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

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

#241

Post by yoz-y »

riffraff wrote: post #127
rnhmjoj wrote: post #29

> In other words, the finite nature of resources will ultimately pit one civilization against another as they all struggle to sustain their growth. I'm not sure this constraint is so strict to force a strong competition for survival, given how vast the universe is. It seems to me this projecting our earth-bound mentality of limited resources to a whole different scale, where it may not really apply.

that is what I thought when I read the three-body problem. If you can manipulate space-time at the levels exposed in the book you can trivially build orbitals that will host trillions of beings and live in a post-scarcity society for millennia, after which your society is likely to disappear waaay before you run out of space and resources.

Why or how would a post scarcity multi planetary or even multi stellar civilisation disappear? I agree that there is no need for plunder, but I don’t think highly advanced civilisations are in risk of extinction.

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

#242

Post by tjalfi »

edgyquant wrote: post #137
crowbahr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is oxygen breathing carbon based intelligent life that wants our planet they could've easily spotted and taken it anytime within the past 2 billion years. It seems safe to say that there isn't life that wants our planet.

Why would anyone come from light years away to inhabit a planet. It would be cheaper to just build habitats or colonize a planet in their solar system. There is almost nothing we can provide to a civilization capable of traversing between start systems.

> Why would anyone come from light years away to inhabit a planet.

Many motives from the age of exploration could apply - imperialism, religious beliefs, religious or political differences, cultural exchange, scientific discovery, competition with others, etc. People don't always take the cheapest option; the same could be true of aliens.

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

#243

Post by overgard »

I'm not an expert by any means, but I guess I've always felt skeptical that if alien civilizations existed we would have the means to detect them. I mean, we can barely detect planets, if we look carefully. Unless one of these civilizations really wanted to make itself seen by desperately spending a ton of energy, it seems like they would mostly be invisible just because we don't have sensitive enough means to detect them.

I personally find it impossibly unlikely that we are the only intelligent life. It's just, there's nothing in the universe that doesn't repeat. And there is a lot of space for us to repeat. Our solar system likely isn't all that special, so I just don't get that we could be the only thing that appeared in all the conceivable universe.

It also might be the case that we're not alone, but that life is just so hard to get going that maybe the nearest civilization is galaxies apart from us. In that sense I suppose we really are "alone" for any practical purpose.

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

#244

Post by snowwrestler »

ryandvm wrote: post #98
snowwrestler wrote: post #48

To me the most likely back of the napkin answer to the Fermi paradox is that aliens are elsewhere in time. The Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years across but about 13.5 billion years old. So it’s like 135,000x deeper in the time direction than the distance direction. We’re in the light cones of all the stars we can see, and as far as we know, we can’t get out of them. If a civilization ended even 100 years…

That and the fact that civilizations probably only broadcast EM radiation out into the void for a short period of time before they start getting into energy efficiency and switch over to more efficient communication technologies.

I have heard (can’t remember the source) that radar, especially military radar, continues to be a significant source of artificial-looking EM radiation leaving the Earth, even as radio and TV broadcasts have declined in power.

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

#245

Post by pharke »

Mary-Jane wrote: post #210
aeternum wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically it's extremely rare that the conquerors killed everyone in the cities they conquered. Instead they enslaved some, or let them mostly live and just taxed them. Even with other species that regularly attack humans (tigers or even mosquitos), we have not exterminated them.

Not many neanderthals around these days. Just an observation.

We carry them with us in our genes, that seems to indicate more than just war was going on.

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

#246

Post by aeturnum »

e40 wrote: post #234
aeturnum wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people are alarmed, but solutions to these problems are enormously costly and largely fictional. The techniques we have for living in space (or transiting through it) would not sustain us if we lost earth. They are enormously costly[1], which is fine for what we are doing, but we need multiple orders-of-magnitude improvement to be practically interstellar. On balance, I think we could spend more, but I also t…

> I think people are alarmed I think your view is skewed. Every single person I've talked to about this as looked at me like they are bored. Of course, here on HN, I've found many like-minded people. That's great, but I think very few humans, especially humans in the power structures that run this planet, care about this issue.

> I think your view is skewed

I suspect it's more that we have different definitions of how widely a feeling of alarm should spread before saying this. I agree the absolute number of people who are worried about the problem is small.

I guess I think about it in terms of "what proportion of the population that would be directly involved in solving this problem"? I would suspect that is close to 100%. Anyone involved in space work is aware that we may we wiped out and would not like that to happen. Government leaders are also, I think, aware, but unconvinced that more resource expenditure would be meaningfully helpful. Given how difficult it's been to convince people to deal with a much cheaper & easier problem that is much more obvious and immediate (global climate change) I have trouble critiquing people for being insufficiently zealous about this issue.

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

#247

Post by pharke »

obedm wrote: post #145
jmull wrote: post #139

I love that series -- just an incredible, imaginative, unique perspective -- but the dark forest hypothesis just doesn't make sense. It's orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude less energy to communicate with (including obscuring your origin, if you want) than destroy a civilization. And communication has potential benefits (cooperation) that destruction does not. Civilizations that communicated would very quickl…

I think dark forest is the best explanation so far. If what you say is true, it should've been true for earlier human civilizations too. Why didn't the Chinese and Japanese civilizations unite to conquer others? Why didn't the Mongols unite with whoever else to conquer, instead of Genghis Khan doing it all with a bunch of Mongols in horses? Human civilization is a dark forest that only changed with global trade. The…

Each of those civilizations you mentioned rose to the heights of their power by uniting multiple smaller tribes into one larger civilization.

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

#248

Post by obedm »

aeternum wrote: post #152
obedm wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think dark forest is the best explanation so far. If what you say is true, it should've been true for earlier human civilizations too. Why didn't the Chinese and Japanese civilizations unite to conquer others? Why didn't the Mongols unite with whoever else to conquer, instead of Genghis Khan doing it all with a bunch of Mongols in horses? Human civilization is a dark forest that only changed with global trade. The…

Historically it's extremely rare that the conquerors killed everyone in the cities they conquered. Instead they enslaved some, or let them mostly live and just taxed them. Even with other species that regularly attack humans (tigers or even mosquitos), we have not exterminated them.

We're trying our best to exterminate certain species of mosquitoes. We haven't done it because we lack the technical ability as of yet.

Also, have you met any Aztec? There are barely any American Indians left compared to the millions there were originally.

Mammuts? All the giant marsupials of Australia that went extinct the moment humans set foot there?

We've been on top of the food chain for very long. Now imagine if we discover another race may take our place and the only option is communication or total obliteration?

I wish it was different, we only have a sample size of one.

But just like the three space ships that first found out about the dark forest and ultimately killed each other, it's what makes most sense from game theory

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

#249

Post by obedm »

pharke wrote: post #245
Mary-Jane wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not many neanderthals around these days. Just an observation.

We carry them with us in our genes, that seems to indicate more than just war was going on.

We don't know that happened to them, or to any other human species for that matter.

But we're pretty sure we obliterated a entire species in our way up the food chain ( giant marsupials for example)

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

#250

Post by NiceWayToDoIT »

colinmhayes wrote: post #192
NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is some kind of Oil centric thinking that got us in this mess in the first place. Renewables and fusion can do the much better better job at any point. By the way coal will not form ever again, only reason why coal/oil formed is because bacteria has not learned how to decompose cellulose at the time. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/the-fanta...

I don't think renewables and fusion will be an option in a post apocalyptic society. After a few generations of anarchy the knowledge will be lost.

True, solar and nuclear need a bit more tech, but wind and hydro are quite simple they need a bit of wire, magnet and something to spin.
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