The Dark Forest
About the book
Book author: Cixin Liu
Book #2 of the Rememberance of Earth’s past trilogy.
I can’t really write much about the books content without spoiling things. But what I can say is that we follow the Wallfacers and their ETO Wallbreaker counterparts as they prepare for the advance of the Trisolaran invasion. The book focuses on Luo Ji, a Wallfacer that nobody understood.
It’s a good Sci-fi book. I read “The Three Body Problem” almost a decade ago, so it was a little hard to pick up this book, but luckily it wasn’t too dependant on the characters in the first one.
== SPOILER WARNING BELOW ==
Reflection and takeaways
Luo Ji is a baller. The very epitome of “work smart, not hard”. I’m not sharing in his cynicism but I do like his approach of letting the subconscious work.
I find the main thesis of the Dark Forest theory to be fascinating. I actually kind of buy into it, but I think life is much rarer than in the books. Game theory never ceases to amaze me. I write it down here so that I’ll remember it:
- Assume that there exists many civilizations in the universe.
- Suppose that survival is a civilizations primary goal
- Suppose that the civilization will expand, but amount of resources in the universe is constant
Due to the speed of light and general vast interstellar distances of several lightyears, you have two other problems:
- Assume technological progress is exponential and can “explode” at any time
- The chain of suspicion: if you cannot communicate and see what the other civilization is doing, there is inherent mistrust. Diplomacy is already hard when you can communicate, and now you cant due to the speed of light.
You have quite limited options in this “game” of “the dark forest”.
Let’s assume you see another civilization. You know that they have not seen you yet. They are more primitive.
You have 3 options:
- broadcast your position
- destroy the other civilization
- do nothing
If you broadcast, they might try to destroy you in return. If you do nothing, they can potentially surpass you technologically, find you, and destroy you. So your ‘best bet’ is to destroy it first.
Even if there are pacifict, benevolent civilizations out there, assume that at least one chooses to destroy. Then any civilization that broadcasts will be destroyed.
So what can you do? Stay as silent as possible, and do not make your prescence known. The Dark Forest hypothesis is a potential solution to the Fermi paradox. Anyone who reveals themselves are destroyed, that’s why we don’t see any aliens. The dark forest has its roots in game theory, but it builds on these assumptions.
Why did I pick it
Wanted to read it as prep for the series season 2.
Verdict
The book was great, but there was a pretty drawn out romance part in the middle. I’m not usually against that, but I didn’t enjoy it too much in the context of this book.
The ending was really good.
4.2 /5.