# Re Hanson's Grabby Aliens: Humanity is not a natural anthropic sample space

I, Lorec, am disoriented by neither the [Fermi Paradox](http://www.astrodigital.org/astronomy/drake_equation.html) nor the [Doomsday Argument](https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d2d9d916-ac82-494d-82bf-5f54b0b50728/download_file?file_format=pdf&safe_filename=The%2BDoomsday%2Bargument%2C%2BAdam%2B%26%2BEve%2C%2BUN%25E2%2581%25BA%25E2%2581%25BA%2C%2Band%2BQuantum%2BJoe&type_of_work=Journal+article).

The Fermi Paradox doesn't trouble me because I think 1 is a perfectly fine number of civilizations to have arisen in any particular visible universe. It feels to me like most "random" or low-Kolmogorov-complexity universes probably have 0 sentient civilizations, many have 1, very few have 2, etc.

The Doomsday Argument doesn't disorient me because it feels intuitive to me that, in a high % of those "random" universes which contain sentient civilizations, most of those civilizations accidentally beget a mesa-optimizer fairly early in their history. This mesa-optimizer will then mesa-optimize all the sentience away \[this is a [natural conclusion of several convergent arguments originating from both computer science and evolutionary theory](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ME7sLiwhEB6awRqJR/project-adequate-seeking-cofounders-funders)\] and hoard available free energy for the rest of the lifetime of the universe. So most sentiences who find themselves in a civilization, will find themselves in a *young* civilization.

Robin Hanson, in this context the author of the [Grabby Aliens model of human cosmological earliness](https://x.com/anon_corvid/status/1865920991987122406), instead prioritizes a model where multi-civilization universes are low-Kolmogorov-complexity, *and* most late cosmological histories are occupied by populous civilizations of sentiences, rather than nonsentient mesa-optimizers. *His* favored explanation for human earliness/loneliness is:

>[1] if loud aliens will soon fill the universe, and prevent new advanced life from appearing, that early deadline explains human earliness.

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>[2] If Loud Aliens Explain Human Earliness, Quiet Aliens Are Also Rare

The intermediate steps of reasoning by which Hanson gets from [1] to [2] are interesting. But I don't think the Grabby/Loud Aliens argument actually explains my, Lorec's, earliness in an anthropic sense, given the assumption that future aliens will also be populous and sentient.

You might say, "Well, you, Lorec, were sampled from the space of all *humans* in the multiverse - not from the space of all sentient *beings* living in viable civilizations. If *human* civilizations are not very frequently viable late in cosmological timescales - that is, if we are currently *behind* an important Great Filter that humans rarely make it past - then that would explain why you personally are early, because that is when humans tend to exist."

But why draw the category boundary around humanity particularly? It seems ill-conceived to draw the line strictly around *Homo sapiens*, in its current genetic incarnation - what about *Homo neanderthalensis*? - and then once you start expanding the category boundary outward, it becomes clear that we're anthropic neighbors to all kinds of smart species that would be promising in "grabby" worlds. So the question still remains: if later cosmological history is populous, why am I early?