Skip to content
Tech News
← Back to articles

The Cognitive Dark Forest

read original get Dark Forest Strategy Board Game → more articles
Why This Matters

This article highlights the shift from an open, collaborative internet environment to a more consolidated and guarded digital landscape, drawing parallels with the 'Dark Forest' theory where civilizations hide for survival. It underscores the importance of openness and sharing in fostering innovation, contrasting it with the current trend of data extraction and control by corporations, which may stifle individual creativity and progress.

Key Takeaways

This is somewhat of a thought experiment, thinking is still free, so let’s indulge.

2009, I bought a refurbished ThinkPad, installed Xubuntu, and started coding.

No permission was needed, no subscription. No gatekeeper, and no middleman taking its toll, between me and the future me.

Just idea, code editor, music in my ears and off I went towards a brighter future - a product market fit, or a learning experience.

Sharing was cool. Source code on GitHub. Talking to peers on forums. MVPs to users. Oddball ideas on blogs. We did our thinking in public because of two assumptions:

Ideas are cheap - execution is hard -and- the world ahead is ripe with opportunity.

The internet (world) was a spacious bright meadow.

Did you get to read the Liu Cixin’s second 3-body-problem novel? - The Dark Forest. Well some of you did …

In it, the universe isn’t empty, it’s just silent. Because it’s a dangerous place. Every surviving civilization that reveals itself gets annihilated. So they all hide.

Annihilation isn’t even malevolent, but only the most rational game-theoretic reaction to becoming aware of another civilisation.

... continue reading