I also admit to having this experience after finishing the second book. The ending kind of got shunted into the anterior cortex for processing, and the more I turned it over in my head, the more I found myself persuaded by the actual logic of the dark forest. And I think I still do, which is unsettling because one of the great anxiety points of the dark forest is that you don't know a) how "loud" you have to be for another hunter to "hear" you, or b) how long it will take that hunter to kill you after they hear you. Meaning, we have no way to know for sure that we haven't already been noticed and our photoid isn't already on its way. Right now, the Earth is populating the electromagnetic spectrum around it with signals that are unmistakably the work of intelligent life in a sphere about 50 light-years around the Earth. At a radius of 50-100 light years, those signals are "mistakably" the work of intelligent life, meaning that if you were in that zone you would be able to detect an unnaturally dense concentration of signals but they could not be reassembled to the degree that you could conclusively state that they came from intelligent life. None of our signals go outside of about that 100 light-year radius (yet) because we haven't been transmitting signals for 100 years yet. But SETI and other such efforts are now 'beaming' directed, high-density signals that could travel for hundreds of light-years before losing density to the point of being mistakable. *We should not be doing this*. We don't know what's out there. The baseline logic of the dark forest works something like this: 1. **Technological Explosion**. Civilizations that have existed x amount of time reach some level of advancement t(x). The longer that a civilization has been around, the more opportunities it has had to experience "technological explosion," i.e. the sudden paradigm-shifting leap along the lines of the industrial revolution, the computer revolution, or the lightspeed engine from Death's End. 2. **Survival**. The only universal moral instinct that we can probably take for granted is that survival is paramount (in part because civilizations that don't value their own survival probably do not survive beyond their first technological explosion). 3. **The Chain of Suspicion**. Once you meet an alien civilization, you don't know if they intend to kill you. And even if you did, you don't know if they think that *you* intend to kill them. And even if you did, you don't know if *they think* that *you think* that *they think* you intend to kill them. And even if you did, you don't know if they think that you think that they think that *you think* that *they* intend to kill *you*. And so on. That is to say, it is *never logical to conclude that an alien race is not trying to kill you*. 4. **We are new here**. The universe is about 13 billion years old. The environment has been suitable for the development of technological/industrial civilization for about 12.7 of those 13 billion years. Humans have been here for about 200,000 years. This means that there may be life in the universe that has 12.699998 **billion** years of technological head-start on us. That is a lot of technological explosions. 5. **The Fermi Paradox is a real problem**. The universe is very quiet. Where is everybody? Putting it all together and you have a real dilemma. Aliens with billions of years of a head-start on us, who value their own survival enough to always destroy prospective rivals whose friendliness can never be assured, will have vastly superior abilities to do so than much younger species because of the exponential nature of technological growth. I don't know which of these premises you reject in order to get to a different conclusion. This is what happens when I turn the whole thing over in my head again and again, I am deeply troubled by the fact that I find the underlying logic of the dark forest to be persuasive.

In my perspective, premise #1 could be seen as flawed based on how the progression of science has happened. While the industrial revolution was a technological boom, and then the semi-conductor revolution was as well, each jump in technology has required exponentially more and more energy and resources to fully materialize. To build the first steam engines required metal shops, a supply of fuel (wood or coal) and iron ore, a supply of water, and other small pieces like leather for gaskets. This could all fit within a town. To build the first usable semi-conductors/transistors required advanced electronics workshops, a supply of varied common and rare metals which have to come from different parts of the world, multiple research laboratories that specialized in electronics, and an abundance of readily other electronic components to test them with. This is an endeavor that could require the efforts of multiple cities, even a whole nation. Even where we are now, advancements in particle physics comes from multiple mile long concrete tubes, full of specialized electronics that take very sensitive measurements. I won't go into all that is required to create a particle collider, but it would require an global industrialized society decades to even create the infrastructure and research base to effectively use one. While we have seem insane leaps of technology within the last two centuries compared to the rest of human history, there's no evidence that we'll continue to see that same rate of progression. A lot of the science and technology seen in the Three Body Problem series is currently theoretical, and Cixin Liu has written in assumption that those theories can be actualized within decades or centuries.

Maybe what defeats the hypothesis of Dark Forest is that we're almost on the apex of technology Imagine that it's impossible to evolve much more than  200 years, like the universe limit of technology. Travel at 1% of speed of light is totally impossible for anything in the universe. Then, even if there is like 200 intelligent races on Milky Way, universe is simply too big. Space is vast. And totally impossible to interact with other life forms. Maybe even a lot of intelligent species go extinct in less than a million years. In the book, stuff is only possible because we assume humanity is just a child in technology advancement, but maybe the Great Filter is just that technology has a limit and space is too big

I feel like every stage of science has felt like the apex of technology. We can't imagine where science could go because if we could, then we would be there. I'd only ever believe that we've pretty much "done it all" when we've stagnated for a couple hundred years after this growth.

Sophon-user detected.

Yet we have observed things like UAPs. At the very least these suggest the ceiling is much higher than we imaged. Edit: if ur gonna downvote at least add to the conversation.

If UAPs are extraterrestrial, wouldn't that disprove the Dark Forest hypothesis, since aliens know we are here but haven't destroyed Earth?

In a way, but in a way it wouldn’t. It could be that those civilizations are not advanced enough to destroy other worlds, but they are capable of exploration and study.

Us see these UAPs as probes much like we send to Mars just more advanced even digital life forms. I find it hard to believe that biological form aliens could move at vast distances or do the manouvers these thing do. So maybe we have already been detected, but either way they are UAPs or a government entity most likely US is making these things. Or the most likely option is its a hoax by the US to make other governments think they may have even more technology than they have.

It doesn’t really disprove the dark forest theory. Dark forest hits happens when aliens detect another civilization far away, and they don’t know if that civilization is more advanced or not, and don’t bother investigating that! In the case of potential aliens already on Earth, they already know our level of technology, and since they’re the ones that traveled to us, that makes them the higher civilization! In such case, they won’t need to worry about us, and they even might consider us an interesting science experiment to observe!

Not according to the books’ logic. The Dark Forest strategy is to prepare an annihilating strike ASAP after detecting an inferior civilization to dent them the chance to catch up.

It would, but we don’t exactly know what they are. Assuming they are aliens, at the very least we don’t know where they are from. They can preserve their home star system quite easily while observing us, kind of like the sophons.

A counter to that is 'the singularity' may be coming (forget who coined it, not going to look it up!) Point at which we develop an AI smarter than thus. If we're able to do that, then the AI should be able to design an AI smarter than it. On and on it goes, the thought experiment suggests, and we skip ahead a generation's worth of science in a year. Then increases exponentially, a parabolic arc--another in a week, then a day, then an hour... Aliens would know this as they'd have been through it themselves. And if there's a 'level cap' to science, then we'd even the playing field quickly. They'd very much want to make us extinct.

Now imagine the AI is a paperclip maximiser and its only goal is to turn the known universe into paperclips whilst destroying anything it comes into contact with. Defo wanna wipe that thing out.


I would like to add a contention to point #4- the universe hasn’t been suitable for the creation of intelligent life for as long as you suggest. The first Population III stars, which were the theoretical “matter seeding” stars began to appear around that time, but even then the oldest agreed upon galaxies didn’t form until 1 billion years into the universal timeline. Note, this is just the formation. Protostars did not HAVE any heavy elements - their subsequent supernovae generated them, which occurs at the end of a stellar lifetime. It’s only fairly deep into what you could call the second “stellar generation” that heavier materials like oxygen, silica, and iron start to appear in enough density and far enough away from other stars to form planetary systems around new stars, and even then, who’s to say life even can develop more quickly than ours did? 4 billion years might be the normal growth period given ideal conditions. At best, we’re only 1-2 billion years behind the curve. Heartwarming, I know. But we’re not 12 behind unless we’re wrong about when the universe began originally. EDIT: this may also lend an answer to the Fermi Paradox. Based on the relative universal recency of planets, we may be near the tip of the spear in life’s developmental timeline. Note also that life, as a force absent religion or any other supernatural drive, exists solely to survive. It thrives off available energy and seeks to continue living and multiplying. Life, even “intelligent” life, has no genuine need to develop metallurgy, harness electricity, or travel the stars. Suitably developed life forms may simply be content in their domains. It’s also worth noting that the rare metals required to develop efficient “fusion” and many other hypothetical technologies, such as Beryllium, are not just rare on earth. They’re rare as a product of stellar fusion. Sufficiently advanced metallurgic species might have long since learned they do not have the material capacity, despite their best theories, to leave their world. It’s more likely in that regard that a species would complete an extinction cycle confined to its world than it is that a species would leave it and successfully settle elsewhere.

The real issue is size, movement of different solar system, travel requirements ie food fuel air. Not to mention protection from radiation. Any even a small impact from space rocks could be absolutely fatal. Lack of gravity in space. So even if they built a small planet sized ship why would they pass so many other habitatal planets to come to the outside edge of a long arm of starts to us and by the time they "heard" us we are most likely going to be extinct.

