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I feel like it is the duty of every intelligent species in the universe to create such monuments. Because we all have the same question. Are we alone?

m_a_g 2y ago
It's just the opposite, actually. Game theory reveals that the best thing an intelligent species can do is to hide. (The dark forest hypothesis)
- macintux 2y ago
  I imagine it depends on whether interstellar travel is practical. If intelligent species come to the conclusion that they’re forever isolated, a monument seems a rational, almost inevitable choice.
  - m_a_g 2y ago
    And how do you know you're forever isolated? There are things you don't know that you don't know. No rational species would ever build a monument IMO, and again, game theory supports this so far.
    - kolinko 2y ago
      If you have physics solved then you may be able to prove that you are isolated. As for the game theory - in practical scenarios you want to use conflict theory by shelling, because game theory is too simplistic.
  - aurareturn 2y ago
    You can build a Dyson sphere and channel the radiation of a star directly to the planet to destroy it that way.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  How can game theory tell us that hiding from a malicious civilization is a safer choice than exposing ourselves to a benevolent civilization that could rescue us from some danger impossible for us to handle?
  - m_a_g 2y ago
    My opinion is based on different theories and hypotheses, but the prevalent opinion is that there can't be a benevolent civilization in the first place. And even if there are, they would continue hiding themselves. Essentially, any alien civilization that survives in the long term is silent and hostile. But especially silent since being hostile can reveal your location.
    - monero-xmr 2y ago
      If you can achieve faster than light travel (worm holes?) and some sort of immortality (digital? consciousness quantum woo?) then maybe you transcend the worries of physical destruction…
    - underlipton 2y ago
      > but the prevalent opinion is that there can't be a benevolent civilization in the first place. You'd have to explain why. Logically, the first two civilizations to "team up" would easily handle any single civilization that challenges them. A civilization that happens to beat them would find among its attractive options a Nobunaga Gambit: taking on the vanquished foe's mission of unification (since it worked until it didn't - and the one time it didn't work, there was a terrifyingly good chance that it could have). "The Dark Forest" as an idea is inextricable from its cultural origins, a China that's rather pessimistic about inter-civilizational contact because of its recent history. That it resonates amidst a zeitgeist of global instability doesn't make it universally correct. Gene Roddenberry's competing vision might seem optimistic, but it's not naive; beneath Starfleet's cheery veneer is the Neo Princess Serenitian realpolitik of, "Peace, or else."
      - stouset 2y ago
- danmur 2y ago
  Is that what humanity is doing now?
  - m_a_g 2y ago
    So far, yes, but not intentionally. Any electromagnetic wave we emit becomes noise. We're still ants compared to what alien civilization can be theoretically. But this does not mean we'll always stay this way. I'm a supporter of making humans detectable in any way illegal.
- epidemian 2y ago
  Out of curiosity: is your statement based mainly on the Liu Cixin series? Or is there some more depth to it? If so, could you give some pointer to the more in-depth analysis of this hypothesis?
  - gcr 2y ago
    Lu Cixin invoked and expanded on an idea much older. He coined the catchiest title, but others have also thought of it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
  - adastra22 2y ago
    There is lots of work done on it in the SETI field. The dark forest theory doesn’t hold up under game theoretic analysis (hiding is not the optimal strategy, nor is predation), and is pretty resounding rejected. Not sure what the best resource would be for an outsider to delve into this field though.
- fellowmartian 2y ago
  Isaac Arthur has a video[1] explaining why this hypothesis is nonsense, including a game theoretical reason. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlhHE2VA1ic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlhHE2VA1ic
- fractaled 2y ago
  Does being the destroyer in the dark forest scenario not reveal yourself to other destroyers? Also while I'm sure a relativistic kill vehicle could neutralize a planet, will it also get all the populated moons/orbitals in the system? What if the target species is already multi-system?
  - stouset 2y ago
    Accelerating a rock to intercept a separate star system doesn’t need to generate any particularly noticeable emissions. If it was intercepted someone could work backward from its trajectory and determine an origin, but the odds of noticing a cold, small, dark rock at relativistic speeds early enough to do anything about it seems slim.
    - ordu 2y ago
      It is a nice scheme, but what if your target is not bound to gravity wells anymore and the most of its economy is artificial structures orbiting its sun? You will hit some ancient rocks orbiting the star, and even if people there dont need them anymore they are bound to become curious of the origin of your missiles.
