Same. Kind of make one decide never expose one's child to the nursury ryhmes "Twinkle, twinkle little stars..."😅 Or in the grand old tradition of nursury ryhmes that scares the crap out of a child, replace that with Gloria Tang (G.E.M.)'s song "Wallfacer" with Dark Forest appropriate lyric like, "Eyes of wolves that fill the night sky, piercing through our naive dreams..." 😁

I agree, I think it's also the big reason why the people of that era were so confident. They'd just essentially sacrificed over half the population, then the technological explosion after it really made humanity feel like it had already been through the worst and come out the otherside.

The great fleet wasn't built during the Great Ravine. It was built afterwards, because humanity first had to get their civilization back on track again.

@@pelletsburnerandpower it was heavily started beforehand and mass industrialization before fusion power is what accelerated climate change. It was halted during The Ravine and started back up again after it. There's a paragraph that talks about how Space Force was almost completely dissolved because of the animosity from the public about putting more resources into space when billions were dying on Earth. A bunch of ships under construction almost ended up as space trash in orbit.

Reading literally all the hope and cocky behavior humanity had after that was nightmare fuel

I thought there was a reference from earlier in the book or in the three body problem about the significance of humanity's appreciation of art. I wonder if the shape and appearance of the droplet was intentional to act as a Trojan horse to let humans let their guard down.

Indeed. Humanity rocks up with its huge fleet think it’s invincible only to be all but wiped out by basically a single scout ship of Tri Solar. YIkes😬

Yes, I think a warlike/destructive nature kinda comes with the territory of rising to the top of your own environment/planet. War promotes tech and industry, and life is a bloody struggle for survival in any case!

The dark forrest hypothesis also would work with an empty universe and a small number of civs. Because if there is alien contact, with the hypothesis beign true, then those aliens are part of our same civilization, otherwise they would have exterminated us before even observing. Any close observation woukd trigger earths technology booms. So, any ufo is in one way or another ours. Like usa and hawaii.

​​@@ManDuderGuyThe Dark Forest applies not because there is a chance of a non peaceful civilization, it is because you just cannot take that chance at all since no other civilizations will. If you consider the various paths you can take when you encounter another civilization, it takes a long time to communicate across the vast space, may take years to receive a reply. Fleets take longer to build and takes even longer to reach them and by that time the other civilization may be more advanced in the hundreds of years to get to them. So it is most efficient to wipe out other inferior civilizations and remain as quiet as we can so other more advanced civilizations don't wipe us out.

thank you!

I listened to the audiobook and always thought of him as "Lieu O.G."

I mostly read sci-fi and have read so much it’s hard to find anything new. This series is such an amazing read and there are so many original ideas and it’s so expansive it blew me away. The second half of The Dark Forest is genuinely some of the best sci-fi ever written imho.

He just did a video on the wallfacers.

Thank you for the clarification of the scene with the escaped ships! And I LOVE the idea that Beihai was like a 5th Wallffacer. It's not something I would have thought of on my own, but it's so true!

Not exactly the same. Diaz’ plan would only have destroyed the planets but the Sun would still be fine. The Trisolarans have advanced enough technology to build space habitats. That’s why they didn’t care.

Yeah, Rey Diaz's plan would have worked since the Trisols IMMEDIATELY backed down when faced with the dead man's switch.

@@user-tt4jz3tm6t It wouldn’t have worked. The Sun would still be fine, which means the Trisolarans could simply harvest the clouds of material orbiting the Sun and build space habitats.

@@mrsheldon9134 Hmm. I thought the whole point was that they wanted a planet to live on, specifically one with water. If not, and they are fine with harvesting space debris, then why would it make any difference whether it was human who destroyed the planets, or an alien civilization who destroyed the sun, since they could collect debris either way? edit. Nevermind, I'm dumb. The real deterrent with Luo Ji's plan is that he broadcast the coordinates to the Tri's home system also, so that it could also be destroyed - although I guess it's going to be destroyed sometime anyway by the 3 suns.

