> Everything is probabilities and risk, but can we really accept any risk when it comes to something as important as the future of the human species? That's the part of the Dark Forest that gets me - the game theory of uncertainty. No player in this game wants to destroy the other. But the risk of another civilization taking into their head that they want to spread their culture at the end of a ray-gun is too great.

I'm ignoring the depraved morality of this stance for the sake of argument. But I wouldn't ignore the depravity of it if it were something we really had to face.

This logic is incredibly flawed. Everything is indeed probability and risk, but deciding to wage war on any civilization we detect even if they don't exhibit aggression is taking the chances that they'll be hostile from something less than 100% to exactly 100%. Then add the risk that we'd lose that war, and the decision to attack in the absence of hostility becomes a much greater risk than the decision to wait until they exhibit hostility first.

Also, as an aside, if we take the author's logic as sound, then we absolutely have to destroy all genAI companies. The genAI industry has been constantly telling us about how there's a substantial risk that their product will destroy us, after all.