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izzydata
KineticLensman
> It's also worth noting that this hypothesis is not an original idea of Liu's
Yes, Greg Bear explores the concept in Forge of God (1987) and Anvil of Stars (1992), twenty years before Liu. David Brin also covered it.
Anvil of Stars really explores the moral quandary from the perspectives of a civilisation that can take revenge in such an environment.
red-iron-pine
> Writing science fiction isn't about making realistic theories of how reality is
it's called "science" fiction because there is an attempt to extract scientific theory and thought, and it's implications.
Otherwise it's fantasy, space opera, or just plain ole magical fiction.
anonymouskimmer
> So if Liu’s hypothesis is right, it makes sense for the galaxy’s top civilizations to just look at every star, see if there’s a civilization there, and wipe it out if so.
If resource are scarce, destroying stars and planets seems counterproductive. Why not just colonize as the Trisolarans made steps to do to Earth?
cmrdporcupine
As others have pointed out, this is the most absurd thing. Resources are not scarce. Once you're out of your gravity well and have the tech to stay out of it, energy is effectively unlimited and probably any solar system has all the elements you'll need for whatever the thing is you do.
All of this kind of sci-fi is just projecting earthbound colonialism/imperialism motives built around the profit motive and resource scarcity and power out into a universe where none of that makes sense. They're good stories by analogy but have nothing to do with the "reality" of the future-worlds they purport to describe.
Larrikin
This isn't a convincing argument. A few thousand years ago North and South America would have been thought of as effectively unlimited resources.
In living memory a gig internet plan would have seemed like an effectively unlimited resource in a world of 56k modems. YouTube and Netflix couldn't have even been a PoC when everyone was using AOL 2.5. I fully expect there to be ground breaking changes in my lifetime to the Internet if we get for instance speeds capable of downloading the equivalent of the entire Internet today.
We don't know what other forms of life might do, but when humans have the ability to effectively consume a resource we push and find new ways to consume it all to make our lives better. Today we are only thinking of slowing progress (but definitely not stopping )on Earth because we seem to be making the planet unliveable eventually. If we begin colonizing other planets I don't see why we wouldn't continue the trend and end up in a galaxy where every liveable planet is populated and used like in Foundation eventually if there isn't some other form of life pushing back like in 3 Body. If we don't need to actually live on the planet we would likely accelerate the resources usage.
ertian
Well...and even during the most competitive and severe colonialist/imperialist periods on earth, extermination was very much the exception and not the norm.
cmrdporcupine
The worst extermination was accidental -- disease, or famine.
someuser2345
We used to think that the idea of humans wiping out species was absurd; after all, there are so many animals out there that us puny humans can't possibly kill all of them. Maybe its the same with interstellar resources; once we master space travel, our energy needs will grow to an absurd amount.
wintorez
Are resources really scarce? Other than stars and planets, there are plenty of resources in the astroids and gas giants, and interstellar space. We can argue that the most scarce resource is organic matter. In universal scale, wood is exponentially more scarce than gold.
ertian
Yeah, and the nature of the Dark Forest galaxy would mean that no civilization could get anywhere close to utilizing a significant share of total resources--or even a significant share of the total resources in their backyard--because doing so would attract attention and lead to their extinction. If everybody is busy hiding and being as quiet and careful as possible then resources would be abundant for lack of use--and thus it would not be worth it to fight over resources in the short term.
onlyrealcuzzo
Are you sure?
The estimate for gold in the universe is 50B tons.
There's 550B tons of organic matter on earth - I'm assuming most of that being plant mass.
And that's if you're certain Earth is the only planet in the entire universe that has organic life.
ertian
This...cannot possibly be right. It's estimated that there are a minimum of 200B galaxies in the observable universe (up to 2 trillion). 50B tons of gold in the universe would mean 0.25 tons per galaxy (shared among the ~100B stars, and let's guess 500B planets)--but we've already extracted ~250k tons from earth alone.
50B tons seems like a suspiciously low number even just within our own galaxy.
macspoofing
>The estimate for gold in the universe is 50B tons.
That is a wild underestimate. Our galaxy alone has around 100 million Earths worth of gold [1].
[1] https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/astronomers-ta...
floxy
According to this:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/did-neutron-stars-or-supernov...
...one supernova can produce 7.4e22 kg of gold (the moon's mass), while a neutron star to neutron star collision can produce 1.9e27 kg of gold (a Jupiter's mass worth). 50e9 tons is 4.6e13 kg.
dumah
USGS estimates humans have discovered 244,000 tons of gold, and that’s just in the crust near the surface.
This estimate is off by many orders of magnitude.
margalabargala
The estimate for the amount of gold on Earth is a bit short of 50B tons.
The issue of course is that most of that gold is at the center of the Earth, not accessible to us.
So that's not 50B tons per universe, but rather, per rocky Earth-type planet.
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wintorez
I think 50B tons is a huge underestimation.
anonymouskimmer
>Are resources really scarce?
That's the claim in the linked article.
stcredzero
If resource are scarce, destroying stars and planets seems counterproductive.
Just stick with destroying life bearing planets. Over 99% of the matter in the Solar System is in the Sun.
