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The Cognitive Dark Forest

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Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#291

Post by [deleted] »

lifeformed wrote: post #289
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…

That's still making assumptions based on our human understanding of the cosmos. Our "laws of physics" could be a localized understanding in our region of space, and much, much, much more powerful entities could operate outside of that, where our perception of time and scale does not meaningfully apply. It would be near-zero cost to destroy potential threats, so they might as well. It's like humans eliminating pests a…

[deleted]

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#292

Post by the_af »

lifeformed wrote: post #289
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…

That's still making assumptions based on our human understanding of the cosmos. Our "laws of physics" could be a localized understanding in our region of space, and much, much, much more powerful entities could operate outside of that, where our perception of time and scale does not meaningfully apply. It would be near-zero cost to destroy potential threats, so they might as well. It's like humans eliminating pests a…

I don't think it gets the scale right, and I don't think it's low cost or even sensible for a civilization to do. I think it's mostly a scifi book's plot device, at best a non-serious thought experiment.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#293

Post by Dylan16807 »

Ygg2 wrote: post #284
Dylan16807 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

> What's your definition of affordable? What years were PCs affordable? That DIY entry PCs can be built for 400 USD or less. Budget PC should be able to browse net and play a few games on the iGPU (so overall 1TB SSD, some iGPU and 16 GB of RAM). Ideally on current generation of RAM and processors. > By my reckoning PCs are affordable today. If you're not trying to run games they're downright cheap. By what reckoning…

> That DIY entry PCs can be built for 400 USD or less. Budget PC should be able to browse net and play a few games on the iGPU (so overall 1TB SSD, some iGPU and 16 GB of RAM). Ideally on current generation of RAM and processors.

Does it have to be DIY? Because a quick search says that if 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD is enough then you can get a Zen 2 machine for $300 and a Zen 3 machine for $370.

But man, $400 in 2026 money is a really tight threshold for "affordable". It means PCs were almost never affordable. If I go back to 2017 when that was equivalent to $300, I don't think I can put together a viable build with even 8TB of RAM and 250GB of SSD. I think that standard is too demanding.

> The first permanent jump in GPU prices. After Bitcoin prices of high-end GPUs remained at +1000 USD.

Oh, that was generally other cryptocurrencies but okay I understand.

nVidia has been overcharging, and they've basically increased the prices by one tier. A 70 card costs as much as an 80 used to.

But price per performance continues to improve. A 5050 beats a 1080 for half the price, before even factoring in inflation.

> For bigger profits. You can see most hardware manufacturers moving from selling to consumers to selling to governments, cloud, and data-centers.

> You can maximize profit by leaving a market. In the same way, you can still sell SSDs but for much bigger margins to data centers and governments.

That works when there's enough demand to buy all the chips. AI will stabilize one way or another, and then the remaining datacenter market doesn't need that many chips compared to the consumer market. Manufacturers will have extra supply, and not selling it to consumers would be stupid.

And even if they charged datacenter-level prices to consumers, people would still be able to get PCs. Even if the cheapest new CPU was $500, that's still nowhere near the options being "no PC" and "$40k workstation".

Plus people could buy old datacenter chips for pennies on the dollar.

> Once you are in the walled-in-cloud-garden, computer is not your own, and you can be monitored perfectly. This is something most governments want and is essentially the endgame for war on general computing.

Governments might want it, but that doesn't transfer to chip makers.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#294

Post by asdff »

jrowen wrote: post #275
red-iron-pine wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>which ones successfully isolated and hid from (real or hypothetical) bigger badder ones?

