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I saw it as a uniquely Chinese perspective on humanity. As the series helpfully reminds you, barely 40 years ago, China was in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, a collective self-inflicted madness which we would find difficult to imagine.

With that as your history and living memory, it's not surprising if your opinion of humanity's emotional maturity isn't as high as it could be.

> As the series helpfully reminds you, barely 40 years ago, China was in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, a collective self-inflicted madness which we would find difficult to imagine.

I grew up in the "communist" Eastern Bloc. I can easily visualize that type of event.

I still don't buy it - neither the premises of that trilogy, nor its conclusions.

At the end I was like - there's got to be a better way, or else this is a pointless Universe.

The books had a few points to make, even if it cut some corners to make them.

1. Humans are bad at real long term (generations or more) planning.

2. Humans have been successful because of their ability to trust each other. This works okay on Earth, but if they live in a universe that is actively hostile towards this, it could turn us into a doomed species.

3. Conversely, an entire universe of species that go around destroying each other on a whim is also doomed for everyone.

The only resolution seems to be that maybe if groups of both species that want to peacefully coexist can find a third place to inhabit together, they may be able to find a compromise even if their original races end up wiped out completely.

My take on the "why are we behaving this way" was that, if you find intelligent life:

a) Its probably either very far behind or very far ahead of you.

b) Civilizations that are very far behind you can jump to being very far ahead of you "overnight"

c) Civilizations that are very far ahead of you can launch a preemptive strike that is guaranteed to destroy you.

d) Civilizations can modify local space to put themselves in a "stone-age" from which they cannot escape, thereby proving "we are not a threat".

Rationally, the only thing to do is destroy any civ you can, or preemptively take yourself out of the game.

An example of (c) was that Civilizations living in a n-dimensional universe could, if advanced enough, figure out how to modify themselves to live in an (n-1)-dimensional universe and then convert the n-d universe into an (n-1)-d universe that only they (and a few other clever civs) could survive in. Harsh. But rational.

Except of course you can escape from the Light Tombs using the pocket dimention door thing from the end of the book. That's another thing I found insane, in order to prove to the universe that you are not a threat you alter the speed of light in a solar system sized area in a way that the entire universe can easily see. If that isn't threatening I don't know what is. It doesn't even protect you from attacks!

The logic that "if you see someone, you must kill them" is kind of like "the first country that develops nuclear weapons must immediately deploy them against every other country, even thought that dooms the world to a nuclear winter." It's super-villain logic that ignores all of the other potential solutions--like diplomac--and ignores the MAD component of being able to easily destroy solar systems.

The entire reason given that alien species can't coexist is due to limited resources, but the Dark Forest mindset means they'll never be able to use those resources in the first place and at the end of the day they end up destroying all of them anyway. It's self defeating, and logically they should be able to figure that out.

The book feels like it's written by some game theory nerd who can't look past the first order equations.

The whole trilogy is built on a solid foundation of complete paranoia.

Yep. It's a zero trust universe. Luckily the real world doesn't work that way because that would suck.

>The logic that "if you see someone, you must kill them" is kind of like "the first country that develops nuclear weapons must immediately deploy them against every other country, even thought that dooms the world to a nuclear winter."

Except that they don't live on a planet, the weapons aren't nuclear, and they don't have spies or reconnaissance planes and satellites that can determine whether the other side really has them or not in near real time.

When we were looking at the SDI, some people argued that SDI was bad because it would allow us to launch a preemptive first strike without any consequences, while other argued that that was a good reason to build it, and then use it immediately. So even in the case where we actually all live on the same planet and share the risk, some in the USA argued for what you claim is super-villain logic. That's what I though the books got dead right: humans are fucking stupid.

The alien weapons also destroy the universe, although in some cases they are able to escape before the destruction is complete. This was in fact the endgame strategy for alien races in the novels: Figure out a way to reform yourself in a lower dimension then destroy the dimension you are in, except that ended up being a completely retarded idea because there are already races in the lower dimensions and far far fewer resources for your race to exploit. They're jumping out of the fire and into a much smaller and still crowded fire.

If self-replicating automated interstellar probes are possible, then given the size and age of the galaxy, they're inevitable -- and then so is a galaxy that's rife with them.

So where are they? Either self-replicating interstellar probes are impossible, or we're the first or only civilization to approach the ability to launch them.

The Fermi paradox.

IMHO the answer is: Once you have the technology necessary to travel interstellar distances, you no longer need to. Species are stuck in their own solar systems because leaving doesn't make much sense. The resources (including available space) in our solar system are nearly unlimited at the human scale, why take a staggeringly expensive and hazardous trip to some distant solar system for just more of the same?

That would mean conscious beings are stuck forever to their systems of origin.

I really, really want to revolt against this law, if it's really a law. Not sure why. I just do.

IMHO it is one of the best possibilities for the Fermi Paradox. Way better than the Dark Forest, we're alone, or all intelligent species destroy themselves alternatives. At least with this there is the possibility for our long range probes to make contact and exchange culture/technology.

Imagine there was one, or even a dozen such probes in our solar system right now.

Would we notice?

Briefly, until the Earth was gobbled up for material to make new self-replicating interstellar probes. Evolution would ensure that the probes would be voraciously reproducing as quickly as physically possible.

The numerical argument that the age of the galaxy gives sufficient time that it should be well-covered with probes seems reasonable.

However, extending that argument to "...and the various probes will have then competed in a Darwinian struggle leaving only a few voracious survivors causing a galactic-scale grey-goo scenario." does not seem especially well supported.