The opening paragraphs are lovely and absolutely not what I'd expected based on the name. This is the America we want to live in.
"We insist upon the right to express our own opinions. But we also believe in the right of others to express their opinions. For the right to speak involves the duty to listen...We know that the truth can only be found through open and honest discussion, and that the common good is served through common attempts to reach common understanding".
The left and right are so divided that they're intolerable of one another. Neither side believes the other is worth listening to.
It's a shame.
We're all animals traversing a complicated landscape. There's daily pain and suffering, and then we die. We should remind ourselves how similar everyone actually is, and that the diversity of our views are humanity living and breathing through our mortal, aging bodies.
One side wants trans people to be able to use the same bathroom and universal healthcare the other side talks about shooting democrats and Myanmar style coups.
It is impossible to be tolerant of the Fourth Reich or those who if they don't condone it will at best tolerate it for tax cuts.
Our unresolvable division is because 10% is evil and 30% is nuts and the remainder can't have anything they want if they don't embrace the crazy.
These people will sacrifice our actual values for pale shadows of same.
You're painting the entire right as Nazis though. That's not at all accurate. Some people just don't want to be taxed, want their guns, and are afraid of the theory of evolution.
You're failing to see the huge distribution of people on both sides.
There are Nazis on both sides, but there aren't many. The majority are closer to the middle, and the media uses the extreme examples to enrage and divide for dollars.
The people who aren't outright nazis will vote one in while either lying to you and I or lying to themselves about doing so. The threat of the rise of the original Nazi party in Germany did not turn on the majority of its boosters wanting to burn Jews and other victims like toast. It turned on them being first willing to overlook violent rhetoric and then later willing to cower in fear lest they themselves join the victims.
Absolutely the entire right are Nazis, collaborators, on their way out politically.
You're dealing in absolutes and lumping everyone you disagree with into the Hitler/racist bin. It's an indoctrination.
Explain non-white conservatives. Explain them in other non-US countries such as Japan. Explain white (often Christian) conservatives that adopt minority children.
You're so single minded in your hate towards these people, most of whom you do not know, that you can't see that you're wrong. Perhaps it is your world view and experiences are that are limited.
I'm sorry you feel this way.
I hope you can start loving more people than you hate.
I will not love people who associate with and vote for those who wish people like me, and people I ally with as brothers and sisters, to be treated as subhuman. Or wish me to be dead just because I'm not like them.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/01/pride-mon... - As Pride Month begins, Republicans double down on restricting transgender Americans - Across 33 states, more than 100 anti-transgender bills have been introduced just in the first few months of 2021.
If peoples' lives are so easily overlooked that you'd rather save a few bucks on your tax bill and will vote for people who align with white supremacists, then yes, you're scum.
What's worse, that division is extremely profitable to some. So they spend their resources stoking that division. This only serves to drive the wedge deeper. Meanwhile, it's like the classic game of Three Card Monte. We are so busy hating the people we're told are "our enemy", that we ignore potential real enemies.
I think if you are willing to ignore 50% of the population, well, I don't know what to tell you other than that history does not look kindly on partisans.
Not just 50% of the population. Folks on the left will sniffily tell you that stuff where the vast majority of the rest of humanity agrees with the right isn’t even up for discussion.
Your sentence is really the same divisive "other side is crazy" crap that everyone else is complaining about. Folks on both the left and right (under US definitions) will sniffily do that same thing and act like their positions are obviously correct and the other side obviously unreasonable.
When was that? 30 years ago? Try having a conversation today with a progressive about virtually any issue where American conservatives may agree with people in Asia or Africa (or even a big chunk of moderate Democrats).
I noticed this particularly acutely in how progressives have rallied around Muslims but you can’t actually talk about a bunch of stuff my Bangladeshi mom and aunts believe. Same sex marriage is one example, but also abortion, gender roles, child rearing, civil order, religion in schools, etc.
Ironically, as a result, you can’t have public conversations about a bunch of stuff many Democrats (particularly non-white Democrats) believe. When Obama have a speech about dads raising their kids, he was shouted down by white liberals. Can’t talk about Latino views on abortion, or Muslim views on gender roles and procreative marriage.
I really think your specific political leanings are deeply clouding your view of things. People on the side X have conversations with other people on the same side about all topics and discuss the finer points. That is true for both sides.
People on side X can't have any conversation with people on side Y about any of the topics because both sides just instantly devolve into tribalism and accusing the other side of being unreasonable. Which is exactly what you're doing, and what you're saying the left does to you
I don't know where you're getting "30 years ago". It's worse today than ever across both sides.
