I don't really agree with this and totally fucking love these books. However, it is a fairly interesting essay.
it is unsurprising that he defended the current Chinese regime
How tf did hexbear not immediately clock this a whiny liberal china-bashing site. It's so fucking obvious.
I think Liu is a liberal, but his bit of writing a book where the aliens are literally just white people and watching all the anglophile libs mald redeems him in my eyes. Y'all remember when kaplaya wrote "man if we go to nuclear war China shouldn't nuke the US back"? Yeah that's the sort of naivete Liu is satirizing.
There's a bit more nuance than that. Liu has said he idolizes people like Elon Musk for example. He's a conservative older Chinese guy. He also supports the party, which are beliefs that can coexist in China which cannot really coexist in a western context. And China has its share of terminally online young single men with terrible political opinions.
I still think China should retaliate if its nuked by the USA, i wonder what happen to Kaplya did he left because we agreed with doing a little posadism
i wonder what happen to Kaplya did he left because we agreed with doing a little posadism
They're still here, just using a different username again. (mildly frustrating when a user that makes a lot of predictions and also informative comments I like to refer back to keeps wiping their accounts!)
I love the fact that nobody bothers to figure out what that username means lol (except for the Russian speakers), because it’d be obvious.
Well in all fairness (and no offense) but I don't think most people actually care at all who used what username in the past. I'm just a nerd. But I didn't announce it here because I have no idea if you wanted your old and new names tied, I was just trying to be courteous.
How many days the account lasts is determined by a randomly generated number. My life depends on me following through that.
Now see this makes me curious.
the last i heard from the kaplya username was the biden thread, right?
oregoncom is talking about this thread: https://hexbear.net/comment/4752012
I thought the books were great, too, but I have to say that I took away basically the same thing as the author. The worldbuilding and overall narrative is really compelling and well-considered, but only if you wholly accept the extreme and highly-questionable assumptions made about both human and galactic civilization. I’m happy to suspend disbelief in order to be taken on a ride, but once the ride is over, you have to look at this stuff as pure fantasy.
The society described in the age of optimism was a caricature of what a right-wing dipshit thinks a ‘woke’ society would be like. Gender fluidity, disintegration of the nuclear family, public services, etc. It’s something that Jordan Peterson would write unironically as a prediction.
But even setting that aside, the thing that struck me was how little imagination or depth was given to the idea that society might evolve away from what we have now. One of the major plot points is that a guy buys the rights to a star, and even though the world government wants the star, it’s made explicit that property rights are too sacrosanct to force him to sell it to them. You have all this fart-sniffing about human nature and the need to survive at all costs, but the powers that be are going to get caught up about who holds the land title on a star system that no one has ever been to?
That’s just a small example, but the point is that these themes are everywhere in the book and go basically unchallenged and unexamined. That’s totally fine, because the books are explicitly about exploring those themes, but it’s really easy to find the reactionary perspective that runs through the whole thing. If you were a typical conservative/libertarian, you could easily read the books and uncritically agree with the underlying assumptions they make, and that’s something worth a bit of critical analysis.
I think this is what makes the story stick in my craw and has me unwilling to really invest in it. The "universal truths" undergirding this fictional universe strike me as fundamentally untrue, and as such the story is a phony one
I love the books but the misogyny really ramped up starting with book 2, and other comrades here have pointed out how reactionary the dark forest thing is.
If you finish it dark forest theory being reactionary is the whole point. The misogyny is wild though
a time travel machine to hold Liu at gunpoint and force him to delete the stupid fucking imaginary waifu subplot that takes up half the book and goes nowhere
The waifu stuff is also present in Ball lightning and he also approved that 3BP fanfic which is basically incelcore literature
the misogyny is wild
I think for me the misogyny is less pronounced (still problematic) than ageism and the boomerism are in his work.
