7 ms·

I couldn't bring myself to swallow his explanation for throttling scientific advancement. The trisolarans use a device that meddles with the results of particle

I couldn't bring myself to swallow his explanation for throttling scientific advancement. The trisolarans use a device that meddles with the results of particle experiments, to make the results super unexpected, so the scientists will commit suicide out of desperation. Make their experimental results so curious and interesting that the observers don't want to live anymore. To me that doesn't jibe with human nature one bit. I also never really understood what the motivation was for projecting a countdown timer into that guy's optic nerve, other than a hackneyed Dan-Brown-level suspense device. I wish I'd read this on paperback instead of e-book so I could flip back to some more of the "wait. what?"s and "?!"s I would have scribbled in the margins.

niknoble 5y ago
> I couldn't bring myself to swallow his explanation for throttling scientific advancement. The trisolarans use a device that meddles with the results of particle experiments, to make the results super unexpected, so the scientists will commit suicide out of desperation. Make their experimental results so curious and interesting that the observers don't want to live anymore. To me that doesn't jibe with human nature one bit. Agreed, scientists would never react that way in real life. Some of the replies are saying that the behavior is explained by Chinese attitudes towards failure, but this plot device (person commits suicide in response to philosophically disturbing event) is something that I've seen a few times in different contexts, so it must be more general than that. When I was in high school, I wrote a story that was basically just this. Character sees something impossible, spirals into depression over it, and finally kills himself. I wouldn't enjoy reading a story like that today, but I remember that it matched the aesthetics taught in K-12 English classes, which weren't very concerned with characters behaving realistically. The story "What's Expected of Us" by Ted Chiang uses this trope too. It annoyed me enough when I read it that I wrote a note about it: > There is zero chance people would go insane due to the emergence of a philosophical paradox like this. The laws of physics are full of mind-bending paradoxes in the real world, but they have no effect on the average person's state of mind. They are not relevant to our day-to-day pursuit of money, popularity, food, entertainment, friendship, sex, etc. ... I don't know why people have a tendency to write stories about a philosophical idea leading to insanity, when such a thing clearly doesn't match reality. I fell prey to the same temptation with my [story I wrote in high school], but that was more believable since in my story only the protagonist was driven insane by the phenomenon, not the whole society.
schwartzworld 5y ago
Reading it in paperback definitely made me feel less bad when I threw the book across the room
tinalumfoil 5y ago
> The trisolarans use a device that meddles with the results of particle experiments, to make the results super unexpected, so the scientists will commit suicide out of desperation I actually liked that concept, and I think if participle experiments unexpectedly stopped working a lot of scientists would lose heart. But (SPOILERS), I couldn't get over the mechanism they used. They program two protons to effectively do their bidding flying around the world causing havoc. They communicate with the protons instantly and the protons can move around on their own, hear and see everything, effect people's vision, effect equipment. Honestly it wasn't really clear where the capabilities ended. It seemed so plot-convenience-y that it ruined the first half of the book for me. Which, despite people's criticisms here, I did like.
- garmaine 5y ago
  > I actually liked that concept, and I think if participle experiments unexpectedly stopped working a lot of scientists would lose heart. Actual physicist here. We LIVE for that moment when the experiment does something unexpected. That’s when new discoveries are made, and our understanding of the world turned upside down. We got into the field hoping for a moment like that to happen within our lifetime. Suicide? Hell no, we’d be giddy for excitement wanting to see what happens next. Liu Cixin doesn’t have the faintest clue about scientists and what motivates them. I put down the book as soon as that part happened.
  - rhn_mk1 5y ago
    Keep in mind that (SPOILERS) the scientists were aware that their results were being manipulated. That's what the suicide note said, and that's also seen in the countdown that was clearly the result of an intelligent being.
    - garmaine 5y ago
      Which, again, would be a fantastically amazing discovery, perhaps the greatest ever in the history of science. A physicist would be salivating at the possibilities. But iirc it started off with a whole history of physics grad students offing themselves when their experiments didn’t work out or confirmed negative results, not just the one you are referring to.
csallen 5y ago
(SPOILERS) Was the point of the sophon meddling to make the scientists commit suicide? I thought the point was to simply prevent the gathering of experimental evidence, which would stymie progress. The scientist suicides were just an unintended (if hokey and unbelievable) side effect, and it didn't seem like the plot depended on them.