Why not just colonize as the Trisolarans made steps to do to Earth?
If one is technologically advanced enough to move to the next star system 4 LY away in a huge generation ship fleet, one is advanced enough to build O'Neil cylinder space colonies and dominate the solar system. Going after Earth makes no sense.
digging
In the book, the entire system would be sacrificed. It's many orders of magnitude easier to target a star than a planet, and the tool used permanently altered spacetime itself in a sphere expanding at lightspeed (similar to vacuum decay, but I can't recall the exact mechanism).
pavel_lishin
I don't recall it expanding at light-speed, and the tool flattened 3D-space into 2D-space, permanently. (The implication being that eventually, the entire universe would flatten down to 2D space, since the process can't be stopped.)
And that was just one possible weapon, used by one possible species, I think?
MattPalmer1086
I thought it was not scarce resources but simply a first strike mentality, given weapons (e.g. relativistic) that could wipe you out.
snapplebobapple
Its not about resource scarcity, its about first strike capability in the face of inability to communicate. You think we would have avoided buclear armeggedon up to now if there wasnt a red phone in the kremlin and in the oval office to allow the ussr and us leader to directly communicate? What do you do when you can't communicate but you possess galaxy ending stealth weapons and you can't tell if the other guy also posses them? Shoot first, ask questions later
WithinReason
Alien civilisations were destroying entire stars for just being suspicious, and did it within a few decades of receiving information, which means (due to the speed of light limitation) that star destroying weapons were spread around the galaxy every few dozen light years. This means resources were extremely abundant, so it's absurd that a civilisation that can do this simply can't send a probe to every star to check for civilisations.
anonymouskimmer
Darn straight. And then colonize or subjugate any existing populations.
I think the books obliquely addressed this by having one of the major civilizations mention a comparable civilization that was its antagonist. But even so, subjugation or incorporation of other intelligent species shouldn't have been impossible.
digging
> If resource are scarce, destroying stars and planets seems counterproductive.
Resources aren't scarce, they're just finite. If there are 19 uninhabited systems for every inhabited one, it may seam reasonable to obliterate 5% of systems if it helps you control the other 95%.
me_me_me
Its not about resources but survival.
The theory is that any civilization can become as powerful as you are and then you are at constant threat of first strike attack.
So you need to first strike before they will ever get that chance.
You cannot make an assumption about other side. They can be pacifists or a hive mind with no morals.
> Why not just colonize
Why bother, you are already star destroying apex species.
Trisolarans were relatively low tech civ in the book.
In the book and theory of dark forest only most ruthless civs will survive. Civ that will make contact with others might thrive for a while, until they get discovered by ruthless civ.
1970-01-01
Not absurd if you consider enslavement. Anyone worried about AI alignment will be in the dark forest camp. You simply can't trust the universe to care about you any more than it already does.
bitanarch
Enslavement only matters if your level of productivity is still on roughly the same order of magnitude (as in, up to minus a few) of your masters. e.g. you are a cow, a jug of your cow milk is still worth a few dollars in human markets. That means it's still worth it to keep you around.
If you're a mosquito OTOH... even enslavement is not worth it. It's eradication.
tbrownaw
An individual bee isn't that productive, at least for the kind of bees that are kept commercially. Or an individual yeast.
galkk
I tried to read the books in Russian, in English but they just don't click for me.
Also I just cannot accept any analogy of dark forest with empty and dead place. Anyone who've been to the forest or even seen any documentary knows/hears/sees that it's also full of life
josefresco
> Anyone who've been to the forest or even seen any documentary knows/hears/sees that it's also full of life
All books I've read about the Amazon rainforest describe it as an extremely harsh place almost devoid of easily spotted pray or food. Anything that falls to the forest floor is consumed very quickly. There's a ton of life there, it's just ruthlessly competitive and therefore beyond easy sight.
I think the Dark Forest concept fits perfectly here. We see "empty" space wherein fact life could be just behind the curtains of "self preservation".
me_me_me
> Also I just cannot accept any analogy of dark forest with empty and dead place.
Huh? I don't even know what you are talking about.
First of all dark forest is not about empty and dead place. Its about being able to blend in with the forest so no one can discover you. Once spotted you become dead, once you spot someone else in your best interest is to destroy them if you can do it without being spotted.
In the books there are several civilizations, and hits that there were plenty more living in higher dimensions.
myth_drannon
The Dark Forest theory being popular right now is more a reflection of our society and our fears. Stanislaw Lem has a good take on the subject of biological systems evolution in his "Summa Technologae". Carl Sagan and Shklovsky also wrote a lot on the topic ("Intelligent Life in the Universe" for example). But they also represent a different time, the Cold War.
calimoro78
Importantly, Liu’s books basically abandon the very same idea in the second and third books of the series (aliens that very actively battle across the galaxy and have many many opportunities to interact, which kind of undermines the premises of the dark forest argument)
justrealist
Crazy that people fixate on the Dark Forest part of the books. I had nightmares for weeks about the dual-vector foil.
anonymouskimmer
My issue was his having unilateral decisions which screw the entire population okay because of "democratic choice".
komodus
It is not absurd. It depends on the type of beings at play. Plants don't kill each other, but animals do on a daily basis, from whales to mosquitoes, they're all part of a macabre annihilation dance where strength, intelligence and mimetism play important roles.