My politics are middle of the road by normal people standards. Among people in my bubble (college-educated urban liberals), it’s very difficult to discuss completely normie takes like “we should control immigration to limit cultural change.” (This is a position that’s not only pretty widely held in America, but would be axiomatic in Bangladesh where I’m from and most other countries as well. As far as I can tell, many American liberals think race and culture are the same thing. I’m not sure.)
Talking with college-educated conservatives and expressing similarly normie liberal takes, like “we should let gay people get married” is by contrast not hard at all.
I would have to go out of my way to find some evangelicals in the Deep South who won’t even discuss the idea and dismiss it as “blasphemy” or some such. But that’s really my point. Urban liberals have embraced a worldview (especially on social issues) that’s as ideologically fervent as what I remember about evangelical Christians during the Bush era.
Your "bubble" is either extremists or jerks or your perception is warped. I've literally never met a person who doesn't think we should control immigration. The culture war is being fought on small edge cases like DACA, not "open borders".
I've met people who definitely would believe someone saying "we need to protect American culture" was thinly veiled code for "we need to protect white culture, and not just from immigrants". And I've met people who do mean that and are racist/antisemitic and not in the "deep south". And I've also met people who said the same words but without the racist underlying beliefs, so it's not really so simple.
> Among people in my bubble (college-educated urban liberals), it’s very difficult to discuss completely normie takes like “we should control immigration to limit cultural change.”
Weird, in my bubble (mostly college-educated, mostly urban-to-suburban, mostly liberal-to-progressive, though there are many exceptions on every axis), that wouldn’t even be a controversial statement (once you got into mechanisms of limitation and more specific cultural concerns such as what kind of drift you wanted to avoid, there would be debate, though, both over principles and pragmatics.)
> As far as I can tell, many American liberals think race and culture are the same thing
They aren’t the same thing, though they are (contrart to racist models) very closely related.
> I would have to go out of my way to find some evangelicals in the Deep South who won’t even discuss the idea and dismiss it as “blasphemy” or some such.
Huh, I can find plenty of college educated, urban California religious conservatives (not necessarily evangelicals) who see it that way without much effort. (Like, zero effort when I go to church.)
> They aren’t the same thing, though they are (contrart to racist models) very closely related
They’re often correlated, but one doesn’t arise out of the other. Us Bangladeshis have a strong tendency to blame our culture for what ails our country (our tendency to corruption, etc.) If an American said “I wouldn’t want mass immigration from Bangladesh to the US because of the prospect of cultural change” I’d probably be inclined to agree. My family left the country to get away from that culture. In Bangladesh it wouldn’t be a controversial statement to say that there are aspects of Chinese culture or whatever that we don’t like.
So when I see Trump attacked as “racist” I find it bizarre. His criticisms are plainly directed at culture, not race. For example his comment about “shit hole countries.” That’s a boorish phrasing of the situation, but it’s clearly an attack on culture, not race. If you asked a Bangladeshi on the street whether they’d rather have immigrants from they’d say something similar. The state of a country is a reflection of the culture of its people. It has nothing to do with race.
>well, I don't know what to tell you other than that history does not look kindly on partisans.
"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."
If the only way to stop an act of violence is with an act of violence, allowing it to happen in the first place, as you would condemn the response of violence, ends up being the greater evil.
Also look up 'The Paradox of Tolerance.'
Saying it is to be 'partisan' to call out injustice is the ultimate in hypocrisy.
History has already condemned those who stepped back and did nothing.
> the constitution bans one specific form of censorship, therefore all other forms of censorship are acceptable
The First Amendment is perhaps the most powerful manifestation of the philosophy of free speech in our world today. As a result, we have a habit of conflating the two. But a culture of free speech can wither while the First Amendment remains strong (and vice versa).
The exercise of editorial discretion in a privately owned publication or forum and censorship are two very different things.
What steams my clams is that the people who complain about private forums exercising editorial discretion tend to be the same people who insist that private property rights are sacrosanct, and so, for example, private property owners should be able to ban union organizers from their property [1]. This strikes me as brazenly hypocritical. Either free speech trumps private property, or private property trumps free speech. You can't have it both ways.
"giving the other side a fair chance to make its point" (from very next sentence) doesn't mean they can't blow that chance by being obnoxious, unfair, offensive, or plain wrong. I don't think the OP argues that this "duty to listen" extends forever, that you have to keep listening after you have determined that "the other side" is being an asshole.
