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There's a lot of possibilities.
My top contender would be a desire to explore, which probably requires consciousness. Given that we have pretty much no idea what leads to consciousness, it can be guessed (dubiously) that if it arose more easily then we'd have an explanation by now. It could be that it's an extremely rare phenomenon, and there may even be other planets with "intelligent" but mechanistic beings that act entirely for their own survival and don't build civilizations or explore much.
Second would be intergalactic and to a lesser degree interstellar travel. If we assume both 1) intelligent civilizations are extremely rare and 2) faster-than-light transportation is impossible, it could be that everyone is just too spread out to make contact.
Third, and the one I most feel is right but it requires pretending I understand quantum physics (which I don't) and probably offending many that do, is the notion that the concrete universe is not large but small and has no objective existence independent of our respective perceptions, and any part of the universe that's invisible is a mere wave function that will only have concrete reality upon our perceiving it. I make the further dubious assumption that conscious beings can't be part of the wave function. So there.
For your final point, that's not what that means. It's not "observation" that collapses the wave function, at least as you're understanding the word. It's any interaction that requires the information to be known. That includes any particle interactions. It's not consciousness that matters. When we "make a measurement" it's only recording information of an interaction. It doesn't actually matter that we record it, only that there was an interaction. There is zero metaphysical consciousness mumbo-jumbo involved.
That's what I thought too, but according to Sabine Hossenfelder there actually is, we just choose not to speak about it. I don't really know enough about quantum physics to make my own judgement.
That video makes no argument for consciousness being required. Also, Sabine is not a reliable source of information. She is confident and convincing, but that doesn't make her accurate or correct.
For an example, not related to this topic: https://youtu.be/s7XAxiJGJdg?si=S0IkGdF_EV5If_wJ