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Netflix's Three Body Problem is Unwatchable
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this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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Here's a list of tons of leftist movies.
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Hey, look, as a person living in a glass house I'm not about to just start throwing cringe stones everywhere, but imo I think we should be really clear on whether we're discussing the Three Body Problem (the book/tv show) or The Dark Forest Theory (the thought experiment), because there absolutely are legitimate criticisms of both of those things, but we kinda need to be careful not to conflate the two, because the chief concern of the book is the question "Is it possible for China to not get colonised by a technologically superior foe?", which is somewhat related but quite a bit different from the "The Reason we don't hear from aliens is because everyone's really mean".
This is really more of a meta-discussion about the things people say about the book. I'm in no position to actually criticize the book, just the things I've heard about it that make it sound unappealing to me. I don't really know what the book's ideological bent is, but the way I've seen it marketed and discussed is "Dark Forest Theory: The Book (now extra depressing!)" so it's understandable people unfamiliar with it would conflate the two
I do think Dark Forest is total horseshit, tbh. Feels way too simplistic and just takes it as a given that relativistic weaponry is possible, practical, and can't be countered, and seems to think launching a civilization-scale attack across interstellar distances is not something that would signal your presence to other civilizations. Don't send radio signals! Things that wipe out entire solar systems? Very smart to send, probably nobody will notice. Like, what happens when the Trisolarans successfully invade? An entire species loading up into ships and hurling themselves at sublight in a linear direction isn't something others would notice? What happens when the Quadsolarans show up and use their superiorior super-technology to beat them up? Then the Pentasolarans and on and on in a DBZ-esque power creep forever and ever? Maybe I'm just being a smartass about it but it feels like it doesn't hold water to me.
Ok? But the things people are saying about the book are wrong tho, either because we're going on hearsay or because of misreading of the text (deliberate or otherwise) and what it is trying to say. Dark Forest Theory as it's used in The Three Body Problem is a sci-fi narrative framing device to discuss US-China relations, and imo I don't think the book is particularly interested in exploring the idea beyond that allegorical framing.
Oh yeah totally I agree with you on that. I don't think any sufficiently advanced civilization can advance beyond their solar system without communism, and once a civilization is capable of interstellar travel they probably are capable of defending themselves from extinction anyway.
(Also I think the scenario you outline happens in the books but I haven't read that far yet.)
I bet when the Dodecasolarans arrive it gets real fucked up
I just saw something that happens in the book called out for this. A dude sends a radio signal from a star to test the "dark forest". The star blows up, so they decide yes, the dark forest is in effect. But the obvious problem is that the attackers don't do any follow up. They don't scout the star to see if anyone is actually there, they don't treat it as a potential trap by the dark forest predator they're supposed to be hiding from. If you shoot a giant relativistic or ftl or magic weapon at someone and you don't kill all of them at the same time they'll just follow the line of your weapon back to you and either counter-attack and wipe you out, or broad-band your position to everyone else so you get wiped out anyway.
The solution to the Dark Forest is War Games: the only winning move is not to play. The book seems like it's trying to engage with nuclear deterrence and MAD is some way, but then forgets about second-strike weapons - nuclear missile armed submarines - that are the foundation on which MAD rests. If second-strike weapons exist you can't do silly shit like this. Maybe it's supposed to make some kind of sense in the silly space-magic of the book, but irl the us can't destroy China without destroying itself and the whole world.
Id recommend reading the books for this part, its a harrowing space battle.