I am starting to think that “time lag” is the main reason why the universe is a dark forest. If you are a benevolent Species, you could just travel to the neighbours planet and build a mutually beneficial connection with zero time lag in the chain of suspicion (Especially if they are benign). For example, if the Trisolarans were benevolent beings from a thriving planet they could have maintained a nonzero-sum game with Earth. I still don’t understand the whole obsession of each species fending for themselves when working and cooperating in groups is clearly a better alternative. Book 4 hints at this a little.

I truly appreciate the pronunciation, I've been trying to look for it

@@sumitraspovthe pronunciation is wrong 😂

@@mariobilo8430 that is. so fantastic. :')

It’s more “tseh shin”

I went back to the transliteration video and they are now pronouncing it as you posted. Thanks!

I use the timer and set it to 30 minutes. You can shake your phone and keep going if you’re still awake but this way if you fall asleep you don’t end up 8 hours later totally lost

I loved the imaginary girlfriend.

I thought this also. They were TOO confident..

exactly this the game theory clearly points out, its always better to destroy anything that has been revealed to you than to reveal your location and wait for a reaction in an attempt at communication

Just read my guy 😂

It irks me how dumb and soft (triumphalist) mankind had become, silly really. "Hey let's put all of our ships tightly together to meet this unknown and wildly advanced alien probe!"

Well by then mankind though they had surpassed trisolaris so they though they would be able to easily kill the probe

That was the one thing that kind of bugged me except that it was emphasized how all these military people were more worried about politics. And it makes sense because almost all of them except Bai-hi (sp?) probably never were in actual military conflicts and lived in a very peaceful and kinda “soft” era. They became arrogant. Still, it seemed pretty obvious but we have to let it go.

it just takes one or two objects of large enough scale to be propelled against us at high speed, the "others" do not even need a gun, they can just change some asteroid or comet trajectories and we are done... and we will never even understand or realize it wasn't random that's even scarier

@@Amatsuichi well I was planning on sleeping tonight but you e ruined it thx 🤣

@@jonathantalley6110 sorry man :) lets hope they wont figure it out heh

There's hope buried in there too, the first two books both end on hope despite the catastrophic events that happen. And actually that's what the story is really doing...sure a lot of people suffer and die... But humanity always has some resilience and hope.

Oh after all these spoilers from this video before reading the books?......That ruins it...hope you've done this in a different order

Believe me, if you think the first two books are so good, the last one will blow your mind.

Yup, it's an upward trend in my opinion, as well as people rating them in Goodreads

Don’t worry, these 3 books scope just expends in multitude proportionally, you would still be blown away each time

Yup! Things get really really weird on the 3rd book🙃

See I don’t see it as cringe. What it boils down to is showing how true organic inspiration comes to be. His author friend kept telling him that a character that you give the ability to breath and grow in your mind can essentially write and develop itself. This is a fascinating thing and most books you have read or heard about having excellent characters, the author will say that about those characters they’ve written. It was meant to show why he eventually became the perfect person to be a wallfacer, and that was because of this original seed of the dark forest that was planted in his mind. And how he was able to figure out what it meant and how it applied to their situation

I 100% agree. I kept begging the book to move on. I hope the Netflix show skips that crap.

@@travisbewley7084 I think with the pace of the Netflix adaptation, they won't have a lot of time to dwell on plot points such as this, or if they do, it will be hopefully economized and recontextualized a bit. There's nothing inherently wrong with exploring the idea of the benefits, consequences, and power dynamics of giving someone unassuming essentially unlimited power, and those who by will or force or circumstance must abide that power. Just don't need to go off on a long tangent to do it. Not with 8 episodes per season.

You could have just skip it, like I did.

Star Wars is fantasy. Great stuff but it's not about hard scifi. In this series, a simple alien weapon makes death star looks like a water gun. Imagine power to move celestial bodies like the sun and planets around like children's toy.

​@@roastpork5437 lol, by the same logic this book is fantasy and a lot of others book are true hard scifi

There's a theory that his wife was actually a secret agent from UN.

Agree with you 100%. Wish the book was a bit shorter without what I viewed as the cringe parts.

She knew her job going in, though. It wasn't like she was completely unaware of what's going on. Secretary General Say even tells Luo Ji that.