      - stouset 2y ago
        Sending a relativistic chunk of tungsten is something we could accomplish at essentially current technology levels. Hell we could send a hundred of them. It’d be expensive and it would take awhile to get there but we could do it in a decade given sufficient motivation. If caveman-level weaponry is sufficient to take out anyone not well on their way to becoming a Type II civilization, I’m betting on the cavemen.
        ordu 2y ago
        We couldn't accomplish this. Theoretically speaking, yes we could, but "theoretocally" means "ignoring the half of the reality". We can't even travel to Moon now practically. To send a chunk of tungsten at a relativistic velocity would mean an effort for trillions of dollars. Don't forget that it is not enough to just get a chunk of tungsten moving, you want it to hit a moving target, and you'd better add some thrusters to it and a guidance system. Is there anyone willing to pay for that? Any civilization will need to concentrate a lot of efforts to fire a chunk of tungsten, but why might it do it? There are better ways to utilize that effort. Maybe it is a rational thing to go aggressive nevertheless, but the benefits will be in a far future while politicians needs to justify spending now. People and societies are not rational. There is no real examples of rational agents, but people still insist on treating rational agents as something real. Theoretically speaking AGI might become a rational agent, but I doubt it from a practical standpoint: AGI will be limited by a computational power and by its abilities to gather data. So it will use heuristics, and it will be not rational. It can be closer to a platonic ideal of a rational agent then human, but even that is not free of doubt. People surpisingly well do with all their heuristics and when they appear irrational it is mostly due to inability of observers to understand the real motivation of people. You need a much more advanced civilization to be as aggressive. A civilization that can do it by spending maybe 0.1% GDP for 10 years. At least looking at humanity, I'd say that any cost higher than that will not work definitely. Such unprovoked and costly agression having no observable results easily could end a lot of political careers. Theoretically speaking we can ignore all these difficulties and start with the assumption that it is possible to concentrate 100% GDP on a one task for years or even decades. Practically it is impossible. Maybe another civilization will have another structure and will be able to concentrate efforts on a larger scale then humanity? Maybe. But could you imagine such a hypothetical civilization and estimate chances of it to get to a sufficiently advanced level? I cant neither. So while I keep in mind this theoretical dreams of rational civilization purging each other, I do not assign any credibility to them. I keep myself in an uncertain state, the best state to have an open mind, to be ready to absorb any evidence or reasoning.
- phyzome 2y ago
  I've never really understood the dark forest thing. Being an intelligent species or not doesn't change whether your planet has useful resources. And if you're a naive species yapping on all frequencies, you're clearly not a threat. So... why would another civilization go to all the trouble of eliminating you?
  - notfish 2y ago
    The idea is that, because of the risk of a technological explosion, any sentient species is a threat. I don’t really buy the idea though - cooperation has been the strongest strength of humanity and is one of our greatest evolutionary edges. Why wouldn’t that apply on the interstellar scale too?
    - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
      Humans attempt to dominate every nonhuman species within their reach, sentient or not. Humans have not even advanced beyond attempting to dominate others of the same species.
    - Rastonbury 2y ago
      Shoot first and ask questions later, if anything shooting first is safer (civilizational risk) on the chance they are thinking the same. On the flip side, an alien civilization sees our request to cooperate, they can accept or they can destroy us, to them we could be lying or go back on our word and destroy them. I see some criticism of dark forest theory in here, but keeping quite and shooting first are the least risky options when the inentions or capabilities of another civilization are unknown and making assumptions about the other sides friendliness could lead to eithers extinction.
      - GoblinSlayer 2y ago
        In terms of absolute agnosticism anything can lead to anything.
