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Comment by phyzome | Hacker News Reader

I've never really understood the dark forest thing. Being an intelligent species or not doesn't change whether your planet has useful resources. And if you're a naive species yapping on all frequencies, you're clearly not a threat. So... why would another civilization go to all the trouble of eliminating you?

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The idea is that, because of the risk of a technological explosion, any sentient species is a threat.

I don’t really buy the idea though - cooperation has been the strongest strength of humanity and is one of our greatest evolutionary edges. Why wouldn’t that apply on the interstellar scale too?

Humans attempt to dominate every nonhuman species within their reach, sentient or not.

Humans have not even advanced beyond attempting to dominate others of the same species.

Shoot first and ask questions later, if anything shooting first is safer (civilizational risk) on the chance they are thinking the same. On the flip side, an alien civilization sees our request to cooperate, they can accept or they can destroy us, to them we could be lying or go back on our word and destroy them.

I see some criticism of dark forest theory in here, but keeping quite and shooting first are the least risky options when the inentions or capabilities of another civilization are unknown and making assumptions about the other sides friendliness could lead to eithers extinction.

In terms of absolute agnosticism anything can lead to anything.

Reasonable to assume that if I have a weapon that can destroy a civilization, others may have it too. Assuming also they have the similar risk calculus, it leans towards hiding and then nuking when either gets afraid enough. You can't do much but hope the other side is not more advance that you and can mitigate the attack.

It seems like a big stretch to assume aliens are going to share ideas of liberal democracy like fairness/cooperation etc (which are fairly recent) when there are groups of humans who do not

And what if they can mitigate the attack?

Then we are probably dead anyway, the onus would have been on them to contact us as they are probably several centuries more advanced. In that case its like going with a tank to an island population that still uses bows and arrows

Is it a good idea to pick a fight with a tank?

You do realise that comment supports strongly the dark forest theory right? The best thing do do before you have a tank is to shut up and hide. Of course you don't pick fights when you could get squashed

Implied was that the actions to take if we had full info are obvious. If their capabilities are known you would not have to resort to "shoot first, ask later"...

But the dark forest theory suggests when you have an arrow, you should shoot others, because they can have an arrow too. This strategy can go wrong if they have a tank. And if you systematically shoot everyone, you're systematically looking for a tank.

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