I think a tit-for-tat approach is fair. If the other party is demonstrably not listening to you, you can drop the duty to listen (and you should probably just disengage). If someone is participating in good faith, but wrong or an asshole/obnoxious/offensive, I don't think that justifies censorship.
In any argument at least one and frequently both positions are plain wrong. Both parties think that is true of the other. If that were a reason to drop free speech norms, they would always be dropped.
Civility is an aspirational value, but communities that enforce it invariably will do so in a biased way. Rude behavior is easy to spot in the outgroup and easy to overlook in the ingroup. Offensiveness is nebulously defined- someone might be offended by the word 'asshole', someone else by the banning of vulgarity. How a community defines civility privileges people from backgrounds that define it similarly. Those closest to the issue will have a harder time keeping their emotions in check- eg. a white person might have an easier time arguing dispassionately about racism than a minority.
If you can get around those issues, I think you should. Civil discourse optimizes for a lot of the factors that justify free speech in the first place. Not so with being wrong; a major benefit of free speech is that those who are wrong and participating can be righted, to the benefit of all parties.
Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, aka Three Body Problem. Explored existential topics in a way I've never encountered anywhere else. I truly believe that decades from now this series will be viewed as the LOTR of our time.
I've recently been reading the Foundation series, and have found the concept of The Mule character to be incredibly eye opening. I can't say directly it's had a positive impact on my life but it's definitely changing my outlook and I feel its expanded my horizons.
I found all 3 books to be vastly overrated and mediocre at best. I would bet money that in 10 years, few will even remember them.
The translation doesn't help, but the issues with the books go beyond it. It's obvious that Cixin Liu is not a good writer. The characters in TBP are cardboard cutouts and his pacing and framing of ideas awful. I feel that there is merit in his imagination but it'd be better presented in a different format than science fiction.
To truly see how bad he is as a writer, compare him to the greats:
Stanislaw Lem, Gene Wolfe, Iain Banks (Culture Series), Strugatsky brothers, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Heinlein, J.G. Ballard, Ursula Le Guin, William Gibson ...
Since Dune was mentioned in this thread, I find the first two books to be absolutely in a different league than TBP as they're complex socio-political SciFi masterpieces that have stood the test of time. I've read Dune more than 9-10 times already (as I've read and re-read most of the books by the greats I previously mentioned). Can you imagine doing that with any of the TBP books?
I have read Summa Technologiae and everything is in there. And I mean everything. I have yet to see any new horizons for humanity he hasn't covered back in the sixties.
For me the single most distressing idea is that we might want to limit the speed of research in order to be able to integrate it, because the exponential growth would otherwise beat humanity's ability to adapt, leading to very turbulent situations.
Try to read this as Chinese literature and not apply Western standards. TBP is not about individual people but civilizations. Similarly, if you read Tale of Genji expecting a plot, you will be disappointed. But that doesn't mean it will be forgotten in 10 years.
Yep. Individual character development isn't Liu's strongest suit. His characters are mostly just allegories to prove a point. (Wenje - bitterness, Luo Ji - logic, etc.) But Liu is brilliant in his deception of mass psychology--the various ways in which large groups react to hopelessness.
Interestingly, I see a lot of parallels between Liu and Thomas Hardy. They both wrote sweeping tales that use individuals to represent abstract ideas. So, it's not just an Eastern thing.
Counterpoint: I can absolutely imagine myself re-reading TBP series multiple times; I've already re-read it once since reading it a year and a bit ago.
I read and reread a lot of books, largely scifi. My favorite is probably Dune, and I've reread it maybe 6 times. Thing is, I also really like TBP, and am actually reading it for the 4th or so time right now.
Dune is soft sci fi. TBP is hard sci fi. They're very different formats of stories. Good hard SF generally doesn't have character development. In fact character development is a kind of subgenre called bildungsroman. I don't know why ppl these days expect characters to change as though it's some inherent part of a book. Some books are thought experiments or about world building. Part of reading for me is to try experiencing something novel. But on your hate for TBP, I'd say the huge fanbase, the Hugo committee and Obama would disagree with you on that one.
I don't "hate" TBP, so not sure why you chose this characterization. I just find it overrated. When I finished the trilogy, I wished I'd have gotten back the hours I spent reading it. That's neither the mark of a good book nor a good writer. And let's not pretend that the Hugo committee is some sort of arbiter of truth. Plenty of real stinkers (N. K. Jemisin anyone?) have won it.
