The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet • Hacker News Board

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#61

Post by beat » Tue, May 21, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

morley wrote: post #51

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…

There are some forms of internet "weapons" that I think reach the same scale as the ones in Cixin's series: - Social media harassment - Review bombs - Doxxing - Swatting Luckily, the internet is not at a point where any individual who reveals their contact information is subject to these problems.

That's a good point. I think it's subject to some of the same flaws as the original article, but you're right - the Dark Forest of the internet already has ways of driving people off.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#62

Post by beat » Tue, May 21, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #36

beat wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone reaches the conclusions of the Dark Forest. But those who don't reach it are exterminated.

No. There are about 100 other parameters whose relative balance determine game theoretical solutions to the problem. And as with many things, Cixin Liu handwaves away all that complexity in service of narrative. Don't confuse fiction with reality. Look at the Drake Equation as a much simpler example. Even given its simplicity, small tweaks in assumptions produce wildly different projections.

Not confusing fiction with reality. Simply stating the premise of the novel.

I don't object to anyone handwaving away complexity in service of narrative. Virtually all authors do that. (Two exceptions that come to mind are Tolstoy's War and Peace, and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.)

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#63

Post by 013a » Tue, May 21, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

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…

Its an interesting theory. IMO: the difficulty of destroying a civilization is probably harder than communicating with them, and the advantages of keeping one around probably outweigh the advantages of killing them if you're already more technically advanced.

A big point in TDF is that the speed of light limits our ability to communicate and understand other civilizations. But, by extension, weapons are also limited by that limit. Of course, maybe its possible to break the speed of light, but then communication could also break this limit.

So, if you're a technologically advanced alien civilization and you become aware of humanity, you can send an Envoy or you can send some Nukes (or, of course, you can do nothing and watch). Just within the context of The Dark Forest Theory, there's practically no reason to send Nukes; at worst, you discover that humanity sucks and then you go ahead and nuke us. But life is probably special; maybe humanity would make great trading partners, maybe our brains function differently and can solve problems differently, maybe our natural proclivity for war would make us great allies, or maybe we'd make great slaves for the mines on the Vartoth 12 colony. All of these are options for a civilization a thousand years ahead of us; they can pick what they'd like, but none of them would classify as a result of The Dark Forest theory.

There's also a possibility that maybe this hypothetical alien civilization tried that course of action in the past with another civilization, and they were friends for a while, helped each other, then fought in a bloody war, and now that civilization is distrustful so they destroy any young civilizations while they still easily can instead of even trying to come to terms. But that's not a Dark Forest theory situation; the Dark Forest Theory suggests that its natural for civilizations to want to kill each other off.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#64

Post by ystrickler » Tue, May 21, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

soulofmischief wrote: post #50

ystrickler wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My newsletter archive is here: https://tinyletter.com/ystrickler/letters/the-dark-forest-th...

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#65

Post by sandworm101 » Tue, May 21, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

xxandroxygen wrote: post #56

sandworm101 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Star wars isn't science fiction. Lucas tells us so in the first frame: a long time ago in a galaxy far far away: it isnt about us or where science may take us in the future. It is a samurai movie with lasers.

You're getting downvoted but in the end you're right - Star Wars is an epic fantasy with science-fiction-y things in it, hence why it doesn't follow rules about things like sound in space

Sound or movememt in space isnt a make or break. Trek was very much scifi yet took license with physics and that's ok. Not all scifi is hard scifi.

Imho Dune is still scifi despite the fantasy overtones because the author deliberately tells us it is set in our future. The author of star wars tells us the opposite.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#66

Post by derp_dee_derp » Tue, May 21, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #52

jerf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Internet is a dark forest, it's not populated by evil aliens out to kill you, but a witch in a beautiful gingerbread house inviting you to eat your fill. Don't ask about why the oven seems so dirty.

Spoken like someone who has never pissed off fascists and found death threats in their PO box. Or lost their job because of a tweet about men being sexisg. Or (to flip the political spectrum), been carefully outed from your hidden fascist leanings by undercover agents and machine learning, instantly losing your job and being evicted from your home. Violence exists on the internet.

Tweets and internet posts are not violence.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#67

Post by asark » Tue, May 21, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

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…

Oh boy, read Blindsight by Peter Watts. Kinda similar idea but more deeply dreadful. Messed me up for days. Now added to the pile labeled "Existentially Horrifying Crap I have to Not Think About to Make It Through Another Day".

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#68

Post by beat » Tue, May 21, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #33

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…

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…

He makes a lot of interesting hash from the speed of light (like the Dark Domain defense). But he more or less handwaves away the speed of light as a limitation, introducing viable FTL travel in Death's End. (As an aside, one of the things I like about the books is how terror scales... from the understandable, relativistic terror of the Trisolarans to the much more threatening terror of the Dark Forest, to the sheer hopelessness of some species altering the very laws of physics as a weapon.)

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#69

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 21, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #48

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#70

Post by wolfgke » Tue, May 21, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #9

Jun8 wrote: post #2

On an irrelevant point: do bloggers who use Medium honestly expect people to pay $5/mo to see their content? By comparison NY Times is $1/mo for unlimited articles.

If you believe content is worth paying for at all, the price of a cup of coffee every month seems perfectly reasonable. The NYT has a different business model, and is still partly supported by advertising in the print edition. The digital content pricing race-to-the-bottom is really unfortunate. It's why we have shitty free-to-play mobile games, for example: people won't pay more than a few dollars for a phone game a…

> If you believe content is worth paying for at all, the price of a cup of coffee every month seems perfectly reasonable.

First: In the USA, a cup of coffee might cost 5$; in other countries, it is much cheaper.

Second: Every payment you do in the internet leaves a huge data track since there exists no analogue for cash for paying anonymously in the internet. So in particular if you are skeptical of data krakens like Facebook etc., you should be very cautious to pay in the internet. In particular, for each payment in the internet, you do not only pay with money, but also with lots of sensitive data.