Stephen Hawking said:

I paraphrase,
Concerning alien life
" We should be very,very quiet and hope we're not noticed"
Too late for that . Any opinions? Should we assume advanced alien lifeforms will be benevolent?

Imagine you’re put in a dark forest. Your main objective is to only survive so, you’ll do anything to avoid any obstacles and finish anything that comes in your way. There might be other people but you do not know if they exist.

Now let’s say you meet one person. You do not know their intentions, you do not know how smart they are, you cannot communicate with them as you do not understand the language.

So your safest option here is to attack first.

This is the Dark Forest Theory and it’s a solution to the Fermi Paradox. It basically says that we should not look for aliens, as there are only two types of them out there. The Quite Ones and the Dead Ones

More likely aliens will find us before we can find them.

An astrophysicist recently noted that we know that our galaxy (the Milky Way) contains over 300 BILLION stars with solar systems like our own. He further noted that we also know that we know there are at least 200 BILLION galaxies like the Milky Way.

From that mind boggling statistic, it would seem a certainty that there must be at least ONE solar system besides ours in this universe that has ONE planet with life. But this astrophysicist said that assumption would be a mistake.

That life exists here is the most remarkable (and unexplainable) fact in all of science. No one knows precisely what life is, or what started it, or how to replicate it, or why there isn't evidence of life anywhere else.

it seems to me that, if there's an argument for "attacking first" when discovering an intelligent alien species, there is a much stronger argument for "making friends with" an intelligent alien species. even just one friend out there would not only be an enormous strategic advantage, but would also just be cool and awesome.

imo, those who subscribe to "attack first" strategy are stuck looking at current state of humanity where capitalism is keeping us stuck in a phase of heavy competition and violence that we can potentially develop out of (with dismantling of capitalism being a prerequisite for that)

Don't know about possible nature/behaviour of aliens but it doesn't mean that no alien exists since we haven't found any alien. That's wrong assmuption. That can be said for us also when aliens are normal beings and we are aliens with respect to them.
You can't say that event/thing/being doesn't exist cause we have never encountered them.

The dark forest hypothesis (≠ theory), first (?) described by David Brin in 1983 presupposes all exo-civilisations are either
a) perfectly silent, pathologically paranoid and wildly genocidal OR
b) extinct (because they attracted such a civilisation which wiped them out).
It stems from the (false) supposition that the game of life is a zero-sum game.

@LOoOoOoOoL123 said in #2:
> Now let’s say you meet one person. You do not know their intentions, you do not know how smart they are, you cannot communicate with them as you do not understand the language.
>
> So your safest option here is to attack first.

Or, y'know, you could attempt nonverbal communication. Clearly indicate that you are not a threat, show your goodwill and make them a present (and be it something as simple as a sip of water). Help each other out.

Because the dark forest is not nearly as dark when you have someone to share it with. And who knows you might even be able to learn from each other. You both might benefit from division of labour and cooperation, one of you might prepare a fireplace while the other is out collecting edible mushrooms and berries for the both of you.

And if you don't get along that well, you might easily go your separate ways, the forest is clearly vast enough for the both of you to survive.

I also disagree with the notion that striking first would be your safest option for survival.
When you have no clue about the other person's capabilities it would be very unwise (and dangerous) to act aggressively (attack first). The small element of surprise would only be useful when you are both similarly skilled fighters. For all you know their age is vastly different from yours so an even match is unlikely in this case.

If you are superior, there is no rush to initiate the fight and therefore no need to strike first. And if you're inferior the small advantage gained by striking first likely wouldn't outweigh the disadvantage of pissing off a formidable fighter who will – if attacked – crush you either way.

However you cannot lose a fight you avoid. This rationale alone should be reason enough to question the presuppositions of the dark forest hypothesis.

Additionally there is a point to be made that the type of uncivilised, paranoid, genocidal/warmongering exo-civilisation assumed by the dark forest hypothesis would be unlikely to reach any level of sophistication sufficient for interstellar travel in the first place.

Why? Because in order to do so they would first need to pass through one or more great filters (such as averting nuclear war annihilation). And therefore one might argue not many (if any) such civilisations would even make it long enough to develop interstellar spaceflight. If they are really paranoid enough to strike first and destroy any nascent life they encounter in their interstellar travels, then surely they were paranoid enough to order a first strike in a nuclear war back on their home planet (with a major nuclear exchange essentially ending all interstellar travel ambitions then and there)?

To reach such heights at all might only be possible for civilisations which have developed an understanding of the interconnectedness of nature, the benefits of cooperation, tolerance and symbiosis (which is abundantly found in nature – even among animals we usually view as predators – because life is NOT a zero-sum game, my gain isn't necessarily your loss).

To my mind at least the black forest hypothesis is one of the more improbable solutions to Fermi's paradox (and it becomes ever more unlikely by the minute or rather by each additional year humanity keeps not being radio silent without getting wiped out).

This hypothesis was published in 1983 when tensions had greatly increased between the major powers (US [Reagan], UK [Thatcher], France [d'Estaing, Mitterrand]; USSR [Brezhnev + Andropov]) with both sides becoming more militant. This period is sometimes called the new Cold War.
In light of this fact I view the hypothesis more as a worrying symptom of Cold War thinking/paranoia (coupled with a megalomanic delusion of human supremacy over nature) rather than a reasonable solution to the paradox, not least because it posits that survival can only be ensured by killing off all other life (which to the contrary would actually make survival impossible in case of the Earth).

"When you have no clue about the other person's capabilities it would be very unwise (and dangerous) to act aggressively (attack first)."

and to add on that, what if the other person actually does have friends (surprise surprise)? by attacking, even if you end up winning, you may be unknowingly alerting other people to your presence, who will now almost certainly be hostile to you.

i really do think that your point about averting nuclear annihilation (etc) is such an important one. speculating about remotely possible outside threats seems odd to me when we have such enormous concerns at home.

@lilyhollow said in #8:
> what if the other person actually does have friends

If they have developed interstellar travel to the point of reaching us, within the "dark forest", then we are unlikely to be their first contact. As such, they are more likely than not to have friends. And not only that, the fact that they exist means that we now know life did evolve in two places instead of one. That greatly increases the number of friends they could have, meaning they are again more likely than not part of an intergalactic organization of multiple species with standard diplomatic treaties like a mutual defense pact, making the "attack first" plan worse, if not suicidal. But it would be very typical and probably a common experience for them. That's why they are again more likely than not to have drawn up some ethical* standards as to how their allies would treat, for example each other, other species on their planet, and so on.

*) as opposed to the technical "warp tech" standard in star trek