or to wander Or even wonder, but to simply to be Until we cease to be any longer"

@TessHKM

Жыл бұрын

That seems almost more depressing than the idea that we're alone in the universe

Somehow it's still grey speckled walls at the airport, just with backlighting

@vlogbrothers

Жыл бұрын

I can't believe that I didn't mention that!!! What a disaster...

It's a comforting thought, that the existential issue of the "Great Filter" is solved by a philosophical (and humanitarian) choice made by advanced species to look at their horizon, their conquered world, the home they already have, and think "Yes, this is enough"

This may be one of my favorite vlogbrothers videos ever, and that is a difficult list to reach the top of.

This is so fascinating. Thank you for the video, Hank!

The beginning of this video made me feel a bit hopeless, but the end restored me with a new kind of hope. Absolutely wonderful, thank you.

Thank you so much for this perspective...it brought tears to my eyes. Feel like I'm surrounded with so much negative talk in my life and hearing your optimism is infinitely (dare I say a universe size amount) valuable. thank you, thank you, thank you...

There was no reference to your Fermi paradox song, but it is still now stuck in my head

Just wanted to say that I loved your books. The audio books were my first audio books, and the actors were so excellent! You did a great thing (another one).

that’s the fermi paradox if they’re out there why don’t they call the galaxy just keeps on spinning

@vlogbrothers

Жыл бұрын

I appreciate you.

I recall either reading or hearing about the idea that we aren't alone really, but just one of the early civilizations. So its not that they aren't out there, its just that they aren't running around space yet. I kinda like the idea of us going forth and being the UFOs for other planets in the future...

Hi Hank! Delightful as always 😀 I wonder if our galaxy is just now old enough for species like ours. Our star is several generations removed from the bitth of the galaxy. Earlier generation stars and their systems would have had access to fewer elements and would have had a much higher background radiation left over from the Bang. We might be among a large first generation of civilizations that will have to learn to get along 😃

Another theory I heard that I think is pretty convincing is that we’re simply early. As you said, life on earth has been around for 28% of the time the universe has existed. That sounds like a long time, but when we look at the expected lifespan of the universe we’re at the very very beginning. So it may simply be that while intelligent life can evolve, it takes a decently long time and we’re simply (one of) the first to make it this far

That was a very refreshing take on the fermi paradox

As we expand our studies of interspecies communication, I still can't shake the idea that maybe we *have* met aliens but we are insufficiently advanced to communicate with them? Also if they have gotten beyond a need to expand thier space maybe they really do visit here just to learn and are actively trying to not interfere with whatever we have going on?

@defj660

Жыл бұрын

If that's the case then they would've bolted after seeing our track record of collaborating with other races. Smart move!

@obviousness8113

Жыл бұрын

Hi Julie, I believe this is possible. Think of the way we might study bacteria or other simple life. It may not have the intelligence to process that it is being observed but it is. That could be happening to us as well.

@myladycasagrande863

Жыл бұрын

​​@@obviousness8113 that explains the feeling of being watched when we're alone... 😀

My personal favorite is probably the most unlikely -- maybe life just takes a while. Heck, *someone* has to be first. Why not us?

Have been thinking alot about this topic lately, great perspective on it!

As a smart man once said: Oh, that's the Fermi Paradox If they're out there, why don't they talk? The galaxy just keeps on spinnin' With four hundred billion stars in it And I just can't believe that we could be unique When there's so much space in this galaxy Oh, I want Pandora's Box To be open, but instead we're stuck in Fermi's Paradox

@NWPaul72

Жыл бұрын

Spider Robinson?

@RainaRamsay

Жыл бұрын

Def spent the entire video with this playing in my head

I think that space travel and colonization of other planets are just VERY hard and costly which is my solution to the Fermi Paradox.

@vlogbrothers

Жыл бұрын

It's a pretty good filter...but everything possible seems probable in a galaxy this big.

