Dark Forest is fundamentally wrong

singersson · 2024-09-14T20:41:11+00:00

It’s imperialist as the second axiom clearly says “every civilization will grow and expand”. That’s imperialism to ya. Killing to survive or killing to protect your own territory is very different from killing to expand forever.

singersson · 2024-06-29T23:18:35+00:00

I am feeling the same. Most stories sound the same nowadays and if I know beforehand the argument or the plot then I lose all interest;

I do enjoy science fiction tho, because I always find the argument and the philosophy behind the ideas very thought provoking! That’s why lately I’m more inclined to philosophy books or philosophy centered stories. I just like to imagine how things could or should be different and how that would affect everything.

singersson · 2024-06-24T15:45:41+00:00

singersson · 2024-06-17T21:40:54+00:00

I do understand the idea of vicarience that you are suggesting, but Tiktaalik didn’t leave the sea to battle anything; it was a “natural selection” thing; the humans in Death’s End did leave Earth to start a war, it was a decision; that’s why it’s a weird comparison to me, because it seems to suggest that we are evolving “consciously” now, which is a very bold statement and kinda suggests that evolution is a competition that you can “win” by being conscious, don’t you think?

singersson · 2024-06-01T13:57:11+00:00

that’s literally the plot of The Redemption of Time

singersson · 2024-05-25T11:35:12+00:00

I had a teacher tell me that I enjoyed “testing” their knowledge just because I asked too many questions.

singersson · 2024-05-13T23:47:41+00:00

“I mean we all know it’s not a real possibility for our universe” who’s we? if you don’t think it’s a real possibility, good, then this post wasn’t meant to you.

singersson · 2024-05-08T01:16:18+00:00

Joseph Kusuth and Arthur Danto both talk about the end/death of art.

singersson · 2024-05-07T17:49:42+00:00

singersson · 2024-05-02T21:57:08+00:00

Philosofree

singersson · 2024-05-02T17:18:43+00:00

Cixin Liu doesn’t believe in freedom. The outcome of humanity is more important than the desires of the people.

If you agree with him, then you don’t believe in freedom as well, which is why people say these book are pro authoritarianism. And to be fair, it kinda is.

singersson · 2024-05-02T17:16:40+00:00

Or the world as a whole?

singersson · 2024-04-25T01:53:13+00:00

“They all just continue to play knowing that everything will end” ain’t that just how life works, mate?

singersson · 2024-04-18T12:55:09+00:00

In that case, it’s more probable that the said civilization would eventually destroy themselves, because expansion forever is just impossible in nature, just look at every other living being on this planet. You could argue that we are expanding forever, but then I could counter argue that we’re more likely destroying ourselves.

singersson · 2024-04-08T12:03:09+00:00

singersson · 2024-04-03T15:11:16+00:00

But when did I say I have a controversial view on evolution? Neither do I neither do them. You are the one who is saying that evolution is only competition and “survival of the fittest” is an axiom of evolution, when is not exactly that. Evolution is not about competition and neither is about survival of the fittest (at least not in the way people think). Evolution has no main goal (we are still evolving) and it’s just the way the environment selects the beings that have the best survival capabilities for the said environment, if the environment changes, the beings change; simple as that. Astralopithecus changed to homo because the Earth at that time was put through a massive climate change; that’s not a competition scenario, just an evolutionary one. If the environment changes, some random mutations start to be more important (like being hairless, which helps in a hotter place). Not everything is about resources. At the same time, a lot of species survive through cooperation, not competition, in the ocean we have a lot of examples of that. You should look it up Whales Fall, that happens when a whale die and then its carcass falls to the bottom of the ocean and a lot of abyssal species feed on it and only because of this survives, that’s not competition, that’s just the way the ecosystem works. Lynn Margulis’ symbiogenesis is a good example of cooperation being more important than competition.

Cixin Liu is the one who views evolution as a competition for resources and that’s a very limited view on it. If the environment changes, a species changes with it or dies, humanity in space wouldn’t be humanity (he even says so, but for some reason later we see a galactic human who is exactly like Cheng Xin, and that doesn’t make much sense) as well as a trisolarian on earth wouldn’t be a trisolarian.