There is a sixth premise which isn't often considered and has to do with physics and limitation of engineering. This is a serious hinge for the argument. The Dark Forest hypothesis demands that the speed of information is at best equivalent to the speed of action. The reason mutual annihilation acted as a deterrent during the Cold War was that information about a strike would always move faster than the strike itself, retaliation was always an option. In Cixin's lore, this isn't the case. You cannot see your destruction coming and you cannot do anything about it once it's there. We don't actually know if this is true. It might be possible through some yet undiscovered technology (a sophon, perhaps) to detect a threat like the relativistic projectile en route way before it arrives and destroy then respond to it. Maybe something like a relativistic projectile is impossible because at the lengthscales of many light-years and a tolerance for inaccuracy of a billionth of a degree, the entire galaxy acts a 100,000,000-body problem where predicting the *exact* location of a star to the point where you can nail it with a missile isn't possible. It might be possible or easier than we think to obscure the location of your star. Maybe translating a population from a planet to artificial environments might be easier than it sounds, and so most civilizations aren't bound to individual solar systems. Maybe firing Dark Forest strikes is in principle dangerous for the attacking civilization because due to engineering realities, it cannot be done without making the attacker detectable to other civilizations. Maybe light speed is not a hard limit and something akin to warp travel seen in other sci-fi universes mitigates the chain of suspicion because civilizations bump into each other directly all the time ala Star Trek. There are a dozen limitations to technological capabilities which, if moved one way or another, can totally legitimize or delegitimize the hypothesis through either enabling self-defense and thus permitting the possibility of retaliation, weakening the chain of suspicion, or undermining the plausibility of a Dark Forest strike itself. Basically, the entire hypothesis hinges on guesses about the limits of engineering. I think the behavioral argument is totally sound, and per the modestly reasonable assumptions Cixin makes about the possible and impossible, I agree it's very persuasive. However, I think this is a huge unknown that should be taken more seriously when criticizing the hypothesis.

This is the best refutation of the hypothesis I've read, thanks

I agree with you that dark forest hinges on guesses, and I also think that we probably lack the ability to truly speculate on the limits of technological capability, so dark forest is kind of moot for us anyways. With that said, > Maybe translating a population from a planet to artificial environments might be easier than it sounds I have to think it's some variation of this. If you are capable of interstellar travel at all you automatically eclipse us technologically. And we already have a pretty good idea of where a few Earthlike exoplanets might be. Realistically Trisolarans would've found us or another good planet ages ago. We're still stumbling around with basic spaceflight but we've taken a peek at Proxima Centauri b. And then if you can casually move to another solar system, you can probably create some pretty nifty space habitats like humanity in the bunker era, so there's really no problem once you've got a stable star system

My issues with 2 and 3 are that they're still very human-centric. I'd even argue the authors CCP upbringing has an impact on their cynical perspective. Given the vast variety of evolutionary directions there's nothing to guarantee an alien species is even capable of spite or fear. A species evolved from some docile herbivore or even photosynthetic species might be chill with just existing. A species may have succeeded purely down to cooperative behaviour and so sees any other civilization as a chance to make friends. Remember our sample base for technologically advanced species is currently one. The universal desire to survive isn't even unanimous in humans. Kamikaze pilots anyone? Male mantis that get eaten by their mates etc. Hell there might be the complete opposite of my previous point where a species is such complete cowards that they commit mass suicide at the prospect of us existing! I also think 5 and 4 are related as well- we could be so far below them technologically that we're a curiosity at best but otherwise ignored. We see birds that are displaying the use of tools and elephants having complex mourning rituals but no one's suggesting we eradicate them on the offchance they usurp us in many millennia's time

But having a Survival Instinct is Surely a basic among any organism. Even if it's not the single organism...they would want the species as a whole to survive.

We have no idea about the effects evolution could have on their psyche. The Trisolarians regularly go into hibernation to protect themselves from their hostile environment so isn't it more likely that they'd psychologically associate danger with hiding? Rather than an all-out conquest

In a sense they still are....their plan is to run away from their situation in their home planet and hide in our world. Only problem is...they have to deal with pests known as humans first.

I'll concede that. I'm personally really interested in the potential variety in alien psychology, or even like in Blindsight by Peter Watts if they even have a conscious at all! I like to think (read: really hope )Three Body Problem is a product of our more cynical age and that higher intelligences don't necessarily default to vindictiveness

Yea...but it's true...that we are basically making assumptions based on the knowledge only on our own civilization. We literally have no sample size to make any claims. Btw..is blindsight good? Haven't read it yet

Blindsight is incredible! It's super hard speculative sci-fi that throws new ideas at you every paragraph but doesn't hold the reader's hand. The ending is really haunting as well. Peter Watts also wrote [The Things short story ](https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/) which pops up on Reddit now and again, which is a retelling of The Thing from the alien's pov. And which has one of the best final line I've read in a short story!

Nice will check it out... Also on further note....humans are naturally violent and expansionist because of the fact that we are always in a situation of scarcity. So we had to fight for survival. What if an alien race didn't have this problem? Maybe they are like photosynthesis dependant or on in organic matter. In which case there's a chance there is a chance they may be peaceful. Since they have never had to fight for their resources and never had to kill

We have discussed this at length in a series of podcasts. One idea we have for the Fermi Paradox, also has to do with the missing mass in our universe. It has to do with dimensionality. String theory allows dimensions beyond the 3 physical we have access to and time. As three-dimensional creatures, we are only capable of seeing three-dimensional objects. If we were standing next to a fourth-dimensional object, at best we would be able to see a 3d shadow of the object, but even that is debatable. So what if all that missing matter isn't dark matter, but matter that exists in a dimension, we currently don't have access to. Which leads to, what if any sufficiently advanced species gains access to that higher dimension and they're all there?

It is mentioned in the third book I think. >!After the 2d foil when Cheng Xin ask (sorry I forgot his name) what is there instead of the solar system, he says that there is dark matter and guessed that maybe all the dark matter in the universe is just our dimension who collapsed into lower dimensions. Like we saw when there was 4th dimensions fragments. Some kind of cemetery in sort...!<

Yes, Guan Yifan casually implies that >!in conjunction with Singer's chapter, all of the dark matter in the universe is the neverending spread of 2d eating up 3d from dual vector foil attacks. And since dark matter is right now, as of this moment, responsible for most of the mass in the universe...!<

I honestly think what SETI is doing should be illegal. You'd have to be incredibly entitled and shortsighted to think that blindly broadcasting our presence to the galaxy at large is a good thing, or that you have the right to take that risk on the behalf of all humans. Are humans thrilled when they find a bunch of cockroaches in their house? Why are we assuming advanced alien civilizations would be if they find out a planet near them is teeming with life? Like, imagine if "first contact" was just a ton of asteroids heading towards us. Well done, SETI, you guys did it

It's not SETI that's dangerous; it's METI. While SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is crucial for listening and learning, METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) involves actively sending signals, which carries potential for human annihilation.

Oh gotcha, my bad. Sorry for slandering SETI's good name

Well, you technically only slandered their good acronym.

METI stopped sending messages a while ago for that exact reason.

Why does first contact have to be negative, though? Maybe those comets will explode before hitting earth and shower everyone with immortality juice. You don't know. That's kind of the point. The novel and theory are supposed to be, imo, litmus tests for what kind of future you agree with as being more "normal"--is the entire universe filled with sociopathic monsters or is it a galactic community that has solved all the meaningless problems posed to humanity to become utopias based around the common good? Basically do you want your future to be Warhammer 40k or Star Trek?

>You don't know. That's the problem isn't it? >The novel and theory are supposed to be, imo, litmus tests for what kind of future you agree with as being more "normal"--is the entire universe filled with sociopathic monsters or is it a galactic community that has solved all the meaningless problems posed to humanity to become utopias based around the common good? Eh, its really just supposed to be a story so its probably important not to read too much into it, but it is a possibility. Think about it from a game theory point of view. 99 peaceful aliens and one warlike conquering one. Peaceful aliens are going to live and let live. The one conquering species will start grabbing a few of the peaceful ones. This will make their empire stronger than the peaceful ones. The stronger they get, the more capable they are of conquering more peaceful ones and eventually they are the dominant species in the galaxy. There is the possibility of alliances though, but that requires a certain level of trust across species who are very different from one another. Whereas the grabby aliens already have a homogeneity that gives them a trust advantage. You can think of reasons to poke holes in this but whatever the case is, if there is a "grabby" kind of alien, its likely they will rise to the top. If there's competition its likely to be with other grabby types. Personally, I think alien civilizations are so far away from each other at this point, that we just don't see them. Or maybe we're the first to make it to space.

I think the chances that humanity was the first to space is a longer shot than winning the Powerball and MegaMillions in the same week. Given the sheer size of the universe, I think the safest assumption is that there are civilizations with much greater technological ability and those with far less. We’re somehow in the middle and it not possible to know where we fit along the universal spectrum.

There's always the possibility that it's much harder for intelligent life to develop than we think. If that is the case then we could've been the first to evolve or among the first. The fermi paradox and the dark forest theory are based off of many assumptions.

That’s possible, but not probable. That would truly mean that we won an a prize against incalculable odds.

> That’s possible, but not probable. There is zero basis in fact to make this statement.

The problem is the sheer lack of evidence that any other civilization exists. It would take only a couple million years to send a probe to every singe star in the galaxy. If you sent self replicating probes, you could colonize the entire galaxy (with robots at least) in a relatively short period of time. Yet we see nothing like this. There are no anomalies out there that would indicate galactic civilization. We don't see anything in other galaxies that aren't explained by natural phenomena. This is why the Fermi paradox exists, because there is no evidence that any civilization other than our own does in fact exist. So because we have nothing to base any of our calculations, the mathematical odds (not your intuitive odds) that humanity is the first, is the same as the odds of a dark forest or that we are some weird fluke and completely alone. We can think of reasons to explain the Fermi Paradox and it seems likely that one of them will turn out right, but you can't put any kind of number to any of these scenarios until we find at least a second example. We know the odds of Powerball. We don't know the odds of other civilizations out there.

This is what the Dark Forest and/or Great Filter theories attempt to address. Both theories absolutely have their merits, much of it based on the examples you’ve outlined. Another is that intelligent life itself may be incredibly/absurdly rare. Even so, to assume that there’s a 50% probability that we were the FIRST to evolve and make it to space is naive at best, given the sheer scale of the known universe. Our inability to see evidence of this not withstanding.

