Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XVI: What Is the “Dark Forest” Hypothesis?

Re:Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XVI: What Is the “Dark Forest” H... by im3w1l on Friday July 16, 2021 @10:31AM (#27856602)

If I use humanity as a model, then we don't see other great apes as dangerous competitors. Rather we see them as interesting curiosities. We want them to stay alive. But it's hard to resist the desire to turn their habitats into something economically productive.

Colonizing other planets and making them into homes for aliens long before a native civilization has a chance to arise seems more plausible than just destroying them.

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Re:Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XVI: What Is the “Dark Forest” H... by jerf on Friday July 16, 2021 @12:52PM (#27858236)

For the purposes of this conversation, colonizing other planets effectively is destroying them. After that, no natural intelligent competitor will arise and surprise you, because you're right there to keep an eye on everything.

(Of course, you may still have any amount of conflict with your fellow settlers, or your someone in your original species' descendants two systems over, but that's a completely different conversation.)

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