I mean - it's called Dark Forest, but if you will look at any documentary, even dark forest is full of life. You will hear crickets, you will hear owls, you may see fireflies.
The theory has catchy name, but even the earth's nature disproves it.
If you read the three books, you realize that the true message is that if you're considered a possible threat to an advanced species, they'll annihilate you, otherwise you'll be left alone. Maybe every other species which knows about us knows we can't even leave our own planet/moon right now, the most we can do is send useless robots to other planets over 30 years.
I haven't read the third book so maybe they expanded on it, but from the first 2 books the theory seemed different. It is far too dangerous to let a non advanced civilization live because they can quickly develop to an advanced civilization.
That's how I understand it: light speed is so slow and technological progress is so fast that any intelligent species could develop the ability to wipe you out faster than you could realize the threat is coming. Ergo, the only possible way to be safe is to destroy other civilizations as soon as they pop up their heads.
I feel like a lot of so-called solutions to the Fermi paradox fail when they speculate on what "aliens" would do. Would they seal us off and make a zoo, or find it morally wrong to contact us, etc, etc. It's bold to assume a single policy, since there would likely be multiple alien civilizations, or multiple factions even if there is only one.
So I give this one more credit in that once you have reached 100% understanding of physics, you will know whether this premise true or not true and it more or less dictates that you answer it if it is true. However, I'm not convinced that with 100% knowledge of physics you would find yourself so vulnerable. And even if you were, it still seems various forms of containment would be just as effective as a genocidal attack.
This one kind of works because it only takes one civilisation to block us and keep the others out.
> once you have reached 100% understanding of physics, you will know whether this premise true or not true
How does understanding physics give you the certainty?
As a solution to the paradox that would assume that all civilisations are extremely xenophobic and also always assume that collaboration is impossible.
BTW: my current belief is that most likely life is just super-rare (phosphorus problem, and way too many required variables) and also that colonising a galaxy is probably a sub-optimal solution for overpopulation.
The theory has catchy name, but even the earth's nature disproves it.