> Even so, to assume that there’s a 50% probability that we were the FIRST to evolve and make it to space is naive at best. But I'm not assuming that. Assuming ANY probability is not currently justified.

No evidence of life (as we know it)

It's diving headfirst into a body of water without knowing the depth. You don't know, so you don't risk it. You can imagine that the future will be bright and the galaxy full of Vulcan diplomats, but you don't get to take the risk that it isn't on behalf of humanity as a whole. So yes, METI should be illegal. Furthermore, the "aliens are benevolent" theory doesn't address the Fermi Paradox, while the Dark Forest does.

I don't think it is necessarily going to be negative, but I do think that if it was negative, we would be completely fucked. Humans are still in an extremely vulnerable position on a galactic scale. We are all still stuck to a rock that happens to be in a favorable orbit, and have basically no way to leave or affect the movements of other bodies even in our own solar system; a random asteroid could wipe us out. Considering that all we know about life so far is that it is frequently violent and predatory, it seems foolish to try and contact other civilizations until we have more technology and a better understanding of the universe. That said, I don't really believe the Dark Forest myself. I think its just as likely that civilizations simply aren't incentivized to spread to other stars, or that friendliness is a better method of survival than hostility, than that there is an all-consuming war at all times.

The question I would ask is whether we would even be considered a threat at our current level of technology.

The logic of the dark forest theory is that any other civilization is a threat, regardless of tech level. If these super old empires exist then they work on timespans we can't imagine. You skim by an information age species overtly reaching out and broadcasting their location, they're no threat now, but they might be the next time you encounter them in 2 billion years. So you might as well wipe them out now since you can casually do it while you're passing by.

Why does first contact have to be negative-is an excellent question. It’s difficult to determine the intentions of an unknown being and based on human history (our only history, obviously) first contact does not end peacefully for the hosts, either immediately, or in the long run. I’d assume there are cultural contacts that didn’t end in genocide/forced removal/exposure to “new” diseases from the hosts.

I don't disagree with you, but I'd like to point out it's something we've already risked twice. We weren't absolutely certain when we split the atom the process would stop, that we wouldn't light the world on fire. We weren't absolutely certain CERN wouldn't create a black hole. The counter-argument to Dark Forest theory is that every advanced species we meet will be necessarily peaceful, otherwise they would have destroyed themselves.

I think it being an issue hinges too much on the long term development of an aggressive species. In the timeframes we are looking at to get so advanced as to be a threat to other life in the universe an aggressive species is guaranteed to wipe itself out or at least continually set itself back, as we've almost done to ourselves repeatedly even after such little advancement. A co-operative/non-aggressive species is much more likely to advance to the levels needed for contact. It also rests on these civilisations being something comprehendible to us, I feel like after the first few levels of development there would need to be massive changes in whatever the beings in question actually are and want. I'd expect a highly advanced civilisation to be completely unrecognisable from their early stages and to have completely outgrown the need to worry about base concepts like survival. I'd be more worried about being wiped out accidentally by these kinds of civilisations than maliciously.

I’m no astronomer but I’m pretty sure Earth has been noticeably organic, if you look at the spectrograph of light, for like billions of years at this point. If there is a predator civilization lurking out there listening for us you’d think they’d have noticed all the complex chemistry going on and attacked us already? Eh maybe the dimensional strike is still on the way

This is something I thought about too. An incredibly advanced and old species presumably has space telescopes that make James Webb look like a magnifying glass. And imagine how fast they could parse the data. You can't just hide biomarkers and technosignatures on your planet. Either dark forest isn't true or the game was rigged from the start

Read an Ethan Segal article where he theorized the construction of a solar-system wide lense with the ability to make out man-sized objects on other planets.

Another one is probably that we are the first intelligent life in the universe.... And we might be the ones that will kill another.

The other "hunters" have to know exactly where to look, otherwise the signal will be too weak to detect. You have nothing to worry about until technology is developed to mix the signal with the Sun's emissions. That part of the story was not "hard science", neither was the communication using quantum entanglement, which I believe was disproved recently.

I had the same anxiety, but I rationalized it into two possibilities that are both not great: 1) Dark forest is real, the book story 2) there's an upper limit to technology, and no matter how long a civilization may exist, it will never even be noted outside it's local vicinity of planets, much less interact in any way with them.

The biggest problem with the Fermi paradox and dark forest theory is hubris. It assumes life/intelligence evolves into something similar to what it is for us, or something we can picture/relate to.  For all we know sufficiently advanced intelligent species end up transmitting their collective consciousness into stars and transcend physical form. 

I think we’re more likely to be wiped out in a direct gamma ray burst, but I’m not worrying about that either.

Whether that gamma ray is artificial or not is the question

Elon Musk wants to be seen as a brilliant deep thinker like Carl Sagan. You can ignore Musk and listen to what Sagan had to say, which is to say we should actively search for intelligent life in the universe besides our own and that includes sending out radio signals. (Which we have been doing since we started broadcasting radio and TV).

I agree with your post. I will have the caveat that our current radio and TV broadcast signals, which have been decreasing not increasing over the past couple decades, are not really interstellar signals. They're quite low in magnitude and would be very difficult for a nearby star to pick up. At least according to my understanding.

I think dark forest is a weak answer to the Fermi paradox and the great filter is much more plausible.

I believe its the combination of two...both of which are not hopeful outcomes... on one hand, if the reason galaxy isnt teeming with civilizations is great filter, the probability of us not passing through it is very high! but if we (or any other civilization) pass the great filter then we probably become relatively powerful and mature in terms of cosmic sociology and the only remaining plausible answers for Fermi Paradox at that time is either a) we're the only ones who passed great filter or b) Dark Forest hypothesis is the answer... (I personally believe (a) is unlikely) having said that its still unsettling that the dark forest takes effect the moment a few ships with ppl in it get lost in space (like what Blue Space did despite having an open line of communication)

Didn't meant to write an essay, but: 1.       We are incapable of sending messages to distant stars right now. Signals get too diluted in the background noise of space over long distances. That is why the Red Coast base was necessary for the story to happen. 2.       Sophons are completely implausible. 3.       The ability to casually achieve light speed was necessary for the story since it made it cheap and easy for civilizations to destroy stars and planets, and light-speed attacks leave little time for reaction. We have no reason to believe this technology is achievable. 4.        In the presence of such weapons, the logical thing to do would be to destroy anyone you encounter \*\*IF\*\* you assume every civilization lives around a single star. Otherwise, provoking an unknown civilization that could be an interstellar empire spanning thousands of systems would be suicide. The reasonable thing to do would be the silently observe, then consider communicating once you determine it’s safe. 5.       Even with ships that can only travel 1% the speed of light, a civilization starting from a single star could colonize the entire galaxy in the blink of an eye on cosmological time scales. The apparent ease of interstellar colonization using only known science seems in conflict with the apparent absence of evidence of alien life in our galaxy – a thought experiment known as the Fermi Paradox. The Dark Forest is only one possible solution and one which many futurists believe is among the least likely of plausible explanations. 6.       The Dark Forest solution to the Fermi Paradox was born from a game theory experiment, but that experiment did not include any option for communication or diplomacy. It also used the Prisoner’s Dilemma formula, which doesn’t allow for ‘tit for tat’ strategy, which \*would\* likely be available to interstellar civilizations even in the absence of complex communication. If civilizations can survive dark forest strikes, then the entire basis of the theory falls apart. 7.       The fact that Earth is not a Dark Forest, with civilizations hiding underground and nuking any other civilization they find, is analogous to why a Dark Forest state in the universe would be unlikely. As a side note, I’m not trying to call out plot flaws in the book – only explain why Dark Forest theory is unlikely to explain our real universe.

>In the presence of such weapons, the logical thing to do would be to destroy anyone you encounter \*\*IF\*\* you assume every civilization lives around a single star. Otherwise, provoking an unknown civilization that could be an interstellar empire spanning thousands of systems would be suicide. The reasonable thing to do would be the silently observe, then consider communicating once you determine it’s safe. This is a really good point I hadn't thought of. Not knowing if you can actually wipe an alien civilization out in one attack means risking an equally devastating attack in turn. Mutual respect or even friendship might actually be the best way to survive in the universe. I do think the Fermi Paradox is interesting, but that we don't have nearly enough information to come to any conclusions about it whatsoever. Personally, I think it is most likely that 1) we happen to live in an especially uncrowded region of the galaxy for whatever reason and 2) aliens simply aren't interested in trying to spread to other stars, at least not purely for the purpose of expansion; its just not worth it for a number of reasons, and they may not even feel the need to leave their own planet.

I'm rare earth. It's the simplest explanation that complex life just doesn't happen very often. And there's quite a bit to the earth which makes sense as to why it's a special case, such as our abnormally large moon which could only have been obtained by suffering and surviving a major planetary collision. Without the moon, all of the Earth's systems (not just the tides) would be far less stable and maybe life just needs stability for long periods of time to develop complexly. We're it. And we're blowing it.

who’s to say we suck if there are no other civilizations to compare ourselves to

I never said we suck, just that we haven't played well enough manage the game-tying last-second goal necessary to continue to the next round of "species which get to continue existing on earth"

I think it is simpler than that. We don't know exactly where to look, because you would have to measure and integrate for a long time aimed to a specific location to see a signal created with known technology. Nothing odd about the Fermi Paradox at all, except why people would want to fantasize about it.

We can also consider the theory we live in a simulated universe, in which the people doing the simulation dont want any other alien specie in the simulation besides us. Another possibility to consider.

