Dark Forest: Should We NOT Contact Aliens?

There is a problem with the Game Theory logic there, and it's that you assume that any civilization you find will be confined into a single place that CAN be destroyed. In reality, the player must consider that the civilization they detected might be a branch or a colony of a larger civilization they have yet to detect. In other words, the option to "destroy" might also lead to civilization A to respond, but now, their response will not be to ignore or contact, since they KNOW you are aggressive. So the option to destroy is actually the worst, since it guarantees that, unless you are absolutelly sure you are destroying the whole civilization, that retribution wwill be comming your way.

"The humans are talking about genocide in terms of game theory again, let's keep hiding from them" is a potential variation of the Dark Forest Hypothesis.

“ "We" don't decide things. Individuals decide, and collective action emerges in a very complex way.” - This is so well put and so many people don't understand.

This was the reason why we were churning out superhero movies for the past decade. The hope is that any aliens who receive our broadcasts will be duly warned of how often we get invaded and how it always ends for them.

The "destroy" option in reality is "try to destroy" and has a branch where it fails and the next step us counterattack with infinite cost. I think that's where this logic fails.

One of the biggest flaw about the destroy option is that if a new player C has chosen the option "silence" they saw B destroy A ... and then migth chose to destroy B by retaliation or fears.

The game is more complicated than indicated, there are multiple alternate plays, the first layer of them being to remove yourself from being a soft target, setup MAD, and doing any talking from something that you can afford to have hit

Another refutation of Dark Forest hypothesis I can think of is this: among many existing space civs, there should be some civs that would create some kind of automated "grave beacon", that would be activated in case the civ is dead. It would start broadcasting to the whole universe the "letter from the grave" message: "If you are reading this letter, it means I'm dead. I was a cool civ, and now I'm dead, thank you for nothing. It is one of you who shot me down, isn't it? Have fun with the heatdeath, jerks". Since we don't observe such grave beacons out there, it means that: 1) either Dark Forest is correct AND killings of civs are very rare, or 2) Dark Forest is incorrect, and Fermi Paradox must be explained in some other way.

The Dark Forest hypothesis is always interesting to think about, but l think it's one of the weaker answers to the Fermi Paradox. The best answer so far (in my humble opinion) is that there is no paradox at all, because we've essentially only sampled one tiny drop of water from an entire ocean as it pertains to scanning space for alien signals. At this point, we have no basis for concluding that alien civilizations are either rare or quiet enough for this fact to require any explanation. All we can really say is that so far, nobody out there had been beaming extremely powerful and detectable signals directly at earth within the scant time and narrow frequency range we've been scanning.

A simpler and much more reality-based explanation for the great silence is that civilizations are so far away from each other and that physics don't allow for meaningful interstellar communication/exchange of messages/exchange of 'cosmic bullets' over those distances.

Is it coincidence this video came out only a few days before "3 Body Problem" on Netflix, or am I starting to see numbers? I mean, there's been videos on the Fermi paradox before, but damn, that's some timing!

The dark forest "conclusion" seems astonishingly sensitive to the (unrealistic) assumptions of the model. Just like the prisoner's dilemma has at least a dozen more realistic variants where collaboration becomes aligned with individual payoffs (repeated interactions, trust and reputation, evolving systems, network effects of interacting with others), I imagine that with slight tweaks you would not a dark forest. Given the intensity of the consequences, it seems important to also explore those variants. I like that you explored the flaws in the reasoning. The misapplication of models to reality seems to underlie a lot of public distrust in science, so I hope we all get better at thinking about these things.

The Dark Forest explanation for the Fermi Paradox was also a central plot point of the 1987 novel The Forge of God (and its sequel Anvil of Stars) by author Greg Bear. These are both great books that I highly recommend.

The radius inside which our incidental radio transmissions are detectable is far smaller than even purportedly scientifically literate people realize. When a signal goes below -194dB, it's indistinguishable from background noise. Our 100kw radio stations aren't reaching out 120 light years. They'll scarcely be detectable at Proxima Centauri

The fact that humans formed tribe, villages and civilization is like a good evidence the Dark Forest is an overly paranoid idea (partly true only). We can continue to shout as much as we want, even civilization level power level signals are barely higher than noise past a low amount of light years. We often forget how much signal weakens quickly, photons scatters, past a couple of light years. A civilization as advanced as us (or more) could be super active and we still would never know directly. That probably the more liekyl why we don’t hear anything. Distance in space and time. But it is a fun mind exercise.

Glad you finally touched on some of the ideas that shatter the dark forest hypo. Took you a minute to get there but you finally did. One thing that you didnt touch on that shatters this hypo is "what if we've already been visited by countless alien civilizations already", if we have and we're still here, doesnt that also shatter the idea that we're surrounded by a bunch of bloodthirsty alien civilizations that only exist to destroy each other🤔 The Dark Forest is an interesting hypothesis but in reality its something that best suited for those who are afraid of their own shadow and had our ancestors followed in their footsteps, we would still be a single cell life form swirling around in the primordial ooze.

This game theory is so over-simplified it ignores some really obvious problems with the "kill" option: such as, the target civilization having (and this seems quite likely) spread through their solar system. Possibly even to near-by systems. Even if you kill their origin world, you may just have identified your location and given the survivors a target to reply to. Thus leading to the infinite cost again. Since not replying at all would presumably have a lower chance of being noticed, attack may well have a higher potential cost. This game theory model ONLY works as described if you can be ASSURED of a one-shot kill. Otherwise you are starting a war you very well may not be able to survive and at the very least are sacrificing any planet in your source system your opponent can identify. Also this solution may be something that can be tested as there would possibly be visible evidence of planets being smited this way.

MAD still applies, e.g. retaliation using a fleet of hidden Von Neumann probes similar to nuclear submarines today. Furthermore, any attacker would have to contend with civilizations unknown to them collaborating to destroy them in retaliation, so the "infinite cost" scenario is still in play should one attack another. EDIT: I just thought of an example of the latter. If any of you played Spore, you probably remember that using the planet buster (a weapon that destroys an entire planet) causes all civilizations nearby to hate you and likely to attack you on sight, including those that used to be allied with you.

One point against the dark forest that I quite like was pointed out by Isaac Arthur in his video on the dark forest. "There is no stealth in space". Even if the victim planet A does not get much chance to see the attack coming, planet C that was unknown to both A and B can watch the whole thing play out then lash out at planet B. Then planet D sees this and repeats the cycle. Not to mention, we're assuming that each subsequent faction is confident that it has even perceived the entirety of its victim. If civilization A had 2 planets but civilization B only noticed 1 planet and lashed out at it, then planet 2 of civ A has plenty of time to respond to civ B. Lashing out in a dark forest is only reasonable if A: you know there is no third party capable of watching you lash out, and B that the party you are lashing out against is in fact entirely destroyed by your attack. And, finally, if kill-on-sight really is the name of the game then everyone everywhere is already screwed because our planets show obvious signs of a biosphere millions to billions of years before any technological civilization could possibly develop, thus any kill-on-sight aliens wouldn't bother to wait to see if ancient earth with it's obviously weird atmospheric composition developed specifically intelligent life and would just end the world the moment they noticed any form of life.

Refreshing to see that PBS Space Time can indulge in whimsy from time to time.