Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XVI: What Is the “Dark Forest” Hypothesis? • Hacker News Board

Re: Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XVI: What Is the “Dark Forest” Hypothesis?

#171

Post by jerf » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #80

jerf wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your logic but would add one more thing to it: There is no compelling reason to wait until a planet conclusively proves it has intelligence on it to nuke it into oblivion with a kinetic kill projectile. You don't really know how long it will take for an intelligent species that could compete with you to arise. Humans have moved pretty quickly on cosmological scales, there's no particular reason to believ…

If I use humanity as a model, then we don't see other great apes as dangerous competitors. Rather we see them as interesting curiosities. We want them to stay alive. But it's hard to resist the desire to turn their habitats into something economically productive. Colonizing other planets and making them into homes for aliens long before a native civilization has a chance to arise seems more plausible than just destro…

For the purposes of this conversation, colonizing other planets effectively is destroying them. After that, no natural intelligent competitor will arise and surprise you, because you're right there to keep an eye on everything.

(Of course, you may still have any amount of conflict with your fellow settlers, or your someone in your original species' descendants two systems over, but that's a completely different conversation.)

Re: Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XVI: What Is the “Dark Forest” Hypothesis?

#172

Post by pdimitar » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

> In other words, the finite nature of resources will ultimately pit one civilization against another as they all struggle to sustain their growth.

I absolutely can't see how that follows exactly. The Universe, hell, just our own galaxy, is pretty damn big. The time and fuel it could cost you to get to the adjacent civilization and steal its resources might be way too much compared to, you know, invest in some cosmic mining operations where you can get a Bonanza of resources just by poking into your local asteroid cluster.

To address the rest of this argument, a civilization might be as malicious as they come and they could still be very powerless and can't just go terrorize somebody.

Re: Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XVI: What Is the “Dark Forest” Hypothesis?

#173

Post by pdimitar » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

nestorD wrote: post #166

My favorite answer to Fermi's Paradox is a paper (which I do not have on hand) showing that it can be explained by the approximation error in doing a raw product of probabilities. If, instead of doing a product of the probability of each event, you actually take the various distributions into account (nowadays you can easily test a wide variety of distributions with monte carlo methods) then, the probability of getti…

What would that be a "favorite" answer? It's just one of the hypotheses. Drake's equation and how exactly must it be applied has been fiercely discussed for decades.

Unless, of course, saying it's your "favorite" is your way of saying "I like to believe in this one hypothesis".

Re: Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XVI: What Is the “Dark Forest” Hypothesis?

#174

Post by pklausler » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

Over enough time and space, probabilities other than 0 and 1 become rare; i.e., things that are not impossible become inevitable.

Bracewell-von Neumann self-replicating interstellar probes are not impossible. I think we're not too far away from being able to create and launch them ourselves, if we survive.

Has any technical civilization in galactic history launched a BvN probe? It only takes one launch of a BvN probe to saturate the galaxy for all time afterwards, esp. if they can mutate and compete. But we don't see any such probe activity, and I think that we would, if they were busily mining asteroids and frantically manufacturing copies of themselves. So I think we can tentatively assume that nobody has launched one yet in our galaxy; and explaining that possibility leads to some unsettling consequences.

Re: Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XVI: What Is the “Dark Forest” Hypothesis?

#175

Post by colinmhayes » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

myrmidon wrote: post #73

NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #17

In the near future it is more likely we will wipe out ourselves either due to Nuclear War, Global Warming, rogue AI or similar, than some hostile alien civilization will get us. It seems that we are those hostile aliens for ourselves.

Do you think there is a "real" (>1% over the next century) risk for humanity to wipe itself out, or just that the hostile-alien risk is way beyond negligible in comparison? Because all current climate doom-erism notwithstanding-- humanity extinction seems impossible to achieve to me via climate change or nuclear war; rogue autonomous self-replicating systems might be a danger, but are too far beyound current tech to…

If civilization as we know it ends but humanity survives it would be very difficult for future generations to reestablish because we've used up all the easy to access hydrocarbons. Without easy to reach coal there won't be another industrial revolution and humanity would be stuck for millions of years until the hydrocarbons reform.

Re: Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XVI: What Is the “Dark Forest” Hypothesis?

#176

Post by jerf » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #150

jerf wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your logic but would add one more thing to it: There is no compelling reason to wait until a planet conclusively proves it has intelligence on it to nuke it into oblivion with a kinetic kill projectile. You don't really know how long it will take for an intelligent species that could compete with you to arise. Humans have moved pretty quickly on cosmological scales, there's no particular reason to believ…

"Too precise a level of incompetence to believe in." That's the most beautiful wording I have read in some time...

Hat tip: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=615 "That is a very specific level of tired."

Re: Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XVI: What Is the “Dark Forest” Hypothesis?

#177

Post by taejo » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

nestorD wrote: post #166

My favorite answer to Fermi's Paradox is a paper (which I do not have on hand) showing that it can be explained by the approximation error in doing a raw product of probabilities. If, instead of doing a product of the probability of each event, you actually take the various distributions into account (nowadays you can easily test a wide variety of distributions with monte carlo methods) then, the probability of getti…

I guess this is the paper you're talking about: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

Re: Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XVI: What Is the “Dark Forest” Hypothesis?

#178

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

nestorD wrote: post #166

My favorite answer to Fermi's Paradox is a paper (which I do not have on hand) showing that it can be explained by the approximation error in doing a raw product of probabilities. If, instead of doing a product of the probability of each event, you actually take the various distributions into account (nowadays you can easily test a wide variety of distributions with monte carlo methods) then, the probability of getti…

[deleted]

Re: Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XVI: What Is the “Dark Forest” Hypothesis?

#179

Post by captainmuon » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

pklausler wrote: post #174

Over enough time and space, probabilities other than 0 and 1 become rare; i.e., things that are not impossible become inevitable. Bracewell-von Neumann self-replicating interstellar probes are not impossible. I think we're not too far away from being able to create and launch them ourselves, if we survive. Has any technical civilization in galactic history launched a BvN probe? It only takes one launch of a BvN probe…

I'm not convinced von Neuman probes are actually feasible. For one, you'd need general artificial intelligence because the task of setting up a production line on a different planet is incredibly complicated. Then you'd need to move a lot of mass across star systems. Tiny replicators are not going to survive the harsh conditions on other planets, and then find and extract all the resources you need to build bigger machines. I'm not sure what the minimum feasible probe would be, but I guess a lot bigger than everything we can send into space now.

Finally, I'm not sure interstellar flight is realistically possible. Especially if you are not sending solar sails or rice corn sized probes, but a payload the size of an oil rig or bigger.

Re: Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XVI: What Is the “Dark Forest” Hypothesis?

#180

Post by jeremysalwen » Fri, Jul 16, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

nestorD wrote: post #166

My favorite answer to Fermi's Paradox is a paper (which I do not have on hand) showing that it can be explained by the approximation error in doing a raw product of probabilities. If, instead of doing a product of the probability of each event, you actually take the various distributions into account (nowadays you can easily test a wide variety of distributions with monte carlo methods) then, the probability of getti…

My interpretation of that paper is that it is saying "We don't have hard enough bounds on the parameters of the Drake Equation, so one (or more) of the parameters could be much lower than expected". But without specifying which parameters are much lower than expected, the paper is just saying "our current understanding/uncertainty about the universe is consistent with someone solving the drake equation in some unknown way at a later point in the future". Which I don't think is actually a solution. The real question we are interested in is which parameters are lower than expected and why.