4 ms·

Let's say we send 10,000 probes out, each weighing 1,000kg at 10% the speed of light out into the Milky Way. We would do this with the sole intention of destroy

by vecter 4y ago

Let's say we send 10,000 probes out, each weighing 1,000kg at 10% the speed of light out into the Milky Way. We would do this with the sole intention of destroying an entire planet once we find any hint of even bacterial life? There isn't enough time to phone home to decide what to do with this information, so the probe would have to decide for itself whether or not to commit immediate genocide. How could any government possibly convince their citizens that this is the best use of trillions of tax dollars (if not quadrillions of dollars), not to mention how can we create a 1,000kg device that can categorically annihilate an entire planet? If the Dark Forest theory is indeed true, why haven't we seen evidence of such galactic levels of destruction? The Milky Way has been around for over 10 billion years. Surely by then there must've been at least one civilization advanced enough to do this in that time. Yet we see no evidence for this whatsoever. The more you spell this out, the more absurd it becomes from any practical perspective.

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sophacles 4y ago
I find it amusing that your assertions about what aliens may or may not do completely ignores the fact that the one intelligent species we can observe does all the things you claim no species would ever do. Really drives home the point you are making with your satirical take.
- vecter 4y ago
  I don't think that's true at all. Humans used to invade foreign lands and decimate the native population, but we did that in pursuit of resources, not as the primary goal (when Columbus sailed off from England, he wasn't sent out with the dictum of "go find other intelligent species and annihilate them"). Furthermore, that is clearly not the case anymore in modern times. As I've stated, we have the technology and military might to wipe many nations off the face of the Earth, yet we choose not to. Our destruction of the environment is different also. Cutting down the Amazon is a side-effect of our pursuit of natural resource. We do not go there with the intention of killing all of the species there. That is just an unfortunate consequence of our hunt for resources. The Dark Forest is entirely different. The entire thesis of that theory is an advanced civilization would have the singular goal of sterilizing all other life in the galaxy as the goal in and of itself. There is simply nothing analogous to that in human history.
  - sophacles 4y ago
    Lets see, in the last 2 centuries humans have: Devoted years worth of total resource production to kill each other by the millions over a few square miles of resource poor land. That was such a popular hit that we threw a sequel that was even more costly. As a result of the sequel we had several major empires devote trillions of dollars to making sure that we could annihilate our own species just in case one of the others also tried to annihilate the species first. This caused the collapse of at least one empire. People regularly call for the use of these annihilation weapons and it's sheer dumb luck that it hasn't happened yet. Speaking of annihilation - there have been several large scale attempts at exterminating all humans that fit xyz criteria in the last century. Mostly these are not based on anything other than "exists with DNA slightly different than our own". It seems likely that "exists with way different DNA" and even "exists with a different building block than DNA" could be used as criteria. If you don't limit yourself to intelligent species, humans have carried out large scale attempts at exterminating several native species. Some I'm aware of in the last couple centuries: Wolf eradication programs paying bounties per dead wolf. Same for the american bison. (this one is special because it was also intentionally an attempt to genocide native folks by starvation). The "smash sparrow" campaign in china - kill all the sparrows because of a misunderstanding of what food they eat. I guess I could buy your premise that humans wouldn't participate in the dark forest for logical reasons is semi-believable IFF we ignore the things humans actually do.
    - vecter 4y ago
      As I stated, people tried to annihilate each other in pre-modern times. In modern times, we literally try to do exactly the opposite, and we go so far as to pass to laws to prevent this even against countries that stand no chance against us whatsoever. Give me an example of modern times and now we're talking. All of the examples you said are so limited in scale to what the Dark Forest actually requires: complete sterilization of all life in the galaxy. To go from "killing bison" to exterminating all forms of life is a gargantuan leap.

by vecter 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

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sophacles 4y ago

I find it amusing that your assertions about what aliens may or may not do completely ignores the fact that the one intelligent species we can observe does all the things you claim no species would ever do. Really drives home the point you are making with your satirical take.

vecter 4y ago
I don't think that's true at all. Humans used to invade foreign lands and decimate the native population, but we did that in pursuit of resources, not as the primary goal (when Columbus sailed off from England, he wasn't sent out with the dictum of "go find other intelligent species and annihilate them"). Furthermore, that is clearly not the case anymore in modern times. As I've stated, we have the technology and military might to wipe many nations off the face of the Earth, yet we choose not to. Our destruction of the environment is different also. Cutting down the Amazon is a side-effect of our pursuit of natural resource. We do not go there with the intention of killing all of the species there. That is just an unfortunate consequence of our hunt for resources. The Dark Forest is entirely different. The entire thesis of that theory is an advanced civilization would have the singular goal of sterilizing all other life in the galaxy as the goal in and of itself. There is simply nothing analogous to that in human history.
- sophacles 4y ago
  Lets see, in the last 2 centuries humans have: Devoted years worth of total resource production to kill each other by the millions over a few square miles of resource poor land. That was such a popular hit that we threw a sequel that was even more costly. As a result of the sequel we had several major empires devote trillions of dollars to making sure that we could annihilate our own species just in case one of the others also tried to annihilate the species first. This caused the collapse of at least one empire. People regularly call for the use of these annihilation weapons and it's sheer dumb luck that it hasn't happened yet. Speaking of annihilation - there have been several large scale attempts at exterminating all humans that fit xyz criteria in the last century. Mostly these are not based on anything other than "exists with DNA slightly different than our own". It seems likely that "exists with way different DNA" and even "exists with a different building block than DNA" could be used as criteria. If you don't limit yourself to intelligent species, humans have carried out large scale attempts at exterminating several native species. Some I'm aware of in the last couple centuries: Wolf eradication programs paying bounties per dead wolf. Same for the american bison. (this one is special because it was also intentionally an attempt to genocide native folks by starvation). The "smash sparrow" campaign in china - kill all the sparrows because of a misunderstanding of what food they eat. I guess I could buy your premise that humans wouldn't participate in the dark forest for logical reasons is semi-believable IFF we ignore the things humans actually do.
  - vecter 4y ago
    As I stated, people tried to annihilate each other in pre-modern times. In modern times, we literally try to do exactly the opposite, and we go so far as to pass to laws to prevent this even against countries that stand no chance against us whatsoever. Give me an example of modern times and now we're talking. All of the examples you said are so limited in scale to what the Dark Forest actually requires: complete sterilization of all life in the galaxy. To go from "killing bison" to exterminating all forms of life is a gargantuan leap.