4 ms·

This state of affairs presages the advent of a second dark age - one that will forever eclipse the era of radical openness & transparency that once served the s

This state of affairs presages the advent of a second dark age - one that will forever eclipse the era of radical openness & transparency that once served the software community for decades. Tips, tricks, life hacks and other expert techniques will once again be jealously guarded from the prying eyes of the LLM whok would steal their competitive advantage & replicate it at scale, until any possible information asymmetries have been arbitraged away. The development & secrecy of technique will once again become a deep moat as LLMs fall into local, suboptimal minima, trained on and marketed towards the lowest common denominator. The Internet, or at least, The Web, becomes a Dark Forest of the Dead Internet (Theory), in which humans fear of speaking out and capturing the attention of the LLM who would siphon their creative essence for more, ever more training data. Interaction contracts into small meshes of trusted, verifiably human participants to keep the tides of spamslop at bay. Quasi-monastic orders that still scribe with pen and paper emerge, that believe there is still value in training and educating a human mind and body. - Unknown, 19 Feb 2026

existsdaily 6mo ago
Scary... where can I find more of that?
danielbln 6mo ago
There were no "dark ages", that's the same common wisdom blunder like "in the middle ages everybody was dressed in drab grey clothing, ate gruel and walked through mountains of poop everywhere". It was a time of transition away from the slave powered empire to decentralized kingdoms and ultimately the Europe of today. It was by no means a time of standstill.
- eru 6mo ago
  As far as I can tell, the dark ages were called the dark ages because there wasn't much evidence to be found: writing was less prominent during that time. > It was a time of transition away from the slave powered empire to decentralized kingdoms and ultimately the Europe of today. You are seeing the fall of the western part of the Roman Empire a bit too rosy. Compare and contrast https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-i-words/ https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-and-f...
- azan_ 6mo ago
  Yes, Europe did not have dark ages, it only had period of population decline, of less emissions, less building, less inventions, less records and severed trade networks.
  - bitwize 6mo ago
    Population decline? Less emissions? Haven't we reached consensus that those would be welcome today? Is it time for a pro-dark-age movement?
    - djeastm 6mo ago
      The world is projected to hit population decline already sometime between 2060 and 2080, so I guess the younger ones of us will find out definitively whether it's a good or bad thing.
- GeoAtreides 6mo ago
  I am very sorry, but you are wrong. Between the fall of Rome (476 AD) and the Carolingian empire (~800 AD) there was a period of not only standstill, but regression, devolution and forgetfulness. Compared with what came before, it can be rightly called the dark ages.
  - teleforce 6mo ago
    I am very sorry, but you are very wrong. It's dark ages in Europe but it's really golden age in Islamic Empires which far surpassed the Greek and Roman. The epitome was the Baitul Hikmah or House of Wisfom established at the time of Abassid Caliphate [1]. >Between the fall of Rome (476 AD) and the Carolingian empire (~800 AD) During this time Al-Khwarizmi was born and House of Wisdom was established. His contributions in algebra (book Al-Jabr) and many others, and the word algorithm literally originated from his name [2]. Many Greek and Indian books translated to Arabic during this myth so called dark age by the Islamic Scholars. Many many more new books were written that improved and innovated the prior knowledge. These books greatly expanding the state-of-the-art centered both in Baghdad, Iraq and Toledo, Spain. The book Almagest by Ptolemy studied by Galileo was the Arabic translation of the Ptolemy works. Of course at the time of Galileo, Islamic astronomers knowledge and contributions have already far surpassed the Greek and the Indian. The Islamic scholars not only translating (that it self is a progress) but also contributing to the body and foundations of knowledge not only in astronomy, but in many others in mathematics, sciences (physics, chemistry, biology), medicine, engineering, geography, psychology, politics, economy, architecture, etc. There are numerous other polymath scholars like Al-Khwarizmi, for examples Al-Haitham, Ibnu-Sina, Ibnu-Rusd to name just a few. But European community has been in denial for so long time and in addition unfairly supressing these Islamic scholars contributions. They even literally changed the scholars name and Latinized them with lousy names like Alhazen, Avicennia, Averroes to hide the fact that they are Islamic scholars. Imagine if now people changed name of the scholar like Newton to Nawab in the literature. Heck, even Copernicus copied diagrams from the Islamic earlier astronomers' books without proper citations, that in the modern will be plagiarism [3]. If this happen today, the university president (if plagiarised his/her book/thesis/paper) will be asked to resign. [1] House of Wisdom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom [2] Al-Khwarizmi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Khwarizmi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Khwarizmi [3] Islamic Astronomy and Copernicus [pdf]: Islamic Astronomy and Copernicus [pdf]
