Netflix is gonna take this work of brilliance and turn it into a show about a far everyman outsmarting physicists by playing a video game.
@Lornext
6 ай бұрын
God... That show is gonna suck ass.
@DrVunderbahr
6 ай бұрын
You were basically correct HAHAHAHAHA
@Bayomeer
4 ай бұрын
@@DrVunderbahr Lmao what did they do?
@OPVSNOVVM
7 ай бұрын
Wow, I hadn't heard of this book trilogy before I saw your video. Now I feel compelled to buy and read it. The best of us, even without faith in the Divine or in the transcendent, seem to intuit wherefrom we fell and whereto we must return. They might lack the hope that one day all shall be restored and might mistakenly assume that we are not even an afterthought in the grand scheme of things seeing how majestic and beautiful it is, yet they know deep down that there must be an eschaton!
@MagneMirare
7 ай бұрын
If one person reads it, or even just thinks about reading it, then the purpose of this video was fulfilled. Be aware though, that getting through the first book may be kind of a drag before one gets to the juicy stuff (as pointed correctly by other comment.)
@UTU
7 ай бұрын
Oh, dang it, gotta go read the book so I can watch this essay!
@erraov9976
5 ай бұрын
well done well done
@bathhatingcat8626
6 ай бұрын
I like your channel. Creating an entity in your mind and calling it real was more exciting when it was hastur that was created upon reading the king in yellow
@Ushakov_Mykyta
6 ай бұрын
I know it's off topic for the video, but I'm still curious to know. What do you think about another famous writer Ursula le Guin? She's quite popular even to this day and very influential in sci-fi/fantasy genres. From her speeches on the internet I get the impression she's pretty much a hardcore marxist. With condemning capitalism as evil, wanting absolute equality, pushing to change anything in society she perceives unjust etc. If you ever read any of her books do you think marxism shows? Would you recommend any of her works to anyone?
@Lady-Lost-In-a-Hall-of-Mirrors
3 ай бұрын
Thank you for great analysis as always, Magne Mirare! I am currently trying to understand the hype around Three-Body Problem. I will probably give Chinese version of series a chance. Honestly I am still recovering from last grand sci-fi I read few years back, Dune. I made it to book 4, where I rage quit, because it devolved into deconstructivist nightmare akin to Song of Ice and Fire. I will contribute at least with some arguments against Theory of Dark Forest. I agree with Isaac Arthur´s analysis of this topic. It´s very unlikely, that this solution of Fermi Paradox is true. It´s just impossible to stay quiet and undetectable for sufficiently advanced civilization. If Dark Forest was true state of Universe, we would be already busted! We started broadcasting radio signals more than 100 years ago. And even if it wasn´t enough, there is lot´s of light pollution and megacities on the planet´s surface to unmistakably prove existence of advanced civilization. Unmanned probes can travel Galaxy in fracture of time of its existence. Even if some civilization on the other end of Galaxy started few tens to hundred thousand years ago, depending on the percentage of speed of light they can travel, they would already have sleeper probes with some level of autonomy of their AI´s in every star system of the whole Galaxy! In our case it would mean UFO´s are real. If they were hostile, we would be already toast! Again Issac Arthur has the exact numbers. Furthermore, who would think about covering their radio broadcast earlier than inventing radios? When we invented radios, we didn´t even know that other galaxies exist! People in 1906 were probably glad there is possibility to communicate remotely. They even had concept of aliens like Well´s War of Worlds. But it didn´t stop us from further development of broadcasting technology. Who is naturally so paranoid that he sees threat even in distant stars? Lastly, even if we weren´t alone in Galaxy, would it mean our automatic damnation? Living beings compete for resources; that’s of course true. But wouldn´t most potential aliens just act according to basic ecological rules? Where there is enough resources for everybody, animals usually don´t compete to death for everything. We have enough evidence that our Galaxy is untouched by great civilizations. There are simply no visible Dyson Spheres and other megastructures. Galaxy is for civilization few centuries from us like Horn of Plenty. Why would anybody in our Galaxy preemptively kill every intelligent life in its cradle? And hasn´t someone already made evolutionary simulation that cooperation is generally more advantageous than hostility? This is of course materialist view of Universe, spirituality and free will would of course upset every such prediction 😀 Which is point of Three-Body book series 😀But Hey! There aren´t any Trisolarians in this timeline to disrupt our science! TLDR: We can relax, most likely nobody from stars wants to kill us.
