1: Remember that 3BP had to break the speed of light (among other things) to make the story work. A first strike is a huge gamble, you have to make sure your shot in the dark kills the monster rather than makes it angry. If you put information lag back into the equation (not to mention other intelligence gathering and military imperfections), the confidence that you need to make the game theory work starts to look incredibly steep.
2: Nearby grabby aliens are highly unlikely in any event because otherwise they would have grabbed already. The time to colonize the galaxy (millions of years) is tiny compared to likely variation in the timescale on which interstellar-capable life emerged and evolved (billions of years). If you turn the colonization of the galaxy into a 2 hour movie and separate it into periods of "no aliens," "sparse aliens," and "dense aliens," the "sparse aliens" section is one small scene lasting seconds. It would take an enormous feat of synchronization for us to be "born" into those few seconds rather than before or after (and "after" probably doesn't work because colonization stops development). "Sparse aliens" makes for great sci-fi, so we are predisposed to imagine that it is more likely than it actually is. It's like Jurassic Park: the dinosaurs don't always escape because the mathematics of chaos theory dictate that it would be impossible to put resurrected dinosaurs in a zoo, they escape because otherwise I wouldn't buy a movie ticket (and neither would you).
3: Suppose that the situation has defied the odds and there are spooky aliens out there just waiting to kill us. What's our move? Hide? Or grow aggressively? The "hide" option is already a bust, so we should grow aggressively. Everyone else will do the same. Just as the desirability of a first-strike hinges on unlikely confidence in the ability to effectively carry out complete retaliation-eliminating destruction on a rapidly advancing adversary far in the future, the desirability of hiding hinges on unlikely confidence in the ability to hide from adversaries with truly staggering surveillance options. Even if the forest is full of monsters, we do not expect them to hide.
I love the 3BP trilogy and the atmosphere of horror that it builds, I just don't think its thesis works very well IRL. Which is a good thing :)
1: Remember that 3BP had to break the speed of light (among other things) to make the story work. A first strike is a huge gamble, you have to make sure your shot in the dark kills the monster rather than makes it angry. If you put information lag back into the equation (not to mention other intelligence gathering and military imperfections), the confidence that you need to make the game theory work starts to look incredibly steep.
2: Nearby grabby aliens are highly unlikely in any event because otherwise they would have grabbed already. The time to colonize the galaxy (millions of years) is tiny compared to likely variation in the timescale on which interstellar-capable life emerged and evolved (billions of years). If you turn the colonization of the galaxy into a 2 hour movie and separate it into periods of "no aliens," "sparse aliens," and "dense aliens," the "sparse aliens" section is one small scene lasting seconds. It would take an enormous feat of synchronization for us to be "born" into those few seconds rather than before or after (and "after" probably doesn't work because colonization stops development). "Sparse aliens" makes for great sci-fi, so we are predisposed to imagine that it is more likely than it actually is. It's like Jurassic Park: the dinosaurs don't always escape because the mathematics of chaos theory dictate that it would be impossible to put resurrected dinosaurs in a zoo, they escape because otherwise I wouldn't buy a movie ticket (and neither would you).
3: Suppose that the situation has defied the odds and there are spooky aliens out there just waiting to kill us. What's our move? Hide? Or grow aggressively? The "hide" option is already a bust, so we should grow aggressively. Everyone else will do the same. Just as the desirability of a first-strike hinges on unlikely confidence in the ability to effectively carry out complete retaliation-eliminating destruction on a rapidly advancing adversary far in the future, the desirability of hiding hinges on unlikely confidence in the ability to hide from adversaries with truly staggering surveillance options. Even if the forest is full of monsters, we do not expect them to hide.
I love the 3BP trilogy and the atmosphere of horror that it builds, I just don't think its thesis works very well IRL. Which is a good thing :)