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The Internet Is Becoming a Dark Forest – and AI Is the Hunter

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Re: The Internet Is Becoming a Dark Forest – and AI Is the Hunter

#31

Post by Towaway69 »

squigz wrote: post #27
piskov wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the quotes miss the simplicity of 3 rules of Cosmology or whatever it was called in the trilogy. — The essence of the Dark Forest theory: 1. Survival is the primary goal of any civilization. 2. Life expands to fill all available space, but resources are finite. Roughly speaking, like humans cutting down forests to expand cities without caring what happens to the ants living there — if expansion is needed, it’s do…

#2 doesn't seem to consider how much stuff there is out there. Why bother harvesting resources from a gravity-laden planet when you can almost certainly get them from asteroids or other places? Furthermore, while we may not care about "ants", we do - at least to some degree - care about the impact on wildlife and the environment. Probably not as much as we should, but our concern has only grown over time, so I'm not…

> Why bother harvesting resources from a gravity-laden planet when you can almost certainly get them from asteroids or other places?

Why bother digging up a carbon laden energy source from the depths of a gravity laden planet instead of using solar energy or wind or any other energy source that is less harmful?

Seems really illogical … oh wait, thats just an intelligent life-form.

Re: The Internet Is Becoming a Dark Forest – and AI Is the Hunter

#32

Post by squigz »

Towaway69 wrote: post #31
squigz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#2 doesn't seem to consider how much stuff there is out there. Why bother harvesting resources from a gravity-laden planet when you can almost certainly get them from asteroids or other places? Furthermore, while we may not care about "ants", we do - at least to some degree - care about the impact on wildlife and the environment. Probably not as much as we should, but our concern has only grown over time, so I'm not…

> Why bother harvesting resources from a gravity-laden planet when you can almost certainly get them from asteroids or other places? Why bother digging up a carbon laden energy source from the depths of a gravity laden planet instead of using solar energy or wind or any other energy source that is less harmful? Seems really illogical … oh wait, thats just an intelligent life-form.

> Why bother digging up a carbon laden energy source from the depths of a gravity laden planet instead of using solar energy or wind or any other energy source that is less harmful?

Well at least one reason might be that you're currently unable to use those latter forms of energy as well as you can the former.

Anyway, using the way we act as a comparison for how these other civilizations might act doesn't make sense to me - we're nowhere even remotely close to being a threat to other civilizations. By the time a civilization reaches the point where they can travel between stars, I do suspect they'll be using renewables pretty dang heavily

Re: The Internet Is Becoming a Dark Forest – and AI Is the Hunter

#33

Post by nicbou »

It seems to rehash a much better article by Maggie Appleton. The original has great writing and gorgeous illustrations.

This is actually a good example of how much better the human-written original is to its AI slop copy.

https://maggieappleton.com/forest-talk

Re: The Internet Is Becoming a Dark Forest – and AI Is the Hunter

#34

Post by elcapitan »

davidivadavid wrote: post #12

If you want something a bit more "serious" on this, check out The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet by Bogna Konior. [0] [0] https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-dark-fo...

Looks like there is also a shorter essay version that came out before the book https://flugschriften.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/flugsch...

edit: The essay is from 2020

Re: The Internet Is Becoming a Dark Forest – and AI Is the Hunter

#35

Post by squigz »

Towaway69 wrote: post #30
squigz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but to me, it would be as if we dug into a prairie dog's tunnels, killed them all and stole whatever little bits of food they have. It just doesn't make sense.

So how is it that the amazon is disappearing? Coincidence or human interference? Humans have demonstrated a cycle of 1. exploitation to the point destruction, 2. Realisation of the damage they have inflicted, 3. Green washing and band-aid fixes 4. Rinse and repeat. Be it waste handling, colonisation, industrial revolution, slavery, oil extraction etc etc. At least for the time being, prairie dog tunnels seem safe.

Like I said, we should probably care more, and generally speaking, we do, over time. I'm not suggesting we're perfect, that we haven't made any mistakes, or that we won't make any more - just that we're slowly learning how to do better.

> Be it waste handling, colonisation, industrial revolution, slavery, oil extraction etc etc.

Interestingly, most of these have seen lots of progress in reducing the harms - if not practically eliminating it altogether, such as with slavery.

Re: The Internet Is Becoming a Dark Forest – and AI Is the Hunter

#36

Post by gmuslera »

piskov wrote: post #14
throw0101c wrote: post #9

For anyone not familiar with the concept of "dark forest": > […] In Liu Cixin's 2008 novel The Dark Forest, the author proposes a literary explanation for the Fermi paradox in which countless alien civilizations exist, but are both silent and paranoid, destroying any nascent lifeforms loud enough to make themselves known.[181] This is because any other intelligent life may represent a future threat. As a result, Liu'…

All the quotes miss the simplicity of 3 rules of Cosmology or whatever it was called in the trilogy. — The essence of the Dark Forest theory: 1. Survival is the primary goal of any civilization. 2. Life expands to fill all available space, but resources are finite. Roughly speaking, like humans cutting down forests to expand cities without caring what happens to the ants living there — if expansion is needed, it’s do…

Another factor that as far I remember was present in the novel was technological acceleration, by the time you detected the first tries of "turning on the lights" of an emerging civilization many light years away, that civilization is not an emerging one anymore, and even more by the time you can get there, and they may eventually be able to do something to harm or destroy your own civilization, so it is not something that should be left unchecked.

