Re:Alien hunters have spent 60 years finding new solutions f...
by KronisLV on Wednesday December 01, 2021 @08:18AM
(#29403367)
In case anyone would like to know more about the Dark Forest scenario, have a look at some of the books by Cixin Liu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Past
Re:Alien hunters have spent 60 years finding new solutions f...
by GoblinSlayer on Wednesday December 01, 2021 @10:27AM
(#29404597)
Sentinelese are worth killing per the Dark Forest logic: they are aggressive and have incentive to kill you, so you must kill them before they even get a chance to kill you. Notice how this logic doesn't differentiate between humans and aliens: self preservation overrides whatever compassion you might have.
>But none of those connections would exist between aliens and humans.
That's exactly why humans are more worth killing than aliens: we have conflict of interests with humans but not with aliens.
>We're not one of them, nor do we share the same biome, so our deaths might well be entirely void of meaning or consequence for them.
If the Sentinelese disappear, the biome will likely become only more rich.
There is a kinship bond within members of the same species, although it isn't universal. As John Donne said, "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." We're human and the Sentinelese are human, and even though we're not genociding them (mostly, I think, because they have nothing worth killing over otherwise they would have been dead a long time ago,) we're still genociding plenty of other fellow humans. We even avoid killing animals to extinction because humans share and suffer the consequences of living in a complex ecosystem with other beings. But we also cut the fins off of sharks for soup and throw them back into the water to drown.
But none of those connections would exist between aliens and humans. We're not one of them, nor do we share the same biome, so our deaths might well be entirely void of meaning or consequence for them. In a Dark Forest scenario, there's little to no advantage to contact or cooperation with an alien species, and every possible advantage in sending a GRB to fry anything that so much as looks like life before it has a chance to evolve into a threat.