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The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

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Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#41

Post by Symmetry »

F_r_k wrote: post #37
ethbro wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

grinds teeth A vein almost explodes in my forehead everytime someone points to Cixin Liu as the originator of DFT. The idea's been around since the early to mid-80s, and people could at least do diligence to properly cite. It's almost as insulting as if I said "When George Lucas started science fiction films with Star Wars..."

Could you cite some books that covered DFT ? I'm eager to read them

The Killing Star (1995) would be the main one that comes to mind for me. Even uses a dark forest as a metaphor though in this case it's a city park full of gangsters.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#42

Post by livueta »

F_r_k wrote: post #37
ethbro wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

grinds teeth A vein almost explodes in my forehead everytime someone points to Cixin Liu as the originator of DFT. The idea's been around since the early to mid-80s, and people could at least do diligence to properly cite. It's almost as insulting as if I said "When George Lucas started science fiction films with Star Wars..."

Could you cite some books that covered DFT ? I'm eager to read them

I'm pretty sure David Brin touches on it somewhere, but not to the extent of being the basis of an entire novel. Can't recall exactly where, sadly.

At minimum, Revelation Space features it as a major plot-point and was published in 2000, significantly predating Dark Forest.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#43

Post by jbattle »

davesque wrote: post #11

A bit off-topic, but I've kind of struggled mentally since finishing The Dark Forest . Even though it's science fiction, it actually seems hard to argue with the theory in the book -- that civilizations must act to eliminate each other or they are overwhelmingly likely to be eliminated themselves. I'd like to believe it's not true, but so long as any two civilizations are likely to have dramatically different rates o…

If you are in the market for a good story touching similar topics, I thought Pandora's Star (first of a two-book series) was a great read (I bounced hard off the dark forest)

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#44

Post by mac01021 »

ethbro wrote: post #32
beat wrote: post #4

As much as I love Cixin Liu's "Dark Forest" concept (I've sung my praises of his novels quite a bit here), I'm not sure this post fully fleshes out the analogy. I think it could be developed further, though. What makes Cixin's dark forest so awful is that new intelligent species are going out into a Universe with other species millions of years more advanced than they are, species that can easily exterminate entire s…

grinds teeth A vein almost explodes in my forehead everytime someone points to Cixin Liu as the originator of DFT. The idea's been around since the early to mid-80s, and people could at least do diligence to properly cite. It's almost as insulting as if I said "When George Lucas started science fiction films with Star Wars..."

So who are the originators?

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#45

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

I feel like there are some really nice ideas in here, but I felt like the metaphor of the dark forest really took a turn when the author started using it to describe the communication channels they felt like were still safe.

I'd personally term those burrows or something. Something that is hidden from external observers walking through the dark forest.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#46

Post by KirinDave »

I'm not a fan of this metaphor but I definitely feel the phenomenon it's alluding to in my life. I've increasingly enjoyed a relatively obscure social media existence on a small, focused Mastodon community as opposed to the general warfare of Twitter.

Similarly I post here out of obligations I have to folks, not because I like it or feel comfortable, welcome, or part of the community. I have smaller, private venues where I feel like I can be myself. And I'm aware sometimes I am a contributor to that attitude of "we are here to pick fights", but there isn't much I can do about it, that's what a lot of tech forums aspire to be.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#47

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

dmitrygr wrote: post #39
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding how long it takes to travel between habitable systems- Cixin Liu, like most other hard sci-fi authors, and everybody else who thinks about those things, seems to assume that lightspeed is just as problematic for everyone else as it is for us humans. And yet we have no way to know that for sure. We have no idea what the average lifespan of an intelligent species is. It may just be that humans are particularl…

Not really, since DFT covers how fast information travels, not biological bodies. Lifespans aren't really part of the equation.

That's not to do with Dark Forest Theory, but why do you say it's about how fast information travels? I take it as a theory about the outlook of technological civilisations with respect to each other.

And yes, lifespans are important. Perhaps not in the books, but in the real world our science and technology advances at least some in every generation, as new scientists and technologists continue the work of their forebears.

If human generations lasted a thousand years, it would perhaps take us a lot longer to make the same technological progress that it now only takes us a few years- if nothing else because the urgency of making progress would be reduced accordingly.

Lifespans may also influence the actualy speed by which species form thoughts and communicate. Remember the Ents in The Lord of the Rings? A species that lived ten thousand years may take an Earth day to form a meaningful utterance. Technological advancement would take considerably longer for them than for us.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#48

Post by KirinDave »

beat wrote: post #4

As much as I love Cixin Liu's "Dark Forest" concept (I've sung my praises of his novels quite a bit here), I'm not sure this post fully fleshes out the analogy. I think it could be developed further, though. What makes Cixin's dark forest so awful is that new intelligent species are going out into a Universe with other species millions of years more advanced than they are, species that can easily exterminate entire s…

> Is that really what we have here, on the internet? When we find our autonomous zones (to steal an anarchist phrase), do Google and Facebook actively exterminate them? No. Not yet, anyway

Worse: they co-opt and integrate them.

We're already seeing that start to happen with Mastodon as well, the gravity is real. There are a lot of instances that flat out refuse to pair with corporate or government funded servers as a result. I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook started launching a scuttlebutt system and tried to monetize it. It is, as they say, 2019.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#49

Post by AgentME »

davesque wrote: post #11

A bit off-topic, but I've kind of struggled mentally since finishing The Dark Forest . Even though it's science fiction, it actually seems hard to argue with the theory in the book -- that civilizations must act to eliminate each other or they are overwhelmingly likely to be eliminated themselves. I'd like to believe it's not true, but so long as any two civilizations are likely to have dramatically different rates o…

Personally, I think it's possible that abiogenesis is so rare that we are the only life within the observable universe. I don't know if that's more or less depressing.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#50

Post by soulofmischief »

ystrickler wrote: post #16
beat wrote: post #4

As much as I love Cixin Liu's "Dark Forest" concept (I've sung my praises of his novels quite a bit here), I'm not sure this post fully fleshes out the analogy. I think it could be developed further, though. What makes Cixin's dark forest so awful is that new intelligent species are going out into a Universe with other species millions of years more advanced than they are, species that can easily exterminate entire s…

I cut some of this out before hitting publish, but I had originally included more about the emotional and status anxiety of posting publicly, reputation management, and the risks to self posed by the way these platforms work. I ultimately cut those things because I thought they distracted from the overall idea and it's something we already hear so much of. I definitely wouldn't say this analogy is 1:1 with Liu Cixin'…

I was interested in reading your article, but Medium has it behind a paywall.
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