Why We Should NOT Look For Aliens - The Dark Forest

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The Universe is incredibly big and seems full of potential for life, with billions of habitable planets. If an advanced civilization had the technology to travel between the stars, at just 0.1% of the speed of light, It could colonize our galaxy in roughly 100 million years. Which is not that long given the billions of years the milky way has existed – so in principle any spacefaring civilization should be able to spread rapidly over huge sectors of the galaxy. And yet we see nothing, hear nothing, the universe seems empty. Devoid of others. This is the Fermi Paradox, which we have discussed in more detail in other videos.

Confronted with the seemingly empty universe, humanity faces a dilemma. We desperately want to know if we are alone in the Milky Way. We want to call out and reveal ourselves to anyone watching but that could be the last thing we ever do. Because maybe the universe is not empty. Maybe it’s full of civilizations but they are hiding from each other. Maybe the civilizations that attracted attention in the past were wiped away by invisible arrows. This is the Dark Forest solution to the Fermi paradox.

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[kurzgesagt]

If this video made you curious and you like reading great and long sci fi books, check out the three body problem by Liu Cixin, who formulated the dark forest idea for the first time. And with that, we say good bye to the year 12, 021. It truly was a wild time, and passed so, so quickly. For us at the Kurzgesagt team it was full of changes and achievements and we learned so much and tried so many new things. And we have so many exciting ideas and projects that we can’t wait to share with you next year! I know I say this often but doing Kurzgesagt really is just such a joy. We only can do this because of you, so thank you so, so much. We appreciate it more than you might imagine. Have wonderful holidays and get safely into the year 12, 022. We’ll see you on the other side! – Philipp

[daenite]

Imagine finally getting a message from space, and after decoding it, the message says "be quiet, they'll hear you."

[betterchapter]

Imagine someone on another planet seeing a similar space sci-fi vid about our planet

[Croc]

I love how humans are so optimistic about finding intelligent life even though we don't even get along with each other a lot of the time.

[obsoquasi]

"don't reply" was the answer humans got in Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem when the protagonist sent out her first succesful interstellar transmission, powerful enough to reach our neighbors. This book, and the two others in the series, are as terrific as they are terrifying.

[lencol]

I’d be really annoyed if our first contact with aliens was them coming to earth as some sort of door to door salesman or trying to recruit us into a pyramid scheme.

[sayounsang]

I was waiting for Kurzgesagt to cover this book. Such a terrifying concept, and yet I can’t stop thinking about it.

[jmlkinc]

'We need to be careful about the type of signal we send out'
Ye Wenjie: ....No.

[TheJerbol]

3:30 "They'll want to call out for help, but they won't" "Why not?" "Because of the _implication_ "

[thedeytow]

“I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.” -Jack Handey

[Wonkabar]

The hunter takes a deep breath and makes a decision
"I shall try and make friends with this Xenomorph"

[hustleAbuck]

I saw this video about a year ago. I just finished "The Dark Forest" book two of the series. Your visuals nailed that part of the book, so much so I had to come back to see if you referenced the book. I am on book three now. I will commit again when I finish the series

[polydynamix]

The 'first strike' concept only works if you're certain the other species only lives on one planet. Any species capable of waging interstellar war is likely living on several planets, hundreds of giant space stations, and probably some moons too. The first strike wipes out a planet, sure... maybe you hit several- but if you don't get them all then you've made an enemy for the rest of that species' entire existence.

Not only that, assume that 10% of the species survived elsewhere, they're going to spread out even more- to minimize the chance of being targeted.

Such a tactic would certainly work against humans, we would be wiped out except for a slowly starving ISS, but against another species capable of reaching out across stars, it would be very difficult to execute.

[Ani]

the art style in this video is perhaps my favourite of any kurzgesagt video so far. the way you guys have animated, portrayed, and narrated (!) aliens is stunning and thought provoking - kudos!

[PossumReviews]

The universe is only about fourteen billion years old, and the star-forming era is expected to last another hundred trillion. The universe is young, so young in fact that the Earth has been around for about a third of the universe's life so far. If you picture the lifespan of the universe's star-forming era as a clock, we popped up in the first second. It may sound unlikely given how big the universe is, but when you take the Great Filters into consideration, we may very well be the first technological civilization in the universe. There may be countless civilizations over the next hundred trillion years, and we will be the "ancient forerunners" to them.

[jackcosgrove]

We all just finished 3 body problem didn't we

[russiananimatorlol]

Imagine an alien version of kurzgesagt explaining why humans exist

[AnotherZenThought]

As Sagan said: “The newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and comparing notes before shouting into an unknown jungle that we do not understand.”

[aleksandaratanasov]

10:22 That's called a pro Wenjie move, and it's a quick way to get your star cursed

[FoxyBoxery]

To be honest, the safest civilisation we can contact, against most people’s expectations, is not a less advanced than us or as advanced as us, but rather far more advanced than us. So advanced, that they won’t view us as a threat