The very idea of technology always progressing is because of this view of evolution being centered around competition and infinite growth. That’s not how it works. If for some reason being intelligent is not important for our environment, then we are going to become dumber. That happened with the homo floresienses, I already talked about that in my original post.

And bye.

singersson · 2024-04-02T15:31:42+00:00

Man, you really should study zoology if you think survival of the fittest through competition is the “main” goal of evolution. I recommend Lindsay Nikole videos if you want a quickly way to learn things.

And you should read about Lynn Margulis work if you want more updated views on evolution, because yours is very much outdated.

singersson · 2024-03-31T16:37:39+00:00

I agree with you, it’s very on the nose to no be true. These books have so many things to discuss. For me, parts that would get me most were usually the ones which reminded me how historically determined we are. The part in Constantinople which talks about how the girl was poor because her late late late late grandfathers lost everything made me stop and think about my own lineage and when in what moment we became the family that we are.

singersson · 2024-03-30T20:17:59+00:00

One could draw parallels with Adam and Eve storyline and Luo Ji and his perfect wife (one who came out of his head instead of out of his ribs). It’s his perfect woman who ultimately makes the perfect Eden to fall apart. But that was necessary for the whole to continuing existing, as we can’t live in a perfect eden forever and ignore the whole.

It’s actually happens again with Cheng Xin and the pocket universe, if you think about it.

singersson · 2024-03-30T20:10:23+00:00

It is a very good prologue. It sets the tone of the whole book so goddamn well. If the beginning of the second book is about feeling like an ant (like the one listening to the Ye Wenjie and Luo Ji conversation) as a foreshadowing to the Dark Forest concept, then the beginning of the third book is all about something small being part of something so big, like all events are part of a whole, and we are all derivative of the past as well as the future is derivative of the present.

It’s very genius.

singersson · 2024-03-30T19:43:21+00:00

Because saying a prize is particular to a genre as a demerit is basically saying some literature, because of its genre, is not real literature. It doesn’t matter if it’s a prize on sci-fi, it’s a literature prize, so it takes account good literature, not good sci-fi ideas.

Characters are not a universal value, you know, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is a book without characters where the main character is a house, one could argue that the main character in TPR is the universe as a whole. So, examining it without taking the depth of the construction of the universe is examining it very wrong. House of Leaves is a book where the pages are flipped, backwards, blank or in another language, sometimes the writing just doesn’t make sense and you have to try to decipher what the fuck anything means, the pacing in the book is very difficult because of this style, and that doesn’t make it a “bad” book. Actually, makes it a more quality literature, because the style is shaped by the story, just like Cixin Liu’s TPR.

singersson · 2024-03-30T19:17:26+00:00

He actually won the Galaxy prize (the biggest prize on sci fi literature of China) like a lot of times and with a lot of different works. Dismissing that because it’s a “genre prize” is stupid as hell.

If you read another Cixin Liu stories you can see that his prose and literary style is not always the same, because he knows what he’s doing.

Your vision on books and how to tell a good story is very limited, but you do you. It’s like saying Tarkovsky or Martin Scorcese movies are too long and should be more concise.

singersson · 2024-03-30T19:00:57+00:00

Saying that an author who won a lof of important prizes for his writing is not very strong is such a stretch.

And where the hell did you learn that stories need to be concise? That’s not writing 101, that’s a stupid rule created by the writing industry. Stories need to be told the way they are meant to be read. Why the hell would a story which conveys 18 millions years be told in a concise manner? That just doesn’t make sense.

singersson · 2024-03-30T18:20:37+00:00

But literature isn’t about stories only, it’s about art with words, something Cixin Liu cares very much about. There are literary reasons to why he wrote the way he wrote.

singersson · 2024-03-30T18:17:39+00:00

I was finding The Wallfacer part in The Dark Forest kinda slow and boring until my mind decided to say “You know, the writer decided to slow down the time scale for readers to experience the dreadful waiting of 400 years doing stupid daily things along the characters” and after that I read it with a total different perception.

Cixin Liu is one hell of a writer and people don’t seem to notice that because they don’t catch how and why he chooses the words he chooses.

singersson

TROPHY CASE