I've Never Had a Real Adversary
Posted5 months agoActive4 months ago
inoticeiamconfused.substack.comOtherstory
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Adversarial RelationshipsOnline DiscourseRussian Interference
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Adversarial Relationships
Online Discourse
Russian Interference
The author reflects on never having had a 'real adversary' and the discussion revolves around the concept of adversaries, online discourse, and the potential impact of external influences like Russian interference.
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Aug 20, 2025 at 10:01 PM EDT
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ID: 44968354Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 2:49:46 PM
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- Oscar Wilde
The number of people who declare they can totally trust what an adversary says because they agree with it is astounding, as though a committed opponent wouldn't do anything if it gained advantage including feinting in a way which seems unadvantegeous to gain long term advantage.
In the end, the only winning move is not to play. If you believe an adversary said something (or "a liar" if you prefer), you ignore it entirely. You make your mind up about what you believe based on evidence, and you decide if you agree with someone based on how well their statement comports with the evidence.
Naturally people will try to fabricate evidence, and even good faith evidence may be unreliable, so you'll have to do your best to access it's veracity. But what the adversary believes or appears to believe is largely immaterial.
Cheaters in games like Magic are very rare; if most people tried to cheat whenever they thought they could get away with it, we'd be forced to set up competitions with more stringent verifiable rules like (off the top of my head) "all cards must be drawn and given to you from your deck by the opponent". We haven't done that, so I infer that most people don't try to cheat.
(In your favour, I do concede that everyone writes down their individual understanding of the history of a given chess game; but there are weak instrumental reasons for that even if people aren't cheating, because it is possible to upset a board by accident.)
There's also the aspect of how hard people are actually competing. For a casual game like MtG, people are mostly there for the fun of it, not to win the competition.
For a deal worth millions of dollars, people are more likely to lie and cheat.
If you know more than others, that's great, but in that case please share some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn.
What would a task force built to oppose the IRA seeding discord online look like? How would it operate? We need that.
my internet usage is now limited to chatrooms with friends and other people that I can be certain that are real. I don't read comments, I don't browse forums. HN is the only site with pseudonymous posting that I follow. otherwise, I completely avoid content without a real identity attached
The issue is the willingness to suffer to consequences of enforcing these rules. A society at war might be willing to, but a society at peace wants to prioritize personal freedom, which is very much at odds with the draconian rules necessary to enforce the rules above.
I guess step one is for us to realize and accept that we are all at a media war with adversarial foreign powers. It's true.
This feels like the same kind of vague "rational mysticism." "We don't know what we don't know, and we're such silly humans, therefore...AI will kill us all" is all I can really take from it.
I really seriously doubt that an AI can convince a normal person to let it out, if they know they'll have their pay docked and if the communication is over text. The best scammers in the world can't convince most people to click on a link over text, let alone if "not clicking any links" was someone's job title.
Remember that last year[1] a crypto scammer convinced a bank CEO to embezzle $47mm, leading to the bank failing and two years in prison for the CEO.
There's always someone out there who can be tricked, even tricked into large-scale mistakes that will end their career.
[1]: https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/fbi-recovers-8-million-swin...
I get that not pressing the big red button might be a problem for people who think Roko's Basilisk is an actual threat and have a culture of considering seemingly absurd ideas, but I question whether it's a problem for everyone else.
There's never even an attempt at a logical sequence of events that leads from the moment of that breach to our complete doom. It's not inconceivable but I feel like these fears need to be grounded in a plausible "here's how it could actually happen." What prevents the combined abilities of the human race from shutting it down? AI isn't magic, it is still confined to the pretty fragile and narrow bounds of digital technology.
When you come across an adversary, it’s to your benefit to try to bring them to the healthy side of things.
People can be pretty reasonable, and if they’re not then they can be shamed into behaving. If they cannot be shamed, then there’s retribution. If that doesn’t work, then there’s always the option to go full Rambo.
You never want to go full Rambo, but your adversary must understand that it’s an option that’s available to you. I don’t think super AI will be any different as an adversary, but maybe there’s something I haven’t considered.
The white-anting by Russia hasn't really triggered this kind of "immune response" - it's hard to know what to do about it, which is of course the entire point.