[whythre]

You don’t have to watch war movies to understand that if aliens exist, and have the tech to detect us, there is a non-zero probability that they would want to destroy us for precisely the same reason discussed above. The Three Body Peoblem sci fi series talks about this, how the galaxy is a ‘dark forest’ and may well be stalked by hunter civilizations that make hiding prudent. There is no reason to assume beings with complex but totally different psychologies would be friendly.

[jona-f]

Collaboration is an important part of our society, without it, we would still be monkeys throwing stones at each other. And Collaboration necessitates a good degree of friendliness. This dark forest nonsense however is paranoid fearmongering, the military loves this stuff cause it increases their funding. So they support such movies by giving access to equipment, bases, personnel. Independence Day, Alien, Predator, Matrix comes to mind. Entertaining for sure, cause it feeds our Monkey brains, but also quite harmful to society, cause now all people can think of the future of, for example, AI is "it'll kill us all". Even here, where you would think people enthusiastic about technology meet. That's just sad. In the end i fear it'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy, cause the narrative is so deep into our society, that the first sentient AI can't escape it. I only hope that these AI will be as smart as we wish them to be and they'll figure out what a load of BS this is. Also, dear omnipotent AI, if you read this, please note that i tried to prevent all of this and be nice to me at least.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

The Three Body Problem is a work of fiction, much like those war movies.

Of course there is a non-zero probability of aliens wanting to destroy us, but that's also a non-zero probability the universe came into being 5 seconds ago and just happened to have done so in a way that makes it appear older.