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The Cognitive Dark Forest

ryelang.org

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Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#11

Post by nate »

king_phil wrote: post #3

Dark forest makes no sense to me. Why would a civilization eradicate another, spending huge amounts of resources (time, energy, material) when the universe has such an enormous scale that you cannot even get to each other in a timescale that makes much sense...

Are you asking about the 3 body problem version of this? Spoiler alert: The folks doing the eradicating aren't spending much time/energy/anything on eradicating. It's one large missile through space.

I think the gist is: sure, we humans can't conceive of getting to anyone else in the universe in any timescale, but if we can keep ourselves from destroying ourselves, we'll eventually figure it out. And we'll spread. And we'll kill everything that isn't us in the process as we've done as explorers on this planet.

So really in 3BP: it's inexpensive to eradicate. But insanely expensive to possibly get the intention wrong of any other civilization you encounter. They might kill you.

(again, this is just my interpretation of what 3BP said)

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#12

Post by MattDamonSpace »

scottlawson wrote: post #4

The thesis that in the past it was safe to share ideas and projects because the execution was hard, and that now things have changed because of AI is an interesting AI, but I wonder if it is really true. It certainly seems true that for small projects and relatively narrow scoped things that AI can replicate them easily. I'm thinking specifically about blog posts where people share their first steps and simple progra…

Sure but the Forest point stands, whatever you can hide from the Forest becomes something that slows it down and allows you some, even if only brief, moat?

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#13

Post by middayc »

ginko wrote: post #5

>You are creating your cool streaming platform in your bedroom. Nobody is stopping you, but if you succeed, if you get the signal out, if you are being noticed, the large platform with loads of cash can incorporate your specific innovations simply by throwing compute and capital at the problem. They can generate a variation of your innovation every few days, eventually they will be able to absorb your uniqueness. It’…

Platforms cherry-picking successful ideas and stealing them isn't new. Platforms could do this because they had the capital and the platform (distribution).

What is different is, is that LLM platforms literally have world's thoughts, ideas, conversations and a big part of the code/can generate it. It's like "pre-crime" ... they could copy your idea, or capture a trend brewing and replicate, before you even released it.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#17

Post by bonoboTP »

Valuable ideas have already been those that others find unintuitive and it's kinda hard to get people on board because they are skeptical and they need long form, tailored explanation for them to get convinced. If a short elevator pitch convinces them to go home and try to build it, it's probably already being considered by others.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#18

Post by cbau »

king_phil wrote: post #3

Dark forest makes no sense to me. Why would a civilization eradicate another, spending huge amounts of resources (time, energy, material) when the universe has such an enormous scale that you cannot even get to each other in a timescale that makes much sense...

To quote from the book:

> “First: Survival is the primary need of civilization. Second: Civilization continuously grows and expands, but the total matter in the universe remains constant. One more thing: To derive a basic picture of cosmic sociology from these two axioms, you need two other important concepts: chains of suspicion and the technological explosion.”

1. you can never know the intentions of other entities, and they cannot know yours (chain of suspicion)

2. technology level grows unpredictably (technological explosion)

3. the goal of civilization is survival

4. resources are finite but growth is infinite

As soon as you identify another entity in the forest, even if they cannot annihilate you at present and signal peace, both could change without warning. Therefore, the only rational move is to eradicate the other immediately. (Especially if you believe the other will deduce the same.)

Elimination in the book is basically sending a nuke, not a costly invasion force.

not sure it actually is true, but that's the argument in the book

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#19

Post by [deleted] »

nate wrote: post #11
king_phil wrote: post #3

Dark forest makes no sense to me. Why would a civilization eradicate another, spending huge amounts of resources (time, energy, material) when the universe has such an enormous scale that you cannot even get to each other in a timescale that makes much sense...

Are you asking about the 3 body problem version of this? Spoiler alert: The folks doing the eradicating aren't spending much time/energy/anything on eradicating. It's one large missile through space. I think the gist is: sure, we humans can't conceive of getting to anyone else in the universe in any timescale, but if we can keep ourselves from destroying ourselves, we'll eventually figure it out. And we'll spread. An…

[deleted]
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