Yeah, I agree that the full narrative force of the metaphor is pretty extreme here, I first thought of it in this context sort of as a joke, but then found that a) the phrasing “dark forest” kinda makes sense as a “things are generally dark and you don’t know who’s out there” sort of way, without the galactic omnicidal premise. I also agree that your game theory summary is a reasonable formalism of the original situation, and yeah, not what I meant
The aspect of the metaphor I found most helpful was just “you don’t see X out there, and that is because the people who make X have an interest in you not seeing X, not because it’s not happening.”
I do think that visualizing the social world as a bright network of lively, private social connections with these relatively bland public outlets is a useful and probably neglected one. And the idea that a certain inaccessibility or privacy is key for their survival is important too. I visualize it more as a sort of faerie forest. To many, it seems like there’s nothing there. In fact there’s a whole faerie realm of private society, but you need to seek out or luck into access, and it’s not always easy to navigate and connections don’t always lead you where you expect.
Yeah, I agree that the full narrative force of the metaphor is pretty extreme here, I first thought of it in this context sort of as a joke, but then found that a) the phrasing “dark forest” kinda makes sense as a “things are generally dark and you don’t know who’s out there” sort of way, without the galactic omnicidal premise. I also agree that your game theory summary is a reasonable formalism of the original situation, and yeah, not what I meant
The aspect of the metaphor I found most helpful was just “you don’t see X out there, and that is because the people who make X have an interest in you not seeing X, not because it’s not happening.”
I do think that visualizing the social world as a bright network of lively, private social connections with these relatively bland public outlets is a useful and probably neglected one. And the idea that a certain inaccessibility or privacy is key for their survival is important too. I visualize it more as a sort of faerie forest. To many, it seems like there’s nothing there. In fact there’s a whole faerie realm of private society, but you need to seek out or luck into access, and it’s not always easy to navigate and connections don’t always lead you where you expect.