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The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

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Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#71

Post by davesque »

asark wrote: post #67
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".

I've read Blindsight. It's a good one. Actually, the premise didn't bother me as much as the Three Body trilogy.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#72

Post by jacobush »

sandworm101 wrote: post #65
xxandroxygen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So time and place dictates what is SciFi now? That's an awfully awkward measure which will cut away a lot of SciFi.

Though, I agree Star Wars is not very sci fi, it's a fantasy epic with sci-fi stuffs in it.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#73

Post by jasaloo »

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…

yes- I hate to nitpick with these sort of things since I really enjoyed the essay, but as a lover of Liu's series I took issue with the dark forest analogy.

I think the author was rather describing Liu's concept of a "black domain," namely "a region of spacetime in which the speed of light is lowered artificially to completely seal it off (and protect it) from the rest of the Universe." (Wikipedia)

Apart from that, really appreciated the author's ideas and using the phrase "...depressurized conversation is possible because of their non-indexed, non-optimized, and non-gamified environments." Spot on.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#74

Post by ethbro »

jacobush wrote: post #72
sandworm101 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So time and place dictates what is SciFi now? That's an awfully awkward measure which will cut away a lot of SciFi. Though, I agree Star Wars is not very sci fi, it's a fantasy epic with sci-fi stuffs in it.

I've never understood the association with relative time in regards to science fiction.

SF is typically futuristic, but that bears jack all as to whether it takes place in the past, present, future, or even anything relative to our planet.

Science, in that it pledges greater allegiance to, extrapolates, or invents in an internally consistent way. But not time.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#75

Post by ethbro »

beat wrote: post #60
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..."

Sure, there's some prior art. But it's not necessary or relevant to cite the prior art when talking about a specific work. If you read carefully, you'll find I didn't claim he was the originator, because duh.

I was taking issue with the medium post.

"In his sci-fi trilogy The Three Body Problem, author Liu Cixin presents the dark forest theory of the universe."

"Liu invites us to think about this a different way."

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#76

Post by Kye »

derp_dee_derp wrote: post #66
KirinDave wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Violence is an expansive concept beyond the usual usage. Tweets and posts can lead to all kinds.

Recent example: at least one politician being milkshaked after the first incident. And even though I find fascist views abhorrent, I can see the fear they feel about the possibility of being clocked post-Spencer as a sort of violence.

Oddly, these same people would reject the notion of violence as something beyond immediate and physical...

And then LGBTQ+ people experience economic violence all the time. There are no protections in most places, and plenty of people are happy to fire them/kick them out of apartments based entirely on stereotypes.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#77

Post by jasaloo »

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…

I hear you. Liu's outlook is deeply pessimistic. His obvious scientific background knowledge seems to be infused with a dash of western, neoliberal ideology-- that it's just dog-eat-dog out there, and we're all in it for our own self-interest.

It's a bit ironic considering Liu is Chinese- wasn't China's Ming Dynasty the first to land on America in the early 1400s and historically demonstrate that exploration and discovery weren't necessarily accompanied by colonization/enslavement/destruction?

That example gets held up a lot when mainstream historians spin the narrative that Colombus et al enslaved/raped/pillaged because that's just what societies do (while ignoring that it was the debt that the explorers owed to their financiers that drove most of that bad behavior).

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#78

Post by jasaloo »

sylens wrote: post #20

Wouldn't the "Black Domain" concept introduced in Death's End be a better metaphor here? Communities are choosing to seal themselves off from the greater Internet, even if that means they cannot collaborate/engage with as many other people.

yes precisely my thought

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#79

Post by derp_dee_derp »

Kye wrote: post #76
derp_dee_derp wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tweets and internet posts are not violence.

Violence is an expansive concept beyond the usual usage. Tweets and posts can lead to all kinds. Recent example: at least one politician being milkshaked after the first incident. And even though I find fascist views abhorrent, I can see the fear they feel about the possibility of being clocked post-Spencer as a sort of violence. Oddly, these same people would reject the notion of violence as something beyond immedia…

There is no such thing as economic violence either. The word you are looking for is discrimination.
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