6 ms·

What makes the dark forest hypothesis not so conving to me is that it has the presupposition that it is indeed possible to hide. An advanced civilization close

What makes the dark forest hypothesis not so conving to me is that it has the presupposition that it is indeed possible to hide. An advanced civilization close to us that is surveying the sky for signs of life would have very likely identified earth as a very promissing candidate due to the presence of methane and oxygen in its atmosphere at the same time. So our star system would have long been under surveillance, before we had the chance to develop a technology that would reliable disguise our presence. If such a technology is possible at all, only the very first advanced civilization had the ability to hide from all others. And only if they were able to develop it before any other civilization had been able to track them. To some extent it might nevertheless be a reasonable strategy to keep as quiet as possible. But this strategy is less and less useful for the latecomers. If they were already tracked by a multitude of other advanced civilization they would hardly benefit from keeping quiet. Unless they (wrongly) think that they are an early advanced civilization. However, if a couple of these civilizations start to openly seek contact to others, what can the hidden ones do? If a hidden civilization starts to fight one of these latecomers, it would need to leave its cover and make itself known to all other civilizations in its vicinity. If it follows the dark forst hypothesis, it could only do so, when it is sure that it is the only dangerous civilization in its forest. This leaves me with the following alternatives: - The forest is dark, because there is only one civilization out there that is very capable in hiding and has the ability to exterminate any latecomer efficiently and without traces. - The forest appears dark, because it is thinly populated and we just have not looked enough for the others. - We are the only ones in our cosmic vicinity.

jerf 5y ago
I agree with your logic but would add one more thing to it: There is no compelling reason to wait until a planet conclusively proves it has intelligence on it to nuke it into oblivion with a kinetic kill projectile. You don't really know how long it will take for an intelligent species that could compete with you to arise. Humans have moved pretty quickly on cosmological scales, there's no particular reason to believe we're moving at the max speed and a lot of reason to think otherwise. Compared to the amount of energy you can obtain over cosmological time periods, the expenditure of a kinetic kill projectile is nothing. In fact, if you don't mind waiting a bit, it can be almost trivial. All you have to do is basically get a factory to the target system; it can use local resources to build a kinetic kill projectile efficiently out of a big, local hunks of rock and local hydrogen. Launching near-light-speed projectiles from lightyears away is the emergency "oh crap! They're smart already!" option. Killing a planet that only has dinosaurs on it is dead easy for these hypothetical intelligences and there's little reason to believe they wouldn't. So I think the dark forest hypothesis falls down on the fact that not only has Earth been broadcasting loud and clear to the stars that it has life on it ever since the Great Oxygenation Catastrophe, which was somewhere around 2 to 2.5 billion years ago, the Dark Forest theory implies that any surrounding intelligence that arose and was capable of seeing Earth on that time frame should have hit it. That has not happened. And 2.5 billion years is actually significant even on cosmological time scales. (Also, no, the dinosaur asteroid or other events were not kill projectiles. If an alien intelligence is going to kill-projectile Earth there's no compelling reason to just sort of inconvenience life... it's going to eliminate it. Hypothesizing a race capable of launching projectiles but being too stupid to realize it wouldn't do the job is too precise a level of incompetence to believe in. As they say, there's no kill like overkill.) Fun science fiction premise... not a solution to the Fermi paradox.
- jeremyjh 5y ago
  How far away from earth is it still possible to detect oxygen and/or methane levels in the atmosphere?
  - jamiek88 5y ago
    Light years with the right telescope. It’s just spectroscopy.
    - jeremyjh 5y ago
      Yes but only a tiny fraction of our sun's light would pass through earth's atmosphere on its way out of the solar system, I didn't think spectroscopy would be possible very far away.
  - david-gpu 5y ago
    If I was a technologically advanced civilization, I would send robotic Von Neumann probes around the galaxy to keep tabs on things at close proximity. If I was also murderous, I would have programmed the probes to destroy any signs of life. So, the fact that we are still alive after broadcasting the presence of life through out atmosphere for the last couple billion years is quite reassuring.
    - pharke 5y ago
      Wouldn't that be the most difficult and expensive way to simply monitor for life or technosignatures? Compare that to simply (relatively speaking) building massive space based optical and radio observatories that can observe every visible star. The light reaching you has already made the trip, you just have to collect it. If you were murderous, you could launch an attack from your home system rather than waiting for the probes to spread from system to system. Granted there could be some technical limitations that prevent you from observing certain systems but that pool will be much smaller than an entire galaxy of stars. Also, don't forget that a Von Neumann probe is at a disadvantage when it arrives in a system since you want to send the minimum number of probes to each star and then have them replicate on arrival. If your probe accidentally shows up in a system that contains an advanced civilization capable of detecting and capturing it then you've given away the fact of your existence and your intent along with all the information that can be gained by studying the probe.
inlikealamb 5y ago
>However, if a couple of these civilizations start to openly seek contact to others, what can the hidden ones do? Stay hidden or destroy anyone close enough to put you at risk along with themselves. This is a spoiler, but IIRC from the books the ultimate safety net was to make your solar system not only invisible... but impenetrable in either direction but essentially trapping yourself in a black hole... thus removing yourself from the equation and hopefully satiating anyone watching. The time scales and distances involved meant that you weren't really perceived as a threat until you approached the ability to reach light speed, which made you stick out enough to be noticed in far corners of the universe. We broadcast radio, but it's not loud or far-reaching enough to be noticed by the far-out civilization destroying overlords. It was loud enough for a different nearby civilization to come destroy us in an attempt to save themselves from being destroyed along with us. Of course, when applied in reality who the hell knows.
sangnoir 5y ago
> An advanced civilization close to us that is surveying the sky for signs of life would have very likely identified earth as a very promissing candidate due to the presence of methane and oxygen in its atmosphere at the same time. Signs of carbon-based life - who is to say all forms of life are carbon-based? The universe is vast, what are the odds of aliens being in our vicinity and time (light cone) stumbling upon our galaxy or star?
- joshuahedlund 5y ago
  > Signs of carbon-based life - who is to say all forms of life are carbon-based? There's a limited number of elements, and their abundance in the universe decreases rapidly beyond the first few. Carbon is by far the most advantageous for life due to its vast ability to form complex molecules. Silicon might be a distant second. If there is other life in the universe, and if there's nothing special about us, it might not all be carbon-based, but it's extremely likely that a large amount of it will be.

