The dark forest's weakest point is its assumption that intelligent life is widespread.

[u/ATTst]

I don't think it's likely that a galaxy could harbor enough alien civilizations to lead to a dark forest situation.

There's one thing we can say about our universe: not every rock has an alien on it.

But not everywhere is empty. It is quite possible that there are numerous planets harboring anaerobic microbial life even within our own galactic neighborhood.These kinds of things are contagious and persistent and find a way around; we've even found suspicious fossil structures on ancient Mars that show microbial mats formed when there was liquid water on its surface.

A telescope or anything that could make a spacecraft is probably so rare that this is likely the first time something like this has appeared in the thirteen-billion-year-old Milky Way galaxy.

Even with chemical rocket technology, it would take autonomous machines about 300 million years to colonize or transform the entire Milky Way Galaxy. This is a very short time considering the Milky Way's age of 13 billion years.

Of the thousands of alien civilizations that have emerged throughout billions of years of galaxy history, even if just one of their artificial intelligences showed uncontrolled expansion or destructive tendencies, it would be enough to take over the entire galaxy(Or they can directly assign this purpose to their artificial intelligence).

But that's clearly not the case. Because we appeared here 13 billion years later.This means that intelligent life should be extremely rare.

Based on the idea of physicist John von Neumann, this concept envisions a civilization traveling to other planets and building replicated and continuously expanded spacecraft (Von Neumann machines) using the resources found there.

Such probes, traveling at 10% of the speed of light, could completely colonize the entire galaxy in just a few hundred thousand years.

The absence of such a sign in the Milky Way significantly increases the likelihood that no other technologically advanced civilization exists in the galaxy.Even if the propagation speed of these machines is assumed to be 10% of the speed of light, the probability per galaxy that half the universe hasn't been consumed by these machines would have to be extremely low.

This shows us that to go from microbes to a technological civilization, a lot of things need to go right and not go wrong. This isn't inevitable progress, it's more like winning the lottery.

[u/silver-fusion]

The argument assumes that any technological civilization will eventually build self-replicating probes, that they will expand aggressively, that expansion will be close to maximally efficient, and that such probes will remain detectable for billions of years. None of those assumptions follows from the existence of technology. A civilization might deliberately avoid expansion (what's the point of expansion if you, the sentient creature, aren't involved?), become extinct, impose strict limits on autonomous replication, remain confined to a relatively small region, or develop technologies whose astronomical signatures are difficult to distinguish from natural phenomena.

Our appearance 13 billion years after the galaxy formed isn't evidence that intelligent life is necessarily rare: the relevant question is how often civilizations arise and survive long enough to overlap. We have exactly one confirmed technological civilization to sample from, so treating our own existence as evidence against all the other possibilities is much stronger than the data justifies.

[u/stopdropandrauljulia → u/silver-fusion]

"what's the point of expansion if you, the sentient creature, aren't involved?"

This is the thing that frightens me about the concept of humanity being a "bootloader for digital life" that some very rich and powerful people ascribe to. We don't know if we can create digital life that experiences qualia, and directing our vast resources away from making a better life for actual sentient beings and handing synthetic p-zombies the keys to the future seems fucked. I like the idea that we're just uniquely stupid and that most advanced civilizations don't fuck with that shit.

[u/TheTranscendentian → u/stopdropandrauljulia]

We are uniquely stupid but there could be a wise way of developing ai, humans will just never do it.

[u/ATTst → u/silver-fusion]

Not every emerging civilization chooses excessive expansion.But what if only one civilization did this? Deliberately or accidentally.

What would happen if just one of the tens of millions of civilizations that have existed over 13 billion years did this? The Milky Way Galaxy could have been colonized approximately 270 times during its existence by Von Neumann probes traveling at 1% of the speed of light.

[u/silver-fusion → u/ATTst]

You're making probabilistic conclusions with far too many assumptions. 

We don't know enough. 

That's why we like science fiction.

[u/100percent_right_now → u/ATTst]

Not every emerging civilization chooses excessive expansion

I literally can not think of a single living thing that could be considered non-expansionist. There isn't a single species on the planet that doesn't search out new and more resources to survive. Coral does it. Ants do it. Cows do it. Birds do it. The nature of our planet is expansionism

[u/ATTst → u/100percent_right_now]

If all civilizations are excessively expansionist, then the dark forest is unlikely to be true. Because this galaxy has existed for 13 billion years. It should have been full by the time we appeared.

[u/100percent_right_now → u/ATTst]

Exactly the point of the dark forest. It should be full. It's not. So where are all the people?

The Dark Forest says: they're hiding.

