The problem with Dark Forest theory is that, in the absence of FTL detection/communication, it requires a very high density and absurdly high proportion of hiding civilizations. Without that, expansionary civilizations dominate. The only known civilization, us, is expansionary for reasons that don’t seem path-determinant, so it seems unlikely that the preconditions for Dark Forest theory exist.
To explain:
Hiders have limited space and mass-energy to work with. An expansionary civilization, once in its technological phase, can spread to thousands of star systems in mere thousands of years and become unstoppable by hiders. So, hiders need to kill expansionists before that happens. But if they’re going to hide in their home system, they can’t detect anything faster than FTL! So you need murderous hiding civs within at least a thousand light years of every single habitable planet in the galaxy, all of which need to have evolved before any expansionary civs in the area. This is improbable unless basically every civ is a murderous hider. The fact that the only known civ is not a murderous hider, for generalizable reasons, is thus evidence against the Dark Forest theory.
Potential objections:
Hider civs would send out stealth probes everywhere.
Still governed by FTL, expansionary civ would become overwhelmingly strong before probes reported back.
Hider civs would send out killer probes everywhere.
If the probes succeed in killing everything in the galaxy before they reach the stars, you didn’t need to hide in the first place. (Also, note that hiding is a failed strategy for everyone else in this scenario, you can’t do anything about a killer probe when you’re the equivalent of the Han dynasty. Or the equivalent of a dinosaur.) If the probes fail, the civ they failed against will have no reason to hide, having been already discovered, and so will expand and dominate.
Hider civs would become so advanced that they could hide indefinitely from expansionary civs, possibly by retreating to another dimension.
Conceivable, but I’d rather be the expansionary civs here?
Hider civs would become so advanced that they could kill any later expansionary civ that controlled thousands of star systems.
I think this is the strongest objection. If, for example, a hider civ could send out a few ships that can travel at a higher percentage of lightspeed than anything the expansionary civ can do, and those ships can detonate stars or something, and catching up to this tech would take millions of years, then just a few ships could track down and obliterate the expansionary civ within thousands/tens of thousands of years and win.
The problem is that the “hider civ evolved substantially earlier” part has to be true everywhere in the galaxy, or else somewhere an expansionary civilization wins and then snowballs with their resource advantages—this comes back to the “very high density and absurdly high proportion of hiding civilizations” requirement. The hiding civs have to always be the oldest whenever they meet an expansionary civ, and older to a degree that the expansionary civ’s likely several orders of magnitude more resources and population doesn’t counteract the age difference.
The problem with Dark Forest theory is that, in the absence of FTL detection/communication, it requires a very high density and absurdly high proportion of hiding civilizations. Without that, expansionary civilizations dominate. The only known civilization, us, is expansionary for reasons that don’t seem path-determinant, so it seems unlikely that the preconditions for Dark Forest theory exist.
To explain:
Hiders have limited space and mass-energy to work with. An expansionary civilization, once in its technological phase, can spread to thousands of star systems in mere thousands of years and become unstoppable by hiders. So, hiders need to kill expansionists before that happens. But if they’re going to hide in their home system, they can’t detect anything faster than FTL! So you need murderous hiding civs within at least a thousand light years of every single habitable planet in the galaxy, all of which need to have evolved before any expansionary civs in the area. This is improbable unless basically every civ is a murderous hider. The fact that the only known civ is not a murderous hider, for generalizable reasons, is thus evidence against the Dark Forest theory.
Potential objections:
Hider civs would send out stealth probes everywhere.
Still governed by FTL, expansionary civ would become overwhelmingly strong before probes reported back.
Hider civs would send out killer probes everywhere.
If the probes succeed in killing everything in the galaxy before they reach the stars, you didn’t need to hide in the first place. (Also, note that hiding is a failed strategy for everyone else in this scenario, you can’t do anything about a killer probe when you’re the equivalent of the Han dynasty. Or the equivalent of a dinosaur.) If the probes fail, the civ they failed against will have no reason to hide, having been already discovered, and so will expand and dominate.
Hider civs would become so advanced that they could hide indefinitely from expansionary civs, possibly by retreating to another dimension.
Conceivable, but I’d rather be the expansionary civs here?
Hider civs would become so advanced that they could kill any later expansionary civ that controlled thousands of star systems.
I think this is the strongest objection. If, for example, a hider civ could send out a few ships that can travel at a higher percentage of lightspeed than anything the expansionary civ can do, and those ships can detonate stars or something, and catching up to this tech would take millions of years, then just a few ships could track down and obliterate the expansionary civ within thousands/tens of thousands of years and win.
The problem is that the “hider civ evolved substantially earlier” part has to be true everywhere in the galaxy, or else somewhere an expansionary civilization wins and then snowballs with their resource advantages—this comes back to the “very high density and absurdly high proportion of hiding civilizations” requirement. The hiding civs have to always be the oldest whenever they meet an expansionary civ, and older to a degree that the expansionary civ’s likely several orders of magnitude more resources and population doesn’t counteract the age difference.