Reasons that every individual of every possible species in the universe would find convincing? Yeah, right.
I’m on board with that.
I have a meet and greet with them next week. I’ll keep you posted (I hope they don’t bring their anal probes).
Tell that to the gravitational lensing folks.
Gravitational lensing bends light around incredibly large masses, such as black holes. I’m not sure what that has to do with anything?
Just Google “gravitational lensing for effective cloaking.” Here’s one.
But Kardashev civilizations and whatnot are straying far from “how old or young is the universe”, so I think getting back on topic would be best.
I see - referring to this paper -
I’ll note this:
So I don’t know if it is actually possible to build shch a device, even theoretically. Maybe if manipulating dark matter turns out to be possible.
A dyson swarm, or one around every star in the galaxy, doesn’t take unknown physics. Your cloaking device does. AKA effectively magic.
Regardless, it wouldn’t help you hide from the “K4” civilization you described.
Any civilization you ought to be hiding from not only knows you were there, it was monitoring the atmosphere of your planet undergo changes when life first arose there. If they’re a K4 civilization before you, they are nevessarily much older too. You can’t hide from them because by the time you’re evolved enough to look at the stars and think hiding is a good idea, it is too late.
Your link is the same study I linked and requires theoretical matter AKA magic. Aveda kadabra!
I was kinda joking about cloaking a K3. As I said, I believe >K1 is fantasy (but I’ll increase that to >K2).
OK, so, just to summarize on what the dark forest hypothesis is: it is one potential explanation for why we see no evidence of ETs. The thinking is that revealing your existence and location is inherently risky as some other ETs may be hostile.
And, some variants go further and suggest a “game theory” strategy of preemptively attacking other species, even (or especially) if they are no threat, as they may potentially be a threat in the future.
This will get quite complex as I get into the various scenarios and sub-scenarios.
Indeed, the complexity of all this has made me realize that, while “dark forest” doesn’t trivially work as a Fermi paradox solution, I should also not say I have trivially refuted it either, as it appears to be a whole class of strategies and counter-stategies.
Anyway, without further ado…
General strategy
It occurs to me that whether “passive” or “active”, it may make sense for a species to broadcast signals.
For example, let’s say we have a probe 1,000 light years away from our homeworld. Why not have that probe loudly broadcast its existence to the galaxy? It could draw out other species and let you know who’s out there, how powerful they are and how hostile they are.
Of course there is an obvious risk to this strategy: you are revealing that at least one intelligent species exists, even if other species don’t yet know where you are. But, on the flip side, this may be the very action that saves your species: if the Big Bad comes and blows up the probe with weapons of a type you’ve never even seen before, you might realize your best strategy as a species is to scatter in a million directions.
Anyway, you start to see why “the dark forest” doesn’t trivially work as a Fermi paradox solution: because it’s at least debatable whether the logic should actually make us expect a *noisy* galaxy of Siren calls.
Passive strategies (hiding)
The main issue with this strategy, is we run into the “everys” again. Even if it makes sense to stay quiet from a civilization point of view, it needs to make sense to every individual, always.
Bear in mind that humans have already broken this: we’ve beamed signals at stars, we’ve put plaques on the Voyagers, we’ve allowed TV signals to leak away. Yes, we’re dumb, and yes, it’s highly improbable any of these signals would be seen even if advanced life was abundant. But it does highlight how relatively easy it is to send signals, and how unlikely a 100% consensus to stay quiet for all time is.
Active strategies (pre-emptive attacks)
Let’s break this down into attacking a more advanced species, and attacking a less advanced species.
The former would be suicide. A more advanced species is likely to be millions of years more advanced. If they were benign, you may have just made them hostile. And if they were hostile, you have just brought forward your destruction.
But attacking a less advanced species is risky too, because that’s a kind of signal, right? Blowing up a bunch of planets and space stations could be the very action that draws the attention of a more powerful species that now knows there’s a threat in town. Why would we put a target on our back just to attack someone who is no threat?
Active strategy II - the relativistic bomb
This is the specific scenario where it doesn’t matter how advanced a civilization is, because there is no defence for a kind of bomb that travels at close to c. And, therefore, it makes sense to preemptively fire these bombs at any planet that might harbor life.
But, again, this could be the very action that brings destruction to the species that started the MAD.
Because if any species sees a bunch of planets being destroyed by relativistic bombs they are motivated to fire off a bunch of bombs themselves to hopefully take out the threat.
We could ask what if the aggressor species has some kind of super scanning technology, where they know the location of every planet, every ship, ahead of time, so they can send bombs off in every direction that will kill all observers before they can retaliate. But this is actually not possible if c is indeed the hard limit: it will always be possible for a ship or space station to have seen the destruction of their homeworld before your scanner has seen them. And what if those ships are armed with relativistic bombs…?
OK, I guess this should be a separate thread…
I don’t buy the “it needs to occur with every individual always” argument. That’s thinking from a human perspective. We humans do many things without considering every unanticipated bad consequence. And, if we continue to do so, without our collective consciousness evolving, we will never become an advanced civilization. We’ll go extinct.
It’s not unreasonable to believe advanced civilizations became advanced because they do think of every possible bad consequence. One bad consequence would be, “if we populate the entire galaxy, there will be sub-populations in the future who will endanger us, the home civilization.” So, before expanding in the first place, it makes sense to develop a fail-safe safeguard against that occurring. What could that safeguard be? I dunno, I’m only human. But, they will know.