jerf 5y ago

I agree with your logic but would add one more thing to it: There is no compelling reason to wait until a planet conclusively proves it has intelligence on it to nuke it into oblivion with a kinetic kill projectile. You don't really know how long it will take for an intelligent species that could compete with you to arise. Humans have moved pretty quickly on cosmological scales, there's no particular reason to believe we're moving at the max speed and a lot of reason to think otherwise. Compared to the amount of energy you can obtain over cosmological time periods, the expenditure of a kinetic kill projectile is nothing. In fact, if you don't mind waiting a bit, it can be almost trivial. All you have to do is basically get a factory to the target system; it can use local resources to build a kinetic kill projectile efficiently out of a big, local hunks of rock and local hydrogen. Launching near-light-speed projectiles from lightyears away is the emergency "oh crap! They're smart already!" option. Killing a planet that only has dinosaurs on it is dead easy for these hypothetical intelligences and there's little reason to believe they wouldn't. So I think the dark forest hypothesis falls down on the fact that not only has Earth been broadcasting loud and clear to the stars that it has life on it ever since the Great Oxygenation Catastrophe, which was somewhere around 2 to 2.5 billion years ago, the Dark Forest theory implies that any surrounding intelligence that arose and was capable of seeing Earth on that time frame should have hit it. That has not happened. And 2.5 billion years is actually significant even on cosmological time scales. (Also, no, the dinosaur asteroid or other events were not kill projectiles. If an alien intelligence is going to kill-projectile Earth there's no compelling reason to just sort of inconvenience life... it's going to eliminate it. Hypothesizing a race capable of launching projectiles but being too stupid to realize it wouldn't do the job is too precise a level of incompetence to believe in. As they say, there's no kill like overkill.) Fun science fiction premise... not a solution to the Fermi paradox.

jeremyjh 5y ago
How far away from earth is it still possible to detect oxygen and/or methane levels in the atmosphere?
- jamiek88 5y ago
  Light years with the right telescope. It’s just spectroscopy.
  - jeremyjh 5y ago
    Yes but only a tiny fraction of our sun's light would pass through earth's atmosphere on its way out of the solar system, I didn't think spectroscopy would be possible very far away.
- david-gpu 5y ago
  If I was a technologically advanced civilization, I would send robotic Von Neumann probes around the galaxy to keep tabs on things at close proximity. If I was also murderous, I would have programmed the probes to destroy any signs of life. So, the fact that we are still alive after broadcasting the presence of life through out atmosphere for the last couple billion years is quite reassuring.
  - pharke 5y ago
    Wouldn't that be the most difficult and expensive way to simply monitor for life or technosignatures? Compare that to simply (relatively speaking) building massive space based optical and radio observatories that can observe every visible star. The light reaching you has already made the trip, you just have to collect it. If you were murderous, you could launch an attack from your home system rather than waiting for the probes to spread from system to system. Granted there could be some technical limitations that prevent you from observing certain systems but that pool will be much smaller than an entire galaxy of stars. Also, don't forget that a Von Neumann probe is at a disadvantage when it arrives in a system since you want to send the minimum number of probes to each star and then have them replicate on arrival. If your probe accidentally shows up in a system that contains an advanced civilization capable of detecting and capturing it then you've given away the fact of your existence and your intent along with all the information that can be gained by studying the probe.

inlikealamb 5y ago

>However, if a couple of these civilizations start to openly seek contact to others, what can the hidden ones do? Stay hidden or destroy anyone close enough to put you at risk along with themselves. This is a spoiler, but IIRC from the books the ultimate safety net was to make your solar system not only invisible... but impenetrable in either direction but essentially trapping yourself in a black hole... thus removing yourself from the equation and hopefully satiating anyone watching. The time scales and distances involved meant that you weren't really perceived as a threat until you approached the ability to reach light speed, which made you stick out enough to be noticed in far corners of the universe. We broadcast radio, but it's not loud or far-reaching enough to be noticed by the far-out civilization destroying overlords. It was loud enough for a different nearby civilization to come destroy us in an attempt to save themselves from being destroyed along with us. Of course, when applied in reality who the hell knows.

sangnoir 5y ago

> An advanced civilization close to us that is surveying the sky for signs of life would have very likely identified earth as a very promissing candidate due to the presence of methane and oxygen in its atmosphere at the same time. Signs of carbon-based life - who is to say all forms of life are carbon-based? The universe is vast, what are the odds of aliens being in our vicinity and time (light cone) stumbling upon our galaxy or star?

joshuahedlund 5y ago
> Signs of carbon-based life - who is to say all forms of life are carbon-based? There's a limited number of elements, and their abundance in the universe decreases rapidly beyond the first few. Carbon is by far the most advantageous for life due to its vast ability to form complex molecules. Silicon might be a distant second. If there is other life in the universe, and if there's nothing special about us, it might not all be carbon-based, but it's extremely likely that a large amount of it will be.