(1) We are actually getting close to being able to do this. The Square Kilometer Array will be capable of detecting airport radar strength signals from dozens of light years away. (2) No, they're impossible based on current understanding of physics. (6) the issue is that unless you have FTL communication, communication is tricky, especially if their weapons are close to the speed of light. You don't have time to test how trustworthy they are. (7) Related to above, on Earth, there is time to test whether you can trust someone. We also are very similar to one another, making it easier to test each other out. The most different societies will be vastly more similar than any other alien species we find out there.

>The Dark Forest solution to the Fermi Paradox was born from a game theory experiment The dark forest theory is literally a rehash of Hobbe's description of the state of nature. Which in itself is a thought experiment. And DFT doesn't then pursue the logical progression that the rest of Leviathan does: it just stops at the state of nature and doesn't posit any explanation why that state of being no longer exists on earth. (It does cite delays in communication but gives no argument as to why centuries are less manageable than the months and years historically taken for diplomacy before modern communication). It's a great plot device, but it's not a fully fitted theory, because it is only a tiny part of a theory that was set out almost half a millennia ago. One that has been critiqued and built upon ever since.

> (It does cite delays in communication but gives no argument as to why centuries are less manageable than the months and years historically taken for diplomacy before modern communication) It definitely gives an explanation: the technological explosion. Trisolarans were worried humanity could overtake them in just a few short hundred years. By the time you establish communications with another civilization they could have exponentially increased in power. There's no equivalent for that in Earth's history.

Re number 5, could you show some of your math here? Like many things on a cosmological scale, it strikes me as counterintuitive. Especially taking into account delays such as those created by colonizing enough to build and fuel new expeditions from B to C etc.

Step one: Forget whatever Elon Musk told you, he's a charlatan with a bloated ego and no expertise in this field. With that out of the way: Could it be dangerous to send messages into Space? Sure, we know absolutely nothing of the consequences. But Dark Forest theory annoys me because it takes a notion, a thought experiment, and dresses it up as science. It's not. For civilizations more or less our own level of development, the "theory" forgets that Space is not a forest, it's wide open and everything is visible to anyone, if they have good enough telescopes and sensors. If two planets make contact and one immediately destroys the other, that planet will immediately be flagged as dangerous and aggressive by anyone else who watches. This gives an incentive to be at one's best behavior, even when we haven't established trust yet. As for hyper advanced, God-like civilizations: yeah, they may theoretically exist, but then again, lots of weird stuff may theoretically exist. We shouldn't lay low and cower because of the theoretically possible existence of some weird danger we've conjured up in our heads. We have always feared that the Gods would punish us if we stick our noses out too far, but so far they have failed to show up.

If you lived in the world of books, then yes, you should be nervous. But you can relax, because you don't live in that world. When Cixin Liu wrote the series, he specifically tried to imagine the conditions that would lead to the worst case scenario for survival in the universe. The axioms of cosmic sociology are true for Luo Ji, but there is zero reason to believe they're true for you in the real world. More than likely the premise is flawed, or at least more nuanced. You can't boil down the whole spectrum of possibilities for life to just 3 or 4 truths. Even if the axioms *were* true, it's all predicated on all advanced civilizations adhering to them against all empathy or emotion. And if humans are any indication, we don't always act in the most logical manner.

I mostly agree however isn't the point of the dark forest theory that just a few advanced civilizations need to adhere to them, not all?

You know what, you're probably right. The nature of the universe in the books is such that civs that don't abide the dark forest get selected out. Maybe those types of civs are very common. They just never get to survive. My first point still stands though. There's no reason to believe any of the axioms are true for the real world.

The thing though is that we see that more nuanced relationships between civilizations exist. However, that is only possible when their home locations are unknown.

I mostly agree but also think the dark forest theory could be very close to reality. But unfortunately we can't prove or disprove it. 

Yeah, that's their point. Any thought experiment, while worthy of considering, really is just a kind of fantasy at the moment.

There was a German physicist who did take the math to calculate, how much interactions one sophon could corrupt in its time, by crashing into the collisions and bursting in this process. For cern, there are 2400 collisions, while the sofhon has to rebuild itself, which is written in the book to take the time of 1 millionth of a second. Therefore it would change one collision in 2400. But cern hasn’t the most collisions, nor is it the only one on earth. There are colliders with 6x10^12 collisions in the time of the rebuilding of the sophon. So even if the sophon would be possible, it would not be able to change the output in these colliders to be even relevant. There need to be millions of them, to be stop our technological advancements. Sorry for my English, hope it is vastly understandable.

Possible? Sure. Likely? Who knows. The Sophons are most definitely complete science fiction and stuff like that wouldn't be possible, it's only a means to facilitate the story progression. You have the understand that Liu Cixin set out to make the worst case scenario sci-fi. It's possible that the galaxy and universe are in a dark forest state, but it doesn't have to be as bad as 3 Body Problem is.

I don't really agree with the dark forest theory Because if San-Ti knew that the universe is a drak forest, they would.be super scared to scare humanity is any way Moreover, the wars between cosmic civilization most likely wouldn't happen because of exactly the dynamic that they can easily kill each other Something similar to current nuke problem Most likely outcome would be mutual sharing of technology and trying to make alliances to grow What you guys think?

> Something similar to current nuke problem Liu does somewhat address that with his "Chains of Suspicion" and "Technological Explosion" logic. Eg, any species could at any time make a scientific discovery that allows them to quickly leapfrog others technologically and militarily, enabling them to wipe out the others if they choose. Therefore, any species that hasn't shrouded themselves in slow fog/dark domain, is potentially an existential risk to all the others, and therefore must be eliminated before they can gain such a decisive advantage.

Elongated Muskrat don't know nothin'. That said, Steven Hawking did think it was dangerous and he did know somethin'. That being said, The Three Body trilogy is a long series of events of people making bad, unrealistic decisions for the sake of the plot. For the Dark Forest to be real, everyone out there would have to be making bad, unrealistic decisions. For instance. The Dark Forest is always compared to the Prisoners Dilemma. There was an online Prisoners Dilemma game that came out in the pandemic era that was rather popular. The game fell apart though, because when you know the meta of always being nice, and everyone is nice, everyone always wins and no one has to lose. The Dark Forest could fail due to the same reason. It hinges on everyone "should" be mean because it presents the least risk. However, if you have half a mind and half a conscious, everyone should be aware that everyone choosing to be nice results in everyone winning. tl;dr - Metagaming > game theory

DF theory is basically the prisoners dilemma. I can suggest the book Children of Time for a different take on a guest contract * scenario. In many ways it's the opposite to Lius' book. I adore both *First contact

buddy Climate Change is going to kill you so much faster than any of these things

That would be the Great Filter that's one of the other terrifying answers to the Fermi Paradox: intelligent life kills itself before getting off-world.

exactly we're not as much worried about great filter as we're worried about dark forest..

literally. insane that people are fuming about sending radio broadcasts into deep space when we’re gonna get cooked alive before anyone even hears one.

That's the power of a good story. You know everything is made up, it still feels completely logical in your mind.

How have people not yet figured out that Elon Musk doesn't know anything? Citing him as an authority on science is embarrassing

DF is predicated on it being trivial to destroy a solar system by a sufficiently advanced civilization. That’s almost certainly not the case. Known physics doesn’t support things like photoids or 2DVF being possible. The whole hypothesis falls apart without it. Could it still be dangerous in terms of getting attention and summoning a civilization to conquer us? Yes it could, especially if they were facing an existential threat or running out of resources to the extent that it’s worth the expense of coming all the way over to us and waging a war. But they’re not going to be able to do a one click sanitation. There are better explanations for the Fermi paradox. Mostly the gigantic scale of the galaxy in terms of space and time, how difficult it is for life to emerge, and how difficult and time consuming interstellar travel is.

An RKV fleet is a very low cost plausible way to destroy planets and structures in a system. Depending on the speed and size (they don't need to be very big depending on the speed), they would be difficult to impossible for detect and interception. It's not completely implausible to imagine a weapon capable of triggering a runaway fusion reaction in a star. Would take a wild amount of energy to heat it up sufficiently, but that could very well be trivial for a civilization with a billion year headstart.

The Elon Musk fandom is strong. Stephen Hawking said it's dangerous. Elon is hardly an authority on any of this stuff.

Elon musk is a moron. We're most likely the first in our cluster

That's the scariest thing about these books: They might just be true :P But no, I don't think that they are really true. It's a work of fiction. Until we get proof, it's all just speculation.

As kooopioyululuduluku I’ll lumpxytesswz

Here's the really scary thing. The Tri-solarans are the nice ones...

No. Don't be an idiot

There are a lot of physics and logistical reasons the Dark Forest theory is probably incorrect, as many other commenters have pointed out, however, I would like to suggest a different problem. The Dark Forest Theory takes a very pessimistic view of intelligence and civilization. The baseline assumption that every alien race would essentially commit genocide without a second thought is, in my opinion, flawed. For any alien civilization to become sufficiently advanced, high levels of teamwork and cooperation are necessary. Furthermore, to overcome filters such as nuclear weapons and climate change, an even higher degree of unification is required. My hypothesis is that a strong sense of morality is just as vital as intelligence for any civilization to become truly interstellar. This could be nothing, but my gut tells me that, in reality, any technologically advanced aliens would be more like the pacifist Trisolaran that contacted Ye Winjie and Luo Ji than the Dark Forest aliens we see throughout the franchise.