        2y ago
- stouset 2y ago
  People seem very confused by this so let me try and spell it out. For the sake of argument let’s say we become aware of another intelligent civilization on a rocky body orbiting Proxima Centauri. They are, virtually by definition, apex predators on their homeworld. We cannot know their intentions should they learn about us. Meanwhile, it is trivial for us to end their civilization. If we decided to, with more or less today’s technology, we could accelerate a chunk of tungsten to comical speeds and obliterate their homeworld. It would cost a fortune and it would take awhile, but we could do it. Certainly it would be orders of magnitude easier than getting humans there, setting up any sort of interstellar trade, or working to understand each other’s language and culture. And nobody at the receiving end would be the wiser until their planet essentially ceased to exist one day. I’m not saying we want to. But we could. And importantly, they could do the same to us. Do we: 1. Loudly announce ourselves, gambling our entire civilization that they aren’t aggressive, paranoid, misunderstand us at some point and take grave offense, realize we have a nicer planet than they do, or find some other reason to become openly hostile. 2. Shut the fuck up and hope they don’t catch our leaked radio signature from before we knew any better. 3. Strike first, just to be safe. Better us than them. If we think that any other civilization might decide to open door number three, the calculus tilts sharply in favor of doing it first ourselves. Or at the very least going with the second option and investing a hell of a lot of money into figuring out how to detect, intercept, and redirect relativistic kill vehicles. It doesn’t even have to be the Centauris in this scenario who are evil or paranoid. They could be just as hopelessly naïve as us and happily engage in a mutually beneficial back-and-forth. Meanwhile the Sirians (who have been quietly observing from the sidelines) one day fire off a pair of surprise care packages to the both of us, before we can get big enough to potentially threaten them and their way of life.
  - epidemian 2y ago
    In this hypothetical scenario, we wouldn't know if they have known of our existence for a long time, and maybe even taken precautions like installing some proxy killer probes in case we had a stupid crazy idea like trying to launch a genocidal relativistic missile against them. So, why would we go so blindly for option 3 and risk it all by being the first ones to defect in an interstellar prisoner's dilemma? Especially if we have good reasons to suspect that they've known about us for long and have remained neutral so far. After all, Proxima Centauri is quite close, and our atmosphere gives ample signals of there being life here. And we haven't been particularly quiet either. I haven't delved deep into this, so there might be some much more tight logic to it. But my first impression is that the dark forest hypothesis seems a bit forced; sort of constructed backwards in order to explain a cool idea (that space is full of civilizations but everyone is quiet). For example, one of the assumptions it makes is that obliterating another space-faring civilization is easy. And, at the same time, that we (and everyone) have very little information of other civilizations. I don't see how these two assumptions can hold at the same time.
- monkeydreams 2y ago
  > Game theory reveals that the best thing an intelligent species can do is to hide. (The dark forest hypothesis) Under certain conditions and with certain assumptions. Under other conditions and with other assumptions, the best thing for a species to do is be altruistic.

m_a_g 2y ago

It's just the opposite, actually. Game theory reveals that the best thing an intelligent species can do is to hide. (The dark forest hypothesis)

macintux 2y ago
I imagine it depends on whether interstellar travel is practical. If intelligent species come to the conclusion that they’re forever isolated, a monument seems a rational, almost inevitable choice.
- m_a_g 2y ago
  And how do you know you're forever isolated? There are things you don't know that you don't know. No rational species would ever build a monument IMO, and again, game theory supports this so far.
  - kolinko 2y ago
    If you have physics solved then you may be able to prove that you are isolated. As for the game theory - in practical scenarios you want to use conflict theory by shelling, because game theory is too simplistic.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  You can build a Dyson sphere and channel the radiation of a star directly to the planet to destroy it that way.
IncreasePosts 2y ago
How can game theory tell us that hiding from a malicious civilization is a safer choice than exposing ourselves to a benevolent civilization that could rescue us from some danger impossible for us to handle?
- m_a_g 2y ago
  My opinion is based on different theories and hypotheses, but the prevalent opinion is that there can't be a benevolent civilization in the first place. And even if there are, they would continue hiding themselves. Essentially, any alien civilization that survives in the long term is silent and hostile. But especially silent since being hostile can reveal your location.
  - monero-xmr 2y ago
    If you can achieve faster than light travel (worm holes?) and some sort of immortality (digital? consciousness quantum woo?) then maybe you transcend the worries of physical destruction…
  - underlipton 2y ago
    > but the prevalent opinion is that there can't be a benevolent civilization in the first place. You'd have to explain why. Logically, the first two civilizations to "team up" would easily handle any single civilization that challenges them. A civilization that happens to beat them would find among its attractive options a Nobunaga Gambit: taking on the vanquished foe's mission of unification (since it worked until it didn't - and the one time it didn't work, there was a terrifyingly good chance that it could have). "The Dark Forest" as an idea is inextricable from its cultural origins, a China that's rather pessimistic about inter-civilizational contact because of its recent history. That it resonates amidst a zeitgeist of global instability doesn't make it universally correct. Gene Roddenberry's competing vision might seem optimistic, but it's not naive; beneath Starfleet's cheery veneer is the Neo Princess Serenitian realpolitik of, "Peace, or else."
