Posted by windcbf 4 hours ago
> […] 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's fictional universe contains a plethora of quiet civilizations which do not reveal themselves, as in a "dark forest"...filled with "armed hunter(s) stalking through the trees like a ghost".[182][183][184] This idea has come to be known as the dark forest hypothesis.[185][186][187]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Communication_is...
> The "dark forest" hypothesis presumes that any space-faring civilization would view any other intelligent life such as theirs as an inevitable threat and thus destroy any nascent life that makes itself known. As a result, the electromagnetic radiation surveys would not find evidence of intelligent alien life.[8][9] […]
> The name of the hypothesis derives from Liu Cixin's 2008 novel The Dark Forest,[11] as in a "dark forest" filled with "armed hunter(s) stalking through the trees like ghosts".[12][13] According to the dark forest hypothesis, since the intentions of any newly contacted civilisation can never be known with certainty, then if one is encountered, it is best to make a preemptive strike, in order to avoid the potential extinction of one's own species. The novel provides a detailed investigation of Liu's concerns about alien contact.[2]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
* Kurzgesagt (10m): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAUJYP8tnRE
(Cixin's novel probably made the idea famous, but others (Brin, Bear) have explored it previously.)
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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 done.
3. Progress is unstoppable. If one group hasn’t mastered fusion yet, they will say in a thousand years — and then they’ll come for the others because of points 1 and 2.
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The author builds the novel on the idea that we shouldn’t be sending signals into space, but rather stay quiet and avoid drawing attention. Because in his view, once one civilization detects a signal from another, the safest move is to eliminate it immediately — without taking the risk of finding out whether it’s friendly (for now) or already not.
Read the book series. Battle with a culture different than your own. The absolute depression by the third book helps you experience this more than this bullshit Cliff’s notes.
Spend a few hours. Jesus.
I didn’t draw the original premise. I just pointed out that they didn’t understand the Dark Forest. At all.
We had an awesome book club talking about historical sci-fi and modernity. He always saw the optimistic side, how humanity could conquer, but I, child of Amazon, could see the end-stage capitalism.
Makes for fantastic dialogue. Read the book series. It’s worth it!
[0] https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-dark-fo...
How does it compare to tor hidden services?
God knows what is sleeping on our machines today.
I once hear there are very very expensive tools with luxurious gui's that bundle bags of fresh exploits and receive new ones over the tubes.
The guy told me that most of the code involved cleaning up after it self.
I think the AI will only run known exploits? Its nice to find those but if anyone really wants in it's just a matter of money.
I'm curious what applications we can bake into hardware. You can't insert malicious bread into a toaster to gain access to other things.
AI in our context is the inverse. Everyone can spend “credits” to get a supergenius coder.
There is an economic asymmetry between having a frontier model that people pay to use vs. being someone paying them so they can keep improving it.
Also, from the outside, we only know about the advances that get shipped/put on servers. Presumably, a lot more promising advances are uncovered than are shipped. Maybe they don't fit the product, maybe they are not ready, or maybe they provide a competitive advantage if used and improved internally without disclosure.
So there is a potential growing development/information/frontier asymmetry, of unknown magnitude and velocity.
I’ve never seen a tool more accessible for people of all backgrounds and abilities. It should be celebrated. And yet “engineers” are worried about their identities.
Anthropic just launched Claude Code Security.
AI is entering cybersecurity — permanently.
But here’s the uncomfortable question:
What happens when attackers automate faster than defenders react?
Attackers have always been ahead. Its been reality since we've been permanently online