Erik Hoel: AI turns intellectual culture into a dark forest of wallfacers
erikphoel · x · 2026-09-10
- In his new essay "Culture Becomes a Dark Forest" (with behind-the-scenes notes), Erik Hoel argues AI is forcing intellectuals to work like wallfacers from Three-Body Problem: crouching quietly to finish original contributions before a prompt can produce an almost-as-good version that mines away the insight and reward.
- He draws an analogy to how social media made everyone paranoid about being filmed; AI now makes thinkers hide their ideas. "This sucks."
- On the OpenAI Navier-Stokes controversy, he says media coverage is badly wrong — the first NYT piece credulously reported OpenAI's side — and there are clear indications solutions came from user data in training (e.g., his Jacobian example), noting OpenAI's weasel wording.
- Search isn't intelligence, but the scale is enormous (10,000 subjective years); a non-genius math PhD given 10,000 years could plausibly solve it. He wants a study of whether AI-solved problems match mathematicians' unfinished drafts sitting in OpenAI chats.
Related event: Erik Hoel's Essay: AI Is Turning Culture into a Dark Forest(10 posts)→
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