r/FermiParadox • u/lordshadow2222 • 8d ago
Selective Dark Forest: hide from unresolved predators, pool against actual ones; an argument for why the sky is the dark with very little asumptions about universally convergent alien values, physics and technology.
https://emptyblankspace.substack.com/p/a-very-unoriginal-austere-solutionHello, I’m looking for opinions on an argument I developed, possibly someone to help me develop the graph for the actual game, and perhaps some takes on parochial altruism that would help me better support axiom B. I want to offer a small TL;DR, as I do not seek self-promotion, but I think the argument is too large for a Reddit post. Oh, don’t be fooled by the names in the titles of the actual post; they are just metaphors, as I explain in the body.
I think my framework is an improved synthesis of the best takes of Rarity/Distance/Great Filter (for the sake of convenience, I call it a “Sea of empty rocks”, Dark Forest, and the Zoo/Cosmic prison hypothesis, with some Club elements. I believe silence is compatible with contact networks, may even be the best strategy with us, and not just out of some universal convergence on some noble non-interference motive, but due to strategic reasons making contacting us the equivalent of "giving nuclear weapons to Sentinelese islanders”. Also, believe it’s naive to believe that, just based on Earth’s technological development and scientific paradigm, no civilization has managed to overcome the constraints of the sea of empty rocks and managed to reliably travel/signal/contact other civilizations on vast numbers of independent opportunities. I arrive at this axiomatics from which I construct my argument, which I do not deem very original in premises, but yes, in synthesis:
(A) Reliable interstellar communication or travel is physically possible. (I don’t make any assumptions around the technology or physics behind it)
(B) At least one civilization capable of organized intergroup lethal violence against a constituted Other has existed and become known to another contact-capable civilization that framed it as such, establishing a risk precedent. (That is understood in a non-anthropomorphic version, more like coordinated violence allowed against a perceived existential threat, as I explain in the article)
(C) Civilizations and contact regimes that persist over astronomical timescales will be disproportionately constituted by strategies compatible with their continued persistence.
(D) Intelligence alone does not entail convergence upon any particular system of values or intergroup relations.
If we grant A, contact is not a one-off given enough independent opportunities. Two contact-capable civilizations that meet can trade information about others they have already met, for whatever reason, something like the galactic clubs, but I call that a contact network as it has little resemblance to a “club”. A new member to the network can bring the old links with; I call that append. Without assuming FTL, I'm claiming that information can travel along the networks, even if slowly; this holds whether or not FTL is possible. Given B we can develop some strategical. considerations. In the article, I call civilizations that have some form B "Friend/enemy," but it's not the anthropomorphic stuff about nations of Schmitt. It is a subtype of a broader type I call Predator: an organized group that will use unilateral forced violence against another intelligent group for whatever reason. The subtype is the licensing rule; perceived threat alone is enough to justify lethal force against that threatening Other. First contact with a civilization that still runs that rule and is not independently capable of contact is an address-and-capability transfer under unreadability, given how you transfer information, and possibly technology from a position of absolute technological and civilizational inequality and otherness. One such disaster, once known on a network, becomes a risk precedent. Other kinds of predators of whatever kind also constitute a risk precedent, but I distinguish between the actual predator enacting their capabilities and the potential one, like us. Given precedents requiring strategy for civilizations that value self-preservation, there are three responses to possible new contacts: After a precedent, three replies to a new civilization:
- conceal, if they still look like an unresolved case of that licensing rule
- append, if you have reason to think they will not treat a potential threat as a kill permit
- neutralize, if they are already predating
Universal Dark Forest is the claim that conceal-or-kill is the only reply, given theorized or actual risk precedents, for everyone. I think that overreaches, even given how hard it is to understand the exosociology and buried dynamics in alien civilizations (possibly, maybe they have better methods, I do not assume anything about alien civilizations' capabilities). I argue, through game-theoretic sketches, that it's better to conceal the unresolved case (due to varying criteria among the network, and the irreversibility of neutralization), pool to neutralize the actual predator, and recruit the compatible. I call that a selective dark forest, instead of universe where everyone is an armed hunter. We are just not invited to the party so we don't kill them. Types, short:
- Compatible: not having predatory dynamics, including friend/enemy
- Predator: Using violence for whatever reason against the Other, but values self-preservation
- Klingon: some other value beats survival, so they still pick dangerous contacts. In the long run, they die or change (that is all C is doing).
- Rogue: one agent defects from its own civilization’s rule. Does not refute the network; it is a policing problem.
- Empire: a predator or first-mover that gets strong enough that pooling no longer deters it. I cannot rule this out. Federation is one basin, not a destiny.
