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>Dark Forest Dark Forest makes no sense. If you are an intelligence capable of faster-than-light interstellar travel, capable of snuffing out stars, capable o

>Dark Forest Dark Forest makes no sense. If you are an intelligence capable of faster-than-light interstellar travel, capable of snuffing out stars, capable of collapsing dimensions-- you don't care about anyone else. Nobody's going to compete with you for resources. Scarcity no longer exists. All you care about is energy and you have mastered it. Energy is practically infinite to you. You can sit off to the side of black holes or neutron stars harvesting energy from their relativistic jets. Finding or controlling a consistent supply of physical matter, least of all individual stars and planets, is no longer relevant to you. You can just pluck individual hydrogen atoms out of the interstellar void and rearrange them using your sources of near-infinite energy to transform them into million-kilometer-wide cubes of whatever you want. If someone makes it to your level of mastery of the cosmos, you would just share the locations of any of the other several hundred billion sources of free and limitless energy. You ain't killing a star because an inhabitant of one of its planets might take your planet over. You haven't needed to live on planets for billions of years. You can construct atomically-perfect structures of arbitrary size and composition out of what we perceive to be the nothingness of space. You don't need dirt.

Tronno 3y ago
Humans kill wasps even though we landed on the moon.
- SllX 3y ago
  Wasps and humans live different lives inside a closed ecosystem with finite resources and energy. The hypothetical civilization the parent is describing is further away from us technologically than we are from wasps.
  - blacksmith_tb 3y ago
    I think real problem with the Dark Forest hypothesis is that it assumes alien civilizations at a very high level of technical development would somehow have not also made any sort of moral or ethical progress. Even humans, in a few thousand years have gone from winner-take-all, kill 'em all, to universal human rights, rules of war, etc. (sure, we aren't doing a perfect job, but we clearly have made some progress - by the time we're sending ships to other stars, I'd like to think we'll be farther along yet).
sebzim4500 3y ago
>Scarcity no longer exists. All you care about is energy and you have mastered it. Energy is practically infinite to you. I'm not convinced. There is a big difference between infinite and merely very large. I think the demand for energy will grow with the supply, as it has for us.
- snakeyjake 3y ago
  >I think the demand for energy will grow with the supply, as it has for us. I think if we apply what is happening on Earth that is not going to be true. It seems as though per-capita energy consumption increases to a certain point, and then stops. In the US it peaked in the 1970s and has fallen such that even with the intervening population increases US energy demand has barely increased. Depending on who is counting energy consumption (this is all sources of energy not just utility electricity) either peaked or plateaued in 2017-2018. In the US, EU, and Japan energy consumption is decreasing (and it is decreasing faster than population loss in Japan). There are a number of reasons for this but mostly it's efficiency improvements-- which still count! I think there is only so much consumption that a TYPICAL human being can do. Only so much heating and cooling, only so much travel, only so many hot showers. Everyone gets to that point, and then stops. They don't reach that level and start setting up tesla coils for funsies. Once they reach that apex, efficiency improvements start to decrease overall consumption. If population predictions pan out and a shift to more efficient energy production and storage techniques continue, I'm willing to bet that in a century the world will be using less energy than it is today. Same thing for hyper-dimensional interstellar megagods. There are only so many 100km x 100km x 100km cubes of atomically-pure gold one needs in their collection.
  - midasuni 3y ago
    US per capita consumption doesn’t count imported foods though. If it costs 1MWh to build a dohicky in China and that’s imported into the US, you don’t add 1MWh to US consumption (and remove it from China)
  - pbh101 3y ago
    Look at what people make in MineCraft. If people had the ability to do that in real worlds, they would. In addition to the effect you describe, I think energy consumption would grow with ergonomics/facility of use.
Tepix 3y ago
> If someone makes it to your level of mastery of the cosmos, you would just share the locations of any of the other several hundred billion sources of free and limitless energy. I'm not sure that's true. Evolution is competitive. An advanced race may decide to remove potential competitors before they become a threat.
Shaanie 3y ago
That's a lot of assumptions which may or may not be true, however likely they may seem. There's no telling how another life form may reason, hell it might not even reason at all - perhaps it's some kind of space fungi or virus which traverses space to inhabit planets capable of supporting life. Not that I think the dark forest theory is likely, but I wouldn't say it makes no sense.
CodeAndCuffs 3y ago
Plenty of people kill for no reason. I wouldn't rule out the idea of a non human lifeform doing the same. I'm not saying I agree with the dark forest. I just wanted to assert that the dark forest idea isn't limited to "we have something they want". It could also include. "They're jerks"
TeMPOraL 3y ago
> If you are an intelligence capable of faster-than-light interstellar travel, capable of snuffing out stars, capable of collapsing dimensions-- you don't care about anyone else. Nobody's going to compete with you for resources. Except other intelligences at similar level to you. And, you first need to get there. It's worth re-reading the core axiom of the Dark Forest theory, as given in the books. They included communication delay (light lag) and unpredictably rapid pace of technological advancement. The latter may or may not be true in the real world. It could be that we're on the final parts exponential-looking part of an S-curve, and everyone at our level would follow the same trajectory. Or it could be that we're riding an actual exponent. Or we may be 5 minutes from hitting singularity. In the latter scenario, a more advanced civilization has good reasons to believe the less advanced civilization may overtake them between the former learning about existence of the latter, and the latter learning about existence of the former. An immediate first strike would make sense then. > You don't need dirt. It's never about dirt. It's about having something some others may want, and not being certain they won't kill you to get it.
lamontcg 3y ago
But another being said something about your momma.
jakeogh 3y ago
Differences in knowledge should be thought about like differences in potential energy.