@MagneMirare
3 ай бұрын
I think this is very fair assessment of the opposing arguments. One could always argue with things like "radio is not nearly enough powerful to reveal us so soon" or that "even the Horn of Plenty is finite from the point of view of sufficiently advanced civilization" but that is neither here nor there since we simply do not have enough information from actual comparison with reality. Until then all we can do is pile up different solutions and see where these thoughts take us. The question of cooperation and hostility is an interesting one, because while cooperation based strategies are much more productive in long term if performed correctly, they are dependent on very hard to achieve factors like very solid formulation of ingroup ethics and identity, as well as on capability to oust free passengers and those who refuse these ethics. This is for example incredibly hard to do even considering just two neighboring small nations... Anyway thanks, glad you enjoyed it :)
@jenkips9026
6 ай бұрын
It's funny how something like Gurren Lagann has similar themes but a completely different approach to them and exists in such opposite medium and genres.
@SechsVerehrer3-qd9fu
7 ай бұрын
I read this series at the height of repeated Lockdowns. It was a powerful experience to observe the paralells between society during those lockdowns and as described in the Three-Body-Series. It too opened my eyes to the way the Chinese see our world.
@MagneMirare
7 ай бұрын
Oh, definitely. I did not really touch upon the specifics of Chinese mentality in the books (possibly in the future), but they are most definitely present and eye opening.
@Lornext
6 ай бұрын
That is a harsh and naive generalization.
@Lornext
6 ай бұрын
Cant wait for Netflix to totally disrespect and not understand anything about their source material for Three Body...
@iExploder
6 ай бұрын
I binged the heck out of this trilogy whenever I could a year or two ago, and absolutely loved it and was fascinated by the ideas it put forward.
@MrNathanSmart
7 ай бұрын
This is a great channel. Keep up the good work
@MagneMirare
7 ай бұрын
Thank you very much!
@leileijoker8465
6 ай бұрын
I read the original Chinese text years ago. Didn't like it as much as you do. I was also an atheist back then and found the book to be a collective of neat ideas but the plot and the characters are too weak. Also I didn't like the nihilistic theme of the story. I found it surprising you like this book so much after watching your George RR Martin critique video.
@MagneMirare
6 ай бұрын
Interesting, we may have read it differently. Why did you found it nihilistic? Also note, that there is of course a difference between the translations. Your experience with Chinese text might be very different. Interestingly, in the interview I used, author himself said he much prefers the English translation to his own original text. But personally I read it in Czech, which was translated from original Chinese. So we have an interesting mess on our hands.
@sw3dge
7 ай бұрын
Great essay on a great series. I find most reviews of the series to be one dimensional - about flat characters. It's not a series without flaws. But it does contain depth, including characters that have unique depths not found in other series. I wonder if this book would even be allowed to be released in 2024 China...
@MagneMirare
7 ай бұрын
Hard to say, because one never knows what will be problem for top down censors, but Liu seems to me to be very careful about not offending the basic ethos of Chinese civilization, so I would not be surprised If it still released without many issues.
@GoldandGunpowder
6 ай бұрын
very impressed by this channel and your music
@AnonymousAnonposter
6 ай бұрын
Your channel is another based and honest one.
@DrVunderbahr
6 ай бұрын
Love the channel so far, I suspect you'll blow up eventually. I'd really suggest the Black Company novels to your taste. They're a nice taste of dark fantasy that evokes Martin without the Nihilism
@Nico-artemis
6 ай бұрын
Beautiful video, I am very happy to have discovered your work. I think you might like the Hyperion novels by Dan Simmons. Have you ever read them? I would be curious to hear your thoughts.
@MagneMirare
6 ай бұрын
I am glad you are enjoying it. :) I have heard the name and it did peaked my interest. So I can very much imagine looking into it in the future!
@Alexxandalu010
6 ай бұрын
This man can orate mediaeval crowds
@Yokar_mova1212
7 ай бұрын
I feel like I'm witnessing the birth of a star far away from all the niose and bull**** Your work is amazing
@DeadpoolX9
7 ай бұрын
Masterpieces inspire masterpieces I suppose.
@justachannel8600
7 ай бұрын
Oh wow. This is gonna be interesting.I read the book after the hype and found it really bland. But it did have interesting stuff in it. Guess I know what I watch tonight.
@MagneMirare
7 ай бұрын
Then let me know what you think afterward.
