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The Three Body Problem is not good (lemmy.zip)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/books@lemmy.world
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Wrapped up the first book after much struggle. Am I crazy for finding it extremely poorly written? Writing aside, the characters suck, the motivations suck, and the scenario building feels like it was tossed together by a 12 year old. I don't get the hype. Everything is paper thin. The fictional science aspect is the most compelling part but as a cohesive whole it fails to land.

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[–] 9 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I enjoyed it and have recommended it, but then I reread it and yea, it's not great. But it had some interesting new concepts, for which I'm still grateful I read the books, like the dark forest theory.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago* (7 children)

    Except that the dark forest hypothesis completely falls apart when you examine it for more than a few minutes.

    SPOILERBasically, the fundamental problem is that it applies game theory really badly, by treating the value of "survival" as functionally infinite, which is something that - if we actually applied it in reality - would make life unlivable. For example, eating a chocolate bar contains a miniscule risk to your survival. But if you multiply any minute fraction by infinity you get infinity, so the risk outweighs any possible value you could obtain. This becomes true for every decision you can possibly make. At both the individual and societal levels, treating survival as a purpose that outweighs everything else just leads to total paralysis. Any society that operated on those principles would never actually advance to the point of being capable of interacting with the wider universe. Liu even has to treat humanity itself - our only extant example of a space-faring species - as an almost impossible outlier because our own behaviour completely shatters the hypothesis. Even our studies of animal life on earth repeatedly demonstrate that curiosity and altruism are actually traits that evolution selects for, not against. Yeah, it solves Fermi's Paradox, but that's literally the only argument for it. It fails every other test possible. It's a really interesting idea for a scifi setting, but it's not remotely supported by reality.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I just read it as a parallel to the realists perspective of international relations on a cosmic scale. It the survival of the state in relation to other states that is the goal. In that respect it holds up well enough.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    But even there it falls apart, because if it had any merit then every country in the world would be North Korea. And even that wouldn't be enough, because even North Korea trades with China. The idea that the natural state of the world is total paranoia and the instant annihilation of every civilisation simply doesn't hold up. The realist's perspective of international relations actually serves to disprove; even when you begin from the presumption that their own survival is the primary goal of every civilisation, it can be observed that the optimal behaviours that arise from that goal are cooperative, not defensive.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Countries on the same planet results in a completely different situation. Dark Forest theory is a result of great distance (the enemy could become technologically superior within the time it would take just to gather intel), being hidden (so MAD doesn't apply), and having a large number of civilizations (even if only a very small percentage of civilizations send out dark forest strikes, the principle holds.)

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I agree that the natural state with the total paranoia is tad silly. Even the books toy with the idea of cooperation between Tri-solaris and Earth. It would have been better if it was treated as the domineering ideology in their area of space and a theory with flaws from the characters.

    If North Korea location was secret, there where no way of telling the difference between North Korea and Switzerland, we had no countermeasures against nukes, and communication increases the risk that North Korea finds you, tensions would way more likely lead to a fist strike doctrines. You only really need one actor with the doctrine to force others to adjust to it.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    It's not even a good analogy, the basic idea of a 'silent dark forest' is pretty nonsense. Forests aren't quiet at night. Animals aren't hiding out to avoid predators. Most aren't active cause it's dark and it's hard to see, so they sleep instead. Most predators are in the same boat, they typically hunt in late evening/early morning, when their prey is also active. That's ignoring the plethora of nocturnal species of course.

    There's literally no part of the theory I find compelling, it seems like a poor conclusion based on a foolish assumption.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I'm not really sure what you mean. I don't think 'infinifte' value vs arbitrarily high value makes a difference here. Also evolutionarily, intraspecies collaboration is beneficial, not necessarily interspecies. Although we're talking about civilizations making decisions, not animal behaviour.

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