The Cognitive Dark Forest

Summary

This is somewhat of a thought experiment, thinking is still free, so let’s indulge. thinkpad# 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. space# 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. It is also asymmetric. If you announce your presence, even if 4 out of 5 civs that notice you don’t annihilate you immediately (but they probably should), the fifth might. It’s just a probability game, with permadeath. So hiding is the most rational - the only - strategy of survival. internet# The earlier internet wasn’t like that. On the contrary, the risk was being silent, disconnected, node without edges. Connecting improved your odds of success, becoming a hub lifted you to another level. Announcing, signaling your ideas offered much greater benefit than risk, because your value multiplied by connections, and execution was the moat you could stand behind. I said success above. Bright future and opportunity makes you optimize for success. But, current year 2026, the internet, by a large margin got consolidated. By corporations trying to extract y...