kpk

Finished Book 2 of the Three Body Problem - some notes below the fold (full of spoilers and only relevant if you've read it) - - - - - - - Ant POV is in the intro and outro - showing different scales of being and time vs. humans; also ants competing for resources and have no empathy - In the beginning humans think battle with Trisolarans similar to navy but instead get the droplet - the expectations are just so wildly off. My straussian reading of the whole book is humans don’t know what the hell they're doing; yeah can go 15% speed of light but wrong axis of development vs. droplet. Ultimately win on strategy but this feels like a plot device - the real subtext is humans are like children in the dark forest. - Another straussian read is humans are very bad at preparing for hundreds of years in the future and ultimately you need to be not-human to have space-appropriate responses (e.g., the Battle of Darkness reveals what empathy is actually appropriate in space) - The details on what space travel entails really show the scale of universe and its immense darkness - it's so large it enables a dark forest (funny how Liu Cixin is like "the Fermi paradox is obviously wrong” once you see this) - Similar to other sci-fi we get the theme that once humans are sufficiently space-bound, divisions among human-kind are an inevitability (especially once you leave the solar system) - Empathy is local to Earth/the solar system - once you enter light-year-level distances, you inevitably move to low trust models; new models of trust need to be iron-clad conditional agreements (e.g., the dead-man device in the conclusion) (maybe in book 3?) - Interesting / fun ideas: wallbreakers, space elevators and structures; “mental seal”; clothing with lighting; no computers because any smooth surface is a computer; “deep sea state”; space film dust screens Onto book 3!