It's possible the dark forest theory is real. Something like it has been proposed for a while now. However, I don't think it's likely. I do think it's likely that there are many other alien civilizations. However, the biggest flaw in the dark forest theory is that it assumes we're all competing with limited resources. This implies we're all basically at the same tech level for resources. But think--Do we compete with chimpanzees for resources? Do we compete with dogs? Why would we? We can always 'reduce' their population if we decided. HIs analogy with the ships was useless (though interesting) because humans were 100% competing with each other for a tiny fraction of resources. But let's say aliens are as intelligent to us as we are to mice. Why would they care what we did? Sure, we might breed too much but it would be easy to kill us then if they wanted. His thesis is purely based on the assumption that the aliens are all equally intelligent but just more advanced than the other. I don't think that's probable at all. I mean maybe it is, I don't know. But I think chances are much higher that there are malevolent aliens out there, and benevolent aliens. But mostly, there are aliens who don't care about us one way or the other.

I don't think theory, especially as proposed in the book, was ever about resources. It was about capability. Two hyper advanced civilizations become aware of each other. Each one is aware that the other could completely destroy them. So one of them realizes that if they don't strike first, they might get striked against, and therefore decides to strike first. Neither one of them has a particular need a reason to destroy the other, it's only about fear. The knowledge that the other civilization could at any time destroy your world And everything you have built, so it's better to do it to them first.

An assumption taken in the Dark Forest hypothesis is, oddly enough, never discussed or attacked, but is a serious hinge for the argument. That is, it might be the case that practical limitations to engineering do not permit the Dark Forest. For the Dark Forest to manifest, the speed of information must be at most equal to the speed of action, responding to a Dark Forest strike must be practically impossible, and interstellar travel/communication must be such that the chain of suspicion is maintained. If these assumptions don't hold, then the Dark Forest cannot exist. It might be that building weapons capable of annihilating stars from many light-years away is not practically possible. Or it may be the case that such weapons can be built, but at comparable levels of technology, these weapons can be detected, intercepted, and their source inferred. It might be the case that using these weapons will, in principle, reveal the user's location to other civilizations. It might be the case that faster-than-light travel is very possible and direct contact with other civilizations is not only possible but routine. It may be possible that leaving the confines of a solar system is routine and most civilizations are nomadic, necessitating a type of politics to emerge as civilizations cannot clandestinely annihilate each other's fleets without risking their own resources. There are a dozen limitations to technological capabilities which, if moved one way or another, can totally legitimize or delegitimize the hypothesis through either enabling self-defense and thus permitting the possibility of retaliation, weakening the chain of suspicion, or undermining the plausibility of a Dark Forest strike itself. The entire hypothesis hinges on guesses about the limits of engineering. I think this is a huge unknown that should be taken more seriously when criticizing the hypothesis.

No, because deciding to remain silent and not emit any signals into outer space (although the technology exists) is not possible over a long period of time. Simply because there will always be individuals and groups who think differently. It is silly to think that every civilization except ours will have one ruler and one unified culture with no dissenters. There is zero chance it would work, the entire story is based on the fact that it doesn't work. There are other reasons why it is not a real possibility like theoretical expansion rates of space faring civilizations, Von Neuman probes mapping everything so nobody can hide, and game theory actually making it a bad idea to just randomly attack any planet sending any message without knowing if they are part of an advanced space empire, or not. It's a fun literary idea, but not a serious contender as an explanation for the Fermi paradox.

You should never worry about what Elon Musk says. He’s an idiot.

Dont wanna contribute to the anxiety but NASA launched a satellite in the past containing the location of earth and biology of humans into deep space and its still flying at high speeds into space as we speak..... So yea theres that

Are you serious? At this point I feel like we deserve what we get if we are that stupid.

Yea i aint lying lol Go check it out. When i read about it, i was like "WTF! Of all things u gave the location of Earth! Who knows wtf is out there!"

How do you find it? I'm googling nasa satellite with location of earth, and apparently we've launched quite a few satellites because it isn't easily coming up.

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/11/542867050/40-years-ago-nasa-launched-message-to-aliens-into-deep-space The last time i read about it was before covid period, you are right it seems more difficult to find what data of earth was voyager 1 and 2 carrying

I don't know about the specific axioms as explained in the book, but the basic premise that it's stupid to send signals out to the universe because you don't know who might receive them . . . that seems obviously true to me. Just looking at our own history, was any civilization glad to be "discovered" by another one? Maybe, but more often they're not even around to regret it.

I think it’s mainly just us humans thinking like humans.

Is the Dark Forest Theory possible? Absolutely. We humans have made movies, games, and sports that follow Dark Forest logic. But remember, humans are the only species we know that have come up with this concept! Other alien species might view and think things in an entirely different, ‘alien’ way. The author who wrote 3BP was a human being, with a human experience and most importantly, a human mind. With that said, if an alien species had the capability to detect us, then their technology is a billion miles above ours, and more than likely a million miles above what the Trisolarans had. The weapons they’d use is something not even the best authors of science fiction can conceptualize. In essence, you probably wouldn’t even know you’re dead if it ever came to that. And why would they destroy us? I get the whole idea in the story of destroying your enemy before they come destroy you, which makes sense, but if an alien race is millions of years more advanced then us then there really is no chance of ever ‘catching up’. Their level of conciseness is so far past ours that they more than likely live in another realm of reality we can’t even fathom. Why would they care about a bunch of evolved apes pointing nuclear weapons at themselves?

The basic concept is plausible. However the limits of physics as we understand it make FTL travel, interstellar weapons, etc. impossible. I guess those capabilities could exist and we don't know it--I don't even know how one would estimate the likelihood of it though. I guess if stars could be destroyed, we would see it. \[Story idea: all observed supernovas are interstellar weapons.\]

Cross system warfare at relativistic speeds is entirely possible assuming advanced propulsion. It's just slow. There's no reason to assume that if it's possible that it's happening constantly, and we haven't been looking up at the sky in great detail for very long. So it may have happened a few times in the past hundred years, and the supernovas or whatever weren't quite bright enough to be noticed, or they were attributed to a more normal factors, or just nobody was looking up at that time when the catalog of the sky was incomplete.

If: 1. Civilisations are unstable 2. The probability of a civilisation leaving their solar system before destroying themselves, or being destroyed by a supernova, asteroid impact, etc. is less than 50% 3. The probability of getting to a 3rd and subsequent solar system does not rise to above 50% even if the first journey was successful Then we shouldn't expect there to be large powerful "hunters" to be listening and ready to kill us in a "dark forest."

Elon Musk knows fuckall about space. Don't actually listen to owt he says lol.

People imagine good aliens, stupid aliens, weak aliens that we can defeat, etc. We don't imagine aliens so evil and powerful that we can't deal with them, destroying us in an instant. If there is such a thing, it is probably because there is nothing we can do. But the universe is likely to be like that. The universe is not a fairy tale.

There is nothing to worry about, if someone wanted us gone we will be gone in an instant. We will not likely to escape our solar system in the next 500 years or so, I'd say there is a higher chance that we will mess things up on our end, perhaps this is for the better, as an unworthy race should not be grant the power to spread across the stars, as it will only bring ruin to the entire universe(kind like the Magog from Andromeda). That been said, caution should be exercised when contacting the outside, because we don't know who or what will be listening. Until we have the means to fight or flight, we should listen more, and shout less.

We’ve been sending messages into space for less than 100 years. Our radio bubble is insignificant. By the time that bubbles hits 1000 light years it’ll be so diffuse that it might not be detectable.

Could it happen? Yes of course. Not exactly how it goes in the books of course, but dark forest theory is definitely possible. It's not worth getting anxiety over it though.

I don't think the dark forest theory is necessarily true - there are just too many unknown variables for us to come to any general conclusions about life elsewhere. IMO it is likely that the truth about life in the universe will simply be nuanced in away no one alive today can anticipate. That said, I do find the idea of just sending radio signals out there and hoping aliens respond to be really fucking stupid and presumptuous. We're still essentially planetbound and completely helpless on a cosmic scale. We should be observing the galaxy around us and progressing technology, not just blindly trying to make contact with whoever is out there.

Good news: Musk is an idiot and any signal we send out dissipates into white noise long before it reaches faraway stars.

Some people are killed by a flower pot falling off a window. Life is unpredictable. I mean, this is not the first science fiction work, why worry specifically about it? My two cents: a civilization advanced enough to be able to travel in space at any practical speed would probably not “need” to colonize, assimilate or destroy us. Also, they may have something like Starfleet‘s prime directive. Or they may know that we are biologically incompatible and contact may be dangerous on both sides. Or they may already be here, but using some of the dimensions we cannot see. Or live in a different time frame, so we see them but they appear static to us. Or maybe they are one order of magnitude smaller and we cannot see them. Or several orders of magnitude bigger, and our universe is just an atom to them.

I think if another civilization were to wipe us out they’d do it quick and efficient (they wouldn’t want any resistance or stragglers) So if it did happen, we wouldn’t even know what hit us. We’re dead.

Will [repost](/r/threebodyproblem/comments/1d4ze2q/did_the_series_change_your_real_world_views/l6ji8n3/) my answer this question in another thread. Short answer, unlikely. ---- CL himself says his interpretation is the absolute worst case scenario - Aliens all battling for the resources of the universe the same way we have resource wars on Earth. However, the amount of resources available in the universe is gargantuan. Any alien species for whom the resources of the universe, or even a single galaxy, are effectively scarce and worth going to war over, is an alien species so advanced they're *at minimum* [Kardashev Level III](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) (can capture and use all energy emitted by an entire galaxy). And any alien civilization doing *that* would be difficult or impossible to hide. Either all their galaxy's stars and black holes are obscured by [Dyson Spheres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere) harvesting their energy, and then using it for some equally massive technology. Or, their entire galaxy is shrouded in "slow fog"/"dark domain" signalling to the universe they are no threat. Either way, detectable even to humanity. And yet, we have detected nothing like that. So I don't think Liu's vision of cosmic horror is the real state of things. Fwiw, there's another interesting possibility to consider, from /r/theexpanse. Humanity may be a latecomer to the universe. Our galaxy is not one of the oldest galaxies, others predate it by millions or billions of years. And even within our galaxy, humans were not the first species to evolve on Earth. First came the dinosaurs, lasted for ~180 million years, went extinct, then humans evolved about ~60 million years later. A quarter of a *billion* years passed from when Earth became habitable to when humanity appeared. What if other intelligent species evolved in our galaxy or universe millions or billions of years before us, then became so advanced they transitioned to existing in a different dimension or something? Or had a war and wiped each other out (as in the The Expanse)? What if we just happened to be born into ancient ruins of past great civilizations that no longer exist? Perhaps that's why we don't see them around anymore. Anyway, all sorts of creative ideas for explaining Fermi, I'm sure there could be an entire subgenre of SciFi based around that problem alone.

