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Liu Cixin's The Dark Forest, the second book in his 3-body problem trilogy, posits a similar philosophy: resources are limited so civilizations annihilate other
by putlake 11y ago
Liu Cixin's The Dark Forest, the second book in his 3-body problem trilogy, posits a similar philosophy: resources are limited so civilizations annihilate other civilizations. So if an alien civilization knew about earthlings, they will destroy earth ASAP if they are capable, lest the earthlings come after their resources.
This is also why some people believe we should not try to make contact with intelligent alien life. They believe broadcasting our location is dangerous.
- skybrian 11y agoExcept that we have a very big moat. I liked David Brin's take on this in Existence, where anything sent such a long way is likely to resemble a virus.
- vectorjohn 11y agoIt just doesn't make any sense. Resources are limited, sure, but they're not scarce. In fact, they might not be limited even. If something can afford to come to Earth, they can afford to get unlimited resources from anywhere. Unless you're positing it's from one of our nearest stars and then just happen to be coming to Earth as a last ditch effort or something. I mean, scenarios can be imagined where an alien would want to destroy life on Earth, but they seem far fetched.