The Dark Forest Theory of Intelligence

What is the measure of human intelligence? One answer could be that human intellect rests in the gap between thought and communication, in our ability to decide what to disclose and what to keep secret. Although other animals can also deceive, human intellect encompasses a particularly complex decision space. As we construct meaning, we also decide whether to communicate truthfully or make use of ‘deceit, trickery, disguise and misdirection’. All representation of human thought, one could argue, is filtered through these decisions, conscious or subconscious. In Remembrance of the Earth’s Past, Liu Cixin’s first contact science-fiction trilogy, extraterrestrials discover with surprise that for humans, ‘think’ and ‘say’ are not synonyms. Humans have an unfair advantage over their extraterrestrial enemy because they can manipulate how their thoughts manifest externally by concealing information or lying: ‘it is precisely the expression of deformed thoughts that makes the exchange of information in human society […] so much like a twisted maze’. Human-level intelligence is thus defined as the ability to control the exchange of information, especially by keeping things secret. On the contrary, the aliens are described as radically explicit—they communicate unreflexively and transparently, as if they were mere display technologies: ‘[they] do not have organs of communication, [their] brains display thoughts to the outside world […] thoughts and memories transparent like a book placed out in public, or a film projected in a plaza […] totally exposed’. Or, one could add, like a computer screen