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