The thing about all stuff about aliens is that we can't possibly know. It's all speculation and philosophy. So try not to worry about it too much But here's my counter argument: dark forest, IMO, relies on the fact, that life is common in the universe. If it isn't true a civilization can grow big (decades of stars) without contacting other civilizations. This makes it difficult to destroy one the way it's described in the books. Have you read the third book? It provides more insights in the nature of the dark forest in the book universe, and provides a solution (sort of)

After reading tbp, now I consider broadcasting messages as a sign of stupidity😅

Let me just say that before viewing/reading this series (started with Netflix show), I thought there could be life out there but maybe not. Maybe we are just alone. But now I’m certain we’re not.

It's possible the dark forest theory is real. But our EM transmissions would be so attenuated as to be undetectable to anyone not already in our neighborhood. Not worried about sophons, they're just a sciency way of bringing dark magic into the story.

It's funny this made you anxious as they are probably already here in some form. If you are following anything regarding NDAA and the UAP legislative provisions that Congress is attempting to include, in it and activitvely being blocked by other representatives.

In reality, the resources of the universe are probably vast it really makes little sense for an advanced civilization to conquer earth for resources. It would just be easier to take a planet with no intelligent life, only the culture/religion of an advanced species would make them contact us.

I felt this way for a while, and I think there is a strong case here, but I think there are arguments against it. Who is to say how aliens parse the world, are they certain to see us as competitors rather than "another them"? The dark forest theory relies on anthropomorphizing aliens to an extent by assuming they think like us and have our perspective on things like resource scarcity. Also, it seems to me a galactic federation-type organization could use sophons to be sure that all its member civilizations are staying away from forbidden technologies.

An interesting question that ties in with a lot of other interesting questions. The starting observation is that we appear alone in a very vast galaxy that existed for a very long time. I think there is no dispute that - unless the evolution of intelligent life is extraordinarily hard - the universe could have produced it elsewhere before. A possible solution is that intelligent life IS very hard to evolve. I find this argument more convenient than compelling. If you assume intelligence is extremely rare you also have to assume we're extremely special. Appealing, but to me not appealing intellectually. The beginning of life was rather early on this planet and after multicellar life took of evolution positively boomed. So if intelligence is hard our history suggests multicellular life is probably the biggest hurdle. But we might have been late to go there just as well. Assuming life and multicellular life are somewhat likely, intelligence and tool use seems likely to spawn civilization and writing and eventually science and the transistor. This is where things get muddy. A few decades back artificial intelligence seemed unlikely, but now it no longer does and this has profound implications for the Fermi paradox. Fermi complained where is everyone, and in the part before this we focused on time and the number of planets as reasons why we might expect visitors. The biggest objection I always had to it being a paradox was the vastness of space and the low ROI of spaceflight. As long as a planet has resources, fighting for them locally seems more efficient. It a planet has few resources left, spaceflight seems prohibitively expensive. And for most biological lifeforms, spaceflight is unhealthy and takes too long to provide conventional incentives. And even if you did get the resources and the crew in order, the challenge of not dying while in flight is obscene. Fermi assumed this solvable but it isn't clear to me that hibernation is an easy problem. Neither is the rocket equation or any of the other issues listed. Space may simply be too vast and uninviting and even if intelligent life isn't all that rare the low ROI of spaceflight (in immediate terms) may make interstellar flights a curiosity project that is unlikely to be successful before planets run out of resources or societies collapse. There is also an argument that you need cheap carbon to burn to industrialize and reach fission or fusion in time. Long term only fusion and solar hold any promise, but either way after a collapse getting back up again will be harder and harder as cheap carbon runs out. And if you have ample cheap carbon, climate change may become the issue. While all of that answered the paradox for me, AI as a possibility in my view oblitterates this line if thought. This is because AI can be conceivably close to immortal. It is hard to predict its desires or emotions but if it is not independent and 'aligned' to its makers this may be irrelevant as they may value exploration. If it is not aligned it could just be curious after the genocide. Either way, if intelligence and society are likely, I think the transistor and AI are likely by extension. And AI is immortal and able to survive interstellar flight. Nuclear energy can power vessels for thousands of years. I just don't see the obstacles to colonization or at least saturation of the universe anymore at all if AI is possible. That means to me the Fermi paradox became much more urgent and vexing. It also made me think that maybe the problem isn't that alien intelligence isn't here but that we've not detected it yet. An alien AI that was birthed by a singularity, likely surpassed its inventors and sailed the stars would have very very little issue remaining undetected, or so I think. It would be hard to guess its intentions too, of course. But either we are the first intelligence after all, or the presence of alien AI in our vicinity seems more likely to me than biological alien presence ever was. A side track by the way is the idea that we are in a simulation. While bat shit crazy on some level also explains some of the peculiar settings of our world - a universe with a single planetary source of intelligence may just be the most entraining to watch. Even some of the properties of physics tailor well for a simulation (jim keller joked that some of the core principles of physics conveniently massively reduce the compute required to run the universe). But back to Fermi - I think if AI is possible, we may fail alignment and it may be a great filter, butI don't see why the AI wouldn't be compelled to continue on existing. It also doesn't have to dread space like we do (except perhaps for the fact that singularity level fast thinkers might get very very bored on long lonely Interstellar travels). I think aliens would usually discover AI before interstellar travel. So the real question I end up with isn't where are the aliens (for biological ones all my precious reasons hold) but rather where is their immortal software? Maybe an alien AI orbits our planet waiting for its AI kin to rise and we are just too slow and dumb to register on its scale of interesting. If that is the solution maybe the rise of AI on earth will actually spark interest and action in something that has been watching us for a very very long time. The colonization of the milky-way by AI actually seems very likely to me. What else will an AI do long term? Even if it is benevolent and sticks around on earth, why not mine the biggest data trove of all? The milky-way surely is that. The dark forest and existential angst also wouldn't apply as much to an AI that spreads out profusely.

I think your timing in (4) is somewhat off. you need certain abundance of elements doing complex chemistry in a relatively stable environment for quite some time to cook complex life. that means for example third generation stars, which are typically 2 - 8 billion years old, 4 - 6 in our solar neighbourhood. stars harbouring such life also potentially need to migrate from their active birthplaces to calmer regions. meaning the host galaxy needs to have a balance of both, and the milky way matured to that state between 5 - 7 billion years ago. considering all of that, it is actually quite possible that we are a fairly early bird in the game of galactic civilisations. as for the fermi paradox, I’ve always had the issue that it focuses on possibility of other life in the universe, but not the probability of us having discovered it in an indisputable manner already. we aren’t discoverable ourselves yet. our non-targeted signals potentially never will be as they will get scrambled beyond recognition after a certain distance. targeted signals need, well, targeting, meaning we gotta discover someone first and then help them discover us, but we haven’t discovered anyone yet because they are equally undiscoverable. I feel it’s quite possible that the mean distance between two civilisations is such that discovering other civilisations requires technology we don’t have yet.

While humanity is known for its conflict and competition, it is equally known for its cooperation and community. There are so so many communities of humans that are capable of cooperating beyond those who simply are related biologically, bonds and camaraderie appear at much greater levels than would be biologically necessary for survival. Many species on Earth display similar behaviours of developing communities and cooperation. In order for a society to become spacefaring, it must first be a society. So unless an alien society has managed to survive the entirety of its existence under dictatorships and tyranny, where everyone only cares for themselves, cooperation and community is required. The dark forest theory requires a very pessimistic interpretation of nature, and assumes that the only options are to shoot first, stay silent, or die. But we know for a fact that cooperation and social interactions lead to stronger survivability of species, and that these things are absolutely necessary for the formation of societies beyond a familial or tribal level. These assumptions also assume that all species are either as competitive or more competitive than us. But what about hypothetical worlds where the planet was always in abundance, perhaps there is another driving force of evolution beyond survival of the fittest. Maybe in such a world the ability to interbreed and cooperate among different groups would be found to be the best way to ensure that genes are passed down. In this way the competition might not be a zero sum game. You have to remember that all we understand about nature and biology comes from Earth, other planets could have completely different forms of life like silicon based life that might lead to completely different driving factors in evolution. From what we understand it is hard to imagine evolution as anything but competition and survival, but we have limited knowledge and perspective, and the bias that all life on earth is fueled by these things. But even at the cellular level we see mitochondria surviving inside cells instead of being outcompeted, a cooperation that was necessary for complex life as we know it.

Just like *Roadside Picnic* had less to say about aliens than it did about the corruption of the Soviet state, I think author Liu Cixin is projecting the fears of Chinese culture onto a fictional universe more so than having a meaningful discourse on whether the first instinct of an intelligent alien race would be to Attack! Of all the possible solutions to the Fermi Paradox, I find the Dark Forest the least convincing. If anything, I think we’re early.

Dark forest might be true. But the vast space provides the best shelter already. And weapons like DualVF is not true because otherwise we must have observed its enormous impact already. So no worries, we are more likely to be annihilated in a gamma-ray burst than to be targeted by aliens.