@Dan-uh9sg

Жыл бұрын

This is my preferred solution too. The universe is just too big. I personally don’t think there’s any possibility of FTL travel. If that is correct, there’s only 3 ways to colonize even a tiny fraction of a galaxy. 1. Live and reproduce for hundreds or thousands of years on a ship traveling at a significant portion of c, and have solved the problems of cosmic radiation, endless resource recycling, and energy for that trip. 2. Absolutely master freezing embryos/eggs/etc, keeping them viable, gestating them, and having robots raise them (if the species requires parents to raise offspring). 3. Some wild sci-fi Kardashev scale nonsense where a species moves their whole solar system around like a space ship. All 3 of those seem preposterous to me, but maybe possible if that species tries over and over to succeed at it for thousands of years. The question is still is that species close enough to us to be aware of Earth and want to travel here? Unlikely, imo. I would bet that very few intelligent species ever meet another from outside of their own solar system and none from outside their own galaxy (without some kind of collision event). Not that we can really know if I’m wrong or right.

There is a fourth possibility which is that interstellar travel is so hard that no civilization can solve it, no matter how advanced. The Galaxy is unimaginably big and we presume that with enough time we could figure out how to do it, but it just may not be possible.

Hank, alone at an airport: Let's consider fermi's paradox, just one more time

I fly about once every couple of years but somehow I still need to find one of these pods now just to see what it's all about.

great video. there are lots of other possible "solutions" the paradox that you didn't mention. i've just been reading Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men and Star Maker, and those pretty interesting explorations of human/cosmic futures.

listening to the third option, especially the "they found a way to put a break on their instincts" part, really corresponds with the idea I read from Subtract by Leidy Klotz

When we realized how large the universe was we were moved to disbelieve we could be alone. Now we are catching up with how immensely more complex life is. The odds might actually be slimmer than we ever dreamed.

My thinking is that we haven't encountered any other life yet because we're the precursors. Stars that can support systems with the complex elements that make life as we know it possible haven't existed for that long in the grand scheme of things.

That last one is definitely my favorite answer to the Fermi paradox. Thank you for reminding us there are always optimistic options to aspire to.

Just had a very similar discussion in an Astrobiology class I'm taking in college. Finding life on Mars could be dire news, especially if it was both still living and distinct from Earth life, because it would suggest that the origin of life is relatively common and that Great Filter sits after the emergence of life and has something to do with the maintenance of planetary habitability, an area we're not performing particularly well in right now

Good, I think. We can't even get along with each other. It won't end well for us if we met them now.

Wow, I had never even thought about the third option. My mind literally exploded 🤯 But considering how greedy we are and how the altruistic humans get screwed over so badly, I'm unfortunately only hoping this would happen and we learn to be happy within some area of our sun. Philosophical discussions like these is when I'm always reminded of my favorite song of all time - Imagine by John Lennon 😍❤️

@defj660

Жыл бұрын

It's always funny to see the common trope in media depicting aliens as evil, dominating monsters. It's an embarrasingly human idea which could only come from an evil, dominating monster species.

@jacob_massengale

Жыл бұрын

It is one of the 10 possible solutions to the feremy paradox, namely that perhaps aliens by and large move towards enhancing their realities I stead of expanding them. Even so, the solutions are arbitrary alternatives to the great filter hypothesis which is commonly thought to have the most explanatory power because of how many ways there are to end planetary life; if life seams scares but the earth is not rare, it's likely there is a golden bullet taking everyone out in the same way.

Thank you for this. I’ve always had trouble considering the Dark Forest theory, not only because I fear it, but because collaboration (maybe even respect, and maybe even kindness) has always seemed to me a more fundamental part of nature than competition. That said, it’s always been much easier for me to imagine our universe through the lens of the Dark Forest than any alternative (I must assume in no small part because nature has made me with a prioritization on weighing dangers, and there is a seductive nature to the fear that comes with it). Something about this presentation of an alternative has finally shaken that hold. I can now imagine a universe with beings who choose collaboration, instead of just believing it in abstract. And while I can’t know it, and while figuring it out is out of my hands, boy am I going to breathe a bit easier. ❤️

You made me cry surprised happy tears. I always want the truth, but I always have to brace myself for it because I worry (or have experienced) that the truth will hurt me. I don't know why knowing that has never made me shy away from the truth, but it's only made me more insistent on it. Hearing that there is possibly a way that Fermi's Paradox could be solved without a sad conclusion has made me very happy. Thank you, whether it's true or not.

Option 4: We're just early - the earlier universe was probably not very good for living things with the lack of heavy elements and the more frequent blasts of killer radiation - maybe we're destined to be the elder gods of this galaxy.

