Talk:Dark forest hypothesis

Phrase vs hypothesis
I made an edit to this article based on the linked-to Brin article. Brin uses the term “Deadly Probes” to describe something that as far as I can tell is nearly identical to the “Dark Forest” hypothesis that Wikipedia attributes to Liu Cixin. I don’t understand why my change was reverted. The revert notice says something to the effect that if I have another source, we can discuss; the other source is the Brin article. I don’t understand why various Wikipedia articles maintain that the Liu Cixin novel is the origin of the hypothesis, when Brin clearly stated it in 1983. Can we reinstate my changes? —Elysdir (talk) 05:19, 15 March 2024 (UTC)


 * You did not cite the source in your edits. Based on your edits alone (which is all we see in the diffs), "Brin" is just a name, not a source.
 * The Brin source is cited in the SciFi section which is incorrect. I will make some edits and let you follow up with more. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:59, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately the article has even more problems.
 * The intro and some other parts incorrectly characterized the "dark forest" so it sounds similar to "deadly probes". The "dark forest" version is very narrow and well kinda silly: aliens are powerful, able to wipe us out, but just hanging around out of sight for "reasons". The silliness of this idea is probably why the article does not explain it simply but mixes in other ideas.
 * "Deadly probes" is much more believable. See the ref in the "Relationship to other proposed Fermi paradox solutions".
 * I do think that the Brin article covers this ground so an edit to make it clear that Liu Cixin is adding details would be good. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:24, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I made a bunch of changes please review. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:13, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Who is "first"?
In my opinion, the "dark forest" hypothesis is not very novel nor very well defined. Attempting to claim that one source or another was "first" is only going to result in fruitless arguments.

I reverted an edit by @Joncolvin because the source refers to preceding work. The source is a book review for the Bear book and as such is not authoritative on the history of the concept. It's not like the reviewer has done deep research, he just reviewed the book based on his other reading.

I don't think anyone disputes that the name of this particular variant comes from the novel "The Dark Forest". The concept predates the novel. So far we don't have resources that say much more. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:22, 16 March 2024 (UTC)


 * The article is about the hypothesis itself, not just Cixin's version of it. The summary seems a suitable place to mention the history of the hypothesis, not just the name of one particular scifi version of it. Joncolvin (talk) 03:38, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * And the NHPR article (ref 1) is hardly "deep research". Joncolvin (talk) 03:41, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * But anyway, there is a University of Warwick publication on the hypothesis that is much more authoritative as to Greg Bear's origination of the concept, so I'll reference that instead. Joncolvin (talk) 03:48, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not seeing the Warwick source claiming Bear originated the concept. Unfortunately unless we have a source explicitly claiming a specific person originated the idea, we can't just go "well here is the earliest formulation of (something vaguely like) the dark forest hypothesis that I can find; therefore this must be the inventor/originator/earliest reference". That's WP:OR. Unless we can find RS's making claims like that, we need to settle for (1) sourcing the term "dark forest" to Cixin's novel (without claiming or implying he was the first to come up with the concept) and (2) mentioning, ideally in the body, the various known formulations of the hypothesis with dates, without necessarily claiming the earliest one we mention must be the absolute earliest, or the "original". For this and other reasons as mentioned in the edit summary, I have reverted your edit as well as 's. That said, I am ok with mentioning Bear in the lead, provided it is done without implying he was the first to come up with the idea, and I have edited the lead accordingly. If there are other precursors to Cixin, feel free to mention them here and we can discuss how to incorporate them into the article. Brusquedandelion (talk) 08:37, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * According to the University of Warwick source, which seems the best we have to date, Bear was the first to apply the concept to METI; "Greg Bear’s 1987 novel The Forge of God applies this paranoid premise explicitly to the concept of METI". The history of the more general hypothesis goes Leinster/Bear/Cixin, per the ref, so I think all three should be reflected in the lead, in chrono order. Joncolvin (talk) 20:57, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Your opinion of the novelty of the hypothesis is irrelevant under NPOV, the history of the hypothesis/paradigm is explicited in the Univ of Warwick reference, and thus should not be subject to "fruitless argument". We do now have a resource that says much more. Since the article is about the hypothesis, not any particular book, the history of the concept should be better described. Joncolvin (talk) 07:34, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The article is about the "Dark forest hypothesis". As the ref Chao Yu states, the name derives from the book. No one disputes that. Thus any history of the hypothesis dates from the book.
 * Sources do say the Dark Forest book derives the Fermi paradox ideas from earlier work. That is history. Specifically the Chao Yu book cites Brin's 1983 paper. This is a direct connection from the article topic to a work.
 * The Webb book cites Brin's paper and discusses the SauerHagen's Berserker novels. But since Webb wrote before Cixin, it is not a direct connection.
 * The Warwick reference dos not provide a history explicit or otherwise.
 * The Warwick article discusses several historical events and stories, then has a paragraph about the Bear novel:
 * Greg Bear’s 1987 novel The Forge of God applies this paranoid premise explicitly to the concept of METI,
 * The Warwick article does not say that Bear originated the dark forest concept. It says:
 * In this context, the Dark Forest model of the Universe is an extension of the older Berserker explanation of the Fermi paradox...
 * The Bear book is discussed in the Sci Fi section, but it does not need to be in the intro. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:18, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * That the current *name* of the hypothesis/paradigm derives from Liu does not at all imply that the history of the hypothesis starts with Liu's b
 * book. The University of Warwick ref is explicit that the history of the hypothesis starts much earlier (with Leinster). Joncolvin (talk) 21:04, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Exactly what one means by "the hypothesis" is IMO the core issue. These are all minor variations on the same concept. The article is entitled "Dark forest" and thus the Cixin novel gets priority in the introduction. No other novel has clearly both about "this hypothesis" and "first" but certainly many are closely related. Johnjbarton (talk) 01:28, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * as you said earlier, the *concept* predates Liu's novel, so I'm not sure why you are now contradicting yourself and claiming the history of the hypothesis dates from Liu's book. Try to be consistent at least. Joncolvin (talk) 21:25, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * As I said, the Liu Cixin novel gets into the introduction not by being first with the concept but because other source chose that name.
 * I think the best solution to these conflicts is to eliminate the article by merging it. It's entirely a marginal topic. Johnjbarton (talk) 01:29, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Disagree, the hypothesis is now noteworthy (due to the fame of the Cixin novel), and the multiple references to it, so should have its own page. The current intro seems to do the job. Joncolvin (talk) 02:04, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