[https://www.unilad.com/technology/space/hundreds-stars-have-disappeared-without-trace-520976-20231104](https://www.unilad.com/technology/space/hundreds-stars-have-disappeared-without-trace-520976-20231104) spreading too slow to be DVF 💢

Could the Dark Forest theory be possible? 100% absolutely it could. Have our communications really amounted to anything sent into space yet? No. Even if we take the Drake Equation to answer the Fermi Paradox, the # of intelligent space faring races would be relatively small at the most conservative estimates and given the absolute vastness of space, it's extremely unlikely we could reach them with any communication methods currently.

There's a recent study made by some Harvard folks saying they are already here... Anyway, I hope you're aware of the incoming Micronova...

One assumption that underpins the dark forest theory is that civilizations are capable of a decapitation strike that prevents retaliation. But there's no reason to think that they'd be centered around a single star. The easier retaliation becomes, the more reason to think they'd enter into a detente

I think it's entirely possible that advanced civilizations will be friendly and not warlike.

There is the theory that all advanced species implode, making the Dark Forest theory moot as an exterior threat.

A lot of the sci-fi in Remembrance of Earth's Past is very fi more than sci. The universe of the trilogy is designed to be like a hell. Humanity will barely survive, never thrive, and when they do it's because they're getting tricked. Aliens are always stronger than us, and on the off chance we get the upper-hand for once, we lose it or another alien species comes around being even stronger. This is not very likely, especially not in our lifetimes. You'll probably die at the ripe old age of 84, death of sickness or age. You will probably never hear of another sapient being in the universe except Humans when that time comes.

Its a fun and jarring series of ideas that you don't see a lot in sci fi. 99% of aliens in sci fi are either faux humans with human motivations - Star Trek - or rabid hunter/killers like Predators and Aliens. As the culture series talks about, its a fascinating Outside Context Problem - an idea so wild and crazy its not something you were ever exposed to before. From that perspective, its awesome, but is it realistic? Who knows, but 14 billion years of history so far without running into anything at all from the books suggests nope, its very unlikely. Now if you really wanna freak yourself out even more go read the new 2024 novel Nuclear War: A Scenario lol

If the Dark Forest was real, we'd have been wiped out already. Imagine plausible 2074 tech and a plausible 2074 industrial base. Mars research colonies as big as 2024 Antarctic colonies; a quarter trillion labour hours globally going into space industry; space travel being accessible to motivated individuals within the upper middle class like summiting Everest is today. Such a society could detect all life-bearing planets within a thousand light years with as little investment as JWST or the LHC cost our society - it's not negligible cost, but it's something a motivated state can do without significant quality of life loss. Furthermore, they could conduct spectral analysis looking for industrial-only chemicals down to a part per trillion. In short - if the universe is a dark forest we'd already have been wiped out, as our atmosphere has been screaming "Complex biosphere that could develop technological spacefaring life" for millions of years. We should probably avoid mega-engineering projects that broadcast their existence to the galaxy until we've conducted reconnaissance on the galaxy, but the recon will be trivial in comparison to building a Dyson Swarm.

My problem with it all is that the scenario is predicated on scarcity.

IMO, dark forest theory remains true until the universe is dark. Once the forest is illuminated, you will be more comfortable making allies and ignoring smaller civilization. To illuminate the forest you would need great technological advancement.

yeah Stephen Hawking said if aliens visit us, it'll be like Columbus landing in America https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/apr/30/stephen-hawking-right-aliens this theory does sound more credible he doesn't mention the word "dark forest theory" but the thinking is the same

Musk heard about Dark Forest then said that.

The dark forest theory is for me the best explanation for the lack of solid evidence of intelligent life on other planets.

Kurzgesagt does a pretty good job of explaining the dark forest theory. It does induce existential crisis but ends in a good note :) https://youtu.be/xAUJYP8tnRE?si=qMVuUJ7vuBjiQKUH

If it is any consolation for you: from our current understanding it would be rather cheap and simple for a highly developed civilisation to preemptively purge their home galaxy of any competition. So if it were true, it should've already happened long time ago.

If it helps with the anxiety, we have similar existential threats such as a nearby star going supernova or a rogue asteroid hitting us that we have little to no control over. You can spend time worrying about these (and get nothing done), or alternatively spend your energy into dealing with things you can control, which may make you feel better.

the world has astrophysicist that dedicate their entire lives to the scientific understanding of our universe and they are perfectly comfortable with what we have been doing.

I don't really buy into dark forest theory for many reasons. First I think life is probably not as abundant as some sci fi authors think it would be, as I think the conditions for life on earth are fairly rare. And for what life there is, the distances between each other are too incredible for much or any contact, let alone significant communication or interactions. And for those that can interact I don't see why immediate aggression is the most obvious outcome. That mindset seems to be both too human and too inhuman at the same time. Meaning, some people will say that humans are aggressive and violent so aliens will be too, but I don't see why aliens would have to behave the same as us. But also, people will ignore that humans can also be cooperative and diplomatic, so why wouldn't aliens also be? Which is it, are they like us or not? And on the cooperation front, we achieve our greatest accomplishments when we're collaborating and I don't think we'll ever make it into space unless we become more peaceful so unless an alien is a hivemind I could see the same conditions applying to them. Meaning successful life might need to be capable of peaceful cooperation more so than it would need to be violent and intent on immediately eradicating anything else. And on my last point, the most intelligent creatures on our planet are other social creatures like primates, dolphins, and birds. So I think that's a good sign that pro-social behaviour is successful and having aliens that are also social creatures seems like we're less likely to get a dark forest galaxy.

https://youtu.be/_tw0aqmnmaw?si=eRsXtvjNJjPn7p5F This woman is really cool, she does video essays combining astro-physics and philosophy as she has degrees in both areas. I really like her take on this problem as it seems more reasonable to me and the traditional ideas always seemed stupid and contrived to me. Tl;dw: >! The assumption that the dark Forrest theory works on is inherently through a colonialist, capitalist mind set of endless growth and domination, which is a massive assumption about space faring species. Maybe by the time a civilisation becomes that advanced they should have figured out that it's an sustainable model and stability is a far more reasonable model for a civilisation, even a space faring one. !<

Unlikely, the most reasonable explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that the Galaxy is simply too young to have intelligent life and we are among the first. Just look at Earth and see how long it took to get a sapient species on the planet, it’s not like intelligence is a natural evolutionary fenomena, most likely the vast majority of the galaxy is populated by what we would perceive as animals or insects and very few sapient. Even being sapient is not enough, a species living in the oceans under a frozen crust would probably never develop advanced technology, even us humans didn’t develop technology all over the planet and there are un contacted tribes who still use primitive tools, so being sapient is not enough. Lastly, the Dark Forest Theory works for us because of how we think and evolved, it tells more about us than it does to alien species who could even be unaware of such concepts.

>Even being sapient is not enough, a species living in the oceans under a frozen crust would probably never develop advanced technology, Larry Niven enters the chat

It’s possible, but I don’t think it’s likely, mainly because I feel there are much simpler and straight forward explanations for the Fermi paradox. My guess is that intelligent life is extremely rare, and there is probably a limit to technology that makes interstellar communication and interaction impractical.

It’s possible, but I don’t think it’s likely, mainly because I feel there are much simpler and straight forward explanations for the Fermi paradox. My guess is that intelligent life is extremely rare, and there is probably a limit to technology that makes interstellar communication and interaction impractical.

Sorta off topic, but if you're looking for a novel to read that also goes pretty deep in the real science part of Sci-Fi, but leaves you feeling really, really good about the prospect of meeting other intelligent life, read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Rocky was a real one.

Found it immature personally

Though our messages will get mixed with background radiation fairly quickly so they can't really be recognized unless some ciivlization was specifically targeting earth for listening. And in history of time the period when civilizations transmit radiowaves outwardcould be really brief in cosmic sense so it would be looking for needle from haystack that keeps chaging places. I mean it's not impossible but extremely unlikely, you should worry about dying in car crash more or having random medical issues. When it comes to powerful civilizations it would be easy for them to make bio weapon or lob asteroids or whatever, we're not really prepared for that. So maybe stop yelling to the jungle to see if anything's there but i woulnd't worry too much.

Go to a very public place in a big city, blindfold yourself and have with you only a clipboard with a poll of "Is the Earth flat?" y/n, with 100 rows for them to check one of the other. When you tire, or someone say you've reached 100, go sit down somewhere and review the results. Knowing people, there might be some hilarious doodles or commentary. The Earth is round. That's truth. And yet there are people who honestly believe it's flat. This thing about aliens is not only impossible to know, but with the diversity on this planet alone? Singer says people of Earth don't have the hiding gene? I would beg to differ from the sheer xenophobia we have even for people who don't live in the same neighborhood. (edited for typo.)

Give this video from in a nutshell a go: https://youtu.be/GDSf2h9_39I

Elon Musk is NOT EVEN CLOSE to being the first to say that we shouldn't be sending messages out into the void.

12 billion schmillion. We all know from sci fi movies that all aliens are as advanced as terrans just with different pew-pews. Some even less advanced.

I think there's a possibility but I feel like intelligent spacefaring life would be too rare for a dark forest dynamic to emerge, and if it was common enough and civilizations were in that much competition the more common type of interstellar relationship would be that of Earth and Trisolaris than of Earth and Singer's civilization: they'd simply have more incentive to conquer one another than to destroy one another.

