A key component of the theory in the book is the potentially rapid speed of tech advance. The US is confident Namibia cannot develop more advanced tech in a few years. The Trisolarans could not be.
This is true, and mirrors the 40s US/Soviet case. The question would be why two planets are so close technologically when their age differences should be on geological/evolutionary time.
You’d expect them to be millions or billions of years ahead, not just hundreds, so this fact requires a Great Filter or other explanation for near-parity.
Yeah, given the disparity in technological power over the last couple centuries, two alien planets arising independently are surely wildly different technologically unless we presume some kind of tapering off of potential discoveries. It might be the case that "early Star Trek" is just the upper limit of the tech tree. But 'Dark Forest' mentality requires upstart civilizations to pose an existential threat (or the existing powers to be irrationally aggressive, with is possible).
Others have pointed out the difference in spacetime proximity as a reason why the NATO:Namibia analogy doesn't quite hold to the dark forest analogy in the book, but from what I remember of the story, the other reason the Trisolarans were interested in Earth was its stability/resource abundance. One could imagine in the Dune universe a situation where the Fremen might prefer not to announce their presence to their spacefaring neighbours so that they could keep the spice to themselves. Similarly, it goes without saying that there are many examples in human history of more advanced civilizations attacking and destroying weaker ones purely to have access to their resources. In fact, now Namibia has freshly found oil, I would expect other countries to suddenly be a lot more interested in it!
Fun, and I do think Earth generally doesn't play out like a dark forest, and humans seem to have strong principles against preemptive striking (and even retaliatory strikes that are MAD), which is a major theme in the book. I think the answer (from the book) is quite simple: Earth is pretty unlikely to survive contact because Earth gave us the wrong priors on how to behave in a dark forest.
Great book and interesting take. Let’s push on it:
I guess we have had time to feel out termites and know them to not be a threat. We also feel pretty comfortable that there are not many unknown unknowns left in our natural habitat, so we generally have the luxury of being more at ease than we would in the dark forest of space.
I think the threat analysis is one angle, but another is about how valuable we are to them and they to us. Consider how humans would react to a new species of tasty fish discovered for the first time in the deep sea.
Keep in mind with another species (not “civilization” of humans) neither side could be sure of the other’s calculus - and there’d be little to no communication initially to help establish trust. How to get out of this phase without a fight is the key question.
The one advantage humans had in Three Body is that they can lie and deceive, while the trisolarian motives are harder to disguise. Imagine that were not the case - how would that change the dynamic and outcome?
I don’t really understand how these examples are pertinent to an interstellar dark forest. Any conflict between humans on earth is fundamentally different than that which is proposed between humans and aliens in the novels.
One of the main aspects of the theory is our mutual total inability to understand or anticipate incentives, and therefore behavior, for a different intelligent species.
This leads to the theory of total annihilation as the safest possible option.
NATO knows what Namibia is, knows its goals as a state, and can generate a reasonable approximation of the incentive structures associated. With respect to NATO, total annihilation of a non member state is not the safest option for survival, so NATO does not destroy them.
The Dark Forest hypothesis itself is trying to model another species' behavior; if we take this as impossible, we should not consider any predictions it makes as meaningful.
What it claims is that to us humans, it makes sense to preemptively annihilate any alien civilization we find, and therefore, it might also make sense to alien species. However, humans don't even follow Dark Forest behavior in practice.
Either aliens are modelable as humans, in which case they won't Dark Forest because humans don't actually Dark Forest OR they are not modelable at all, in which case Dark Forest game theory should not be applied.
I find the commenters to provide a more convincing argument here about why Dark Forest hypothesis could be likely. The only counter I could see is whether the potential gains from cooperation would outweigh the risks. I'm thinking of Robert Axelrod's _Evolution of Cooperation_ thesis. Like, if shouting to the forest about potential alliances would spur mutual cooperation.
