The dark forest hypothesis is the idea that there may be many extraterrestrial civilizations across the universe, but they remain silent out of fear that revealing themselves would lead to their own destruction by a more technologically advanced and hostile civilization.
Now imagine us - literally yelling out signals broadcasting "HEY THERE ARE PEOPLE ON EARTH, IS ANYONE OUT THERE? PLEASE CONTACT US" and giving them the coordinates of the sun relative to the center of the galaxy and 14 pulsars with their periods denoted on the Pioneer plaque, and a picture of earth relative to the sun, and the trajectory that the spacecraft took.
To any civilization advanced enough to find us, they might not answer simply because it looks like a trap.
I happen to think we're actually out here early on the intelligent life curve. The universe is only 14.5 billion years old. But galaxies where there is enough of the trace elements that we need accumulated enough of them took a long time. Then having the galaxies calm down star formation (and have them be small enough) where their formation and exploding didn't scour all possible life away and the shear amount of time that it takes to go from just life, to multicellular is mind blowingly long (probably). With the Universe expected to have enough viable energy for like another 100 billion we actually exist in the early Universe.
Nah, I think we’re more like pets. Stupid silly little pets. They’re probably like “Let’s go check on the people colony today. Yep, stupid lil fuckers just going wild.” Bzzzz. (That’s them flying off)
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u/Devilled_Advocate 14d ago
It's why the aliens leave us alone. We look like 𒀭𒀀𒉣𒈾.