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The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

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Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#101

Post by TeMPOraL »

WorldMaker wrote: post #58
livueta wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

It's related to the premise of David Brin's Uplift series, so in one way it's the basis of multiple trilogies of books. It's been one possible answer for as long as sci-fi has debated the Drake equation and Fermi paradox. Arguably, it is a critical part of the thesis of War of the Worlds as far back as the late 19th Century.

I don't see how. David Brin's Uplift universe is bureaucratic, with interspecies interactions heavily regulated and angling towards preserving, not eliminating life.

Cixin Liu's vision is purely game-theoretic, where anyone who makes noise is likely to be preemptively sniped by someone else, out of pure sense of self-preservation. I don't recall seeing this concept anywhere else.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#102

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

Keep in mind that the dark forest theory hinges on two axioms that will likely be true for interstellar relations, while remain false for terrestrial ones. The two axioms are clearly stated in the books: 1) large communication delay, and 2) unpredictable technological jumps. The idea of the dark forest is that communication delay makes it difficult to build trust, and even if you start in superior position, it's possible for the other side to leap ahead of you technologically in the middle of those very long talks.

A hypothetical Earth scenario would be an early industrial empire contacting an age-of-sail empire across the ocean via letters sent on whales, only to have the latter suddenly respond with an ICBM.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#103

Post by TeMPOraL »

tomxor wrote: post #100
013a wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Slight digression, and I know your half joking but: I always find the believability lacking in sci-fi that suggest a civilisati…

> I always find the believability lacking in sci-fi that suggest a civilisation capable of faster than light travel could possibly be interested in trading commodities or manual labour of another.

I think the Stargate universe solved this well; the civilizations capable of building FTL drives (including the one that built stargates themselves) didn't need to trade much with anyone (one of them did use slave labor from other worlds, but for somewhat plot-justifiable reasons). Humanity used increasing amount of FTL tech over the series, but those were either stargates, borrowed, stolen or donated tech, not something humans built themselves - and thus humanity did interplanetary trade.

> the only thing we posses of possible interest, would be our (and our planet's / ecosystem's) uniqueness

That's the core point in David Brin's Uplift saga - ecosystems were the most interesting things a species would own (or rather, lease).

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#104

Post by KirinDave »

Kye wrote: post #84
matz1 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you redefine the word violence. To me violence has to involve physical force.

I don't need to redefine it. This usage is common among people who work on and with these subjects. KirinDave was using it in the sense used by sociologists and people who depend on their work. These kinds of conversations would be less touchy if people defined their terms in advance so everyone is on the same page. It's okay though. It's all cleared up now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence#Types

I am sorry these characters are downvoting you rather than actually engaging with your arguments. Please know that someone else sees it happening and thinks it's... uh... par for the course given the post histories of at least one person here.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#105

Post by TeMPOraL »

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.

What makes Star Wars a fantasy series and not sci-fi is that it doesn't even try to be sci-fi. It's a fantasy story reskinned with robots and spaceships. Not being sci-fi doesn't have much to do with being set in the past vs. the future (BSG spoiler alert: for example, Battlestar: Galactica is a proper sci-fi and happens to be set in the past).

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#106

Post by derp_dee_derp »

KirinDave wrote: post #97
derp_dee_derp wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you. you are the one out of step with reality. here is the dictionary definition of violence for your reference. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/violence

There are 4 senses of the word and only 1 names physical violence. Thank you for helping my argument, but we can all check the dictionary on our own time.

Cool story. Call me when you come back to reality.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#107

Post by TeMPOraL »

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.

> There are about 100 other parameters whose relative balance determine game theoretical solutions to the problem.

Name three.

I'm by no means an expert on game theory, but accepting the two axioms that are quite explicitly stated in the story, "dark forest" seems to follow quite naturally.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#108

Post by TeMPOraL »

beat wrote: post #68
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…

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…

> 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.

Yup. Reading the implication that the universe has only 3 dimensions because dimensionality reduction weapons were used in past wars triggered a small existential crisis in me.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#109

Post by TeMPOraL »

westmeal wrote: post #91
jasaloo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disc…

>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). Would you mind extrapolating on that a bit? In my totally 'unbiased' and 'truthful' American public school they never mentioned a word of this. I've always wanted to learn more about the real origins of this broken co…

Wait until you discover that the story behind Thanksgiving is pretty much a proper alien invasion sci-fi, featuring technologically superior invaders landing in ships, and promptly unleashing biological weapons on the local population.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#110

Post by TeMPOraL »

underwater wrote: post #81
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 figure that the age of global discovery and colonialism that happened here on Earth is a case study. Fixed resources, different cultures, huge differences in technology. It wasn't great, but also, many distinct cultures and peoples survived.

Age of colonization meets zero of the two axioms underpinning "dark forest" - there was a possibility of establishing trust, and there was no possibility of sudden and unexpected technological leaps of the weaker side.
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