Well it is trying to speculate on sentient species. For which we shouldn’t throw away the only data we have.
And, “our kind must survive at all costs” is itself a human perspective. It’s one that any species is likely to begin with, just thanks to evolution. But if we want to speculate about species that may have advanced beyond simple instincts, then their own species preservation is fair game too.
Anyway, the point is, it’s debatable whether a more advanced species will trend towards being more hive-like. Especially as they become scattered across space.
Maybe, but in the context of the dark forest that I was just discussing, it’s important to note that we have already falsified the strongest version of this conjecture. Humans have already tried to broadcast their location, pretty much as soon as we had the ability to. So it is demonstrably not the case that all species put in these safeguards prior to having the ability to break the silence.
Now, it’s still possible to argue that enlightenment comes prior to being able to do a good job of broadcasting signals. Something likely to be detected.
But, looking at where human society is, our governmental structures, and how quickly our communications and aerospace tech is moving, I very much doubt it’s going to play out like that for Homo sapiens. Which again, is the only data we have right now.
The earliest pond scum did pretty well, filling up the whole planet and diversifying into every form of life we see today, without some central Pond Scum Network directing its behavior and long-term strategy. And hominids spread far and wide out of Africa (in multiple overlapping waves that sometimes wiped out the remnants of earlier waves) to every habitable corner of the globe, again without a United Nations guiding them in doing so.
And it’s very possible that our descendants who populate the stars bear as much resemblance go us as we so to those early hominids. Or the pond scum.
Pond scum and early hominids didn’t have to worry about an advanced civilization intercepting their radio signals and crushing them out of existence.
Neither do we. If advanced civilizations are out there and close enough to crush us, they’ve been watching us since before we evolved.
You’ve convinced me to close my bedroom shades at night. I don’t show my naughty bits for free.
I don’t believe that’s the case at all. Maybe they’re on their way to crush us as we speak. Maybe they’re waiting to crush us if and when we actually pose a threat. Maybe they see how we’re handling global warming and saying, “pshaw, we don’t need to crush them, they’re crushing themselves.”
We’re crushing it 
Got an Orange Crush? I’m thirsty.
It seems to be part of the topic to me but it’s your thread, I think it’s up to you to decide.
I agree with @Tibby that your standard of every individual as applied here and to other parts of your argument is not something that must apply to any civilization. In the case of hiding for instance, it is not necessary that every individual never attempts to reveal the existence of their civilization. If you thought we weren’t being seen by aliens what could you do individually to reveal our existence to them? And based on how few intelligent civilizations I think there are within our sight, or us withing theirs, it is not necessary to believe one of them would have revealed themselves to us by now if they were there.
There seems to be a tendency to believe the exponential growth of major discoveries in the areas of engineering and computer science will continue unabated far into the future. I believe this is our human mindset because we are currently in a centuries old tech growth spurt since the dawn of the industrial age.
But, things were pretty boring for us hominids for millions of years before that. Oh sure, there were some major game-changers before the industrial age: tools, harnessing fire and ménage à trois sex transitioning into an agrarian society come to mind. But these milestones were few and far between. We’re merely toddlers in the realm of high-tech. Everything is new, exciting and much yet remains to be discovered.
But eventually the eureka moments will slow and perhaps even hit a wall.There will of course still be incremental improvements in design and function of already discovered major technology, potentially forever, But, one day there will be no more big things to discover. This applies to us as well as any other potential advanced civilization. All must obey the physical laws of the universe. Anything that you, sci-fi writers or science futurists can imagine will not necessarily become reality, no matter how much we want them to.
I believe one impossibility is downloading your consciousness into a hard-drive with a titanium robot body (something some people argue will allow us to withstand interstellar travel unaffected by time). I have no doubt AI will attain consciousness, but it won’t be your consciousness, it will be the robot’s consciousness. If I don’t experience the qualia, I say, screw the robots (with titanium screws).
I believe FTL or near-FTL travel is another absolute universal impossibility. I think the actual universal speed limit that any life-form can attain falls far short of that. Even if going near light speed doesn’t break physical law, it may be impossible for practical reasons, like propulsion.
I’m no expert, but I believe ionic propulsion, gravity assist and nuclear electric propulsion are, or soon will be reality. In the best case using these methods, it would take ~1000 years to just reach our closest star, Proxima Centauri… 2000 years if you want to return with a pizza.
If you want to bring back your pizza faster, you’ve got to use theoretical means of propulsion like nuclear pulse propulsion, fusion ramjets, laser sails, antimatter engines or Alcubierre warp drive. You can get your pizza back in ~80 years using an antimatter engine, or back in 8 years using the warp drive. Ok, your pizza may not be hot, but that’s not too bad. Of course, if you want pizza from the joint halfway across the galaxy, well you better have some snacks available while you wait. And these are theoretical means of propulsion. They may never become reality for any civilization.
Of course this just applies to bringing resources back to your home vicinity, not seeding the galaxy with probes or colonies over millions of years. But, as discussed, advanced civilizations (any of them) may not want to fill the galaxy over millions of years (any/always). They may just want to expand and fill an area a few light-years radius from their home planet, an area they can control and defend completely and gather resources from only a few years travel away. That’s not a dumb idea even for a super-intelligent species. It’s the advanced psycho-social mindset. It’s the way I’d do and I’m just semi-super-intelligent. 