Having read the „three body“ series I wonder if there is an actual debate about the dark forest theory? Or: Should we announce our existence and location to the universe?
Before the Industrial Revolution Earth was teeming with biomarkers. After the IR we not only have biomarkers but increasing industrial pollutants in the atmosphere. Such markers are interesting because they are short lived and need replenishment. It's the same reason we look for them.
The sphere advertising the Industrial Revolution is ever expanding. Anyone that can gather spectra of Earth will see it once the light reaches them. So there's no hiding from any aliens that happen to be looking.
But the dark forest theory gets more absurd with the idea that some alien species upon seeing a technological civilization on Earth is them going to hope in their spaceships for a visit. Ignoring entirely that space is fucking huge and physics is unforgiving.
Some alien species that had the capability to fly the obscene distance to Earth would by definition have the capability to fully exploit all the resources in their own solar system (which is gigantic). They could also save themselves the effort of an invasion by exploiting uninhabited solar systems much closer to them (also gigantic). For as awesome as Earth is, it doesn't have any unobtainium some hyper advanced species couldn't find elsewhere.
Any aliens with the capability of visiting us already has the capability to detect us. We can't go un-advertise ourselves.
For example, humans seem to be at a point where corporations are trying to automate everything - what if some alien civilization figured out automation was the way to go as far as colonization and what if they figured this out say, 20 million years ago and so didn't care if it took a million or 2 or 5 million years to "get here" via some automation that is beyond our ability as humans to perceive?
What if millions of years of advancement wound up leading to very, very different goals for colonization than what we're used to based on pretty much nothing else other than fairly recent (by comparison) human history?
What if, for example, if you're a civilization that's been around for millions of years, your goals are no longer to "extract base resources" like in "Starcraft" ... but rather to play a sort of "Sims" game where you guide the development of life on various planets and "extract" research data – or simply sit back and enjoy the show?
Or what if they have an advanced Ai they're testing and want to see if life on colonized planets turned out like the Ai said it would, and if so – to what extent?
In that case, the "resource to be extracted" wouldn't be physical as much as knowledge and possible entertainment.
Then I read Ball Lightning, and had the revelation of "Oh shit, this dude actually has zero comprehension of how physics works". Then I felt silly for all the energy I spent trying to make any of it make sense. All his books are a ton of fun, and lots of imaginative concepts, but it really is all just for fun, and not really realistic at all. The whole 12 dimensional deflation concept shook me for months, and Dark Forest Theory is a really cool concept, and totally valid in certain environments, but almost certainly not in our galaxy at this point in time.
> For as awesome as Earth is, it doesn't have any unobtainium some hyper advanced species couldn't find elsewhere.
Yeah, I'd imagine that even if a hyper-advanced civilization did stop by, they'd probably just harvest a bunch of hydrogen from Jupiter to refuel their spacecraft, and be on their way. Earth has some of the least interesting resources in the solar system.
Most importantly, environments with plentiful resources that explode with life tend to develop a robust ecosystem of symbiosis and mutual dependence. The only time "Dark Forest" type ecosystems emerge is when resources are insanely restrictive, like deserts etc. As far as we can tell, our galaxy is teeming with resources that no one has really started mining at scale. Even if we did bump into some other expanding civilization, there's approximately zero chance of anyone getting boxed into a corner that would lead to conflict. We would just keep expanding in some other direction.
But seriously great writeup, thanks. I think the two convincing pieces that are also missing is the economic theory of unequal exchange which shows that even when one party is better than the other by every metric (technology, population, resources, etc.), there's still advantage to trade. And the other is the extreme waste of natural resources the dark forest species permits to occur under its watch. All those trillions of stars bleeding negentropy into the wastes...
Resources are finite, room is also finite and other galaxies are ridiculously far for sub-light expansion. When cold hard logic is applied, even great ally will eventually turn into competing party, just a question of time.
Its true that in that case Earth would be probably preemptively wiped out long ago since life markers are here for billions of years. Its fun mental exercise, just highlighting how we don't really have a clue, just wishes/fears and some (doubtful) statistical projections like Drake equation.
It's dumb because like I said Earth's biomarkers are already broadcasting out in space and have been for millions of years. Also space is stupidly large. It's a bit absurd to assume a species capable of interstellar travel on a scale to send invasion fleets could develop that technology but not the technology to fully exploit their home solar system and adjust their own growth to be sustainable.
Even if such an unlikely species existed, they're already on their way. Their need for resources would be so great they'll send an invasion fleet the moment they find a world with biomarkers or whatever it is they want. They're not going to wait for radio signals or even industrial markers. So the dark forest theory as some policy to not develop technologies is extra dumb.
1. Aliens would kill us because they cannot determine if we are an existential threat. If they assume we are friendly and we are not, they are dead. It isn't about resources, it is about destroying your enemies before they evolve the capability to hurt you. There is no good way to monitor or communicate with a civilization more than a couple dozen light years away, physics doesn't allow for it. By the time your message gets there the entire government, culture, etc of the planet has probably changed.
2. They would use long range missiles (e.g. an asteroid going sufficiently fast) to wipe out the planet, not an invasion fleet. This means that they don't have to have the capability to travel in deep space, just to throw big rocks.
3. This is all predicated on a few assumptions: that no aliens are living close(r than 400LY) to us, developing the capability to fling rocks at a star or planet isn't extremely difficult, and that once the big rock is in motion, there is no good way to defend yourself against it (except sniping it with another big rock, but that's probably magnitudes harder than hitting a planet).
I don't know enough about biology to dispute the thing about biomarkers, but that would put a huge dent in DFT. And I agree using it to make policy decisions is dumb.
Scientific curiosity has a value but the effort involved would be Brobdingnagian.
If we assume some species decides to undertake such an endeavor and has the capability of doing so, there's nothing we can do about it. This is why the dark forest idea is so dumb, we can't not broadcast ourselves. We also can't change the minds of some unknowable alien species that decides to come over and put us in a zoo. We can take issue when they actually arrive but that's about it. It's not something that's worth worrying much about all things considered.
Also I do think it’s too early to call it as safe: just because something has not happened yet does not mean it won’t happen, or “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”
~5% of the universe is made out of the stuff we're made of. Sugar cubes, ice, doll houses, lithium, etc. Most of that is burning hydrogen and helium down in stars.
~20% of the universe if made out of dark matter. We know little about dark matter except that it, well, falls down.
~75% of the universe is dark energy. We know almost nothing about dark energy except that it falls up ... maybe?
Whatever million+ year old civilizations may exist have probably figured out something more about the other 95% of the universe that we know is there. Let alone all the other stuff we'll finally be detecting by the year 5001.
Even if we do decide to announce ourselves, devil may care, what are the odds that anyone out there would even be made of the stuff that could listen to us? It's not that we're in a dark forest or at a crowded dinner, it's that we're anemones talking about the other side of the tide pool.