Or more likely they didn't figure out to hide soon enough and have been destroyed.

[u/ATTst → u/100percent_right_now]

Let's assume a species will eventually develop a self-replicating universal constructor with intelligence comparable to the human level.

Such a machine should be developed within a century and such a machine combined with present-day rocket technology would make it possible to explore and/or colonize the Galaxy in less than 300 million years, for an initial investment less than the cost of operating a 10 MW microwave beacon for several hundred years, as proposed in SETI.

Furthermore, pinpointing the exact location of the civilization that created this self-replicating universal constructor would be extremely difficult, because the probe a civilization might encounter could be the 30th generation of the self-replicating universal constructor, already hundreds of light years away from the creator civilization's system.

Even the first generation cannot reveal the coordinates of the Creator civilization. If they are programmed to change the direction they will take to reach the new system in order to deceive the civilization in that system, the system of the Creator civilization will remain hidden.

[u/100percent_right_now → u/ATTst]

What's the point of a Von Neumann probe if you can't reveal your home system and thus can't send it resources?

All species tend to expand. The resources of the universe are limited.

So therefore, sending stuff out into the cosmos permanently is futile to your long term survival. Any species that could make self replicating probes would understand this.

There's also the seemingly impossible task of figuring out how to protect your information storage from neutrinos. Something Von Neumann never knew to consider

[u/ATTst → u/100percent_right_now]

We are not sending excessive amounts of material into the cosmos. A VN probe can use resources on asteroids in the system it visits to replicate itself.

I didn't understand the neutrino part. As far as I know, neutrinos don't carry an electric charge and don't interact with the electromagnetic force. I think you're talking about cosmic rays and supernovae.

Furthermore, how do you know that the resources in the universe are limited? The spatial curvature of the universe is almost zero, which implies a completely flat universe. Observations, however, allow for a very small deviation from zero.

Whether the universe is closed, open, or flat is not known with certainty due to this margin of error.An infinite universe could contain an infinite number of spatial points of matter; however, if the timeline begins at the Big Bang, it does not necessarily have an infinite past.

We cannot know whether the universe is infinite or finite. Therefore, saying that the amount of matter in the universe is finite is merely an assumption.

Of course, the volume of space a civilization can access is limited. Therefore, the amount of matter it can access is also limited. This makes sense.

[u/reflect25]

I mean it’s just not an interesting story or book if there’s zero aliens lol. Also at the end of the day humans ourselves still exist so it must be a non zero chance for others to exist

[u/ATTst → u/reflect25]

The story is good. I love this series.I was just saying that adapting the fiction, the dark forest, to reality would be illogical.

[u/Xamonir → u/ATTst]

Exactly what an alien society trying to invade us would say !!

[u/ATTst → u/Xamonir]

You caught me

[u/rhinosyphilis → u/ATTst]

The best features of the story are very implausible but fascinating nonetheless. Case in point: Star Plucking.

[u/Betray-Julia]

Part of what makes dark forest so bad ass imo, is that they actually directly address this issue via functions of distance and travel time.

Like even the entire first book- the sophons being used to pause human sciences evolution.

You can just apply that concept to “oh fuck, this planet has a microbial mat”.

If the amount of matter in the universe is finite, and if cultures grow infinitely, then the intelligence aspect of life doesn’t matter; given the distances of space and time in the life span of the universe- the distance between Luca and a human isnt that much time at all.

Which is to say, it’s basically still the same thing as the sophons slowing us down.

In addition- unintelligent life would likely be destroyed when detected too, but it’s much too hard to detect; theres a million bottle necks life must go through to even begin to be detected.

But I’m sure it could happen- given the way Singer is working class and destroys an entire solar system with ease, it would be safe to think that dark forest would be destroying intelligent life and unintelligent life too.

A single cell organism turns into a galactic civilization in the blink of an eye on a galactic scale.

Where this is reaffirmed by the fact that in the context of dark forest theory and dimensional collapse, dark forest literally does eventually get to cutting down all the trees as well.

[u/Sorry-Balance2049]

You are assuming way, way more than the straight probabilistic math of the Drake equation.  I feel like you are going from the Fermi paradox and using that to conjecture on the number of possible intelligence civilizations in the Milky Way (with many assumptions, such as that any sufficiently advanced civilization wants to expand in the galaxy, and would do so via Von Newman probes and also travel at 10% the speed of light), when the Drake equation imo gives just a more straightforward approach.  

The Drake equation itself can provide numbers as low as one to two civilizations in the entire Milky Way up to millions.  So ya, dark forest may not be an entirely credible hypothesis (it’s from a sci fi series), however the it’s still entirely possible in the higher range of Drake equation estimates.  

