The Dark Forest is a solution to the Fermi Paradox in which the absence of observable life is explained by a pressure towards cautious silence and a “shoot first ask questions never” type approach to first contact.
So there’s this Chinese sci-fi book by the same name (this will be quick, and its relevant I swear) in which The Dark Forest Theory is crucial to the plot. In the book, the theory is introduced by 3 Axioms:
- “Suppose a vast number of civilizations distributed throughout the universe, on the order of the number of observable stars. Lots and lots of them. Those civilizations make up the body of a cosmic society. Cosmic sociology is the study of the nature of this super-society.” (based on the Drake equation)
- Suppose that survival is the primary need of a civilization.
- Suppose that civilizations continuously expand over time, but the total matter in the universe remains constant.
This basically sets up a Darwinian competition for survival, but on a galactic scale. In this scale communication takes years. In this state of nature, languages, biology, cognition, and values will all be alien.
Other civilizations are threats not only for their present capacity for violence, but for their potential to make technological leaps ahead of you, while the speed of light keeps this hidden from you and slows your communications down AND means any attack you made on them would take substantial time to reach them (cruelly giving the edge to preemptive strikes).
On earth we have a hotline between our nuclear powers’ heads of state. Real time communication with translators. In The Dark Forest, alien languages and cognition make it hard to understand them enough to trust them enough not to attack them, and even if you do, how sure are you that they trust you? Worse yet, how do you convince them you trust them enough that they believe you and don’t feel compelled to attack you out of self defense?
If this is true what does it mean?
First things first, as a civilization, we should probably shut up. This is pretty self explanatory. We should also probably hold off on things like Dyson spheres/swarms, or any other mega-engineering projects that would be apparent from a distance, lest we blow our cover.
The universe isn’t dead, but is instead teeming with life! It’s just all scared for its life waiting to kill you (just like nature intended).
To be fair, this somewhat lowers the stakes from some of the worldviews I described arising from The Great Filters interpretation. We don’t carry the torch for life all on our own.
In this case, we should do our best to expand quietly, if at all.