Through different eras, men have traveled long distances to kill, subjugate, enslave other people, and to consume everything that can be consumed, we won't change if we start going to the outer space. Being the most advanced species on earth doesn't make us different, as spiders, fish, birds, wolves, anything that moves is determined to kill or be killed, so it's not only a human trait.
Is it a dark forest? We don't know, it may just be an open battleground where intelligence is the final conqueror and that's exactly what rides on top of the arrow of evolution.
rf15
> Plants don't kill each other
They absolutely do. From simple concepts like resource competition in which trees deplete the ground or outcompete each other for sunlight (e.g. any forest floor is usually not covered in grass) to parasitism and strangulating vines and whatnot, these guys are hostile and deadly to one another. They just don't run around much.
> through different eras, men have traveled long distances to kill, subjugate, enslave other people
I know lichens are considered "symbiotic" but I'm not sure what you would call a fungus that breeds algae cells and consumes them for nourishment. In that vein we're also symbiotic with pigs, which I find an inappropriate term.
Either way, my point is: Animals aren't remotely as unique as many people think.
awb
Cooperation and symbiotic relationships exist in nature as well.
The trajectory of history suggests that it’s easier to trade than to steal and easier to ally than to fight.
ironlake
In the books, each civilization can have a hiding gene and/or an exterminating gene. At the beginning of the story, humanity has neither. The idea is that civilizations without the hiding gene won't last long. So it's not rational for a civilization to become "Space Hitler", there are other options, they can hide.
I found the hypothesis to be convincing in the story. By the time you figure out if a civilization is friendly, they may have advanced to the point where they could destroy you. Everyone has to hide. Not everyone has to exterminate.
Clearly, having discovered no other civilizations in the universe, we don't have enough information, so it's all guesswork and fantasy.
anonymouskimmer
Prisoner's dilemma, or even better than that. Cooperation is ignored despite having significant advantages laid out in the likes of Star Trek and Babylon 5.
SnazzyJeff
> Prisoner's dilemma
This falls apart pretty rapidly when you move beyond one person—groups of people don't tend to act collectively rationally. Hell, the entire reason "capitalism" is a thing at all is it provides some consensus in the face of byzantine faults even if it fails to represent our collective needs with any accuracy.
anonymouskimmer
I'm pretty sure capitalism is a thing because it provides a means of legal ownership and the growth of one's exercise of power through the exploitation of that ownership. Consensus would exist due to the power of the state regardless of the economic system.
labster
Cooperation is essential to build a society that can reach space. Every spacefaring race should have cooperation genes like us (but also like us they may be occasionally genocidal). One of the reasons for human success is cross-species cooperation, mostly with dogs and horses
infradig
I always considered it a political metaphor really.
Andrews54757
After reading the books, I thought that there was some sort of underlying political meaning with the way Liu incorporates both philosophy, religion, and real world events (ie, the Cultural Revolution). Then I read the afterword and author interview transcripts where the author explicitly says that there is no such meaning.
> “As a science fiction writer who began as a fan, I do not use my fiction as a disguised way to criticize the reality of the present.”
Given that the author lives under an authoritarian government, I'm not sure if Liu's words should be taken at face value. But officially, a political interpretation of the book wouldn't be the authors intention.
sdwr
Was looking for this, had to scroll a long way to find it. The "dark forest" is a metaphor for growing up in an authoritarian regime. Paranoia and zero trust, because crimes against the state are absolute, and you never know who is reporting on you.
Then it mixes that with the US - China relationship mirroring first contact with the aliens.
Not everything lines up 1 to 1, but all the themes are there. Amazing how many people take it at face value instead of looking for context.
awb
If we look at human history through the lense of a Dark Forest hypothesis and resource scarcity, you’d expect to see a variety of behaviors: aggression, defensive isolation, cooperation, etc.
And as on Earth, in Space, distance may help keep the peace.
me_me_me
> distance may help keep the peace
Its the opposite actually, distance increases the information latency.
The higher latency the more uncertainty (and paranoia about what other side will do).
You will notice your neighbor slowly changing their attitudes and ideas because you can see it happen. You can intervene or prepare for whats happening, but
At space distances by the time you see those changes, their relativistic weapons were already fired. And even if there was some cultural shit and they regretted firing it, its already too late to do anything
_nalply
Another hypothesis about why humans don't find traces of aliens in the universe: The universe is quite young. We are just first in our local sector!
> Advanced aliens really are out there, and we have enough data to say roughly where they are in space and time, and when we will see or meet them.
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As the author of this article says at the top it makes for a fun science fiction, but doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense in reality. So why do people fixate so much on how not realistic this particular science fiction concept is? Writing science fiction isn't about making realistic theories of how reality is. It's about writing interesting things that are only loosely related to actual science.
It's also worth noting that this hypothesis is not an original idea of Liu's it just wasn't called a Dark Forest previously.