The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet • Hacker News Board

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#151

Post by jerf » Wed, May 22, 2019, 3:00 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.

A non-trivial part of the reason this environment exists is that we are being enticed into these big centralized platforms, with centralized identities, because it benefits the witches, not us.

When there was no central big service, there was no ground for these massive centralized pushes to exist. Bad stuff happened, but bad stuff happens in real life, too; as long as the scales are roughly comparable I'm not inclined to go too ballistic trading freedom for safety. The risk of all those things exists today in such an outsized way because it benefits Facebook and Twitter to centralize everything.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#152

Post by matz1 » Wed, May 22, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #148

matz1 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I too believe language can evolve. I too believe there exist many other definition of violence that even more absurd. There still million of people that use the term violence like mine, it is still a valid use, even if you do find it challenging.

I agree that there are an awful lot of people who'd like to put forth your point as a means to defend their actions. And like them, you're the one seeking to erase senses from the dictionary by pretending they aren't there to begin with.

Yes, I too agree that there are an awful lot of people to put forth your point as a means to defend their actions.

And like them, you're the one who contribute the support to replace the current definition.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#153

Post by JohnClark1337 » Wed, May 22, 2019, 3:50 PM UTC

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Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#154

Post by WorldMaker » Wed, May 22, 2019, 4:04 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #101

WorldMaker wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The implication in the Uplift universe was that the bureaucracy and "gamification" of interspecies interactions was designed to avoid such an elimination state, but such a thing likely existed in its deep past. The thesis, as such, of the Uplift universe was generally that mutual cooperation was hard, but should win in the long run. The emphasis in the hard was that by default most societies wanted to shoot first and ask questions later even with cooperation heavily incentivized by the rules/games.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#155

Post by KirinDave » Wed, May 22, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

jlawson wrote: post #150

KirinDave wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But why, then, do some people hold onto this absurdity tooth and nail, refusing to give it up even when it's clearly causing miscommunication? It gives some benefit to them. Interesting take. We'll get back to this in a moment. > They want a contest of power: Who can stigmatize, harass, and physically intimidate the other side into submission? And yet weirdly you're part of a group hear arguing that we should not c…

> If this isn't violence, then why shouldn't I stigmatize you? What do you care? ..... If speech, association and the implication of violence are so trivial that it cannot constitute violence You seem to have the idea that any act/speech which isn't literally violence must thus be trivial/acceptable/unobjectionable. Do I even need to explain why this is wrong? Obviously there are many acts which are unacceptable and…

> You seem to have the idea that any act/speech which isn't literally violence must thus be trivial/acceptable/unobjectionable.

I haven't put that forth, but thank you for your concern. What I'm noting is that you're essentially decrying the labeling of some types of speech-as-violence as a tactic that according to you is being espoused by people to somehow cover the idea that they want to use speech tactics against you.

You claim this is to their benefit, but that is absurd on it's face. Why would folks ostensibly wanting to use the sharper sides of self-expression go and label their own actions as violence?

What conclusions are we supposed to draw from such an obviously wrong point?

> I can kind of sense that you're trapped in your own definitional games here. Since you've so long equated "any objectionable thing" with "violence"

Quite the opposite. I'm willing to be very flexible and contextual with the application of words because that's what words are. You might want to have this conversation with other folks in the thread suggesting with dictionary-based semantic rigidity.

> consider my example above about the pedophilia lies,

I ask you to step back and ask yourself if you're really going to commit to the general conversation here. Because the point you're jumping into is a conversation about if forms of violence besides a fist and a gun exist, with your opinion arising from within a group who denies that.

I'll give you a counter example: is the act of lawmakers to criminalize all abortion in Alabama despite the will of their electorate is clearly an act of speech. It is an act that radically reduces the freedoms and rights of it's citizens and provokes other parties into action (such as law enforcement) which may include physical violence. It seems strange to suggest that a declaration stripping you of many of your rights and property is not a violent act simply because the lawmaker themselves is a flaccid old man.

Laws are speech, and in some cultures that speech holds enormous power. Under your refusal to recognize causality, I could set up a bomb to explode outside your car when the door opens and then claim I didn't open the door. If I undertake actions that are certain to lead to physical harm towards another how am I not in some way morally responsible? How is the speech act itself not part of the violence?

It seems to me like the one hoping to split definitions to hair-fine levels via semantic games here is you.

But perhaps we'd find a more fruitful conversation in person. Perhaps we could meet for milkshakes some time and talk it out?

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#156

Post by 013a » Wed, May 22, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

hannasanarion wrote: post #118

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…

There are several reasons not to fear Dark Forest, chief among them, 1. Any species that develops a civilization capable of space travel must necessarily have evolved a strong cooperative spirit, and so is more unlikely to exercise homicide as a first resort. 2. If Dark Forest were true, and there was a murderous civilization that wanted to kill every other, we would all be dead already. You can make an entire galaxy…

> Any species that develops a civilization capable of space travel must necessarily have evolved a strong cooperative spirit, and so is more unlikely to exercise homicide as a first resort.

It's more accurate to say that HUMANITY would need a cooperative spirit in order to reach interstellar travel. I don't think it's accurate to assume that every species would need this.

And, beyond that, TDF addresses this through the assertion that humanity, at multiple turns, didn't want to partake in this Dark Forest ideology; we wanted to make peace and friends, but the other more advanced civilizations weren't having it. So even if they had a cooperative spirit in the past, that doesn't preclude that the spirit sticks around when the destruction of your species is at stake.

