Today I want to discuss a very central phenomenon in the Three-Body Problem, the dark forest phenomenon-"The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is a hunter with a gun, sneaking in the forest like a ghost, gently pulling away the branches blocking the road. He tried his best not to make any sound in his footsteps, and he had to be careful even to breathe: he had to be careful, because there were hunters sneaking like him everywhere in the forest. If he found other lives, there was only one thing he could do: open The gun destroys him. In this forest, others are hell and an eternal threat. Any life that exposes one's own existence will be quickly destroyed. This is the picture of the civilization of the universe."
The above paragraph is a kind of revelation of the truth of the universe in the book (the rationality of the dark forest itself is not discussed here, science fiction itself is the output of imagination and fantasy based on existing science, and it is not a real world. A realistic description, the dark forest itself is the setting of the work, and it is not an issue to be discussed for the rationality of the three-body world), in the dark forest due to the technological explosion and the existence of the chain of suspicion, civilizations cannot trust each other , Thus can only adopt an elimination solution.
In the first two parts, the theory of the dark forest and the initial description are quite appropriate. The main evidence is that the star system where the coordinates are broadcast has been destroyed, and the Trisolaran civilization is afraid of the earth broadcasting coordinates. But there are a few descriptions in the third part that show me different scenes in the real higher civilization in the universe.
Description 1. Under the primitive system of the Dark Forest, it is not allowed to exist such things as the Alliance of Civilizations, but the group of Zeros appeared in the third part, and its name is widely known (also known by Guan Yifan), and its behavior is completely It does not conform to the dark forest's practice of keeping hidden and cleaning up.
Description 2. Guan Yifan's oral description of the dark forest scene can still be deduced into larger and higher cosmic civilizations, indicating that although there are dark forests among higher cosmic civilizations, it is not like the second one.
Description 3. The singer’s civilization and its rival "marginal world" civilization have fought fierce interstellar wars. The energy of the interstellar wars is not as big as the earth’s small broadcasts. How can these civilizations maintain their own stability?
Based on the above three descriptions, I think the cosmic picture of the dark forest in the book is mainly aimed at the phenomena that exist in the low-level civilizations under the influence of high-level cosmic civilizations. These civilizations are not qualified to be hunters with guns. These civilizations are relatively hunters. It’s just a little rabbit (the little rabbit also has the potential to become a hunter), with the help of the fog of the dark forest of the universe to hide, high-level civilization is a real hunter with a gun. On the one hand, the hunter will kill the prey as much as possible, and on the other hand, the hunters will spend resources. The competition will also break out large-scale wars.
I understand that the greater darkness of the higher-order civilization of the universe or the universe as a whole lies in the fact that the most important thing for the development of civilization in survival is that the necessary condition for survival is to consume resources, and the resources of the universe are limited. Use limited resources to deal with this infinite development. Therefore, the speed of the universe continues to decrease, the dimensionality continues to decrease, and the mass continues to decrease. According to the second law of thermodynamics, the entire universe will eventually die completely.
In order to escape from this fate, there has been an attempt to reduce the speed of light to 0, the dimensionality to 0, and restore the mass of the universe to achieve another explosion and rebirth of the universe. Maybe a ray of sunlight in the darkness of the universe or hope to put it.