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The Cognitive Dark Forest

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Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#271

Post by red-iron-pine »

the_af wrote: post #231
lifeformed wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Timescales that makes sense" may be a human reasoning but not necessarily the reasoning of inconceivably advanced timeless civilizations. Sure, that planet of fish may be harmless now, but what about in a quick three billion years when they have FTL and AGI and Von Neuman probes and Dyson spheres and antimatter bombs? Easier to click the delete button now to save the trouble later.

The laws of physics apply to the civilization of alien fish too, it's not a human specific timescale. They have nothing to fight over with us, no reason to spend effort developing weapons to reach us, if they do have weapons they'd have a much higher probability of wiping themselves up first, and no way for their weapons to reach us within a time boundary that makes sense for any sentient race. Dark Forest seems to b…

the dark forest is based on trying to answer the fermi paradox as to how the universe is so big but we haven't seen any other sign of life anywhere

answer: because they're all dead, or in hiding

the author then writes a book around that idea

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#272

Post by tancop »

the assumption here is that someone replicating your work is or should be treated as a bad thing. that the only reason people come up with new ideas and do the work to make them real is so they can monetize them or turn into a line on their cv. its a zero sum capitalist rat race mindset where everything you do needs a direct personal benefit for you, ideally an exclusive one. of course its wrong to take others ideas and claim them as your own like all the corporations and vibe coding influencers do. but the only way to beat them is to reject that zero sum framework and put your work out there hoping it makes someone else life better at least a bit even if you dont get credit. because theres always some good people around who will give you the credit and recognition and maybe some of the money you deserve. community is the answer and it always has been.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#273

Post by the_af »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #271
the_af wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The laws of physics apply to the civilization of alien fish too, it's not a human specific timescale. They have nothing to fight over with us, no reason to spend effort developing weapons to reach us, if they do have weapons they'd have a much higher probability of wiping themselves up first, and no way for their weapons to reach us within a time boundary that makes sense for any sentient race. Dark Forest seems to b…

the dark forest is based on trying to answer the fermi paradox as to how the universe is so big but we haven't seen any other sign of life anywhere answer: because they're all dead, or in hiding the author then writes a book around that idea

Isn't this more or less what I just said?

Except I added in this and other comments why it's not a very convincing explanation for Fermi's paradox either.

In other words,

> answer: because they're all dead, or in hiding

I understand this is what the Dark Forest theory argues, but it works because it's meant for a scifi book; it's just not a very good explanation for the real universe.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#274

Post by theAurenVale »

this is already hapening in the visual space too. go look at AI generated product photos or headshots from two years ago vs now, everything converges toward the same clean, competent, completely forgettable look. the dark forest isnt just text, its images, its video, its anywhere the cost of producing "good enough" drops to zero and nobody has to make an actual creative decision anymore. the irony is that real direction and real taste become more valuble when everything else is noise, but most people cant tell the difference until they see it side by side

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#275

Post by jrowen »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #269
asdff wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is a paranoid and cynical strategy that doesn't win out in the known history of life. What works is grow, expand, mingle, maintain - assimilate but don't annihilate. Uhh, yes it does. You are thinking of humans. Humans can mate with other humans. They can assimilate. Now, think of invasive species. What do they do? They don't mate with the natives, learn their culture, respect and give them space. Quite the opp…

one need only asks the Neanderthals, the Dodo bird, and the Passenger Pidgeon how well "grow, expand, mingle, maintain" worked for them

And what would you learn from that? Even if it could be said that those things attempted to implement that strategy and failed, you can't really infer much about its overall viability by looking only at losers.

The dodo bird is an example of something that was isolated and then got steamrolled when the herd came around.

You can always zoom out and look at the bigger picture, it's not even about individual species but life as a whole. "Hide and isolate and wall off" is not successful in the long run.^ Your only chance is to keep up with the herd.

If we look at human civilizations, which ones successfully isolated and hid from (real or hypothetical) bigger badder ones? Neither isolation nor annihilation is ever a winning strategy. Fear is the mind-killer.

^ Save for things like extremophiles that have found their way into a tiny niche that nobody else wants. They may survive but they don't flourish and prosper.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#276

Post by Dylan16807 »

Ygg2 wrote: post #257
knowhy wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI will not be able to eat up all chip manufacturing capabilities forever. At some point the market will be saturated and PCs will get affordable again.