    - stouset 2y ago
danmur 2y ago
Is that what humanity is doing now?
- m_a_g 2y ago
  So far, yes, but not intentionally. Any electromagnetic wave we emit becomes noise. We're still ants compared to what alien civilization can be theoretically. But this does not mean we'll always stay this way. I'm a supporter of making humans detectable in any way illegal.
epidemian 2y ago
Out of curiosity: is your statement based mainly on the Liu Cixin series? Or is there some more depth to it? If so, could you give some pointer to the more in-depth analysis of this hypothesis?
- gcr 2y ago
  Lu Cixin invoked and expanded on an idea much older. He coined the catchiest title, but others have also thought of it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
- adastra22 2y ago
  There is lots of work done on it in the SETI field. The dark forest theory doesn’t hold up under game theoretic analysis (hiding is not the optimal strategy, nor is predation), and is pretty resounding rejected. Not sure what the best resource would be for an outsider to delve into this field though.
fellowmartian 2y ago
Isaac Arthur has a video[1] explaining why this hypothesis is nonsense, including a game theoretical reason. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlhHE2VA1ic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlhHE2VA1ic
fractaled 2y ago
Does being the destroyer in the dark forest scenario not reveal yourself to other destroyers? Also while I'm sure a relativistic kill vehicle could neutralize a planet, will it also get all the populated moons/orbitals in the system? What if the target species is already multi-system?
- stouset 2y ago
  Accelerating a rock to intercept a separate star system doesn’t need to generate any particularly noticeable emissions. If it was intercepted someone could work backward from its trajectory and determine an origin, but the odds of noticing a cold, small, dark rock at relativistic speeds early enough to do anything about it seems slim.
  - ordu 2y ago
    It is a nice scheme, but what if your target is not bound to gravity wells anymore and the most of its economy is artificial structures orbiting its sun? You will hit some ancient rocks orbiting the star, and even if people there dont need them anymore they are bound to become curious of the origin of your missiles.
    - stouset 2y ago
      Sending a relativistic chunk of tungsten is something we could accomplish at essentially current technology levels. Hell we could send a hundred of them. It’d be expensive and it would take awhile to get there but we could do it in a decade given sufficient motivation. If caveman-level weaponry is sufficient to take out anyone not well on their way to becoming a Type II civilization, I’m betting on the cavemen.
      - ordu 2y ago
        We couldn't accomplish this. Theoretically speaking, yes we could, but "theoretocally" means "ignoring the half of the reality". We can't even travel to Moon now practically. To send a chunk of tungsten at a relativistic velocity would mean an effort for trillions of dollars. Don't forget that it is not enough to just get a chunk of tungsten moving, you want it to hit a moving target, and you'd better add some thrusters to it and a guidance system. Is there anyone willing to pay for that? Any civilization will need to concentrate a lot of efforts to fire a chunk of tungsten, but why might it do it? There are better ways to utilize that effort. Maybe it is a rational thing to go aggressive nevertheless, but the benefits will be in a far future while politicians needs to justify spending now. People and societies are not rational. There is no real examples of rational agents, but people still insist on treating rational agents as something real. Theoretically speaking AGI might become a rational agent, but I doubt it from a practical standpoint: AGI will be limited by a computational power and by its abilities to gather data. So it will use heuristics, and it will be not rational. It can be closer to a platonic ideal of a rational agent then human, but even that is not free of doubt. People surpisingly well do with all their heuristics and when they appear irrational it is mostly due to inability of observers to understand the real motivation of people. You need a much more advanced civilization to be as aggressive. A civilization that can do it by spending maybe 0.1% GDP for 10 years. At least looking at humanity, I'd say that any cost higher than that will not work definitely. Such unprovoked and costly agression having no observable results easily could end a lot of political careers. Theoretically speaking we can ignore all these difficulties and start with the assumption that it is possible to concentrate 100% GDP on a one task for years or even decades. Practically it is impossible. Maybe another civilization will have another structure and will be able to concentrate efforts on a larger scale then humanity? Maybe. But could you imagine such a hypothetical civilization and estimate chances of it to get to a sufficiently advanced level? I cant neither. So while I keep in mind this theoretical dreams of rational civilization purging each other, I do not assign any credibility to them. I keep myself in an uncertain state, the best state to have an open mind, to be ready to absorb any evidence or reasoning.
phyzome 2y ago
I've never really understood the dark forest thing. Being an intelligent species or not doesn't change whether your planet has useful resources. And if you're a naive species yapping on all frequencies, you're clearly not a threat. So... why would another civilization go to all the trouble of eliminating you?