And technological acceleration is a constant in that universe, the attackers were just a bit ahead of us in technological advancement, lets say a few hundred years, not the millions or billions of years ahead of the very bad ones.

Re: The Internet Is Becoming a Dark Forest – and AI Is the Hunter

#37

Post by Towaway69 »

squigz wrote: post #32
Towaway69 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why bother harvesting resources from a gravity-laden planet when you can almost certainly get them from asteroids or other places? Why bother digging up a carbon laden energy source from the depths of a gravity laden planet instead of using solar energy or wind or any other energy source that is less harmful? Seems really illogical … oh wait, thats just an intelligent life-form.

> Why bother digging up a carbon laden energy source from the depths of a gravity laden planet instead of using solar energy or wind or any other energy source that is less harmful? Well at least one reason might be that you're currently unable to use those latter forms of energy as well as you can the former. Anyway, using the way we act as a comparison for how these other civilizations might act doesn't make sense…

That's why I gave the example of solar: we've been able to utilize solar for a long time yet only now is it become a serious source of energy. Windmills have existed for probably 200 years but have not been taken seriously as a source of energy.

I'm not talking about mining asteroids, I'm talking about other sources of energy that have been known to us but which we don't utilise because of self-interest of oil companies - not money or cost, self interest. Money & cost are regulated by us not money.

So to say these other sources of energy weren't viable from a financial PoV might be correct but it goes against our own self-interest.

> I do suspect they'll be using renewables pretty dang heavily

That's like saying "in any case, the future will be better". As humans have shown, worse comes before better in history. Howabout making the present better first?

Re: The Internet Is Becoming a Dark Forest – and AI Is the Hunter

#38

Post by Towaway69 »

squigz wrote: post #35
Towaway69 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how is it that the amazon is disappearing? Coincidence or human interference? Humans have demonstrated a cycle of 1. exploitation to the point destruction, 2. Realisation of the damage they have inflicted, 3. Green washing and band-aid fixes 4. Rinse and repeat. Be it waste handling, colonisation, industrial revolution, slavery, oil extraction etc etc. At least for the time being, prairie dog tunnels seem safe.

Like I said, we should probably care more, and generally speaking, we do, over time. I'm not suggesting we're perfect, that we haven't made any mistakes, or that we won't make any more - just that we're slowly learning how to do better. > Be it waste handling, colonisation, industrial revolution, slavery, oil extraction etc etc. Interestingly, most of these have seen lots of progress in reducing the harms - if not pr…

Colonisation and industrial revolution have reduced the harm? For whom?

Looking it from a white, western male perspective, you're right. From other perspectives this might well not be the case.

A lot of technology has short term benefits but are, in the long term, net negative to either us as species or the environment around us - which is the life support system for us. We as a society have not got a "undo" button for much of this technology, since once the damage has been done in real life, it stays in real life.

So we develop technology, see it fail, and try to fix the issues with more technology not realising that technology might be the problem. Or perhaps it's because we don't have the simplicity of an "undo" button.

Re: The Internet Is Becoming a Dark Forest – and AI Is the Hunter

#39

Post by squigz »

Towaway69 wrote: post #37
squigz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why bother digging up a carbon laden energy source from the depths of a gravity laden planet instead of using solar energy or wind or any other energy source that is less harmful? Well at least one reason might be that you're currently unable to use those latter forms of energy as well as you can the former. Anyway, using the way we act as a comparison for how these other civilizations might act doesn't make sense…

That's why I gave the example of solar: we've been able to utilize solar for a long time yet only now is it become a serious source of energy. Windmills have existed for probably 200 years but have not been taken seriously as a source of energy. I'm not talking about mining asteroids, I'm talking about other sources of energy that have been known to us but which we don't utilise because of self-interest of oil compan…

We haven't been able to utilize solar to the degree we have been able to utilize oil for all that long, and since it has, our utilization has only grown.

"Commercial concentrated solar power plants were first developed in the 1980s. Since then, as the cost of solar panels has fallen, grid-connected solar PV systems' capacity and production have doubled about every three years. Three-quarters of new generation capacity is solar"

This says nothing of, say, hydro power, which we have been using for a while

> That's like saying "in any case, the future will be better". As humans have shown, worse comes before better in history. Howabout making the present better first?

Mate I said nothing about our future or present. It's just absurd to assume our past has any bearing on how super-advanced space-faring civilizations will utilize technology.

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