South Sentinel Island, famously. Still existing in the stable equilibrium established a millenia ago. Oh but they don't have iphones. Big whoop. If our modern supply chain falls apart due to climate change, not an unrealistic bet, we are finished and will probably kill ourselves and you and I will die in the violence to come. They will not even notice anything, and will exist as they have existed for millenia more. Their civilization and state of technological development is actually far more robust than ours.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#295

Post by asdff »

adrianN wrote: post #234
asdff wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, even north korea has figured out the nuclear bomb, the original greatest secret deep stack of compounded tech. Seems like anyone can figure out anything if they are hell bent on it on this earth. Engineers seem to be more fungible than people anticipate I guess, and no one really comes up with unprecedented unique ideas. The whole research process incentivizes incremental work on known concepts to justify rec…

Korea had the advantage of like seventy years of technological advancement from the first nuclear bomb.

Soviets figured it out in a couple years after we did, very much planning to keep it out of the soviets hands the whole time.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#296

Post by Ygg2 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #293
Ygg2 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's your definition of affordable? What years were PCs affordable? That DIY entry PCs can be built for 400 USD or less. Budget PC should be able to browse net and play a few games on the iGPU (so overall 1TB SSD, some iGPU and 16 GB of RAM). Ideally on current generation of RAM and processors. > By my reckoning PCs are affordable today. If you're not trying to run games they're downright cheap. By what reckoning…

> That DIY entry PCs can be built for 400 USD or less. Budget PC should be able to browse net and play a few games on the iGPU (so overall 1TB SSD, some iGPU and 16 GB of RAM). Ideally on current generation of RAM and processors. Does it have to be DIY? Because a quick search says that if 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD is enough then you can get a Zen 2 machine for $300 and a Zen 3 machine for $370. But man, $400 in 2026 mon…

> Does it have to be DIY?

Yes. Because only DIY allow your computer to be repaired at will. Go laptop or corporate and those get increasingly hard to fix. Not to mention if DIY market is healthy the non-DIY market is even cheaper.

> But price per performance continues to improve. A 5050

If 5050 didn't beat a 10 year old graphics card it would be an even greater waste of sand.

> Governments might want it, but that doesn't transfer to chip makers.

If governments want it, there is money to be made.

> Plus people could buy old datacenter chips for pennies on the dollar.

Sure, but no one will be able to afford all the other amenities. Buying a server CPU isn't the issue. It's buying every other part of the server rack. Namely the board, the cooler, the memory and the storage. And housing and power for it.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#297

Post by Dylan16807 »

Ygg2 wrote: post #296
Dylan16807 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That DIY entry PCs can be built for 400 USD or less. Budget PC should be able to browse net and play a few games on the iGPU (so overall 1TB SSD, some iGPU and 16 GB of RAM). Ideally on current generation of RAM and processors. Does it have to be DIY? Because a quick search says that if 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD is enough then you can get a Zen 2 machine for $300 and a Zen 3 machine for $370. But man, $400 in 2026 mon…

> Does it have to be DIY? Yes. Because only DIY allow your computer to be repaired at will. Go laptop or corporate and those get increasingly hard to fix. Not to mention if DIY market is healthy the non-DIY market is even cheaper. > But price per performance continues to improve. A 5050 If 5050 didn't beat a 10 year old graphics card it would be an even greater waste of sand. > Governments might want it, but that doe…

> If 5050 didn't beat a 10 year old graphics card it would be an even greater waste of sand.

It beats the 10 year old high end. That's not necessary to avoid being a waste of sand.

But that's not the point. As long as you can keep getting better performance for less money, things are getting more affordable.

> Buying a server CPU isn't the issue. It's buying every other part of the server rack. Namely the board, the cooler, the memory and the storage. And housing and power for it.

Motherboards are looking at the smallest price hikes of all. Coolers are dirt cheap and a quality thermalright is less than $20. Housing for a server is about the same as a desktop and not changing. Half this list is nonsense.

Memory is going up a lot. But that's the one we started on. And you can get a reasonable amount for a couple hundred dollars, and acceptable storage for less than one hundred. Power isn't going crazy either.

And you didn't address how your threshold for "affordable" would exclude every year before about 2019. It's too strict.