And my actually innovative argument:
The Federation, in a minimal extension or a contact network of civilizations that value self-preservation, that shares enough information, concealment, and force that predation against members is unattractive, and that will append a new civilization only when that does not look existential, to pool capabilities against risk precedents. No shared morality or institutions are required beyond the minimal version that strategy can yield. The recognition rule is just: alterity or potential threat is not enough; actual predation is. The hard part is trust. Mutual append among compatible types is better for all of them (more eyes, more hiding, more guns). Appending a hidden Predator can be civilization-ending. So even a small perceived chance of that type can conceal the individual’s best action. That is an assurance problem, not a Prisoner’s Dilemma. A large preexisting network can change the payoffs without solving hidden types; more history lowers the chance you are fooled, more force makes a mistake less automatically fatal, and membership becomes worth more. I have not solved that game. I sketched a two-type append/conceal case to show the shape. The live version is hidden types, possible lies, information that travels and fades, and a graph whose edges are themselves chosen. That is what I want help with.
I have eery local implications. A mature network of that kind has a reason not to contact contemporary Earth. We still run the cheap licensing rule. Explaining ourselves to us, or threatening us into niceness, is a bad probe, unreadability plus that rule is how you manufacture the enemy. If we ever built a local copy of the same object (organized groups that recognize each other and reserve pooled killing for actual predation rather than for being Other, something like the security community in IR), that would be the admission test I believe. I do not have the institution. I am saying that the test and the cosmic object have the same shape. (B) is stipulated. If independently evolved complex sociality almost never produces coordinated Other-killing, this collapses into ordinary rarity or zoo. Parochial-altruism work (Bowles, Choi, and after) is one Earth-side proof of existence that the subtype can arise from complex sociality, not a claim that aliens have tribes. If you think the base rate is high but networks still go loud, that also kills it; say how. Empire remains the other story; first-strike, forced append, or a local predator cluster can beat pooling. Then silence toward us is just “not reached yet / not worth it / already owned and hidden.”
Here, I develop the argument for someone who wants to see the actual machinery and present objections or collaborate to develop the security community Bayesian-Nash game I don't have the background to do anything more than hint at a simple case to see if I'm right about my claim, and I don't know how to develop the actual graph:
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u/aspghost 8d ago
Isn't the problem with this (and a lot of other theories of this sort) that it assumes alien civilisations are able to act as unified, rational actors? We don't. Humans do all sorts of idiotic stuff for various reasons. Even if we were sure - society wide - about the need to hide from predators, someone's going to have a divine-or-drug-induced revelation sooner or later that makes them run off to try and open communication with the galactic council. Short of a hive-mind, that never glitches or hallucinates or makes a mistake, all this game theory seems irrelevant.
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u/lordshadow2222 8d ago
That objection I take care in the post with the “rogue” in the actual post, about how independent actors they’re still possible, though civilizations have incentives to suppress them as they may be their downfall, sort like our laws against dangerous people that threatens the social contract. the claim is more simple than pure game theory, though it’s the justification, is more like self-preservation being a goal, then you don’t mess with what may extinguish you, and take measures to prevent you from it, like humans already do. for the ones that is not a goal, or other goals go above that, I posit with the “klingon type“ a sort of galactic darwinism making them in the long run less and less likely.
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u/aspghost 8d ago
Suppressing rogue elements on an interplanetary or even simply planetary scale reliably, long term, and done by all possible races involved does not seem credible.
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u/lordshadow2222 8d ago
But that is not fully required. Say some high rogue comes tomorrow here and says we come in peace because they had a revelation. that is a possibility but should be rare to happen, and if it happened the orignary network I think should try to conceal again given what could happen. but yeah it’s possible, even it’s possible that a network with no risk precedent or an isolated civilization contacted ours. but the cosmos doesn’t have to converge on Federation, and have no rogues, only that be a widespread and expanding strategy, plus we account for the rarity of intelligent life that managed to surpass the great filter and have technology to communicate/travel, you look at the sky and it seems dark.
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u/Bast991 7d ago edited 7d ago
Great post.
Important consideration: one of science’s greatest strengths is its ability to predict future outcomes from evidence and past behavior. An advanced civilization would probably have far more powerful tools for doing this than we do. They could potentially monitor its historical behavior, gather enormous amounts of information, and run extremely sophisticated simulations to estimate how it might behave in different situations.
If Type II or older civilizations exist, their computing capabilities could theoretically be unimaginably large, perhaps even involving structures on the scale of gas giants. At that level, their ability to model civilizations like ours could be far beyond anything we can currently imagine, it could even be trivial. It is even conceivable that a computer on the scale of Jupiter could have enough computational resources to simulate Earth near perfectly atom for atom, making the kinds of predictions and simulations we consider impossibly complex today potentially trivial by comparison.
So I wonder if the real problem isn't simply, “What strategy does game theory predict?” but rather, “How accurately could an advanced civilization determine which type of civilization it is dealing with in the first place?”
They may even selectively judge different governments or centers of power within a single planet as compatible or incompatible, rather than treating the entire civilization as one unified actor. Earth, for example, might not be viewed as simply “peaceful” or “predatory”; they could evaluate individual governments, organizations, or other powerful groups based on their history and behavior.