Interesting, encouraging, and a lot to think about, especially as a writer! That would be an interesting world to construct, and guess how such societies might function.

hank you should look up "grabby aliens", its authors synergize the fermi paradox with humanity's cosmic earliness and it's bad news for your final point in this video but i found it pretty compelling

This is by far my favourite version of fermi paradox answers as normally it's the one where a species colonises and destroys everything like a virus. Thank you for a fresh look at an old science question Hank!

@TessHKM

Жыл бұрын

Idk i never thought of space exploration as a virus, maybe naively the idea of encountering other life has always been an exciting one to me

@arranorr4487

Жыл бұрын

@@TessHKM I was referencing the dark forest idea where no species can trust each other and so go for strike first tactics. I love sci-fi and theories that are optimistic but alot of the fermi paradoxe ones have been very war of the worlds

Many indigenous people have had the mindset you describe for a long, long time. Look into 7th generation thinking, Māori Kaitiakitanga, Kimmerer's writings on reciprocity, Diné concepts of hózhó, Shinto concepts of mottainai, and literally 1000s more examples. We're not a species that is finally realizing this, we're RE-learning about deep knowledge, thanks to the wisdom of BIPOC activists. Other species also do this, as Kimmerer deftly argues in Braiding Sweetgrass and the Serviceberry.

@kjenkinson9016

Жыл бұрын

Yes!

@hamm0155

Жыл бұрын

But all these societies still take up all the space. Where were the uninhabited but inhabitable regions?

As you can see from the grey speckled walls behind him...

Kurzgesagt call back to the Fermi Paradox AND the great filter! Love it, thanks Hank. Feel like I must go back and watch those beauties again.

I love the hopeful angle you took on this topic, Hank.

I love this video! I love the discussion of you’re last point - and it’s good to note that indigenous populations have been land managing and not just ‘taking up available space’ for 10’s of thousands of years already and there’s a lot to be learnt there. Dark Emu is a great book documenting how humans managed the land and showed restraint thousands of years ago, as First Nations Australian people.

It feels forbidden to be this early

I saw a video about "grabby aliens" that suggests maybe we're just one of the first forms of life to develop in the universe, and that the universe itself is relatively young

The idea that we could figure out the Fermi paradox by becoming the solution is one of the most hopeful things I’ve heard in a while, thank you for always providing such a hopeful point of view

This is by far the most optimistic take on the Fermi Paradox that I've heard and I love it. I love framing it as a solution that has yet to be discovered and it is possible, rather the great filter being a vast unknown obstacle that we do not know if we have passed.

Cool video, like what you said, but am so, so intrigued: What happens when the timer reaches zero? Will the doors simply open and suggest you to leave due to lack of privacy? Will the most annoying sound in the universe play so that you practically flee? Ejection seat? Pod squad forcing you out? Simply nothing?

The thing I think is understated when people talk about the Fermi Paradox is just how big space is. Sure it's possible that there's a way to travel between stars, but that's not a certain. We could just be all on our own little islands.

Great video! I've another option; primitives on a small island nation, isolated in the middle of the Pacific wouldn't have any idea that they fell under the 'ownership' of a vastly larger subcontinent, or that that same subcontinent had set up an exclusion zone around their little island paradise in order to protect them. Perhaps we fall under a similar 'guardianship' as the 'backyard' of the much more advanced Zeta Reticuli B...

Every now and then, Hank comes along with a video I really, really needed, without knowing that I needed it. Today’s video was one of those. The last one was an impassioned rant about orange juice 😂

“Maybe, someday, we will solve the Fermi paradox by becoming its solution, and that would be pretty cool” - Hank Green 2023 The before times.

This year has felt like a return to early vlogbrothers vibes and I'm so happy for it

Hank- This reminds me of the song “vlad the astrophysicist” (can be found on KZread) in which the song writer asks the question, “are their aliens and if so, why haven’t we met them?” to a physics professor. This “Vlad” just so happens to have been my research professor in undergrad. He shared this with me when it was first written by the author. But I really like the way the song portrays his answer.

