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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27716 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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If we discover advanced alien civilizations existing doesn't that actually lessen the evidence for the Dark Forest theory? Something like massive infrared indicators imply that they are not hiding. Dark Forest theory implies hostile and hidden.

If we can discover multiple advanced alien civilizations at our current tech level, Dark Forest theory is annihilated. Better said that the Fermi Paradox would stop being a paradox.

Personally, I wish people would stop taking Cixin Liu's plot device in Three Body Problem as a serious speculative hypothesis. The books were an exploration, in their own way, of the problems Scott mulled over in Meditations on Moloch, and the Dark Forest was a kind of literary device for the nihilistic endpoint of progress and memetic competition.

"If we lose our human nature, we lose much, but if we lose our bestial nature, we lose everything."

and

"You must advance, stop at nothing to advance. Advance, advance without regard for consequences!"

These are at the heart of what the books are getting at.

Personally, I wish people would stop taking Cixin Liu's plot device in Three Body Problem as a serious speculative hypothesis.

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forge_of_God]Greg Bear[/url] came up with it long before anyway. And Fred Saberhagen as that article points out, though I don't know how explict he was about it.

I've read some of Saberhagen's books. And yeah, before it was "The Dark Forest Hypothesis" it was "The Berzerker Hypothesis" so he should get some credit for coming up with it first. But they're very silly space opera books, lots of action with basically no deep thinking. They're not meant to be taken too seriously, so I can see how people slept on the idea.

Still, as crazy as it sounds, there is a certain elegance to the idea- it solves the "it only takes one" problem. Like, maybe most aliens just don't want to expand, or don't want to build megastructures, or are using tech that is somehow hidden from us. That's all fine, but you'd think there'd be at least one similar to us so that we could detect it easily. But in the same light, maybe 99.99% of aliens are peaceful, but there's just that one group of assholes who built berzerker probes and wiped out everyone else (maybe including themselves).

But they're very silly space opera books, lots of action with basically no deep thinking.

Eh, not really; a lot of them are basically "puzzle" stories, where the protagonist has to outsmart the berzerker.

Anyway, that's not a complaint you can make about the rather heavier in tone Greg Bear books. Bear may have called it a "vicious jungle" rather than a "dark forest", but it's the same thing.

I just found the quote I'd misremembered as being by either Niven or Pournelle, but which turns out to be from "The Killing Star".
I won't dump the whole thing because most people will be familiar with it, but it's the one that ends with "There is no policeman. There is no way out. And the night never ends."

You can tell it's from 1995 because the worst imaginable cosmic horror is to be stuck in NYC's Central Park after dark.

So the idea has been bouncing around in science fiction for decades, rather than being slept on.

Personally, I wish people would stop taking Cixin Liu's plot device in Three Body Problem as a serious speculative hypothesis.

Greg Bear came up with it long before anyway. And Fred Saberhagen as that article points out, though I don't know how explict he was about it.

I was under the impression most people are buzzing about it lately because of its prominent featuring in a popular scifi. The specific term "Dark Forest" was added to the Fermi Paradox Wikipedia page in 2016, specifically referencing Cixin Liu. On the other hand "It's dangerous to communicate" was listed as a possible solution well before that. Perhaps I'm overstating my case.

I do think in the novels it's a parable.

I've never read Bear, but Forge and Anvil have been recommended several times. Are they any good?

I loved saberhagen's berserker series. Templar Radiant is brilliant, and The Annihilation of Angkor Apeiron is a paragon of the classic pure concept scifi short story.

Yes, they are. The ending of Forge is one of the more indelible moments I've read in sci-fi.

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