Also, If I'm in the mood for hard sci-fi, I'll read Peter Watts who is (again) on a different league. Blindsight and Echopraxia navigate similar (but not only!) themes to TBP in a much more intelligent, thought-provoking and cohesive way.
I'm considering start reading TBP. So my question to you is why did you progress through the trilogy if you find it kind of substandard? Meaning, once you are done with first or even the second book what made you consider reading the next books in the trilogy?
This is an honest question as someone who is seriously considering reading TBP in near future.
Because enough people I know were raving and kept telling me it starts slow / payoff comes later. Well, I won't be listening to these folks again re: books that's for sure!
If you're dead-set on reading it, read the first book and if you don't like it cut your losses short right there. I say skip the whole mess and read Watts instead.
I bounced pretty hard off that trilogy. I couldn't get past the weird motivations and interactions between characters, and usually I don't mind books by authors who focus more on the situation than the people in it. I thought the novels had a dreamlike quality to them, with people behaving in ways that don't make entirely sense, but approximate a semblence of normality that can be accepted if you don't look too closely.
It's been a while since I read it, and I only completed the first two books, but there are a few issues I recall having. Spoilers ahead, obviously.
The most glaring issue I remember was how the countries of Earth were essentially a united front for 450 years. They came up with a single plan - and a very strange one at that - and then carried it out for the next half-millenia with little dissent or deviation. Given the author of the book is Chinese, this struck like a plot element that's ideological in nature - the ruling class can't be seen as bickering or divided.
The only people opposed to this were effectively a death cult dedicated to wiping out humanity in the strange hope that a race of genocidal aliens would somehow be better custodians of our planet. While I imagine that there would be some people who felt this way, it strained belief that the alien sympathisers would be so organised and competant.
I'm usually pretty forgiving of novels with weak characterisation but interesting situations, but I didn't think the Three Body Problem succeeded in this aspect either. Obvious solutions were passed up or not discussed, for example, if there are only a few sophons on Earth and they can't travel faster than the speed of light, why not build many particle accelerators and perform experiments simultaneously? The final twist was also pretty heavily hinted at throughout the novels, so the latter half of the second book was just a case of waiting when it would be revealed. Frankly it could have been carried a lot sooner as well - why wait a century for verification when it costs nothing to call the alien's bluff immediately?
The books felt like the author had an idea that would have worked well for a short story that was expanded to the length of two novels. In a short story a lot of the details could have been glossed over, but when expanded out the author was forced to explain the intermediate steps.
I've re-read it recently, and I think you should give it another go; I agree that the two first books kinda complete an arc, but (minor spoiler) the third book totally throws a wrench into the happy ending of the second book.
> the countries of Earth were essentially a united front for 450 years.
That's not how it happens at all. (spoilers ahead!) The UN originally comes up with the Wallfacer plan in the first year or so after they learn of the fleet that's coming, in a time of utter despair. This is also a back-up plan, in case the "classical" space war fleet plan doesn't pan out. The first three Wallfacer end up thinking up heinous plans and spending a ton of resources, so the plan is essentially dismantled shortly after Luo Ji sends out his "spell" on that other star. They also mention the "great ravine", a very dark period of history, but we never get that much detail on that part.
Regarding your Sophons hypothesis, at speed of light you can go 7 times around the earth in 1 second; you'd have to be pretty precise with your timing to make your plan work. Moreover, Trisolaris was constantly building new ones, so by the time we'd build enough particle accelerators, there would be even more sophons on Earth.
And as for your last point, I think Luo Ji had only an hypothesis at this point, and wanted to be 100% sure before calling the bluff (and besides, he had time).
I agree with you that the characters don't have much depth, but this is a book you read for the concepts & ideas presented in it, not for the character interaction.
> I've re-read it recently, and I think you should give it another go
I'm afraid found it to be one of the worst books I've ever read. As I said, I bounced off this one hard.
> Regarding your Sophons hypothesis, at speed of light you can go 7 times around the earth in 1 second; you'd have to be pretty precise with your timing to make your plan work.
A second is a huge amount of time by the standards of modern physics. We wouldn't even need to separate out the colliders by any great distance; even a foot of separation would take a whole nanosecond for a sophon to cover.
Another approach would be to design a collider that could measure many collisions at once. Can the Trisolarans produce a thousand sophons on short notice? What about a million, or a billion? And given the latency the Trisolarans have to work with, they'd have to plan at least four years in advance.
Now maybe the Trisolarans have ways to prevent this, but the idea is never discussed, despite it being an obvious thing to try first.
