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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?

#291

Post by unchocked »

godshatter wrote: post #138

I wonder if we're making too many assumptions about how civilizations would live and spread. I've always wondered why our species puts so much focus on planetary colonization instead of building smaller habitats. We seem to assume we'll terraform Mars, maybe build habitats on some of the Jovian moons, then jump to the next star. It seems more logical to me to take the ISS and iterate on it, building larger habitats a…

The O’Neillian movement is predicated on the answer to “is a planetary surface the best place for an expanding technological civilization” being no. Long run, this view will be most influential.

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

#292

Post by gilbetron »

a1369209993 wrote: post #259
gilbetron wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Accelerating a rock to relativistic speeds is pretty easy Huh? How? I haven't seen any proposal that doesn't start with the assumption that we can inject a rock with a preposterous amount of energy let alone hit (in astronomical scales) a ridiculously small target, not to mention navigate all the gravity wells in between.

Multistage rocket using ion engines. Remember this is over interstellar distances (>4 lightyears), so you have multiple years, if not decades or centuries to accellerate. This does get back to the "Why didn't we RKKV it millions of years before intellegent life even existed, much less had a opportunity to hide, based on biosignatures in the atmosphere?", though.

Ok, that gets us to maybe 0.3% of the speed of light on something small, which isn't very interesting.

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/22140/what-is-the-...

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

#294

Post by rtsil »

tyfighter wrote: post #280
ManBlanket wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the other end of a technology curve, when a civilization ceases use of an outdated piece of technology. In our case humanity is looking for radar because we're currently broadcasting it. Why would anyone continue using radar to communicate within a few years of quantum entangled data processing, capable instantly transmitting data instantaneously across vast distances? There might be a few living that rock st…

That's not possible. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem )

This assumes that QM (and/or our current understanding of it) is the ultimate explanation of how the Universe works.

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

#295

Post by rtsil »

ManBlanket wrote: post #277
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…

There's the other end of a technology curve, when a civilization ceases use of an outdated piece of technology. In our case humanity is looking for radar because we're currently broadcasting it. Why would anyone continue using radar to communicate within a few years of quantum entangled data processing, capable instantly transmitting data instantaneously across vast distances? There might be a few living that rock st…

> Begs the question of what we would ever need from another civ, and furthermore what a similar civilization would ever want from a bunch of squatting troglodytes such as ourselves.

The need to fight loneliness and to find a kindred spirit?

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

#296

Post by microtherion »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #4

Am I missing something, or is this article very narrowly missing the most damning criticism of the Dark Forest hypothesis according to the article's own logic? The first paragraph of the “ Criticism ” section says: > Overall, the Dark Forest Hypothesis has an internal logic and consistency that makes it an appealing (if somewhat somber) potential resolution to Fermi’s age-old question. Unfortunately, it also suffers…

> we have made many active attempts to communicate our existence to other hypothetical civilisations

Spamming aliens with nude selfies, among other measures, which in retrospect may not have been a wise choice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque

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

#297

Post by edgyquant »

tjalfi wrote: post #242
edgyquant wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This seems to be projecting a human trait that is itself obsolete to us unto civilizations that share no common culture or genetics and are leagues ahead of us technologically speaking. Not to mention the age of exploration was driven by economics. Seems foolish to me.

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

#298

Post by finwhat »

Meanwhile, reading this on planet earth every few paragraphs is interrupted by an ad for a groin / body hair trimmer.

Honestly, it puts things into perspective when considering the terror of the 'dark forest' hypothesis. If intelligent life is anything like us, they are just as stuck on the prosaic (arguing amongst themselves about invasive ads) as they are on the profound (ending other civs).

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

#299

Post by not_jd_salinger »

myrmidon wrote: post #281
not_jd_salinger wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 billion is a rough estimate based populations prior to the massive boom in the industrial revolution that saw massive changes in the way agriculture is done. It could easily be 2 billion or so, but definitely not 7.8 billion. You can see the population history here[0.] To see the powerful impact of fossil fuels on carrying capacity you'll notice there's an important inflection point around 1920-1930. This is becaus…

Thanks for explaining how you arrived at your numbers. > I have feeling I'll still get down votes and "hand wavy" explanations Let me turn this around: you are getting downvotes (not from me) because your 1 billion population carrying estimate in a post-fossil age is implausible and borderline disingenuous: 1) It assumes that pre-industrial agricultural output is the maximum that our planet can sustain. Which is comp…

> It assumes that pre-industrial agricultural output is the maximum that our planet can sustain. Which is completely off for a multitude of reasons

I agree it's off because we've done significant damage to the biosphere since industrialization. As I've pointed out we have disrupted the natural nitrogen cycle.

If we where to immediately rewind our population back to 1850 and try to life that lifestyle we would have a much harder time since we have depleted natural resources. We cannot go back because we the earth would not support us the way it once did.

> There is no reason to assume that we're anywhere close to peak sustainable agricultural output, neither in pre-industrial times NOR now.

Our entire current agricultural system relies on fossil fuels, so I agree, where nowhere near close... we're way past.

> Viable pathways are

- batteries: not for commercial transport, the energy density is still way too low. Your battery becomes your cargo. Modern global trade is impossible in a battery based economy. Nobody that is serious on renewables will disagree with this, they will claim that new battery technology is going to solve this.

- Biofuel: require more energy to make they they provide [0]. So again, not only do you need to double the grid to handle intermittent power, you now need to expand it by the total biofuel energy required times 1/efficiency, so we're looking at at least tripling our current power output and trying to do it with only renewables. Please tell me how much silicon and lithium it would take to build a grid that large in that sort of a time span and you'll find it dwarf's annual production.

- Fuel cells: same problem again, currently fuel cells are made with coal or natural gas today 95% of fuel cells are made with natural gas [1]. If you want to switch to electrolysis you come up with the same problem of having to double our current grid power.

- Hydrogen in combustion engines: I'm not sure how this is different from hydrogen fuel cells, but the hydrogen production problem is the same.

Please if you want sources, provide some of your own. Come up with some back of the envelope estimates on the total grid capacity needed to cover 100% of our energy needs. Then do some research on the energy costs to produce solar cells at that scale (or wind farms, hydro is already near full capacity at least in the US).

I know you yourself don't really believe what you are saying. It's based on no research, you have provided no meaningful sources, and even the most die-hard solar/renewable proponents realize that grid scale storage is still an unsolved problems. What you have given are "hand wavy" explanations without sources, exactly as I expected.

0. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7320919/

1. https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-fuel-basics

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

#300

Post by zarzavat »

kadoban wrote: post #162
aetherson wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, maybe. Honestly hard for me to imagine war actually going on between two interstellar civilizations. But even if it did, it seems like in 99% of all cases, that would leave at least one of the two civilizations still around. We're looking for explanations, in this hypothesis, that leave 98% of all time with no civilizations.

Maybe war between two spacefaring civilizations is too "easy". eg something like: throwing asteroids at ~the speed of light is necessarily a cheap thing to do once you're at that level, and everyone just dies. Like if on Earth nukes were something everyone could cook up in their backyard in an afternoon, we'd all be gone pretty quick. Not sure that really makes any sense though.

You may be on to something there. Nukes aren't something that you can cook up in your back yard yet but it seems inevitable that at a certain level of technology they will be. The same is even more true for biological warfare.

Society probably only functions below a certain level of technological advancement before everybody dies to an onslaught of engineered diseases.

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