
The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet - razin
https://onezero.medium.com/the-dark-forest-theory-of-the-internet-7dc3e68a7cb1
======
beat
As much as I love Cixin Liu's "Dark Forest" concept (I've sung my praises of
his novels quite a bit here), I'm not sure this post fully fleshes out the
analogy. I think it could be developed further, though.

What makes Cixin's dark forest so awful is that new intelligent species are
going out into a Universe with other species millions of years more advanced
than they are, species that can easily exterminate entire solar systems - or
worse (the weapons in Cixin's dark forest make the Death Star look like a
drawing of a BB gun). Is that really what we have here, on the internet? When
we find our autonomous zones (to steal an anarchist phrase), do Google and
Facebook actively exterminate them? No. Not yet, anyway.

I think other analogies might be in order for the very real phenomenon of
retreating from the corporate internet.

~~~
ethbro
_grinds teeth_

A vein almost explodes in my forehead everytime someone points to Cixin Liu as
the originator of DFT.

The idea's been around since the early to mid-80s, and people could at least
do diligence to properly cite.

It's almost as insulting as if I said "When George Lucas started science
fiction films with Star Wars..."

~~~
F_r_k
Could you cite some books that covered DFT ? I'm eager to read them

~~~
livueta
I'm pretty sure David Brin touches on it somewhere, but not to the extent of
being the basis of an entire novel. Can't recall exactly where, sadly.

At minimum, _Revelation Space_ features it as a major plot-point and was
published in 2000, significantly predating _Dark Forest_.

~~~
WorldMaker
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.

~~~
TeMPOraL
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.

~~~
WorldMaker
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.

------
davesque
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 of technological advancement and so long as
crossing the gaps in space between civilizations takes sufficiently long due
to the laws of physics, it seems hard to deny that there might be strong
reasons for civilizations to fear each other.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Regarding how long it takes to travel between habitable systems- 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.

And yet we have no way to know that for sure. We have no idea what the average
lifespan of an intelligent species is. It may just be that humans are
particularly short-lived, among all the species in the galaxy, or the entire
universe. If a species has a lifetime of a couple thousand years then
interstellar travel, even at sub-light speeds, would be a lot more manageable
than it is for us.

Which to me, means we can relax a little about the risk of being destroyed by
hostile aliens. We don't know what we don't know. Chances are, if they were
going to destroy us, they would have already done so in the last million years
or so. We're probably a lot less appealing, as a world, than we think we are.
Perhaps the universe really hates salt water or oxygen atmospheres? Who's to
say?

~~~
Freaky
> 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 unknowable, there can never be
proper trust between them. Yet a relatively young and slowly-developing race
is literally more sure of what humanity is doing than we are of our
neighbouring _countries_.

"Hard sci-fi", pfft :P

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
+++ 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 technology, not magic. Cixin
Liu usually manages to weave in a couple of natural laws to every impossible
thing so he passes.

I was more annoyed by the lightspeed contrails to be honest. That really comes
out of nowhere and is a total literary device that has no basis on anything we
know of. Makes the whole endeavour space opera if you ask me - which is not
bad in and of itself. But in that case, where's the nuclear energy-sword
wielding hero who saves humanity? Disappoint.

~~~
Freaky
> 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.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
My opinion on this might be controversial but I think there's very little
difference between even "hard" sci-fi and all-out fantasy (but, with
spaceships). There is very little space left to write a story that is
interesting and compelling if one wishes to respect the bounds of what is
scientifically plausible.

Then again, if one starts to stretch the definition of "scientifically
plausible" there's all sorts of things that are classic sci-fi tropes like
Einsten-Rosen bridges and Alcubierre drives, etc. So it's just my opinion.
But, I note that the best Sci-Fi stories I've read always took lots of
liberties with the laws of nature.

I'll even come up with a few examples if I really think about it.

~~~
dorgo
>There is very little space left to write a story that is interesting and
compelling if one wishes to respect the bounds of what is scientifically
plausible.

Are we living in the same world? Quantum mechanics, relativistic effects,
mathematics ( game theory anyone? ) are blowing my mind. The world is more
phantastic than anything one could imagine and we know that we don't know
everything. The constraint to stay in this world is the least limiting for an
interesting and compelling story.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
But those are not science fiction. If you tell a story that is within the
limits of what we know to be possible with the knowledge that we have right
now, you will end up with a very boring story. If you start speculating about
what _might_ be possible- you'll end up with time travel through black holes,
like in Interstellar, which makes for a nice story, but not a very realistic
one.

There is a trade-off between speculation and realism, that leaves a very, very
narrow space for an interesting story.

Part of it is due to the fact that most of modern science has been mined
mercilessly for "hard" sci-fi subjects, that have now become tropes that can't
form the basis for an interesting new story anymore. For example, try to write
a story where the entire premise is that someone manages to construct an
Alcubierre drive. You'd get ...Star Trek: First Contact. Nice movie, hey. But
nothing new, there.