Speaking as a JPN>EN translator of 25+ years, you hit the nail on the head. Contrary to popular modern belief, translation ISN'T a mechanical process, and two translators will produce very different takes on the same material (and software will be wildly wrong, but will be accepted as gospel because A.I.!) based on their knowledge sets and backgrounds. One thing we always have to worry about is injecting too much of ourselves into the translation - our job is to be invisible. If the original author is dry, the translation should be dry. Those are actually a lot easier. It's when the author uses flowery language and word play that you're gonna have to sit down and suss out some way to replicate the same tone. But by the same token, you also have to take into account readability in the target language. Japanese loves long, meandering sentences with parentheticals within parentheticals, but that doesn't fly in English. You often have to break one sentence up into two or three. It's a balancing act. My advice is always to read, read, read. Always add more tools to your kit.

Yeah, I also feel like this one was just too foreshadowy? None of the big reveals and twists hardcore fans have told me about felt like such to me.

Well… that’s not this story. 👀

@@nazimelmardi true that is why the book is good...

@@notrixamoris3318 yep. I miss this sci-fi books from Merphy’s collection. And in fact Daniel’s too. Or Mike’s. It’s highly underestimated how can these perform on KZfaq. I tried to suggest next Banks - Culture (Player of Games) because it deserves the attention, and I believe Merphy would love it.

a piece of paper, the size of a credit card.

@@tsukasa1608 that’s all we have to say. ☝️

As someone who's never read the book, I applaud 👏👍🏽

You've made a silly assumption a cleansing civilization's attack can be traced to their homeworld. Nobody in their right mind would launch relativistic missiles from their own system. It's more likely cleansers produce listening-exterminating interstellar spacecraft, and launch an abundance of them in all directions, annually. We haven't the slightest clue as to what the limits of offensive technologies are, or what configuration efficient, interstellar attack ships can include. The galaxy could be full of such automated ships (crew hiberating or cloned in vats once a nearby signal is detected). Their civilizations of origin may have already been wiped out, but they still carry on with the mission, while maintaining "radio silence". Besides, cleansers don't have to attack directly, either. Even a weaker civilization can pose a threat, by simply revealing your location to someone stronger, who's actively hunting. The hypothesis suggests you either actively search and destroy or wait on your bum, awaiting the coming bullet. You ARE hunted. Refusing to attack an identified target doesn't change a thing. If this superior civilization finds you, you're dead anyway. If you can't determine their strength, the logical step is to reveal their location. As we've inscribed it on the Voyagers, the message can be a simple 2D image of the target system in relation to our galaxy's pulsars. Also, spreading "wide" may be seen as an unreasonable thing to do. The moment a self-sufficient colony is taken over by another Mao or Kim, it can lead to an Ultimate Escalation -- the colony transmitting the positions of every other colony. Now Mao or Kim gets to rule over the entire mankind (or rather its leftovers). Your take on probes is just silly. Chains of Suspicion. Whether you respond to a signal coming from a planet, a ship or a probe, it will give away your location. Sending out millions of probes to establish diplomatic relations doesn't matter, if nobody answers out of fear or the answer comes from a probe. Would you know their true intentions? Would you give away your location as a gesture of good will? No one in their right mind would. Resources are meaningless in the Dark Forest. People get that wrong all the time. The first Axiom is not about scarcity, but survival. A cosmic civilization's primary concern is its survival. Everyone is bound to become a threat with time. Either due to their potential for rapid technological leaps or their capacity for detecting you. Again, once they detect you, they don't have to act themselves, but transmit your location into the darkness. Someone will kill you for them.

Who cares about character development... I don't get why people have trouble reading a book, if it doesn't adhere to a template, by including some "mandatory" literary mechanism. The ideas conveyed were worth the read. Mankind's behavior was spot on. The characters themselves were the faces of our species.

Excellent point. This ought to wake some people up; Meaning, don't forget that this series has been heavily sponsored by Chinese money to push it onto the market. It's 100% "party approved" material. Their love for the United Nations, given them ultimate governmental powers, the negation of individualists and instead the focus on technology (and "knowledge") instead. China is good at veiling this. To see it more clearly, one could observe North Korean released footage, such as their songs. Then it becomes so much more clear.

