[smallmancontrov]

Liu Cixin had to break the laws of physics -- badly, multiple times -- in order to make the Dark Forest game theory work. That's not a problem, fictional rules are good fun, but generalizing his conclusions back to the real world without sending them through a customs inspection first is a problem. See also: do the dinosaurs escape because the laws of chaos theory dictate that dinosaur zoos are mathematically impossible? Or do they escape because otherwise I wouldn't pay to see the movie and neither would you?

If we ground ourselves back in reality where the speed of light is probably law and the spooky aliens probably don't get to tamper the laws of physics, the actual game-theoretic winning move is always to grow voraciously, threat or no.

[bluGill]

Where the speed of light is probably law (our universe) there is no way aliens could reach earth. The only possibly scenario where earth is in danger is if we terraform and colonize mars (Venus would also do, or a few other large rocks), then we have a falling out and start a major war. The few survivors would not know if anyone is on Mars, but if so they might still be out to get earth so better be quiet. If you are not already in this solar system you can't get here in a useful timeframe no matter how long lived you are.

[vee-kay]

Speed of light is a constant and law only in the 5% of the Universe that's made of Matter and Energy.

Light is energy, it is a form of electromagnetic radiation, that travels in waves and consists of particles called photons. While photons do not have mass, they carry energy and momentum, which allows them to interact with matter.

But remaining 95% of the Universe is made of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, so if aliens are made of dark matter and use dark energy technology, their laws of physics may be different, and they could be capable of interstellar travel because they may not be limited by light's speed. Their dark matter and dark energy based technology may be incomprehensible or even irreproducible by us humans.

Scientists are still not sure what Dark Matter and Dark Energy are, so 95% of the Universe is still a big question mark to us all.

[int_19h]

The very existence of dark matter is postulated by us based on those very laws of physics that include the speed-of-light limit as a foundational axiom. If general relativity is not really true, then there's no basis to infer the existence of dark matter from our observations.

But it could also be something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_dynamics.

[jay_kyburz]

We should expand our definition of Aliens visiting earth.

If we received a signal (at light speed) that described how to build a physical alien computer, and then ran a program on that computer, which happened to be AI, we would have alien visitors.

[bitwize]

An interocitor!

"Normal view! Normal view! Normal VIEW! Normal VIEEeewwww..."