that description is amazing hahaaa! i will give my own thoughts on the idea of emergence. for one, as optimistic as a person i am, i do agree with you that probability strongly pushes against the odds of achieving even small goals in general acting as a sort of probability "filter". not just large emergent goals like space travel and communication, but also goals as simple as successfully emerging as a species as advanced as humans. so on the other hand, we did evidently overcome this competitive probability battle to succeed in prolonging our species far better than any other animal on Earth, and have managed to surprise ourselves exponentially with our success so far, and we've still yet to reach or even see an end of progression which is hopeful. for this reason, i believe that as long as there is life on any planet, it will constantly survive and progress towards more capabilities no matter what disasterous events impede that goal, until an ultimate extinction that is, buuuut worrying about an ultimate extinction that's out of our control is a waste of time of course. as for my personal thoughts on why an other potentially emerging civilizations in space wouldn't contact Earth, i personally really like the idea i believe i heard from Neil Degrasse Tyson who said that they could possibly look at us like insects who still aren't smart enough to unify, letalone talk to and share information with.. i also believe that possibly a philosophy develops from such an advanced civilization that sharing information with animals who haven't yet independently developed the ability to obtain it themselves might do much more harm than good, sort of like if we gave monkeys electronics. like okay the monkeys have access to the electronics, but they lack more advanced communication ability in order to make observations and conclusions required to understand the universal purposes of electronics, and they might electrocute themselves which wouldn't be very helpful. not to mention that their physical bodies aren't quite as good as ours at precisely handling tools, etc. which might limit their ability even if they did have the intelligence. and to quickly explain why i believe we haven't detected anything yet, i tend to go with the simple yet for many, unsatisfying answer, that it's because we haven't developed enough to detect them yet unless they build some kind of planet sized megastructure with something very distantly identifiably artifical, which i believe is not possibly conclusive with our currently limited capabilities.

1:06 I’ve been following vlogbrothers for quite some time now, and I don’t think I’ve ever disagreed with anything you’ve said more. Recently I’ve been reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. In it she marries indigenous wisdom with modern scientific practice, and highlights how the former offers a less myopic worldview in terms of how ecosystems develop. It’s only within the past couple centuries that we’ve projected neoliberal, Western motivations onto plants and animals. For the majority of human history we’ve understood the balance between ourselves and the world around us. While I’d concur that we’re collectively seeing a shift away from the myth of perpetual growth, I hardly think we’re the first species to do so. Nor is it the first time we’ve been here. ❤ DFTBA

Forget about aliens, I'm worried about those world-conquering camels.

I have a few thoughts on filters great and small: 1) I do like the idea that civilizations might evolve to a point where they don't have to have everything and are willing to settle for "enough." I think it's more likely that we get forced into that by circumstances but more on that later. 2) Recently Matt O'Dowd on PBS Spacetime recently proposed the idea that "The" great filter is actually a combination of things. Certainly planetary systems are not rare, and since life arose here almost immediately we could posit that life in general isn't rare (though it may take some time under usual circumstances), and maybe intelligence is nearly inevitable given enough time, and so on. But each time you multiply by a number less than one you get a result that is smaller and smaller so that by the time you get to "spacefaring" all those probabilities multiply together to make something kind of rare. 3) Maybe interstellar travel is just too expensive to be worth it and civilizations that might otherwise be Galactic Empire builders just give up. We know that we put a LOT of time, money, and effort into expanding out across this planet despite vast oceans with nothing much in them in part because there was a hefty profit to be made even with all that expense put into it. Magellan's voyage, that he didn't even survive, to circumnavigate the globe made a fortune for his investors even after you account for the loss of ships and lives. On the other hand, it's difficult to make a living out in the western prairies of the US, but it's easy enough to get there these days that a community can survive on almost nothing but tourism and maybe a sawmill. But, we haven't been back to the moon in almost 50 years! The resources there aren't plentiful or valuable enough to make a trip profitable, and the costs to get there are too high to make it worthwhile to go look at all the natural beauty. In theory, the moon is space available for us to take up, but we don't because in practice, it's too expensive. Interstellar travel is several orders of magnitude worse, especially when you consider the speed-of-light limit for travel and communication. My gut feeling is that intelligent civilizations with the knowhow and resources to get out of the gravity well are pretty rare, but even if they weren't, would a species capable of reaching that plateau and having the resources necessary to launch an expedition, have the patience necessary to expand beyond their own system? I think probably not!

I recall another thought from Carl Sagan's Cosmos series, where he said that maybe we're just the first in the universe, the first instance of life to emerge or the first biosphere to evolve civilizations.