@justachannel8600
7 ай бұрын
@@MagneMirare Well. This is going to be hard. Many points are kind of what I expected from watching your other videos - which I don't think is bad, I think very similarily - it's just that I didn't find them in the book. So, idk, maybe this is going to be a bit too negative and mostly just my perspective (from memory and I only read the first book). I'm a software dev myself and coded my own physics projects a long time ago. So a lot of the science parts were nothing new to me - things I had learned and never actually got to use on the job. The beginning of the book really hooked me in with the cultural revolution part and the students posing in front of machine guns. It kind of like a realistic action scene. But then it switched to the complete focus on science and I felt a bit like a lot of it was really just filler. I asked myself if one reason for the hype was that people wanted to show off their nerdiness. So anyway there's this woman who sends the signal - iirc because she wanted to start a war with the aliens that she knew humans would lose. And I found that massively interesting. But I really missed the development there. You could fill pages upon pages about how her hatred grew or how she was abused. Or perhaps the opposite, you could have sympathetic viewpoints like idk characters talking about how an outside threat would unite people. Ok, maybe that's lame. But anyway, I mean you have to think about this. One of the main characters of the book is basically the ultimate terrorist. And she's kind of relatable. But it just happens like so. There's no screaming, there's no tears, nobody running outside into a hailstorm just to stand there, nobody puking their alcohol poisoning out. You know, stuff that happens when you dump your girlfriend. Or fail the math exam. Instead you turn the page and then it's all about science again. So, idk. Maybe you are right, he is building a bridge. But he starts from such a detached intellectual place. And I'm talking out of memory here, I think all the things I mentioned where in it, just ... not enough. It's like cooking a shrimp curry and you have all your veggies and stuff but all you use is a single grain of pepper. NOOO! You pour in the entire glass! You go to the store and buy extra pepper! Bwahahaha ... ahem ... sorry. Well, any way, that was kind of my take on the book. I guess that's why I'm really not a science fiction reader.
@MagneMirare
7 ай бұрын
To be honest, I think this is a very fair critique of the first book. Even though it starts in reality, it may offer a very intellectual view of reality, focusing more on "stuff" than on "people". Therefore, it actually misses some aspects of necessary relatability. I believe Liu took the hint afterward, and the second book is much more anchored in the mental state of its protagonist. To a degree, it could be said that the second book is the centerpiece with the most active and successful character arc. You see him struggle, and you go with him throughout the whole emotional process. The third book is a little bit more frustrating because it's about the ultimate failure of its protagonist, but still, it is very focused on her personal development. Anyway, as far as the first book goes, you are correct in pointing out the weaker aspects of it
@justachannel8600
7 ай бұрын
@@MagneMirare Well, maybe I will yet pick up the next one. Anyway, some thing I forgot, the thing about fractals. It's like the alchemy thing "as above so below". Patterns from a lower level repeat on a higher level. But I don't think it's actually true. You can find that of course irl in many instances. But you can also find patterns repeating laterally, like for instance, I've heard someone do cooking analogies in a coding talk. I think that's just it. Patterns repeat but to think that shows some big mathematical structure is kind of a big jump.
@MagneMirare
7 ай бұрын
"As above so below" is precisely what hides behind fractal thinking. As for the big jump, there are, of course, many facets to it, but the presence of this feature of repetition is precisely due to shared mathematics-because mathematics is scale-free. Now, fractals have the problem that they lack precise definition for use, so that is why I mainly focus on the "it's very useful even though the mathematical reality may be more complex" approach. But, that being said, since the goal of our scientific struggle is to define and describe the world and its functioning, the omnipresence of patterns is a big hint for us. And since it is still the same universe, the same matter, bound by the same laws, there ought to be "some" mathematical explanation to it. So It may be a jump to say that it's a simple straightforward fractal-it's not, it's something much more complex-but it is definitely not a jump to expect some shared mathematical structure.
@ambience273
6 ай бұрын
I think the second book is 10/10, fantastic. But even two years later from time to time I am salty at how I hated the third. I almost never read bad books, and I can't say Death's end deserve to be called a lazy or bad book, but it is still one of the worst books I read. Well, it is the first time I put it into words so here goes the first draft of my "critique", or just things I hate about it (spolers, also I didn't read it in english, so forgive if I can't find the right terms): 1- No one realized what the "2d dimension" part of the stories meant? I didn't, but I also don't have the knowledge for it, but it should be very obvious for all the scientists with all those clues. 2- How did man become so feminine that a woman like the protagonist can't even distinguishe them from women. Let's be honest, without wanting to offend anyone, but unless a trans person really rocks the looks you can tell wich is the gender of birth. And how it was just as things became harder, masculine men were on the rise again? What was the point anyway? 3- How did anyone believe the plan to hide behind the big planets with spheric arkships would work? Sure if humans realized it would be possible the aliens would also. Did they think aliens could only explode stars? And when the system is about to become 2d, the narrator says that humanity was too arrogant. Are you kidding me? this is for sure lazy writing. Like, for me it was obvious from the start that the plan would fail, and I believe it would be common sense, it is too obvious. 4- How did the ship that survided (blue space?) develop the technology of lightspeed travel? In only 500 years, when they didn't have the clues from the stories and couldn't spend precious resources. 5- this brings to the other problem. Luo Ji tells the female protagonist to seek blue space (?) but no, she decides to go after the guy that bought the star. Like, she had already part of the blame for destroying humanity's chances and she decides to after the guy that is hostage to a alien species that swore to destroy humanity, with the only ship that is capable of speed of light flight. The logical conclusion would be that they would confiscate the ship and blue space would be alone for thousands of years. Oh no, but is all okay, the trissolarians are nice now and blue space developed a lot of technologies in this relatively small amount of time and are now colonizing planets already. 6- The protagonist left the aquarium and the pc with records in the pocket universe, when there is a serious danger of that fumbling everything. She is so erratic, and the author tried to paint the ending as this beautiful act. I hate it so much. 7- How did humans trust the trissolarians so much in the third book? This are the things I remember now, and that is why I wouldn't recommend the series (as a whole, second book is great). I think the author just wanted to end in a trilogy and wrote a protagonist that would doom humanity at each step.