~~~
Freaky
Er, no, on all counts.

> But those are not science fiction.

Stories based on physics and maths are not science fiction? Are you feeling
OK?

> If you tell a story that is within the limits of what we know to be possible
> with the knowledge that we have right now, you will end up with a very
> boring story.

Um. Most stories in general stay within reasonable limits of what we know to
be possible - are most stories very boring? You basically seem to be arguing
that all stories that aren't fantasy are boring, which is clearly untrue.

> Interstellar, which makes for a nice story

Interstellar is tediously boring rubbish :P

> For example, try to write a story where the entire premise is that someone
> manages to construct an Alcubierre drive. You'd get ...Star Trek: First
> Contact.

What... no? The phase-space of all possible Alcubierre-drive fiction is not
"Vulcans come to visit", any more so than the phase-space of all possible
stargate fiction is "Ra gets quite angry".

------
sylens
Wouldn't the "Black Domain" concept introduced in Death's End be a better
metaphor here? Communities are choosing to seal themselves off from the
greater Internet, even if that means they cannot collaborate/engage with as
many other people.

~~~
beat
Only if you actively hide the community from the rest of the internet, rather
than passively hide (by not advertising its existence).

~~~
loteck
So what you're saying is that black domains end in .onion?

------
yuy910616
Is this a meme?

'''Calls out the internet for becoming a 'dark forest' bc of indexed,
optimized, and gamified nature...posts on Medium'''

~~~
knolax
You can criticize a system and still participate in it. The author also stated
that they only posted on Medium after vetting their ideas with a more private
group.

~~~
joeax
The article is paywalled so they are also profiting from it as well.

------
Jun8
On an irrelevant point: do bloggers who use Medium honestly expect people to
pay $5/mo to see their content? By comparison NY Times is $1/mo for unlimited
articles.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
If you believe content is worth paying for at all, the price of a cup of
coffee every month seems perfectly reasonable.

The NYT has a different business model, and is still partly supported by
advertising in the print edition.

The digital content pricing race-to-the-bottom is really unfortunate. It's why
we have shitty free-to-play mobile games, for example: people won't pay more
than a few dollars for a phone game anymore, so a lot of devs have to find
other business models to support development.

~~~
nextlevelwizard
With SV salaries that is easy to justify. Normal people wouldn't pay even $3
for a cup of coffee.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
The popularity of Starbucks suggests otherwise.

But if you still don't like the coffee analogy, that's fine. The point is that
$5 a month is not a lot of money for the _average_ American. That's much less
than the cost of a monthly newspaper subscription, and 20 years ago those were
extremely popular.

------
KirinDave
I'm not a fan of this metaphor but I definitely feel the phenomenon it's
alluding to in my life. I've increasingly enjoyed a relatively obscure social
media existence on a small, focused Mastodon community as opposed to the
general warfare of Twitter.

Similarly I post here out of obligations I have to folks, not because I like
it or feel comfortable, welcome, or part of the community. I have smaller,
private venues where I feel like I can be myself. And I'm aware sometimes I am
a contributor to that attitude of "we are here to pick fights", but there
isn't much I can do about it, that's what a lot of tech forums aspire to be.

------
X6S1x6Okd1st
I feel like there are some really nice ideas in here, but I felt like the
metaphor of the dark forest really took a turn when the author started using
it to describe the communication channels they felt like were still safe.

I'd personally term those burrows or something. Something that is hidden from
external observers walking through the dark forest.

~~~
xxandroxygen
I agree, I was pretty confused when dark forests went from "things hiding from
predators" to "safe, separate spaces to communicate"

------
inflatableDodo
Is more a mass of jungle with some old boggy wastelands and an escalating
series of slash and burn plantation forestry monocultures all intertwined with
unruly canopy vines and invasive fungi.

------
LiquidSky
I'd say the Internet is more like Dante's "dark wood" in that it leads to
Hell, but without a Virgil and no road to Paradise (or even Purgatory) waiting
at the end.

------
lostconfused
There are plenty of exclusive communities on the internet because it's just as
useful of a tool for any illegal activity as it is for corporations trying to
drive more profits.

------
apotatopot
dude's obviously never been to a dark forest.

------
HNLurker2
[https://outline.com/AMgCJV](https://outline.com/AMgCJV)