For that matter, there's very few things that are tried. The idea that all the countries in the world would band together and try only one or two things over the course of 400 years is just bizarre.
> And as for your last point, I think Luo Ji had only an hypothesis at this point, and wanted to be 100% sure before calling the bluff (and besides, he had time).
He had time because he implemented a backup plan after the Trisolarans prevented the Sun from being used as a broadcasting station. But why take the risk? What does he have to lose? Either he's right and the Trisolarans will bargain with him, or he's wrong and nothing will happen. Given that Earth is doomed anyway, there's no reason not to try immediately before the Trisolarans are in a position where they can stop him.
Also it seems bizarre that in 400 years no-one once considered calling for help.
"Pretty sure" is not a good position to bluff from. Especially given the events of the third book, it's obvious that it wouldn't have worked unless the Trisolarans knew you knew.
I haven't read the third book, but I have read the Wikipedia synopsis. My understanding is that in the third book there's a new swordholder who the Trisolarans think won't go through with MAD, so they call Earth's bluff and turn out to be correct.
However, the swordholder doesn't need to be certain of the consequences in order for the scheme to work. All that's required is that the Trisolarans are certain of the consequences, and they believe that the swordholder will push the proverbial button.
If Luo Ji said, "Look, I'm like 60% sure that if I broadcast our location we'll all be killed, but I will do it if you continue." What could the Trisolarans do? Call his bluff? Then he'd say, "Okay then. I'm actually more likely to do this while I'm unsure, since there's a 40% chance nothing will happen. My being unsure has only made it more likely I'll press the button. Here we go..."
The Trisolarans would need to respect the threat regardless, which would confirm Luo Ji's theory without the need to wait a century to get results.
Lol nvm. I thought you were talking about the Foundation series. I've never read the trilogy you're talking about. Thanks for the thoughtful answer though. Hope others find it interesting.
It makes me sad that I can't read these books for the first time again. I reread them often. Surprisingly enough, my favorite book of the series was The Redemption of Time, a fourth book written by a fan with the blessing of Liu Cixin. If you haven't read it yet and you enjoyed TBP then you're one lucky sumbitch.
Thanks for the recommendation, I just bought it on Audible. I really enjoyed the Three Body Problem trilogy, haven't listened to them a second time yet, but I plan on it.
I really like to travel, really the only material thing I care about is being able to travel. Sometimes reading great literature from other countries gives me the same feeling that the earth is a small place and we are all in this together.
I don't put it on-par with Dune, but there are definitely concepts in the TBP trilogy that are simultaneously difficult and mind-opening. Some of them are quite haunting, actually.
Most of the deeper exploration of these ideas takes place in the third book.
Dune holds up way better if you pretend it's just one book (the first one). It stands alone very well and IMO is completely worthy of its status in the classic sci-fi pantheon.
On the other hand, I finished TBP, but I disliked it enough that I didn't go back to the other two volumes. What makes them better than the first, in your opinion? (purely for my own curiosity re: whether I should go back and read them)
The first book is more character driven and the plot moves slowly, glacially compared to the next two. I don’t want to ruin the plot, but I‘d say they exceed Dune’s vastness without the long grinds.
The author described how he approached the series as wanting to write about the “the worst possible universe”.
I recommend you read books 2 and 3 in the REP series. TBP is comparatively really slow (IMO necessarily), but the series really picks up in 2 and 3 in a way that makes you appreciate the foundation that book 1 laid.
The first book’s the best one but there’s an arc that carries through to its conclusion in God Emperor that kinda completes the whole thing.
I did read 5 and got about a third of the way through 6 before stopping and I still don’t know why either book exists. The previous story was over, and the new stuff’s muddled and not compelling.
5 and 6 are bizarre; not only do they read like action thrillers, they almost seem to contradict the whole message behind the Golden Path. The series should absolutely have ended with God Emperor (my personal favorite, followed by the original)
I read it for my bookclub together with a bunch of physicists. While I thought it was quite entertaining (but not more than that) they were all dismayed because of the amount of technobabble. Also, not to spoil it, but the title is wrong. It's a four body problem.
I read all three of those books, plus Ball Lightning by the same author. I found them very difficult reading, partly because I wasn't familiar with Chinese names and had trouble keeping them straight. Also, the material was dense and required a lot of background. But the ideas and some of the images stand out more than dozens of other books I've read over the time period. For each book, it took me about 3 months to get through the first 40%, then 3 days to get through the other 60%, once I had bootstrapped enough to get into them. Not easy, but highly recommended.
