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Comment by obedm | Hacker News Reader

I think dark forest is the best explanation so far.

If what you say is true, it should've been true for earlier human civilizations too.

Why didn't the Chinese and Japanese civilizations unite to conquer others?

Why didn't the Mongols unite with whoever else to conquer, instead of Genghis Khan doing it all with a bunch of Mongols in horses?

Human civilization is a dark forest that only changed with global trade. The communication challenge is language and culture. And civilizations have always been technologically distinct, with the more powerful one almost always conquering.

With interstellar communication and technological advance it would be orders of magnitude higher stakes.

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Each of those civilizations you mentioned rose to the heights of their power by uniting multiple smaller tribes into one larger civilization.

You've got a fantastic point. It reminds me of Chinese history, full of war between clans until it was finally United.

What I keep thinking about is that we are all... Humans. Like, the same animal, same way of thinking etc. And yet our answer so many times is conflict.

The only reason conquerors didn't kill all the conquered was for taxes and slaves and so on. Imagine if resources were not an issue ( advanced enough tech) and you wanted to avoid confrontation.

Sending a near light speed bullet to explode a star seems a good trade-off to keep your dominance.

Historically it's extremely rare that the conquerors killed everyone in the cities they conquered. Instead they enslaved some, or let them mostly live and just taxed them. Even with other species that regularly attack humans (tigers or even mosquitos), we have not exterminated them.

Not many neanderthals around these days. Just an observation.

We carry them with us in our genes, that seems to indicate more than just war was going on.

We don't know that happened to them, or to any other human species for that matter.

But we're pretty sure we obliterated a entire species in our way up the food chain ( giant marsupials for example)

We very likely obliterated a few along the way but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

Humans had the power to exterminate many more but chose not to, and continue to choose not to.

Is that really true though?

Saying "we didn't kill them all" doesn't exempt the fact that we did it for many of them.

There's no easy answer to this. We are what we are. But it points to the disregard powerful beings have over weaker ones when they get in their way.

Sure, but the interesting thing is that the powerful beings typically do not have disregard. Why do we care for all the species that we have power to exterminate?

Especially the predators that compete with us.

We're trying our best to exterminate certain species of mosquitoes. We haven't done it because we lack the technical ability as of yet.

Also, have you met any Aztec? There are barely any American Indians left compared to the millions there were originally.

Mammuts? All the giant marsupials of Australia that went extinct the moment humans set foot there?

We've been on top of the food chain for very long. Now imagine if we discover another race may take our place and the only option is communication or total obliteration?

I wish it was different, we only have a sample size of one.

But just like the three space ships that first found out about the dark forest and ultimately killed each other, it's what makes most sense from game theory

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