And COPA didn't succeed at first, but try and try and you get COPPA, and now age verification laws. I don't think we'll see PC affordable in my lifetime. It didn't happen after Bitcoin crash, didn't happen post pandemics. New price gets normalized and the cartels just agree to not make anything for PCs. And if you get everyone on cloud? Then you can control Internet same way you can control TV or the press.

> I don't think we'll see PC affordable in my lifetime. It didn't happen after Bitcoin crash, didn't happen post pandemics. New price gets normalized and the cartels just agree to not make anything for PCs.

What's your definition of affordable? What years were PCs affordable? By my reckoning PCs are affordable today. If you're not trying to run games they're downright cheap.

I'm not sure what issue you're referring to with bitcoin, but if you want to use bitcoin to buy something it's about as easy/awkward as it ever was.

Food prices went up 15-20% more than they would have with 2% inflation. If PC prices do anything similar, it's not a big deal in the long run.

Cartels just agree not to make anything for PCs? Why would that happen? The point of restricting supply to a market is to maximize profits, not to refuse forever and lose out. They wouldn't even want everything to be in the cloud, because a hundred rarely-idle cloud cores can replace a lot more than a hundred mostly-idle consumer cores, so they end up selling a lot less hardware.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#277

Post by eudamoniac »

chongli wrote: post #222
eudamoniac wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a claim is unfalsifiable, it contains no information

What I said is quite far from unfalsifiable. Any number of insiders could step forward and set the record straight.

Not really. Only in the affirmative. If an insider said they don't do that, you'd still think they might do that.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#278

Post by xantronix »

nextaccountic wrote: post #251
xantronix wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have a project you would have open-sourced, and you don't do that for fear that the LLM god will steal it, what's the point of building it at all? To prove to myself that I can, and to solve problems in a way I enjoy. I'm not saying I want to go into utter solitude; I just want to be a lot more careful where and how I share my works. Addendum: I think the idea of private art and code collectives, entirely se…

I think the Toledo family qualifies http://biyubi.com/

...I love this. You have made my day, thank you.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#279

Post by blksv »

middayc wrote: post #243
blksv wrote: post #242

"To close the gates" is only reasonable when you're working (a) not for self-actualization, (b) not for fun, (c) not for learning, (d) not for public good or your understanding thereof, (e) not for any other reason not directly connected with extracting rents from a broad audience. As I see this as the only path where corporations can outpace you with AI capabilities. And remember how many good products have been aba…

The article is me coping with my existential crisis, trying to explore and accept my fears by writing it. And by exploring ideas I think I found some vision for my stance in all this - or hope if you will. I hope these feelings will be real, and I can write a positive blog post also, but I can't be certain if the feelings will survive the scrutiny at this point, or are just warm fuzzy delusions and next level of cope…

Texts, like it or not, do not respect our intentions and live their own lives... The developments are indeed disturbing, and I also puzzle over the ways to navigate the mess they create.

The unfolding you foresee is definitely not to be dismissed: we've already seen quite a few people in this discussion sharing the same view, which I perceive almost totally ungrounded, and ready to act accordingly. But I think we should "grow the box" for our own good, despite not having proper credit from all those who benefit, because, while losing credit, our ideas gain impact, even ones that would have no credit anyway.

What makes me deeply concerned is the economic consequences. Although I believe that this time it's not different and eventually everything will play out to the greater public good, I also believe that this time it's not different and the transition is going to be very harsh. And I'm completely lost here.

Another thing is that I treasure my (very modest) role in public enlightenment. But advances in AI make me feel obsolete in this role, as I really cannot say more than a properly asked LLM. The only enlightenment remained in need seems to be enlightenment in prompting. I wonder whether others have the same feeling and what it can lead to.

(please, forgive me my midnight musings, I just had to say that at last)

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#280

Post by middayc »

theAurenVale wrote: post #274

this is already hapening in the visual space too. go look at AI generated product photos or headshots from two years ago vs now, everything converges toward the same clean, competent, completely forgettable look. the dark forest isnt just text, its images, its video, its anywhere the cost of producing "good enough" drops to zero and nobody has to make an actual creative decision anymore. the irony is that real direct…

Generated images moved even faster than generated code in a way through it's cycle, so maybe there is a lesson there we can observe and that you also touch upon.
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