Tronno 3y ago

Humans kill wasps even though we landed on the moon.

SllX 3y ago
Wasps and humans live different lives inside a closed ecosystem with finite resources and energy. The hypothetical civilization the parent is describing is further away from us technologically than we are from wasps.
- blacksmith_tb 3y ago
  I think real problem with the Dark Forest hypothesis is that it assumes alien civilizations at a very high level of technical development would somehow have not also made any sort of moral or ethical progress. Even humans, in a few thousand years have gone from winner-take-all, kill 'em all, to universal human rights, rules of war, etc. (sure, we aren't doing a perfect job, but we clearly have made some progress - by the time we're sending ships to other stars, I'd like to think we'll be farther along yet).

sebzim4500 3y ago

>Scarcity no longer exists. All you care about is energy and you have mastered it. Energy is practically infinite to you. I'm not convinced. There is a big difference between infinite and merely very large. I think the demand for energy will grow with the supply, as it has for us.

snakeyjake 3y ago
>I think the demand for energy will grow with the supply, as it has for us. I think if we apply what is happening on Earth that is not going to be true. It seems as though per-capita energy consumption increases to a certain point, and then stops. In the US it peaked in the 1970s and has fallen such that even with the intervening population increases US energy demand has barely increased. Depending on who is counting energy consumption (this is all sources of energy not just utility electricity) either peaked or plateaued in 2017-2018. In the US, EU, and Japan energy consumption is decreasing (and it is decreasing faster than population loss in Japan). There are a number of reasons for this but mostly it's efficiency improvements-- which still count! I think there is only so much consumption that a TYPICAL human being can do. Only so much heating and cooling, only so much travel, only so many hot showers. Everyone gets to that point, and then stops. They don't reach that level and start setting up tesla coils for funsies. Once they reach that apex, efficiency improvements start to decrease overall consumption. If population predictions pan out and a shift to more efficient energy production and storage techniques continue, I'm willing to bet that in a century the world will be using less energy than it is today. Same thing for hyper-dimensional interstellar megagods. There are only so many 100km x 100km x 100km cubes of atomically-pure gold one needs in their collection.
- midasuni 3y ago
  US per capita consumption doesn’t count imported foods though. If it costs 1MWh to build a dohicky in China and that’s imported into the US, you don’t add 1MWh to US consumption (and remove it from China)
- pbh101 3y ago
  Look at what people make in MineCraft. If people had the ability to do that in real worlds, they would. In addition to the effect you describe, I think energy consumption would grow with ergonomics/facility of use.

Tepix 3y ago

> If someone makes it to your level of mastery of the cosmos, you would just share the locations of any of the other several hundred billion sources of free and limitless energy. I'm not sure that's true. Evolution is competitive. An advanced race may decide to remove potential competitors before they become a threat.

Shaanie 3y ago

That's a lot of assumptions which may or may not be true, however likely they may seem. There's no telling how another life form may reason, hell it might not even reason at all - perhaps it's some kind of space fungi or virus which traverses space to inhabit planets capable of supporting life. Not that I think the dark forest theory is likely, but I wouldn't say it makes no sense.

CodeAndCuffs 3y ago

Plenty of people kill for no reason. I wouldn't rule out the idea of a non human lifeform doing the same. I'm not saying I agree with the dark forest. I just wanted to assert that the dark forest idea isn't limited to "we have something they want". It could also include. "They're jerks"

TeMPOraL 3y ago

> If you are an intelligence capable of faster-than-light interstellar travel, capable of snuffing out stars, capable of collapsing dimensions-- you don't care about anyone else. Nobody's going to compete with you for resources. Except other intelligences at similar level to you. And, you first need to get there. It's worth re-reading the core axiom of the Dark Forest theory, as given in the books. They included communication delay (light lag) and unpredictably rapid pace of technological advancement. The latter may or may not be true in the real world. It could be that we're on the final parts exponential-looking part of an S-curve, and everyone at our level would follow the same trajectory. Or it could be that we're riding an actual exponent. Or we may be 5 minutes from hitting singularity. In the latter scenario, a more advanced civilization has good reasons to believe the less advanced civilization may overtake them between the former learning about existence of the latter, and the latter learning about existence of the former. An immediate first strike would make sense then. > You don't need dirt. It's never about dirt. It's about having something some others may want, and not being certain they won't kill you to get it.

lamontcg 3y ago

But another being said something about your momma.

jakeogh 3y ago

Differences in knowledge should be thought about like differences in potential energy.