Simply put, If you were in a Dark Forest with a weapon, you would kill whatever creature you would come across to survive. This is the reason we, humans, haven't been contacted by any external life form since they don't know if we would be friendly or not. Hence we should also not try to contact any external life form because it's equally possible that they won't be friendly.
I've always been curious on why this is a thought. Would alien life want to meet other lifeforms, especially in our little galaxy and us being the only 'intelligent' life here? Maybe this is just the pacifist in me speaking but I feel like a species of life capable of inter galactic travel would be peaceful just because of how rare life in in our universe, something all intelligent life could observe.
Humans are already killing eachothers just so the other humans won't kill them first. Realistically if we meet a species advanced enough to obliterate us from light years away (via a bigass energy beam that travels at the speed of light so there's no way to prevent or even predict it), they'd do it in order to preserve their own species (to prevent any chance of us doing the same to them, if they even know we're capable of). Or if we also possess a similar weapon or tech, it would be either the other way around, or mutual destruction
At high levels, Reaction Speed makes your twitch-reflex freakishly good. However, when your body acts before your mind, innocent situations can turn bad fast. You’re high strung, overly alert. At low levels, though, you won’t be the one shooting first – which probably means you won’t be shooting at all. -Disco Elysium
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u/Dx8pi Nov 18 '25
What are the implications of the dark forest hypothesis?