Darkness And Light The Two Paths For The Foreign Policies Of Advanced Civilizations

There is a theory in Liu Cixin’s Three Body Problem novel series that assumes that the universe is a dark forest, where alien civilizations, in fear of the danger that other civilizations could potentially pose, always hide themselves in secrecy or risk being annihilated by someone else from somewhere.

While an interesting idea, and one powerful enough to potentially motivate some percentage of civilizations in the universe to adopt what I will call the Darkness policy, I would like to consider that there could be an alternative policy that makes more sense.

The alternative, which I shall refer to as the Light policy, is based on certain fundamental expectations. First, given uncertainty about the universe, there is a very high probability that somewhere in space and time there exists a far more powerful civilization or entity than our own. This is essentially impossible to completely rule out. Given this possibility, our continued existence as a civilization or entity most likely is due to the relatively benign or benevolent intent of this power. Otherwise, we should not exist. Similarly, the other beings and civilizations that do exist in the universe, do so with the approval of this power. Any action to destroy other beings and civilizations thus runs the risk of going against the plans of this power and its allies and could invite eventual retaliation. If this power is sufficiently powerful, going against their plans may ultimately prove futile and dangerous for our own existence.

For followers of the Light policy the only rational choice then is to behave in a manner consistent with the apparent goals and values of the benevolent superpower, and effectively align and ally with it. Given, we do not know whether this power is real. We can expect however, that some others will believe and follow the Light policy and enforce benevolence in the universe as much as they are able to. Following the Darkness policy is thus risky as well, because choosing to go against the Light and especially surprise attacking other civilizations, could invite retaliation from those other civilizations powerful enough to sense and trace the attack.

The Light policy does not mean we should not be prudent and careful in our dealings with other beings, but it does suggest that there may be a way to avoid the paranoid warlike state of nature of the Darkness policy. The Darkness policy makes sense when there is certainly no higher powers, and communication is exceedingly difficult to the point of impracticality. Note that technology such as faster-than-light communication, such as a wormhole based ansible, would resolve the latter issue as well.

Realistically, we can expect a mixture between the two extremes to exist in the universe. However, fundamentally, this boils down to a matter of trust or faith in the reasonability of the argument that a moral alliance can be formed with higher powers strong enough to protect others.

A further point against the Dark Forest Theory is that it assumes that the Dark Forest Strike can be reliably fatal. This wouldn’t be guaranteed against advanced space-faring civilizations with control over multiple star systems. Furthermore, if an attack can be made from mobile platforms in space to avoid the attack being traced back to the home star system, what is there to prevent communication efforts being made from the same safely distant positions? A reasonable compromise between darkness and light would then be to carefully avoid revealing one’s home system, while still using cautiously positioned space ship based communication attempts to try to find possible friends and allies in the universe.

Page last modified on May 22, 2020, at 08:00 AM
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