npsomaratna 6mo ago
Somehow made me think of Warhammer 40k (maybe pre men of iron?)
- plasticchris 6mo ago
  It’s a recurring theme, see dune’s references to Samuel Butler.
  - SketchySeaBeast 6mo ago
    I say this with a multiple decades-spanning love of the game and the lore, but Warhammer 40k is what you get when teenagers try to create something immediately after reading Dune.
SkyeCA 6mo ago
> Interaction contracts into small meshes of trusted, verifiably human participants to keep the tides of spamslop at bay This is already happening and you don't have to look far to find it. Personally HN is the only site I browse and comment on anymore (and I'm on here less than I once was). The vast, vast majority of my time online is spent in walled off Discords and Matrix chats where I know everyone and where there's a high bar to add new people. I have no real interest in open communities anymore.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
avaer 6mo ago
Directionally correct. But seems overly optimistic to think that moats can be kept from the prying eyes of LLMs, unless you're not interacting with the market at all.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
davebren 6mo ago
> Tips, tricks, life hacks and other expert techniques will once again be jealously guarded from the prying eyes of the LLM who would steal their competitive advantage & replicate it at scale I've already started thinking this way, there's stuff I would have open sourced in the past but no longer will because I know it would get trained on. I'm not sure of any way I can share it with humans and only humans. If I let the LLMs have the UI patterns and libraries I've developed it would dilute my IP, like it has Studio Ghibli's art style.
- TeMPOraL 6mo ago
  It's worth questioning the underlying assumptions. It's humans - all humans - that benefit from LLMs. I see a lot of people having this attitude, but I can't help but see it as really being about seeking credit instead of generosity, and/or Dog in the Manger mindset.
  - davebren 6mo ago
    I'm not seeing how the benefits have outweighed the positives at this point. Spam, scams, porn, being inundated with slop, people losing their skills and getting dumber, mass surveillance... Is that worth possibly maybe saving some time programming, but then not gaining the knowledge you would have if you did it yourself, that can be built on in the future? I don't see technological advancement as good in itself if morality is in decline.
    - hirako2000 6mo ago
      I reached the same conclusion. It also made me realised how most technologies degraded our lives. Before the TV people would go to the theatre. It's becoming hard to find a theatre these days. Artificial light is convenient, it made billion or people develop sleep disorder and we can't see stars at at night. Mass food production supposedly nourished more people: veggies today have 20% the minerals content they had 70y ago..the list go on and on.
      - 6mo ago
Cosi1125 6mo ago
> Quasi-monastic orders that still scribe with pen and paper emerge, that believe there is still value in training and educating a human mind and body. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem#Plot_summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem#Plot_summary
- shagie 6mo ago
  A college instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work and teach life lessons - https://apnews.com/article/typewriter-ai-cheating-chatgpt-cornell-ce10e1ca0f10c96f79b7d988bb56448b https://apnews.com/article/typewriter-ai-cheating-chatgpt-co... The scene is right out of the 1950s with students pecking away at manual typewriters, the machines dinging at the end of each line. Once each semester, Grit Matthias Phelps, a German language instructor at Cornell University, introduces her students to the raw feeling of typing without online assistance. No screens, online dictionaries, spellcheckers or delete keys. The exercise started in spring 2023 as Phelps grew frustrated with the reality that students were using generative AI and online translation platforms to churn out grammatically perfect assignments.
supliminal 6mo ago
Sounds lifted from Alpha Centauri
Ferret7446 6mo ago
Most people don't care, provably from historical data. And trying to keep secret knowledge is a losing battle; as the saying goes, three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. Look how well that strategy served Claude with the recent source code leak