@MagneMirare
6 ай бұрын
Thanks for your thoughts, I’ll try to tackle them. I think the main thing with the third book is that its composition is based on feeling of “frustration”. It is meant to be seen (in my opinion) as a description of failure, while true success is negligible without an eagle eyed view of the world. It's a small, little flicker of light, surviving against the odds. The thing with “frustration composition” based on failure is that people generally know that something is off from the traditional storytelling. And, I don’t of course have no idea if this is your case, but multiple times I have encountered this issue personally when encountering depiction of failure. People are great at knowing there is something wrong, but have a hard time pinpointing specifically what is wrong. People enter the state of nitpickingness. That is not to say their points are not valid, but the points are not a source of the critique, feeling wise. Again, I have no idea if this is your case. 1. ------- 2. I think this is generally a depiction of a possible conclusion to the changes we did undergo in the last 100 years. Also note the author is Chinese, and Asian society can have an even more feminine look to it. 3. I think this is simply a depiction of our focus on hope, even if obviously misguided one. I actually have this feeling, that book mentions the futility of this action in between the lines. Like the whole time you know this won’t work; but humanity needs to do at least something to fill the time. 4. Technological explosion. The book's premise is that few breakthroughs are enough. 5. This is a dreamy motif. It’s the “love is a force in the universe” monologue from Interstellar. It is a symbolic depiction of the tenderness of our soul. 6. Symbolic act. Let’s leave something behind. This is the motif of survival. Don’t put your eggs in one basket. You weigh the situation, you know your main quest is to survive in the outer universe, but you leave something behind in the parallel one. 7. Because they are united in their understanding of the rules of the universe. The beauty of this idea is that life is the same; filled with desire for goodness and divinity, we just need to play by the harsh rules of reality. Once the obstacles and necessities forcing humans and trisolarans into conflict passed, there is no reason for hostility.
@ambience273
6 ай бұрын
@MagneMirare 3-everyone belived it would work? Like, no one in the book says the plan could fail, not even the nihilistic antagonist guy? No mention of pushback by anyone, it is so weird. And look, I can see the theme, it doesn't make the writing good. The first two books was full of brilliant minds, but in this part of the third book everyone is brainless. No need to be smart to see the plan would fail. 4- except despite being in space they regressed to a terrible predicament. I wont search it now but I heard/read to have this development boom you need a stream of thinking minds (a lot of people in the same goal) in Blue space the population would be very small and mostly in hibernation. You also need resources to waste. Blue Space can't waste resources on experiments. Fail once, everyone dies. Remember it took earth decades to build a ftl ship, with the clues, resources and scientists. Weird enough despite the ship its population has the perspective of a very poor third world country, if you compare to the Earth at the time at least. And no communication, just search about the regress in Tasmania's technology due to them not being in contact with Australia anymore (ancient history I mean). 5- Luo Ji dream girl is a dreamy motiff and it was explicit he didn't care about humanity's survival. Tho it would make sense she didn't care about Blue Space despite her deal with Luo Ji. And Again, Blue Space should still be lost, but the descendants appear like a deus ex machina, just so the trissolarians wouldn't need to take her ship to avoid she saving them. 6- it doesn't lead to survival at all. And knowing trissolarians, they would not leave the pocket universes and would retain at least part of humanity's history. While typing this I came to the conclusion that the protagonist is a force of destruction. She acts like she cares about the universe but may have intentionally contributed to its destruction. I swear, there will be an alien going at pocket universes to collect the leftovers to save the universe (if it was possible, only way the protagonist didn't scree with it, like all the other times). 7-not by the trissolarians, they still treated "us" like insects. And it is naive to think humanity would turn like that. We hold grudges, and Trissolarians gave plenty of reasons. I don't think I need to show historic parallels.
@Lornext
6 ай бұрын
While I don't feel that strongly about the third book, it was definitely a lesser work compared to the combo of the first two. The first two feel like they have this overarching narrative towards a goal, which makes the third one really separated and off putting. Obviously it is scifi so some logical stuff should always be taken with a spoonful of salt.
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