alt Hacker NewsFor anyone not familiar with the concept of "dark forest":
> […] In Liu Cixin's 2008 novel The Dark Forest, the author proposes a literary explanation for the Fermi paradox in which countless alien civilizations exist, but are both silent and paranoid, destroying any nascent lifeforms loud enough to make themselves known.[181] This is because any other intelligent life may represent a future threat. As a result, Liu's fictional universe contains a plethora of quiet civilizations which do not reveal themselves, as in a "dark forest"...filled with "armed hunter(s) stalking through the trees like a ghost".[182][183][184] This idea has come to be known as the dark forest hypothesis.[185][186][187]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Communication_is...
> The "dark forest" hypothesis presumes that any space-faring civilization would view any other intelligent life such as theirs as an inevitable threat and thus destroy any nascent life that makes itself known. As a result, the electromagnetic radiation surveys would not find evidence of intelligent alien life.[8][9] […]
> The name of the hypothesis derives from Liu Cixin's 2008 novel The Dark Forest,[11] as in a "dark forest" filled with "armed hunter(s) stalking through the trees like ghosts".[12][13] According to the dark forest hypothesis, since the intentions of any newly contacted civilisation can never be known with certainty, then if one is encountered, it is best to make a preemptive strike, in order to avoid the potential extinction of one's own species. The novel provides a detailed investigation of Liu's concerns about alien contact.[2]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
* Kurzgesagt (10m): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAUJYP8tnRE
(Cixin's novel probably made the idea famous, but others (Brin, Bear) have explored it previously.)
Replies
Fancy. Much more likely they just ruin their own environment and die. It has happened many times before, since the Great Oxygenation Event 2.4B years ago.
Here's a PBS Space Time episode [1], "Dark Forest: Should We NOT Contact Aliens?", that takes a look at this from a game theory point of view
This sort of low effort post, we can all recognize right?
Read the book series. Battle with a culture different than your own. The absolute depression by the third book helps you experience this more than this bullshit Cliff’s notes.
Spend a few hours. Jesus.
All the quotes miss the simplicity of 3 rules of Cosmology or whatever it was called in the trilogy.
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The essence of the Dark Forest theory:
1. Survival is the primary goal of any civilization.
2. Life expands to fill all available space, but resources are finite. Roughly speaking, like humans cutting down forests to expand cities without caring what happens to the ants living there — if expansion is needed, it’s done.
3. Progress is unstoppable. If one group hasn’t mastered fusion yet, they will say in a thousand years — and then they’ll come for the others because of points 1 and 2.
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The author builds the novel on the idea that we shouldn’t be sending signals into space, but rather stay quiet and avoid drawing attention. Because in his view, once one civilization detects a signal from another, the safest move is to eliminate it immediately — without taking the risk of finding out whether it’s friendly (for now) or already not.