I suspect the triumphalist mindlock got into the population somehow- maybe something as simple as culture being influenced by generations who were mindlocked passing this attitude and beliefs forward to future generations

​@@angel_machariel How about DC and Marvel movies?! Individualistic heroism, the opposite of " love for the United Nations, governmental powers, the negation of individualists and instead the focus on technology (and "knowledge")" .

@@Idylliac Exactly, because the western powers are in cahoots. The world is a stage and the supposed friction is only partially real but also artificially created. When a politician says "China is bad", don't forget that somebody above the politicians supports China. Just like Ukraine: the west incites them to fight Russia whilst Russians destroy them. It's all a stage to fool people.

Shame about the narrator, there are a couple different ones, but if none of them appeal to you, the audiobook's a no-go obviously. Not sure what your issue with the "spell" was. He deliberately uses that word to hide his intentions from the sophons. [spoiler but hey this is a spoiler video] It's just a broadcast to the wider universe revealing the coordinates of a far off solar system to see if there are any trigger happy super advanced civilisations out there willing to obliterate all potential signs of life they finds, so he can use it as a threat of mutual destruction against the Trisolarans. The "horrifying" aspects for me were: 1) the whiplash from "nothing can hurt us" to "nothing can save us" from the droplet attack & the reminder that unfathomable technologies could exist out there that we could be hopelessly defenceless against. Loved how the whole scenario played out from "even under 1,000,000x magnification, the surface was a smooth mirror" to "if we destroy you, what business is that of yours", then the utter helplessness and carnage of the attack. 2) the plausibility of the Dark Forest theory & cosmic sociology: Survival is the primary need of civilisation, civilisation continuously grows & expands but the total matter in the universe is constant. Hence the universe is a Dark Forest, life competes for resources. There's a prisoner's dilemma situation too if you think "oh but what if they're peaceful". On the cosmic time scale, technological progress is an explosion; humanity went from the invention of the car to initial space travel in under 100 years. Communicating with distant planets can take decades/centuries per message because of the vast distances, giving enough time from "hi we're here" to the second message for the other civilisation to go from harmless to existential-threat, and given how life on earth mercilessly eradicates other life (even within species, just look at human genocides) it's not a reach to think aliens would do the same to us. The peaceful ones are eradicated by the aggressive ones (the more aggressive Homo Sapiens eradicated the more peaceful Neanderthals), so existence selects for aggression. Therefore, this could be our reality right now: Several aggressive super advanced civilisations could be out there, listening for signs of life, wiping them out before they become a threat. 3) Generally the plausibility of the catastrophic events in the second half of the 2nd book ("the battle of darkness") and what happens in book 3. The way he writes makes it feel real, like this could actually happen, rather than some Star Wars space cowboy deathstar scenario. There are some seriously bleak moments in there that can leave you feeling unsettled. Gotta disagree about external sources. Not sure what tripped you up, but it was totally possible to follow for me despite not having a scientific background. Understanding all the technical details isn't necessary to get the story. Got the character names mixed up a few times due to my unfamiliarity with Chinese names, but was still able to follow once the context revealed who the narrator was talking about. What I do agree with is the dryness of the characters (which seems to just be how the author likes his sci-fi characters) & the weirdness of the whole fictional-wife-becomes-real-wife plotline, which felt like a creepy fever dream. It didn't do anything for the wider plot, totally unnecessary & tedious, but luckily it passes & doesn't come back 😅

Dude I havent a single math problem or study anything science related for at least 15 years and I got all the concepts of the book. It's not that hard. Maybe u got a little impatient?

@@DTTaTa possibly. It could have been the pacing. It could also have been just my expectations. Thanks for replying. I do plan to try the second book again.

@@junkfire4554 Thanks for this insight. A lot of the things that you mentioned here are definitely some of the things that I struggled with. Honestly, it makes me feel better that other people had some of the same issues. Makes me feel a little bit more positive going into a second read. Thanks!