CHAO YU source on Brin and Cixin
The source Discusses Brin first, quote: Then Cixin, quote:
 * David Brin, a scientist famous for his science fiction stories and his opposition to Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (METI), proposed in 1983 [1] the possibility of an unknown risk faced by other civilizations in the universe, forcing them to maintain silence. This results in human beings failing to discover any foreign civilization, which he termed “the Great Silence”. Brin posits that METI projects are futile calls in the forest of the universe.
 * The Three Body trilogy by Cixin Liu [2], a Chinese science fiction writer, also offers a detailed interpretation of the Fermi paradox: the dark forest rule. Representing an effective reiteration and expansion of Brin’s position, the dark forest rule is based on two hypotheses and two concepts.

The current introduction incorrectly fails to mention the Brin work.

The Chao Yu source never uses the word "beserker" and thus cannot be a reference for the similarity of that idea and the dark-forest idea. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:36, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Webb, Stephen (2002)
The reference never mentions "Dark forest". It was written before the Cixin book.

The Webb book also does not mention Bear's Forge of God book.

Therefore this source cannot be used to explain the Dark Forest story or directly its relationship to any other Fermi paradox story. The source can be used for history pre-dating 2002, eg the Berserker or Brin work. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:54, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to merge this article into Fermi paradox
The Fermi paradox article is fabulous and provides all the context discussed in this article and much more. The section Fermi_paradox is a repeat of most of this article. Wikipedia readers and editors would be better served if "Dark forest hypothesis" redirected to Fermi_paradox Johnjbarton (talk) 01:44, 26 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Many of the other subsections have WP:CFORKs, and I don't see why this one shouldn't. It clearly meets notability guidelines. Brusquedandelion (talk) 02:15, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * the dark forest hypothesis just got its own PBS Spacetime episode last week (reference now in article). It's notable and deserves its own article. Joncolvin (talk) 02:22, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Highly disagree, Von Neuman probes, Berserker hypothesis each have their own pages, and the DFH is now far more notable than either of those due to the fame of the Cixin novel. Joncolvin (talk) 02:28, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Switch order of description to act as "spoiler warning"
I know spoiler warnings aren't a thing on wikipedia, but this one needs a way around that. I think it is damaging user experience.

The third listed reason for getting rid of spoiler warnings (which used to exist) is "Sections that frequently contain spoiler warnings—such as plot summaries, episode lists, character descriptions, etc.—were already clearly named to indicate that they contain plot details. Therefore, further disclaimers would be redundant and unnecessary." This does not apply here because people may not know that The Dark Forest is the title of a Cixin book before encountering this article, or they would think this particular term (not idea) precedes the book. They would then read the first line of the article, which contains a major spoiler.

This could be easily resolved if the first bit of information given is that its name comes from the Cixin book. I'm a new user, please let me know if this makes no sense or is impossible to get around. CopperBug (talk) 04:49, 14 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Preserving the reader's ignorance is precisely the opposite of what encyclopedia articles are for, full stop. Remsense  诉  04:53, 14 July 2024 (UTC)