Thanks for the thoughtful and interesting responses, looking forward to listening to the podcast. I loved the Cixin trilogy, but hadn’t heard of the dark forest theory applied to online conversations before. I’m not sure I agree with such a strong suggestion, maybe more that the people that are most verbal in a group are rarely the people with the most interesting thoughts. It is sadly becoming increasingly true though that anything you say is now a permanent liability.

Did you read the English version? I'm trying to read the trilogy but the prose is just dull and the characters are flat.

I did. The beginning was a slog, but then it got really interesting. For me it was more about the plot than the characters.

Upon relistening to that podcast I realized Yancey wrote it as an article originally: “The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet” by Yancey Strickler https://link.medium.com/0MeIwL0ET7

The podcast is amazing and worth listening to regardless.

Have you read the Three Body Problem trilogy, by any chance? It talks about the dark forest theory, except in terms of alien civilizations.

Just relistened and that's exactly where Yancey in the podcast originally got the idea from.

The conversation starts at 13:00 and also realized he wrote an essay about it here: https://onezero.medium.com/amp/p/7dc3e68a7cb1