The Dark Forest
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
The Dark Forest
| Full title | The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth's Past, Book 2) |
|---|---|
| Author | Liu Cixin |
| Published | 2008 |
| Recommended | 2 times |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | The second volume of Liu Cixin’s trilogy that opens with The Three-Body Problem: an enemy that can read every transmission and document is four centuries out, so Earth appoints four Wallfacers whose strategies must never be written down — the only plans that survive total observability. Out of it comes the dark-forest hypothesis: in a universe of unknowable civilisations, silence is rational and broadcasting your position gets you killed. |
The Dark Forest
Where I heard about it
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a16z’s infrastructure team — on the a16z Infra Reading List, in the Sci-fi — Very good books section (A tier), under the Remembrance of Earth’s Past series, which they credit as the first homegrown landmark of a Chinese science fiction market they think is the world’s largest. Read as strategy, it is the volume about operating when your adversary sees your entire internal state.
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On Patrick Collison’s Bookshelf — Patrick Collison’s catalog of the physical books he owns (unflagged). Saved in Kyle’s April 19th, 2020 Roam daily note.
Connections
- a16z Infra Reading List — the list this came from.
- Liu Cixin — the author.
- The Three-Body Problem — volume one, already in the anti-library.
- Death’s End — volume three.
- Game Theory — dark-forest deterrence is a game-theoretic argument, and the wiki already runs a deterrence thread through von Neumann and Schelling.
- China — the trilogy’s setting and the market the list points at.
- Science Fiction — the genre page.
- a16z — the firm whose infra team curates the list.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.