Comments by "Taxtro" (@MrCmon113) on "Is Messaging Aliens a Bad Idea?" video.

  1. We already observe the absence of "technosignatures" not only in our galaxies, but in all that we have checked.
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  2. Nah, Liu gave it the name "Dark Forest", but the argument has been around at least til the 80ies.
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  3.  @serpentphoenix  An old civilization would have already reached all planets in the galaxy, making hiding useless.
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  4.  @Bahnz1985  You can get rid off all of the preconditions and just assume that all civilizations try to eradicate all other civilizations and it still wouldn't make sense to "hide". In fact there's be MORE of a reason to expand, because then you're covering the far more likely case of civilizations arising after you rather than at the exact same time as you.
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  5. I can tell you my reason: it only applies in the extremely unlikely case that another civilization arose at exactly the same time as us and is currently deciding on where to go first. Otherwise, we're first and colonize the galaxy or they were first and have already colonized the galaxy.
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  6. As an extreme upper bound I'd say that a civilization shouldn't take longer than a million years to settle the entire galaxy. That's really short compared to the geological timescales on which we expect civilizations to arrive (hundreds of millions, billions). It is irrational to focus only on civilizations that happen to arise at exactly the same time (within a million years) to us. Not to speak of the obvious absence of interstellar civilizations in other galaxies.
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  7. The idea of the Dark Forest is precisely that civilizations stay silent by not expanding.
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  8. The fundamental mistake imo is not considering that the milky way is a whopping 100000 light years in diameter, but only contains 100000 million stars. So it doesn't take much longer going from one end to the other than it takes to reach everywhere. A galactic civilization would be more like an expanding bubble than folks settling one solar system here and there.
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  9. Folks now that there's a solar system here, because of the sun. The METI messages won't be stronger than the sun.
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  10. There is a way to know: Namely that you're still here an unmolested. So the entire argument only applies if all civilizations assume that there's other civilizations who happen to arise at EXACTLY the same time and now decide where to go first. In all other scenarios, your potential rival has already colonized the entire galaxy or you are colonizing the entire galaxy. To not expand just in case someone else just happens to be concurrent seems totally mad.
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  11. Listening to what? We can already observe the absence of civilizations in thousands if not millions of galaxies. To try and "listen" in our own is just cringe. It's like standing in an empty stadium and holding your ear to your chair listening for morse code. It's just nonsense.
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  12. You're only covering the case in which another civilization happens to arise at EXACTLY the same time as us and is currently deciding where to go first. In all other cases, you're making the wrong decision. The "Dark Forest" is kind of like only planning for the case that you win the lottery three times in a row.
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