A key component of the theory in the book is the potentially rapid speed of tech advance. The US is confident Namibia cannot develop more advanced tech in a few years. The Trisolarans could not be.
This is true, and mirrors the 40s US/Soviet case. The question would be why two planets are so close technologically when their age differences should be on geological/evolutionary time.
You’d expect them to be millions or billions of years ahead, not just hundreds, so this fact requires a Great Filter or other explanation for near-parity.
Yeah, given the disparity in technological power over the last couple centuries, two alien planets arising independently are surely wildly different technologically unless we presume some kind of tapering off of potential discoveries. It might be the case that "early Star Trek" is just the upper limit of the tech tree. But 'Dark Forest' mentality requires upstart civilizations to pose an existential threat (or the existing powers to be irrationally aggressive, with is possible).
Others have pointed out the difference in spacetime proximity as a reason why the NATO:Namibia analogy doesn't quite hold to the dark forest analogy in the book, but from what I remember of the story, the other reason the Trisolarans were interested in Earth was its stability/resource abundance. One could imagine in the Dune universe a situation where the Fremen might prefer not to announce their presence to their spacefaring neighbours so that they could keep the spice to themselves. Similarly, it goes without saying that there are many examples in human history of more advanced civilizations attacking and destroying weaker ones purely to have access to their resources. In fact, now Namibia has freshly found oil, I would expect other countries to suddenly be a lot more interested in it!
Fun, and I do think Earth generally doesn't play out like a dark forest, and humans seem to have strong principles against preemptive striking (and even retaliatory strikes that are MAD), which is a major theme in the book. I think the answer (from the book) is quite simple: Earth is pretty unlikely to survive contact because Earth gave us the wrong priors on how to behave in a dark forest.
Great book and interesting take. Let’s push on it:
I guess we have had time to feel out termites and know them to not be a threat. We also feel pretty comfortable that there are not many unknown unknowns left in our natural habitat, so we generally have the luxury of being more at ease than we would in the dark forest of space.
I think the threat analysis is one angle, but another is about how valuable we are to them and they to us. Consider how humans would react to a new species of tasty fish discovered for the first time in the deep sea.
Keep in mind with another species (not “civilization” of humans) neither side could be sure of the other’s calculus - and there’d be little to no communication initially to help establish trust. How to get out of this phase without a fight is the key question.
The one advantage humans had in Three Body is that they can lie and deceive, while the trisolarian motives are harder to disguise. Imagine that were not the case - how would that change the dynamic and outcome?
I don’t really understand how these examples are pertinent to an interstellar dark forest. Any conflict between humans on earth is fundamentally different than that which is proposed between humans and aliens in the novels.
One of the main aspects of the theory is our mutual total inability to understand or anticipate incentives, and therefore behavior, for a different intelligent species.
This leads to the theory of total annihilation as the safest possible option.
NATO knows what Namibia is, knows its goals as a state, and can generate a reasonable approximation of the incentive structures associated. With respect to NATO, total annihilation of a non member state is not the safest option for survival, so NATO does not destroy them.
The Dark Forest hypothesis itself is trying to model another species' behavior; if we take this as impossible, we should not consider any predictions it makes as meaningful.
What it claims is that to us humans, it makes sense to preemptively annihilate any alien civilization we find, and therefore, it might also make sense to alien species. However, humans don't even follow Dark Forest behavior in practice.
Either aliens are modelable as humans, in which case they won't Dark Forest because humans don't actually Dark Forest OR they are not modelable at all, in which case Dark Forest game theory should not be applied.
I find the commenters to provide a more convincing argument here about why Dark Forest hypothesis could be likely. The only counter I could see is whether the potential gains from cooperation would outweigh the risks. I'm thinking of Robert Axelrod's _Evolution of Cooperation_ thesis. Like, if shouting to the forest about potential alliances would spur mutual cooperation.
Wasn't Namibia destroyed by an organization (Berlin Conference) that kinda was a precursor to NATO?