Dark Forest theory is just way for a Chinese author to make up bullshit nonsense physics to turn 3D space into 2D space via Clarktech while desperately trying to not piss off the CCCP.
Liu closed his eyes for a long moment and then said quietly, “This is why I don’t like to talk about subjects like this. The truth is you don’t really—I mean, can’t truly—understand.” He gestured around him. “You’ve lived here, in the U.S., for, what, going on three decades?” The implication was clear: years in the West had brainwashed me. In that moment, in Liu’s mind, I, with my inflexible sense of morality, was the alien.
And so, Liu explained to me, the existing regime made the most sense for today’s China, because to change it would be to invite chaos. “If China were to transform into a democracy, it would be hell on earth,” he said. “I would evacuate tomorrow, to the United States or Europe or—I don’t know.” The irony that the countries he was proposing were democracies seemed to escape his notice. He went on, “Here’s the truth: if you were to become the President of China tomorrow, you would find that you had no other choice than to do exactly as he has done.”
It was an opinion entirely consistent with his systems-level view of human societies, just as mine reflected a belief in democracy and individualism as principles to be upheld regardless of outcomes. I was reminded of something he wrote in his afterword to the English edition of “The Three-Body Problem”: “I cannot escape and leave behind reality, just like I cannot leave behind my shadow. Reality brands each of us with its indelible mark. Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains.”
Translation: “I just signed a mortgage. I’m trying to please my parents, maybe get a wife and kid. I got responsibilities. I can’t tear down the system that got me what I enjoy. Let someone else do it while I take my fortune and go live on an estate writing my fantasies, enjoying the lucky fact that my doomer story resonated with enough of society to win several recent popularity contests.”
That’s an easy criticism to make of someone on the other side of the planet. But on this side of the pacific, I can’t help but notice that we make the same excuses for continuing to live under our own government.
What’s wrong about it? It seems like the obvious assumption that running into intelligent alien civilizations, them figuring out that we exist, would be extremely dangerous.
Dark Forest theory is just way for a Chinese author to make up bullshit nonsense physics to turn 3D space into 2D space via Clarktech while desperately trying to not piss off the CCCP.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/24/liu-cixins-war-of-the-worlds
Translation: “I just signed a mortgage. I’m trying to please my parents, maybe get a wife and kid. I got responsibilities. I can’t tear down the system that got me what I enjoy. Let someone else do it while I take my fortune and go live on an estate writing my fantasies, enjoying the lucky fact that my doomer story resonated with enough of society to win several recent popularity contests.”
That’s an easy criticism to make of someone on the other side of the planet. But on this side of the pacific, I can’t help but notice that we make the same excuses for continuing to live under our own government.
Dude. Relax. It was fiction.
What’s wrong about it? It seems like the obvious assumption that running into intelligent alien civilizations, them figuring out that we exist, would be extremely dangerous.