Liu focus on theme/ideas before good characters, he talks about it in an interview where the characters are “unhuman” because he uses them represents concept. I think he explicitly uses (his word) Luo ji and chengxin as example. Luoji, a man, represents logic and cold and calculation and Cheng Xin, a woman, represents emotion, heart (humanism) which is super problematic itself.
In the second book, it is represented that the status quo of the dark forest which requires logic and game theory to annihilate others to survive. However, Chengxin’s humanism is portrayed as seeing the wrongness of the dark forest. I think the end of the trilogy proves her right. I think Liu tries to convey that cold and lack of humanism is ultimately the downfall of the civilization, but since he is not focus on writing good characters (i personally think he is a bad writer and never talk to women) makes it looks at the end as some gendered (and cishet normative) deterministic take that it makes my eyes roll.
As of his ageism (shown in the bunker era of 3BP being post-gendered, effeminate, weak , also in his book supernova era and also that novella about filial poety) is a belief that he unironically holds.
Tldr he is a bad writer with some ok world building, but since he is the first chinese sci-fi writer that made it to the mainstream, we have to suffer his writings.
Edit: it happens that better chinese scifi books are written by women authors like Hao Jingfang and Xia Jia
Oh wow I didn’t know about the editor asking him to do some changes to the character.
This confirms that STEMslord like Liu can’t write once again
I think this furthers a discussion on Gender roles in modern Chinese (where liu and I are from) society
I guess I was so tuned out by the waifu subplot in book 2 that I didn't really pay attention.
Like if you have 900 pages of this reactionary belief is how the unvierse works and is the axiom the entire first book is built on, does it matter that you subvert it in the epilogue?
When the Aliens put all of humanity in a reservation in Australia the population density is still lower than Gaza. Take out the sci-fi elements and sub in all humans for just Native Americans and you'll find that Three Body is actually far more optimistic than real life. The Aliens in Three Body invaded earth because they believed they had no other option, real world colonial regimes will do so for purely ideological reasons if given the opportunity.
real world colonial regimes will do so for purely ideological reasons
Actually we shouldn't forget that the prime motivator for colonialism is, in reality, simply also material conditions. Economic growth and subjugation is the true motivator for colonialism on a mass scale, these superstructural concepts used to justify would vanish quickly if there was no longer the incentive for infinite growth
You have a point. But also real world Europeans weren't colonizing under the belief that Tsunamis would inevitably drown all of Europe or something.
Yes, however, they colonized because their economies would crash which would mean toppling the economic order which helped keep those on top, on top. So for them the tendency for their economy to explode without colonial extraction could be seen as akin to a world ending disaster like the destruction of their planet or tsunamis wiping out Europe.
The aliens are basically amerikkka. Try to limit the technical development so the people you want to conquer can't fight back? Force those you conquer into shitty reservations to starve? Sounds like someone we know.
The whole series was conceived from an author who grew up with the Cold War mentality and once you have understood this perspective, you start to see why the Dark Forest theory which was born out of game theory resonates with people who have experienced the threats of being colonized and annihilated by foreign imperialist powers acting in pursuit of relentless capital expansion.
Unless the way the books articulate the theory is substantially different from how other people are articulating the theory, it isn't very good game theory. And isn't what you're saying just the Horizontal Alliance vs Vertical Alliance of the Warring States period except from the POV of the non-hegemon?
I mean the Trisolarans saw that public opinion towards them was shifting massively positive. With Cheng Xin as the new swordholder, humanity would've been far more empowered to let all of Trisolaris immigrate into the solar system. But no, they decide to attack instead?
Honestly I feel like some ideas in the book just break down despite the good world building. I really did enjoy the series but it seems there are a million holes that are either because I missed something, or because I just didn't get it, (or the secret third option, it just has holes!).
I think the biggest hole is that over the like 400 years humanity had, the approximately 200 years from the start of the crisis era to the start of the deterrence era are where the most technological development happened, and that's despite the sophon block! The next 200 years seem to basically have 1 big invention and that's it!
