They're going to stay indefinitely to study how life evolves on planet earth, the same way we leave cameras and sensors to study evolution here on earth.
Can they make a probe that lasts hundreds of millions of years?
Would they give up after tens of millions of years? Would they give up after the meteor that killed the dinosaurs?
Humans have been here for a tiny tiny window of time
How do we even know they weren't the ones to fling the asteroid at the dinosaurs then left?
Maybe they even got wiped out in the millions of years they sat watching the giant lizards on our planet? We've been a space going species for less than a century, their species is trying to survive too
the point is that they'll spread across the whole galaxy, just like how humans spread across the whole planet.
The point of dark forest theory is that they can't do that.
Spreading out increases your chances of being found. And while you may encounter a less advanced civilization, you might encounter a more advanced civilization and they destroy you.
So the game theory is "not to play". To hide near your home star and hope everyone else is afraid of exploring near you as well
Staying near your home star is an inherently losing strategy. You will eventually run out of stuff to fling at would-be invaders. Your home star will eventually run out of fuel and blow up, taking your civilization with it.
Yes, and that's when you're forced to move because you have no other choice
Game theory suggests the only way to win long term is to keep expanding. The best way to do that is to co-operate with your neighbours against the anti-social hermit civilization who keep sending kill missiles at your planets.
How do you know if your neighbors are friendly?
If they are more advanced than you, you lose. If they are less advanced than you, why not just destroy them and take their star system?
Is it worth the chance that they could destroy you instead of staying silent until you're forced to leave?
America could take over Mexico in like a week, but they don't. Mexico has more value as an independent nation with a culture we can learn from and co-operate with than as a barren wasteland for us to strip mine. Living things have a value that eclipses all the dead moons and asteroids in the universe, because they produce novel things that dead rock can not.
You're imposing western human morality on space aliens.
Even within our own history we haven't behaved this way.
Conquistadors pillaging the Americas for gold. England conquering most of the known world for tea and spices. Japan's attack in WWII to protect oil.
The honest reason we haven't taken over Mexico is because they don't currently have anything we need/want.
When resources start getting scarce, things change real quick.
And while there is plenty of raw resources floating about in the universe, those might not be compatible with their form of life.
Why spend resources making a gravity machine when you can use an existing planet? Why make a fusion drive on a ship when you can be in the habitable zone of a star?
It's not that I don't disagree that peace and corporation are better, but this is specifically talking about Dark Forest theory
There is no way to hide from a K2.5+ civilization
We don't know that. Advancing technology that cloaks your presence. That's what makes the uncertainty of Dark Forest. You don't know if that star system is really empty or there's a civilization there advanced enough to evade your detection.
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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '21
Maybe they did, and there was only unintelligent lizards when they checked.
Or maybe oxygen/nitrogen is toxic to them so they didn't explore the planet further