Dark Forest theory (universe, aliens, see, find)

[redace]

Picked up from Liu Cixin's trilogy. Three Body Problem, Dark Forest, Death's End.

SPOILER!

Here's the premise. The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization's a hunter. Silent, stealthy, arrows drawn. Why? Because yelling, "Hey, I'm here!" is a ticket to extinction. Civilization finds another, there's one thought: preemptive strike. Get them before they get you. Survival at its rawest.

Got to think about this from Cixin's perspective. China, where they've got the Warring States period in their history. Kingdoms going all out against each other. Total warfare. So, it's not a stretch to project this onto a cosmic scale.

Problem is, it's a bit one-sided. Cixin assumes humans, and all civilizations really, are innately suspicious, hostile even. There's no room for diplomacy. For a cosmic UN of sorts. It's all survival. Endless, ruthless survival.

Thoughts?

[rjshae]

Our fear is that aliens will turn out to be... just like us. That in itself is a form of parochial thinking. The civilizations that are suspicious and warlike may turn out to be short-lived, leaving older, more tolerant species that are capable of outclassing anything we could throw at them. They can just wait us out and see if we survive.

[Avondalist]

My first thought is that it's an unfalsifiable hypothesis. "We don't detect aliens because they make themselves undetectable."

My second thought is that it's more a reflection of hyper competitive contemporary Chinese society than the universe at large.

My final thought is that we are alone in our corner of the universe.

[djmilf]

I have read Cixin's trilogy. I thought that second novel was a lesser quality than the first, and the third even less than the second.

As to his Dark Forest theory, IIRC it is premised up an assumption that all species tend to expand in population, and when they do, they wind up competing with other species for resources. This is the reason for the presumption that (if you'll forgive the phrase) interstellar species that come into contact with each other will necessarily come into conflict, leading to the extinction of the lesser/losing species.

If said theory were true, then there'd be only one species on our planet right now. The reality is that species find their niche in the environment; not all find that niche or some get replaced by a species that better adapts, but there's no wholesale slaughter of competing species.