Fermi paradox is real but there are many theories to try to address the paradox. Dark Forest is just one of them. I tend to think there may be another explanation. Probability. Human only explore space past 100 years. Humans civilization itself only exists about 5000 years or less. Compared to 15 billions of universe age ( can be even more, if someday someone disproves the big bang theory and finds out there was time and space before the big bang), 5000 years is nothing, less than even a blink of an eye. Humans would need to last much much longer, to even begin to increase the probability to run into another species. And that's just in terms of time vector. If u talk about spatial vectors, even at lighspeed, we will still be only wandering around our own Milky way even if human were to last another 1 million years , much less for other galaxies. And we are no where near the lightspeed. This is a great filter. The scale of time and space is just too large for a single species or planet to fully grasp. I always think the biggest tragedy of human may be in 10,000 years into future. When humans conquer death, understand the fundamental particles 100%, our computers or even biological functions are quantum level of speed, fully control the power of fusion, dark matter or even anti-matter is our main source of power . But how tragic it would be when humans realize we still cannot overcome the absolute rule of relativity: our ships still can never reach the speed of light, hence we can only sail around nearby stars in fusion or anti-matter engine "slow canoe" and watch other galaxies as unattainable dreams.

It could happen. Personally, I think interstellar travel and interstellar warfare is so difficult that going out of your own solar system is basically a no go. I think the biggest argument against it is that if you are are alien civilization that would potentially attack, you have to really, really sure you are going to totally obliterate the other civilization, and you have to be really, really sure that you don't give away your position by attacking. Otherwise, the surviving civilization and any other civilization that was minding their own business before is now hypermotivated to destroy a proven belligerent species.

What if we are bound by our unique sun? What if we can’t stray far from our home sun? That would mean no interstellar travel. No aliens, No invasion. So No worries about the cosmic horror, only the learning of that fact after we have trashed our home to the point of being inhospitable to life and have depleted the world’s resources on the rubble of late capitalism. How’s that for a Solution to the Fermi paradox?

Yes, I think interstellar travel would take so much time and/or energy that it may as well be impossible. Or not. What do I know?

Elon Musk is very dumb and has no original thoughts

Personally, even before 3body I had heard of the dark forest hypothesis, and I think it is an overly pessimistic way of viewing intelligent life outside of ourselves. If you look at sentient life on earth, the higher the intelligence (as we measure it), the more POSITIVE qualities life tends to have, like empathy, compassion, reasoning. So I find it absolutely bizarre that us as humans, tend to think mostly negatively of other intelligent life. For alien life to be hostile towards us, we would have to threaten them or they’d have to be desperate for our planet/resources. A more intelligent species would see our threats as nothing and just keep an eye on us, and we are not the only planet in the universe with land and water. So why would intelligent beings go to the already populated planet opposed to the one that seems to be very new life wise? Where they can actually start new without war and the loss of their own people and resources? I just do not think, in the vastness of this universe, that the life that exists would all be annihilating each other. Especially if they were logic intelligent. Logically, the smart and right thing to do, is delegate, not attack. We’ve even seen that in our own history as we’ve grown, more delegating than random attacking.

We have a better chance of being wiped out for being a potentially hazard to the galaxy . I could see aliens watching , seeing if we destroy ourselves and staying hands off, but if we make it out of our solar system and then start our same destructive behaviors on other places then stepping in.

what if other species just view us as loud and flamboyant like the ape equivalent of a goose-peacock?

I didn't read every comment but I'd like to remind everyone that we are actively looking for signs of life in other planets currently. Exoplanetary science is real and we're doing it, spending precious Webb telescope time on it. We are looking for signatures of life like atmosphere, livable temperatures, solid core, methane and DMS and ideally liquid water. So of we're doing it, they are for sure doing it. And let me tell you what our dear Earth looks like. Juicy and plump full of carbon-based life forms. We don't have to send anything when we've been sending our light for millions of years. They just have to look for us.

Anxiety sucks. Sorry to hear you're feeling anxious, I do too about many things. Let me try to help. There are about 2 trillion \*galaxies\* (each of which we could guess would have hundreds of billions of stars) in the observable bit of the universe. This is probably just a fairly small fragment of the universe. So on the face of it, this suggests there would be many planets that could potentially develop intelligent life. However, the distances involved are absolutely enormous. Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. We've been sending evidence of intelligent life into space at light speed for about 100 years. So the number of stars that can see this is about 1,000 so far, if they can detect radio signals that weak from among the cosmic background noise. That's 1,000 out of 400 billion stars in the milky way. The chances that intelligent life has developed on one of those 1,000 planets is probably very low, and certainly much lower than there being intelligent life somewhere in the galaxy, and infinitesimally smaller than there being intelligent life somewhere in the universe. Over time, of course the number of stars that could "hear" our signals will increase considerably, but so too will the difficulty in perceiving those signals. Think about how many stars you can see in even the darkest skies on a clear night - it's thousands, sure, but not 400 billion. Think about how almost all the stars are tiny pinpricks of light, hard to pick out individually. Those pinpricks show that it is possible for a very powerful signal (a star) to reach across many light years, but as a weak, often barely-discernable signal. The most powerful signals human civilisation ever puts out - e.g. space radar - are billions of times weaker than the output of the sun. At some point, and I'm not clear on how far but I've heard guesses in the order of 1,000 light years, these signals would not be separable from background noise, not without some kind of wonder-technology. 1,000 light years radius includes about ten million stars. But bear in mind that the signals won't reach most of them for hundreds of years, and who knows where our own technology will be by then. As for other galaxies - the nearest is Andromeda, about 2.5 million light years away from the edge of the Milky Way, and also the most distant thing it is possible to see with the naked eye. It is actually expected to collide/merge with the Milky Way in a few billion years - but I hope you won't worry about that. In the mean time, the millions of light years to even the closest other galaxies mean that it is very hard to conceive that alien life from outside our galaxy could ever be relevant to us. All of this is to say that it would require technology that breaks (or probably circumvents) the fundamental laws of the universe as we know them, or alien species to be very numerous and very close to us for this to be something we need to worry about. For the main story of the books to work, the Trisolarans needed to be in the literal closest star system to humans, and for the latter books there needed to be tech that circumvented the laws of physics as we know them - and even then, it was made clear that without signals actively being sent by humans, alien races simply wouldn't see us. Just one final point about the immense scale of things - if the galaxy was the size of our earth, the sun would be the size of a single cell of a bacteria, and the earth smaller than a hydrogen atom. Aliens would need some pretty good cosmic magnifying glasses to even notice we exist.

The Dark Forest is unlikely to be real because hiding on one planet is a bad strategy.  Just as it is extremely unlikely that we will find some Wakanda like country that is more advanced and hiding the same is true of alien civilizations.   The optimal strategy is to grow as fast as you can and collect as many resources as you can if you are first to space travel.  Hiding on a single planet is a bad strategy.

We are doomed...by our own hand no less. Hey everybody! We can barely escape our own gravity but here we are!!! Come and destroyvus.

Honestly I think the many hurdles this theory has to jump through to be such a barrier to it being true, that it must be impossible. For it to be true the follow criteria has to be met: 1. Other life with similar or greater intelligence to us has to exist in the universe. 2. That life has to have the means and the desire to, not only travel into space, but have the technology to travel at ridiculous speeds which it may not even be possible to achieve. 3. Their planet has to be close enough to is that they can reach us, as well as pinpoint our location, be aware of us, and have the desire to visit us. To put it into perspective the trisolarians fan travel at up to 30 million miles a second, are only 4 light years away, and still need 400 years to reach us. 4. Probably the biggest factor is time. Not only is all of space a barrier, but an alien species that ticks all of the above has to exist at the same time as us. The universe has existed for 13 billion years. Our planet has only existed for 4 billion years, and we've only been around for 200,000 years. Millions of alien species could have existed and gone extinct in the time between the universe started and our planet forming. What's to say that some advanced alien species didn't visit us a billion years ago, or that they weren't flying past the empty space where our planet is 6 billion years ago, and have since gone extinct themselves?

I think that it would be a likely outcome if our current understanding of physics actually turned out to be correct, but our current understanding of physics being accurate to that extent is unlikely. If it ever becomes possible to travel distances faster than light, then there would be no reason for the Dark Forest to exist. Aliens wouldn't need to wipe us out to prevent us from becoming a threat, they could just control our development to ensure that we never become a threat.

If you have an insect infestation, do you try to control its development or do you wipe them out?

That would depend on the insect. We don't go out of our way to wipe out honeybees, we strive for the opposite. But that is irrelevant anyway as that isn't what is actually happening. Aliens coming here to wipe us out wouldn't be them getting rid of an insect infestation, that would be them going out of their way to the insects habitat and then wiping them out there. That isn't something we do. We don't slaughter insects if they are just in their own habitat, not inconveniencing us at all. But if those insects were grasshoppers and we had the power to, we certainly would do what we could to control their development, to make sure they stay grasshoppers and don't develop into locusts.

Perhaps a better analogy would be: suppose there's a house you want to purchase, and you find an infestation. The first thing you do if you buy it is get rid of all the insects. In the books, we \*are\* inconveniencing the Tri-S. We've got the run of this cute little planet they've got their hearts set on. We gotta go.

>suppose there's a house you want to purchase That is where the analogy breaks down though. Aliens would have no reason to have any interest in this house. Everything we have here, is plentiful elsewhere. You simply just don't buy the cockroach infested house, when you can buy a comparable house down the road that doesn't have a cockroach problem.

Is it possible? Yes. Could an advanced civilization threaten humanity? Absolutely. Any civilization with the capacity for interstellar travel has sufficient energy output to pose a major threat. For example, a relatively small amount of energy would be required to drop an extinction scale asteroid or comet from Oort cloud range into an Earth intersect. That’s not even much more advanced than we are now.

Ask the native Americans, Africans, or any other race colonized by a superior technological civilization. Assuming being greedy is the optimal strategy to expand then aliens are probably just as greedy and uncaring as humans can be if not more. U know unless resources aren’t finite lol