I mean the Trisolarans saw that public opinion towards them was shifting massively positive. With Cheng Xin as the new swordholder, humanity would've been far more empowered to let all of Trisolaris immigrate into the solar system. But no, they decide to attack instead?
This, too, sounds similar to the early stages of colonization.
True enough I suppose, given the Australia plan I always got the impression that the Trisolarans still felt contempt towards humanity. A very colonial mindset, and very funny considering Trisolaran civilization "liberalized" after contact with Earth.
Luo Ji was inspired by astrophysicist Ye Wenjie, protagonist of the first book, who told him two ‘self-evident’ axioms: 1) ‘Survival is the primary need of all civilisations’; and 2) ‘Civilisations continuously grow and expand, but the total matter in the universe remains constant’ (Liu 2016). On this basis, Luo develops the idea of the ‘chain of suspicion’ (猜疑链) and the infamous ‘dark forest’ theory (黑暗森林). According to the former, one civilisation (A) cannot determine whether another (B) is benevolent or malicious. Furthermore, A cannot determine whether B thinks A is benevolent or malicious. A cannot determine whether B thinks A thinks B is benevolent or malicious—and the ‘chain of suspicion’ goes on. Given this ultimate uncertainty and the spatiotemporal scale of the universe—which, according to Luo Ji, means that the difference in capabilities between civilisations is likely to be enormous and unpredictable—the ‘dark forest’ theory posits that every civilisation is like a hunter with a gun stalking in a dark forest. They must hide themselves and strike at the first sign of other life.
This completely falls apart since they are more than two civilizations. To use the dark forest analogy, it would be like if you mag-dump the first sign of life, which turned out to be some random deer, only for a tiger that was previously stalking the deer to pounce on you instead. This almost feels like a Daoist or Buddhist fable. Some hunter is disappointed he missed the deer after shooting his bow only to see a tiger that was right next to him pounce and kill the deer, the implication being that if the hunter had killed the deer the tiger would've pounced and killed the hunter as the hunter picked up his quarry.
I haven't read the books, so maybe that's what the "three" in "three-body problem" is referencing. The dark forest analogy only makes sense if they're exactly two bodies and falls apart as soon as you introduce a third. Like, isn't this what more or less happened to the Sasanians and the Byzantines? They warred with each other only to get completely blindsided by the Rashidun Caliphate.
I haven't read the books, so maybe that's what the "three" in "three-body problem" is referencing.
nah the aliens that are invading earth are from a fictionalized version of alpha centauri which is a 3 star system. It's fictionalized in the sense that the orbits are much closer and more chaotic than they actually are. The chaotic orbits are a major motivation and plot point in the first book.
I haven't read the books
You most certainly have not. I mean I appreciate you taking the time to type this up but to be frank it is total nonsense.
In response to your first point for example, it is certainly possible to strike without revealing your position.
In response to your first point for example, it is certainly possible to strike without revealing your position.
Are you talking about the technology within the book's settings or are you talking about a general principle?
My broader point is that blowing your load on the first civilization you encounter with no followup plan for the second, third, fourth, fifth civilization you encounter makes no sense. If we're talking about real life, PRC isn't going to empty its entire nuclear arsenal on the US because there's also Russia, the DPRK, India, Pakistan, Israel, the UK, and France who all have nukes as well as countries who can quickly procure nukes like Iran. Moving back to the dark forest metaphor, it makes no sense to just have a rule to always kill or always hide from any living thing.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that what you should do if you're stuck in some dark forest is also the most boring and uninteresting answer: you should studiously observe what's in front of you, give a threat assessment, and make your move based on past experiences that are similar to what you're facing right now. This is neither faux-realpolitiks "kill anything that moves" nor some naivete about how aliens of a sufficient tech level are communists who come in peace.
The most reasonable answer is also the most boring and most obvious answer.
I'm just paying attention to it for the popular discourse, to be honest. Watching everybody lose their shit over the boat getting the Resident Evil (film) treatment is great, because I can't wait until they get to watch
Babe! It's 2400, time for your flattening!
Yes honey.
