“Imagine that you encounter a signal. It is structured, and dense with information. It meets all the criteria of an intelligent transmission. Evolution and experience offer a variety of paths to follow, branch-points in the flowcharts that handle such input. Sometimes these signals come from conspecifics who have useful information to share, whose lives you'll defend according to the rules of kin selection. Sometimes they come from competitors or predators or other inimical entities that must be avoided or destroyed; in those cases, the information may prove of significant tactical value. Some signals may even arise from entities which, while not kin, can still serve as allies or symbionts in mutually beneficial pursuits. You can derive appropriate responses for any of these eventualities, and many others.
You decode the signals, and stumble:
...
They contain no usable intelligence, yet they are structured intelligently; there is no chance they could have arisen by chance.
The only explanation is that something has coded nonsense in a way that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort does the deception becomes apparent. The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus.
Viruses do not arise from kin, symbionts, or other allies.
the gsv sleeper service had an entire other ship/Mind basically acting in this role (a rotating assignment/volunteer position), complete with human crew/residents
the grey area/meat fucker was a small, uncrewed, and demilitarized(?) ship/Mind that, while morally repugnant to the culture's sensibilities (or at least most other Minds'), no one considered significant/dangerous enough to give the same treatment
the culture Minds are intentionally designed with personalities (for lack of a better term) suited for their intended functions that keep them interested in/involved with base reality and their responsibilities there. there was a bit about how "perfect" Minds created without such proclivities will basically fuck off to a higher plane of existence asap. of course the culture Minds know this, they're the ones designing and building new Minds after all, and some decide that they'd like to see what's on the other side of the veil themself and that's allowed, but most are content running their ships and orbitals and whatnot
I run a Pi-hole (mostly for my phone and paired with OpenVPN and iOS/MacOS content blockers) and run into the same "problem". My advice is to stop patronizing those sites at all. Just like paywalled articles linked on HN, just stop visiting.
Seriously, just stop. It's the only way we're going to move to something less damaging and invasive than the current ad/data economy.
I should note that I do pay quite a lot for journalism and art via subscriptions, Patreon, Kickstater, etc, but I'm not going to tolerate sites clogging up search results with paywalled articles or piles of tracking scripts and media downloads.
You decode the signals, and stumble: ... They contain no usable intelligence, yet they are structured intelligently; there is no chance they could have arisen by chance.
The only explanation is that something has coded nonsense in a way that poses as a useful message; only after wasting time and effort does the deception becomes apparent. The signal functions to consume the resources of a recipient for zero payoff and reduced fitness. The signal is a virus.
Viruses do not arise from kin, symbionts, or other allies.
The signal is an attack.
And it's coming from right about there.”