7 ms·

The dark forest theory lives!

sudhirj 6y ago
Unfortunately, yes. The first thing we’re going to do as soon as we fine intelligent alien life is figure out how to kill it. And sadly we’ll have to assume they’re doing the same. An no, settling Mars won’t help. If someone / something can launch an interstellar attack it can certainly attack more than one planet and moon.
- Pulcinella 6y ago
  I have a far more charitable theory. The vast majority of human and alien life would want to be friends (or at least just leave their neighbors alone). It’s the elites who desire to destroy each other. I also have a less charitable theory: intelligent life just doesn’t exist. A thousand years from now we will have met dozens of sentient species, but the search for intelligent life continues :P
  - prox 6y ago
    It’s also about how you define intelligence: >“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- me_me_me 6y ago
  Are we though? Universe is huge. Wars on earth are waged over scares resources. If we are capable of reaching aliens would we really be incentivized to fight them while there are so many resources available elsewhere?
  - sudhirj 6y ago
    Habitable planets are the ultimate scarce resource. Once the earth is full we’ll have to find a way to move and there’s less than 5 good options in this solar system. In time they’ll be full too.
    - ls612 6y ago
      Who says habitable to us == habitable to hypothetical aliens?
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      If we've got the technology to travel between stars, we've probably also got the tech to leave planets behind entirely, or to terraform, or to adapt ourselves to conditions.
    - Enginerrrd 6y ago
      The only logical path is to download our brains onto computers, which will happen before that point. Once that technology exists, that's the only form of life that will dominate. Robots, nano-machines and hyper-intelligences will blow easily damaged flesh with finite lifespans. Habitable regions would be massively expanded.
      - LocalH 6y ago
        When you can figure out how to physically attach consciousness to a machine, get back to me
        jcelerier 6y ago
        the only thing that matters is for it to look like the consciousness has been attached.
        jessaustin 6y ago
        I've never forgotten the scene in the OSC short story "Fat Farm", in which the protagonist's mind has been copied to his clone, which clone has left the facility to "continue" to enjoy his fine life, and the protagonist realizes he hasn't thought about what comes next. The answer is grim. A consciousness might awake in the machine, but it won't be my consciousness.
Cro_on 6y ago
my sci-fi perspective is practically on the side of charitable, but in essence more like disinterest. in less than a century we went from heavier than air flight, to satellites, moon landings, mars probes, et al. and now we're talking seriously about terraforming mars and becoming interplanetary? it could turn out to be ~150 years from the invention of the lightbulb to people on mars.. insane. another century or two of progress and that spacefaring civilisation, and their tech, will look nothing like 99.9% of the speculation. and may even look nothing like us lol. so given the amount of time it takes for a ball of dirt to churn out meat computers, and how long it takes them to start making neil armstrong figurines. it would be reasonable to assume that all the other aliens are a few years ahead or behind us. it is not easy to picture the kind of mind bending spaceships they might have because, for example, for us they are still being thought of as spaceships. ex. you have to really think about what the internet is to not take the logical route and say that it's just copper, fancy glass and radio-waves.. it's actually extremely weird and magical. we have loads of stuff that is incomprehensible to our ancestors, and it's just going to keep going. of course in this hypothetical universe, i assume that time creates consciousness and benevolence. which may not be the reality. but if it's true, and that advanced civilisations exist all around us and are enormous, magical realms of impossibility, then we will never see them because they are incomprehensible to us, and to them we are a curious entity which share some similarities to their own history – if that's even something that they still posses.
carapace 6y ago
Pfft! It's the Fermi Paradox writ large. No other intelligent species has a word for "war". The aliens have us in quarantine. The Martians evacuated as soon as they realized that Percival Lowell could see them.

Unfortunately, yes. The first thing we’re going to do as soon as we fine intelligent alien life is figure out how to kill it. And sadly we’ll have to assume they’re doing the same. An no, settling Mars won’t help. If someone / something can launch an interstellar attack it can certainly attack more than one planet and moon.

Pulcinella 6y ago
I have a far more charitable theory. The vast majority of human and alien life would want to be friends (or at least just leave their neighbors alone). It’s the elites who desire to destroy each other. I also have a less charitable theory: intelligent life just doesn’t exist. A thousand years from now we will have met dozens of sentient species, but the search for intelligent life continues :P
- prox 6y ago
  It’s also about how you define intelligence: >“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
me_me_me 6y ago
Are we though? Universe is huge. Wars on earth are waged over scares resources. If we are capable of reaching aliens would we really be incentivized to fight them while there are so many resources available elsewhere?
- sudhirj 6y ago
  Habitable planets are the ultimate scarce resource. Once the earth is full we’ll have to find a way to move and there’s less than 5 good options in this solar system. In time they’ll be full too.
  - ls612 6y ago
    Who says habitable to us == habitable to hypothetical aliens?
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    If we've got the technology to travel between stars, we've probably also got the tech to leave planets behind entirely, or to terraform, or to adapt ourselves to conditions.
  - Enginerrrd 6y ago
    The only logical path is to download our brains onto computers, which will happen before that point. Once that technology exists, that's the only form of life that will dominate. Robots, nano-machines and hyper-intelligences will blow easily damaged flesh with finite lifespans. Habitable regions would be massively expanded.
    - LocalH 6y ago
      When you can figure out how to physically attach consciousness to a machine, get back to me
      - jcelerier 6y ago
        the only thing that matters is for it to look like the consciousness has been attached.
        jessaustin 6y ago
        I've never forgotten the scene in the OSC short story "Fat Farm", in which the protagonist's mind has been copied to his clone, which clone has left the facility to "continue" to enjoy his fine life, and the protagonist realizes he hasn't thought about what comes next. The answer is grim. A consciousness might awake in the machine, but it won't be my consciousness.

Cro_on 6y ago

my sci-fi perspective is practically on the side of charitable, but in essence more like disinterest. in less than a century we went from heavier than air flight, to satellites, moon landings, mars probes, et al. and now we're talking seriously about terraforming mars and becoming interplanetary? it could turn out to be ~150 years from the invention of the lightbulb to people on mars.. insane. another century or two of progress and that spacefaring civilisation, and their tech, will look nothing like 99.9% of the speculation. and may even look nothing like us lol. so given the amount of time it takes for a ball of dirt to churn out meat computers, and how long it takes them to start making neil armstrong figurines. it would be reasonable to assume that all the other aliens are a few years ahead or behind us. it is not easy to picture the kind of mind bending spaceships they might have because, for example, for us they are still being thought of as spaceships. ex. you have to really think about what the internet is to not take the logical route and say that it's just copper, fancy glass and radio-waves.. it's actually extremely weird and magical. we have loads of stuff that is incomprehensible to our ancestors, and it's just going to keep going. of course in this hypothetical universe, i assume that time creates consciousness and benevolence. which may not be the reality. but if it's true, and that advanced civilisations exist all around us and are enormous, magical realms of impossibility, then we will never see them because they are incomprehensible to us, and to them we are a curious entity which share some similarities to their own history – if that's even something that they still posses.

carapace 6y ago

Pfft! It's the Fermi Paradox writ large. No other intelligent species has a word for "war". The aliens have us in quarantine. The Martians evacuated as soon as they realized that Percival Lowell could see them.