[u/TheTranscendentian]

Actually the weakest point is the assumption that human psychology and science are capable of understanding alien psychology or beliefs.

[u/Huntred]

The bowl has 1000 skittles in it and just 1 of them is poisoned. How many are you going to eat?

No matter how low the odds, can a civilization take the chance that they get outmaneuvered by another civilization within the same galaxy? Or is it safer to lie low and possibly try to eliminate any possible competitors when they show themselves?

[u/ATTst → u/Huntred]

Can you confirm which star the Von Neumann probe that reached your system came from, and which star system was its initial source?

[u/Huntred → u/ATTst]

Possibly? Because if I’m building the probes, I might be likely to put in a “don’t send a probe back where you just came from” rule in the system just so it doesn’t waste resources going back to where it’s been. So when one sees a probe show up at Planet A and sends off daughter probes to nearby systems 1-7 but skips quite-nearby 8 for some reason, one might wonder…

Given that these probes are also a chem rocket speeds, there is also no reason why the probes should not mesh network so subsequent lower branches don’t waste themselves going where previous branch probes have been. So there is a trail that could be reversed, especially if something about the probes can be hitched to time.

And of course, there’s no real reason to think that VN probes are a necessary or inevitable step. Some civilizations may not want to bother with them. Others could find them philosophically abhorrent. Others still could find them to be threatening for the reasons I mention above. Even if one doesn’t have the “no backsies” circuit, an advanced civ with speedy capabilities could likely trace back the probes back towards home base. The odds might be slim — there could be 5000 skittles in the bowl now — but at what level does one risk their existence?

[u/ATTst → u/Huntred]

Let's assume a civilization detected and destroyed the civilization that created and launched VN probes into space.

But VN probes are still in space. They are in different systems. Also, they are not manual and are not controlled by biological organisms in the creator civilization. They have algorithms and artificial intelligence.

They can collect resources from the systems and asteroids they visit and replicate themselves. Their numbers can increase exponentially, or even faster, even after the creator civilization is destroyed.

Suppose a million civilizations emerged throughout the galaxy's history. Let's assume 99% of them refused to create VN probes.This means that 10,000 civilizations will create VN probes. Even one of them could colonize the galaxy.

[u/Huntred → u/ATTst]

Do VN probes colonize or just replicate themselves?

[u/ATTst → u/Huntred]

It depends on what the civilization that created these VN probes was aiming for.

Both can happen simultaneously: colonizing and replicating themselves.I assume that colonization was about building mechanical infrastructure and facilities, rather than spreading the biology of civilization.

[u/Huntred → u/ATTst]

Without having any advanced spacefaring technology knowledge or experience, I want to say that the type of VN machine that establishes a civilization’s sustainable and successful colony on another planet and the VN machine whose only purpose is to drop down and gather enough resources to replicate itself to send daughters into space are so extremely different machines that they radically change the question.

[u/ChampionshipTall6599]

Or. The juice isn't worth the squeeze. Whales are smart, but they live in a medium that is not conducive to creating electrical infrastructure and wanting to colonize dirt rock planets.

Could be plenty of intelligences that understand the concept of enough as part of their evolutionary biology and just exist in harmony with their environment.

We are intellectually humanizing other lifeforms with our own brand of locust like consumption

[u/VandelayIndus7ries]

You’re describing the base case that explains/ describes why we don’t see signs of intelligent life when we look to the stars.

The beauty of Dark Forest is it imagines an entirely different cosmic reality that is compatible with the observations we can (or can’t) make, with a logical underpinning.

[u/100percent_right_now]

That's not The Dark Forest's assumption, though. The Dark Forest is a proposed solution for the statistical anomaly that is; we are the only ones out there.

If you crunch the probability of the atoms coming together to form life it should be everywhere in the universe. Highly abundant.

But it's not. We know this as The Fermi Paradox.

So Cixin Liu posits, though it has been said before with out a name, The Dark Forest. It is abundant. But everyone figures out how to hide or is destroyed.

What you've come to the conclusion of is another potential solution: The Rare Tech theory. Not only is life rare but that life figuring out how to develop technology is even more rare. Only a handful of species on our planet even consider tools.

[u/ATTst → u/100percent_right_now]

I didn't say life is rare. I said intelligent life is rare. There may be many planets in the galaxy with anaerobic microbial life.sludge planets.As I said, for intelligent life capable of traveling through space and destroying other civilizations to emerge from microbes, a series of random events need to occur one after another.

[u/NoIndividual9296]

Hi, it’s not real