Why We Should NOT Look For Aliens - The Dark Forest

Thumbnail of Why We Should NOT Look For Aliens - The Dark Forest

## General Information

**Why We Should NOT Look For Aliens - The Dark Forest** is the 153rd video of Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell. This video explains why it's not a good idea to search for aliens and what would happen if we did.. It was uploaded to the English channel on December 15, 2021.

According to the Dark Forest theory, which was presented in the video, extraterrestrial civilizations are so afraid of one another that they hide in order to prevent being seen as threats by other civilizations and being annihilated. It's one of the ways to resolve the Fermi Paradox.

### Description

Getting something from the kurzgesagt shop is the best way to support us and to keep our videos free for everyone. Thank You!

►► kgs.link/shop. (Worldwide Shipping Available)

Sources & further reading:

https://sites.google.com/view/sources...

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.

Show more/less
### Video Explanation

The Fermi paradox states that although the universe is teeming with life, we have not discovered any. The Dark Forest idea offers one explanation for this conundrum. It says that although there are many civilizations in the universe, they are all concealing from one another and will eventually be destroyed if they don't.

* The Way of Life —
	+ All living creatures desire to endure, get food, and proliferate. The others that wish to achieve the same thing as them are their biggest impediments. We became the dominant species on Earth because our predecessors were competitive. As new civilizations arose, the aggressive ones proliferated more quickly and wiped out the others. We will adopt the same approach to the stars as we did to every region of our globe. Aliens may be hazardous if they resemble humans.

* The Significance —
	+ We cannot tell who is violent or calm when we meet new people. Even if we told them, they wouldn't believe us or know what our objectives were. Even if we managed to find one other, the distance would prevent us from communicating for years, and we would both be unsure of whether attacking would be the best course of action. Because of the light-years between us and them, it will take a long time to deploy an invading fleet, and by then, the aliens will have evolved well beyond our capabilities.
	+ The goal of a civilizational war is to eradicate other people in order to remove your own existential danger. You could become so terrifying to a civilization that they attack you at the first opportunity.
* Conclusion — We must exercise caution while sending signals into space, and if we find others, we should observe them closely rather than revealing ourselves immediately away. Maybe this is just in our heads, and when we're ready, a welcoming society of extraterrestrial cultures is waiting for us.

### Language

This video was only published to the English and the German channels.

* English: **Why We Should NOT Look For Aliens - The Dark Forest**
* German: Warum wir nicht nach Aliens suchen sollten