> Because only DIY allow your computer to be repaired

Listen, if I can get a whole computer for $300 then I don't need repair. It's a real downside, but if the CPU and motherboard are soldered together and take each other out then it's like I doubled the risk they break within seven years. And after seven years I'd replace both anyway. So that's like a $50 penalty, not a disqualifier. And the mini PCs I was citing have detachable memory and storage.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#298

Post by Ygg2 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #297
Ygg2 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does it have to be DIY? Yes. Because only DIY allow your computer to be repaired at will. Go laptop or corporate and those get increasingly hard to fix. Not to mention if DIY market is healthy the non-DIY market is even cheaper. > But price per performance continues to improve. A 5050 If 5050 didn't beat a 10 year old graphics card it would be an even greater waste of sand. > Governments might want it, but that doe…

> If 5050 didn't beat a 10 year old graphics card it would be an even greater waste of sand. It beats the 10 year old high end . That's not necessary to avoid being a waste of sand. But that's not the point. As long as you can keep getting better performance for less money, things are getting more affordable. > Buying a server CPU isn't the issue. It's buying every other part of the server rack. Namely the board, the…

> It beats the 10 year old high end. That's not necessary to avoid being a waste of sand.

I remember when GPUs didn't need to wait 10 years for same chip makers worst offering to beat the top of the line.

> Motherboards are looking at the smallest price hikes of all.

For now.

And for the record I bought a bargain bin Xeon. Only to realize later the only motherboard that accepts it costs $1000. And I needed another Xeon chip. This was around 2020

> And you didn't address how your threshold for "affordable" would exclude every year before about 2019. It's too strict

Honestly. It's the last time hardware prices were close to sane.

> Listen, if I can get a whole computer for $300 then I don't need repair.

If you are willing to bear externalities of e-waste. Fine.

Also replace them with what? You think industry will care about power users? Nah. They can eat cock. Everyone gets a tightly sealed mobile phone that LARPs to be a computer.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#299

Post by Dylan16807 »

Ygg2 wrote: post #298
Dylan16807 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If 5050 didn't beat a 10 year old graphics card it would be an even greater waste of sand. It beats the 10 year old high end . That's not necessary to avoid being a waste of sand. But that's not the point. As long as you can keep getting better performance for less money, things are getting more affordable. > Buying a server CPU isn't the issue. It's buying every other part of the server rack. Namely the board, the…

> It beats the 10 year old high end. That's not necessary to avoid being a waste of sand. I remember when GPUs didn't need to wait 10 years for same chip makers worst offering to beat the top of the line. > Motherboards are looking at the smallest price hikes of all. For now. And for the record I bought a bargain bin Xeon. Only to realize later the only motherboard that accepts it costs $1000. And I needed another Xe…

> I remember when GPUs didn't need to wait 10 years for same chip makers worst offering to beat the top of the line.

It sucks, but it's nowhere near being the kind of barrier you're describing.

> Honestly. It's the last time hardware prices were close to sane.

What I mean is such a standard says that 1990-2018 was all unaffordable. 2019 was basically the only year that qualifies.

> If you are willing to bear externalities of e-waste. Fine.

In terms of e-waste, if you look at an unfixable mini computer with core parts that on average die 2 years sooner than a full-size computer, it causes less e-waste because it's so much smaller.

> Also replace them with what? You think industry will care about power users? Nah. They can eat cock. Everyone gets a tightly sealed mobile phone that LARPs to be a computer.

They can sell bigger chips that cost more money to power users, why would they not care?

But even if it was just phone chips, that would only set back the exponential speed increases by a few years. It wouldn't destroy the market. My brand new phone is way more powerful than my aging desktop. If I could let the desktop borrow its CPU I would do so instantly.

Re: The Cognitive Dark Forest

#300

Post by chairmansteve »

perilunar wrote: post #239
chairmansteve wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right. In the dark forest, the predators must eventually die out, because they can't find prey.

No. It's not really a predator-prey relationship, because the predators aren't consuming the prey for sustenance. They are killing out of self-defence only.

"predators aren't consuming the prey for sustenance".

You don't know that....

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