- notfish 2y ago
  The idea is that, because of the risk of a technological explosion, any sentient species is a threat. I don’t really buy the idea though - cooperation has been the strongest strength of humanity and is one of our greatest evolutionary edges. Why wouldn’t that apply on the interstellar scale too?
  - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
    Humans attempt to dominate every nonhuman species within their reach, sentient or not. Humans have not even advanced beyond attempting to dominate others of the same species.
  - Rastonbury 2y ago
    Shoot first and ask questions later, if anything shooting first is safer (civilizational risk) on the chance they are thinking the same. On the flip side, an alien civilization sees our request to cooperate, they can accept or they can destroy us, to them we could be lying or go back on our word and destroy them. I see some criticism of dark forest theory in here, but keeping quite and shooting first are the least risky options when the inentions or capabilities of another civilization are unknown and making assumptions about the other sides friendliness could lead to eithers extinction.
    - GoblinSlayer 2y ago
      In terms of absolute agnosticism anything can lead to anything.
      - 2y ago
stouset 2y ago
People seem very confused by this so let me try and spell it out. For the sake of argument let’s say we become aware of another intelligent civilization on a rocky body orbiting Proxima Centauri. They are, virtually by definition, apex predators on their homeworld. We cannot know their intentions should they learn about us. Meanwhile, it is trivial for us to end their civilization. If we decided to, with more or less today’s technology, we could accelerate a chunk of tungsten to comical speeds and obliterate their homeworld. It would cost a fortune and it would take awhile, but we could do it. Certainly it would be orders of magnitude easier than getting humans there, setting up any sort of interstellar trade, or working to understand each other’s language and culture. And nobody at the receiving end would be the wiser until their planet essentially ceased to exist one day. I’m not saying we want to. But we could. And importantly, they could do the same to us. Do we: 1. Loudly announce ourselves, gambling our entire civilization that they aren’t aggressive, paranoid, misunderstand us at some point and take grave offense, realize we have a nicer planet than they do, or find some other reason to become openly hostile. 2. Shut the fuck up and hope they don’t catch our leaked radio signature from before we knew any better. 3. Strike first, just to be safe. Better us than them. If we think that any other civilization might decide to open door number three, the calculus tilts sharply in favor of doing it first ourselves. Or at the very least going with the second option and investing a hell of a lot of money into figuring out how to detect, intercept, and redirect relativistic kill vehicles. It doesn’t even have to be the Centauris in this scenario who are evil or paranoid. They could be just as hopelessly naïve as us and happily engage in a mutually beneficial back-and-forth. Meanwhile the Sirians (who have been quietly observing from the sidelines) one day fire off a pair of surprise care packages to the both of us, before we can get big enough to potentially threaten them and their way of life.
- epidemian 2y ago
  In this hypothetical scenario, we wouldn't know if they have known of our existence for a long time, and maybe even taken precautions like installing some proxy killer probes in case we had a stupid crazy idea like trying to launch a genocidal relativistic missile against them. So, why would we go so blindly for option 3 and risk it all by being the first ones to defect in an interstellar prisoner's dilemma? Especially if we have good reasons to suspect that they've known about us for long and have remained neutral so far. After all, Proxima Centauri is quite close, and our atmosphere gives ample signals of there being life here. And we haven't been particularly quiet either. I haven't delved deep into this, so there might be some much more tight logic to it. But my first impression is that the dark forest hypothesis seems a bit forced; sort of constructed backwards in order to explain a cool idea (that space is full of civilizations but everyone is quiet). For example, one of the assumptions it makes is that obliterating another space-faring civilization is easy. And, at the same time, that we (and everyone) have very little information of other civilizations. I don't see how these two assumptions can hold at the same time.
monkeydreams 2y ago
> Game theory reveals that the best thing an intelligent species can do is to hide. (The dark forest hypothesis) Under certain conditions and with certain assumptions. Under other conditions and with other assumptions, the best thing for a species to do is be altruistic.