> If Dark Forest were true, and there was a murderous civilization that wanted to kill every other, we would all be dead already. You can make an entire galaxy's worth of relativistic kill missiles with the mass of a medium size asteroid.

That's being awfully presumptive.

Constructing even a galaxy's worth of kill missiles and launching them wildly like a shotgun isn't a strategy that any logical civilization would do. They'd end up destroying tons of empty planets that could have rich resource deposits or be habitable for future colonies, and they'd know that. Maybe there are illogical interstellar civilizations, but it stands to reason that they'd be More Rare than Logical ones, given it takes some form of logic to even accomplish space travel.

Targeted strikes make more sense. So you have to have a Target. Humanity has been broadcasting RF for about 100 years. The milky way is 105,000 light years across; at best we're detectable by 0.095% of just our own galaxy. Maybe we haven't gotten one of these kill missiles because they haven't heard us yet. Or it's on its way.

But all this requires life to common; the dark forest theory asserts that the reason life seems rare is because its common and everyone is just being quiet, but the other possibility is that life is, well, rare, and that's probably more likely. If life is rare, then the dark forest theory kinda goes out the window because the novelty of finding new life would invariably overwhelm a hypothetical risk that your species has never encountered before.

IMO space contact & travel will have one of three outcomes. (1) The light speed limit can be worked around and none of this matters. (2) Life is Common, and the Dark Forest Theory is valid between species. (3) Life is Rare, humanity will colonize the stars, but a version of the Dark Forest Theory will begin to apply between human colonies separated by hundreds of lightyears. If its been 150 years since anyone in your colony has ever talked to Earth, then you're not really a colony anymore, but it's obvious to you that Earth won't see it that way. Your colony creates other colonies, and it takes earth hundreds of years to find out about them, if you decide to even tell them (because what do you owe earth?). So a thousand years pass and we've got dozens/hundreds of Tribes of humans who can't really talk to each other, most of whom don't even know of each other's existence, all developing culture, science, and weapons at independent rates. Really starts to look Dark Forest-esque, doesn't it?

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#157

Post by Freaky » Wed, May 22, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #135

Freaky wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. ... the primary weapon of the Trisolans in the first book are subatomic ansible faeries. I thought it was kind of funny, because the whole point behind the Dark Forest theory is that it emerges because aliens are so unknowa…

+++ SPOILERS +++ Eh, they had inside information (the Earth-Trisolaran Organisation was in contact with them). And it's hard sci-fi because they were AIs made of protons , not actual fairies found in the magical forest of Elthrolien that had to be seduced with promises of space mead. That's how it goes with sci-fi, innit. You can come up with anything you like as long as it's obvious that it's just advanced technolog…

> And it's hard sci-fi because they were AIs made of protons, not actual fairies

Does mentioning your faeries are made out of atoms stop them being fantasy?

> That's how it goes with sci-fi, innit. You can come up with anything you like as long as it's obvious that it's just advanced technology, not magic.

Sure, I mean, even Star Wars is still considered within the genre despite it all being completely made-up - but the point of hard sci-fi is you're not just making it up and rubbing science-words on your endless stream of arbitrary plot contrivances.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#158

Post by davejohnclark » Wed, May 22, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

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…

I found the oatmeal's comic about Columbus enlightening (and disturbing) https://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#159

Post by KirinDave » Wed, May 22, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #151

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.

A non-trivial part of the reason this environment exists is that we are being enticed into these big centralized platforms, with centralized identities, because it benefits the witches, not us. When there was no central big service, there was no ground for these massive centralized pushes to exist. Bad stuff happened, but bad stuff happens in real life, too; as long as the scales are roughly comparable I'm not inclin…

I've made a conscious effort as well to move off centralized platforms, moving more to federated models and staying out of hub nodes, myself.

But even there we see coordinated acts of harassment on folks cross instance. Ironically many of these are coordinated via a centralized service like Gab or Reddit.

I am not sure that it makes sense to mandate from a government standpoint that organizing harassment is violence. It's difficult to imagine a world where this is not abused to quash any substantial reformist movement. But I do think from the standpoint of individuals and community norms it is not going too "ballistic" to recognize them as such.

Re: The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

#160

Post by hannasanarion » Wed, May 22, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

013a wrote: post #156

hannasanarion wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several reasons not to fear Dark Forest, chief among them, 1. Any species that develops a civilization capable of space travel must necessarily have evolved a strong cooperative spirit, and so is more unlikely to exercise homicide as a first resort. 2. If Dark Forest were true, and there was a murderous civilization that wanted to kill every other, we would all be dead already. You can make an entire galaxy…

> Any species that develops a civilization capable of space travel must necessarily have evolved a strong cooperative spirit, and so is more unlikely to exercise homicide as a first resort. It's more accurate to say that HUMANITY would need a cooperative spirit in order to reach interstellar travel. I don't think it's accurate to assume that every species would need this. And, beyond that, TDF addresses this through…

> It's more accurate to say that HUMANITY would need a cooperative spirit in order to reach interstellar travel. I don't think it's accurate to assume that every species would need this.

How do you build a spaceship without working together with others?

> Constructing even a galaxy's worth of kill missiles and launching them wildly like a shotgun isn't a strategy that any logical civilization would do.

Who said the missles are dumb rocks? If each one has a camera on it and a few adjustment rockets, it can choose which planets to target as it approaches the star. It's gonna take you a hundred thousand years to get there anyway, so who cares if you wreck the local ecosystem a little bit now? You're probably going to have to make changes to the planet to suit your species' needs anyway, so why be coy about it to save yourself a minivan's worth of raw material?