existsdaily 6mo ago

Scary... where can I find more of that?

danielbln 6mo ago

There were no "dark ages", that's the same common wisdom blunder like "in the middle ages everybody was dressed in drab grey clothing, ate gruel and walked through mountains of poop everywhere". It was a time of transition away from the slave powered empire to decentralized kingdoms and ultimately the Europe of today. It was by no means a time of standstill.

eru 6mo ago
As far as I can tell, the dark ages were called the dark ages because there wasn't much evidence to be found: writing was less prominent during that time. > It was a time of transition away from the slave powered empire to decentralized kingdoms and ultimately the Europe of today. You are seeing the fall of the western part of the Roman Empire a bit too rosy. Compare and contrast https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-i-words/ https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-and-f...
azan_ 6mo ago
Yes, Europe did not have dark ages, it only had period of population decline, of less emissions, less building, less inventions, less records and severed trade networks.
- bitwize 6mo ago
  Population decline? Less emissions? Haven't we reached consensus that those would be welcome today? Is it time for a pro-dark-age movement?
  - djeastm 6mo ago
    The world is projected to hit population decline already sometime between 2060 and 2080, so I guess the younger ones of us will find out definitively whether it's a good or bad thing.
GeoAtreides 6mo ago
I am very sorry, but you are wrong. Between the fall of Rome (476 AD) and the Carolingian empire (~800 AD) there was a period of not only standstill, but regression, devolution and forgetfulness. Compared with what came before, it can be rightly called the dark ages.
- teleforce 6mo ago
  I am very sorry, but you are very wrong. It's dark ages in Europe but it's really golden age in Islamic Empires which far surpassed the Greek and Roman. The epitome was the Baitul Hikmah or House of Wisfom established at the time of Abassid Caliphate [1]. >Between the fall of Rome (476 AD) and the Carolingian empire (~800 AD) During this time Al-Khwarizmi was born and House of Wisdom was established. His contributions in algebra (book Al-Jabr) and many others, and the word algorithm literally originated from his name [2]. Many Greek and Indian books translated to Arabic during this myth so called dark age by the Islamic Scholars. Many many more new books were written that improved and innovated the prior knowledge. These books greatly expanding the state-of-the-art centered both in Baghdad, Iraq and Toledo, Spain. The book Almagest by Ptolemy studied by Galileo was the Arabic translation of the Ptolemy works. Of course at the time of Galileo, Islamic astronomers knowledge and contributions have already far surpassed the Greek and the Indian. The Islamic scholars not only translating (that it self is a progress) but also contributing to the body and foundations of knowledge not only in astronomy, but in many others in mathematics, sciences (physics, chemistry, biology), medicine, engineering, geography, psychology, politics, economy, architecture, etc. There are numerous other polymath scholars like Al-Khwarizmi, for examples Al-Haitham, Ibnu-Sina, Ibnu-Rusd to name just a few. But European community has been in denial for so long time and in addition unfairly supressing these Islamic scholars contributions. They even literally changed the scholars name and Latinized them with lousy names like Alhazen, Avicennia, Averroes to hide the fact that they are Islamic scholars. Imagine if now people changed name of the scholar like Newton to Nawab in the literature. Heck, even Copernicus copied diagrams from the Islamic earlier astronomers' books without proper citations, that in the modern will be plagiarism [3]. If this happen today, the university president (if plagiarised his/her book/thesis/paper) will be asked to resign. [1] House of Wisdom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom [2] Al-Khwarizmi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Khwarizmi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Khwarizmi [3] Islamic Astronomy and Copernicus [pdf]: Islamic Astronomy and Copernicus [pdf]

npsomaratna 6mo ago

Somehow made me think of Warhammer 40k (maybe pre men of iron?)

plasticchris 6mo ago
It’s a recurring theme, see dune’s references to Samuel Butler.
- SketchySeaBeast 6mo ago
  I say this with a multiple decades-spanning love of the game and the lore, but Warhammer 40k is what you get when teenagers try to create something immediately after reading Dune.

SkyeCA 6mo ago

> Interaction contracts into small meshes of trusted, verifiably human participants to keep the tides of spamslop at bay This is already happening and you don't have to look far to find it. Personally HN is the only site I browse and comment on anymore (and I'm on here less than I once was). The vast, vast majority of my time online is spent in walled off Discords and Matrix chats where I know everyone and where there's a high bar to add new people. I have no real interest in open communities anymore.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]

avaer 6mo ago

Directionally correct. But seems overly optimistic to think that moats can be kept from the prying eyes of LLMs, unless you're not interacting with the market at all.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

davebren 6mo ago

> Tips, tricks, life hacks and other expert techniques will once again be jealously guarded from the prying eyes of the LLM who would steal their competitive advantage & replicate it at scale I've already started thinking this way, there's stuff I would have open sourced in the past but no longer will because I know it would get trained on. I'm not sure of any way I can share it with humans and only humans. If I let the LLMs have the UI patterns and libraries I've developed it would dilute my IP, like it has Studio Ghibli's art style.

TeMPOraL 6mo ago
It's worth questioning the underlying assumptions. It's humans - all humans - that benefit from LLMs. I see a lot of people having this attitude, but I can't help but see it as really being about seeking credit instead of generosity, and/or Dog in the Manger mindset.
- davebren 6mo ago
  I'm not seeing how the benefits have outweighed the positives at this point. Spam, scams, porn, being inundated with slop, people losing their skills and getting dumber, mass surveillance... Is that worth possibly maybe saving some time programming, but then not gaining the knowledge you would have if you did it yourself, that can be built on in the future? I don't see technological advancement as good in itself if morality is in decline.
  - hirako2000 6mo ago
    I reached the same conclusion. It also made me realised how most technologies degraded our lives. Before the TV people would go to the theatre. It's becoming hard to find a theatre these days. Artificial light is convenient, it made billion or people develop sleep disorder and we can't see stars at at night. Mass food production supposedly nourished more people: veggies today have 20% the minerals content they had 70y ago..the list go on and on.
    - 6mo ago

Cosi1125 6mo ago

> Quasi-monastic orders that still scribe with pen and paper emerge, that believe there is still value in training and educating a human mind and body. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem#Plot_summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem#Plot_summary

shagie 6mo ago
A college instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work and teach life lessons - https://apnews.com/article/typewriter-ai-cheating-chatgpt-cornell-ce10e1ca0f10c96f79b7d988bb56448b https://apnews.com/article/typewriter-ai-cheating-chatgpt-co... The scene is right out of the 1950s with students pecking away at manual typewriters, the machines dinging at the end of each line. Once each semester, Grit Matthias Phelps, a German language instructor at Cornell University, introduces her students to the raw feeling of typing without online assistance. No screens, online dictionaries, spellcheckers or delete keys. The exercise started in spring 2023 as Phelps grew frustrated with the reality that students were using generative AI and online translation platforms to churn out grammatically perfect assignments.

supliminal 6mo ago

Sounds lifted from Alpha Centauri

Ferret7446 6mo ago

Most people don't care, provably from historical data. And trying to keep secret knowledge is a losing battle; as the saying goes, three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. Look how well that strategy served Claude with the recent source code leak