- SkyMarshal 5y ago
  That was my reading of it too. The suicides were only a side-effect of the real objective, and perhaps more credible in Asian culture where historically, suicides were a means of redeeming oneself for a great failure, shame, or loss of face. But they were not the main objective of the Trisolarians’ intervention. The main objective was to sabotage particle accelerators and thus prevent humanity from understanding the full subatomic structure of matter, which is the key to scientific and technological advancement. Thus humanity would not be able to defend itself when the Trisolarian fleet arrived to colonize Earth 400yrs later.
jandrese 5y ago
The sophons were so annoying. So they build these god-in-a-box fundamental particles that would be perfect for scouting out all nearby solar systems for habitable planets, and they instead use them only to give the human race a wedgie. Also, humanity just deciding one day that exploration is lame and unfair so they'll forever be against letting people leave the solar system was beyond annoying. And that forever is forever, humanity as a whole never changes their mind, even when they're being murdered by the dumbest smart weapon of all time.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- SkyMarshal 5y ago
  > Also, humanity just deciding one day that exploration is lame and unfair so they'll forever be against letting people leave the solar system was beyond annoying. This is one aspect I liked of the books because it is an exploration into the difficulty of big decision-making, and how various human biases can result in poor decisions. Numerous critical decisions were wrong throughout the series, - the battle plan of the first engagement vs the Trisolaris probe, choice of Luo Ji’s successor, banning light speed research, strategy for defending against a Dark Forest attack, etc. This may partly derive from the world view of a Chinese author who is old enough to know about all of the CCP’s big decisions and failures over the years - Great Leap Forward (famine), Cultural Revolution (destroyed knowledge, science, and truth), Tiananmen Square, etc. Another compelling aspect was that it faced humanity with an adversary that was not only technologically superior, but also superior at decision-making and strategy. Every decision the Trisolarans made was clearly calculated, and all possible outcomes clearly understood by them. They were only thwarted in the end by random dumb luck (the human broadcast ships and Trisolaris escort probes flying through a region of space that disabled the probes). I found it all culturally and psychologically insightful.
  - slyall 5y ago
    I remember when I first read it I found the periodic "mass panics" unrealistic. As in about 10 times in the book the entire world population goes nuts. Then I remembered Chinese history.
mdoms 5y ago
> I couldn't bring myself to swallow his explanation for throttling scientific advancement. The trisolarans use a device that meddles with the results of particle experiments, to make the results super unexpected, so the scientists will commit suicide out of desperation. Make their experimental results so curious and interesting that the observers don't want to live anymore. To me that doesn't jibe with human nature one bit. You either need to re-read the book or stop commenting on it, because you are severely misremembering it.
enragedcacti 5y ago
> The trisolarans use a device that meddles with the results of particle experiments, to make the results super unexpected, so the scientists will commit suicide out of desperation. you are combining to different things here. One aspect is that they use the sophons to stimy research into particle physics so that humans can't advance into understanding higher dimensionality, etc. The second, unrelated aspect is using the sophons to effectively terrorize scientists in non particle physics fields into either submission or suicide by gaslighting them about the nature of the universe. The purpose of the countdown timer and blinking the universal background radiation from the main character's perspective was to make his life a living nightmare until he agreed to stop his nanoparticle research.

niknoble 5y ago

> I couldn't bring myself to swallow his explanation for throttling scientific advancement. The trisolarans use a device that meddles with the results of particle experiments, to make the results super unexpected, so the scientists will commit suicide out of desperation. Make their experimental results so curious and interesting that the observers don't want to live anymore. To me that doesn't jibe with human nature one bit. Agreed, scientists would never react that way in real life. Some of the replies are saying that the behavior is explained by Chinese attitudes towards failure, but this plot device (person commits suicide in response to philosophically disturbing event) is something that I've seen a few times in different contexts, so it must be more general than that. When I was in high school, I wrote a story that was basically just this. Character sees something impossible, spirals into depression over it, and finally kills himself. I wouldn't enjoy reading a story like that today, but I remember that it matched the aesthetics taught in K-12 English classes, which weren't very concerned with characters behaving realistically. The story "What's Expected of Us" by Ted Chiang uses this trope too. It annoyed me enough when I read it that I wrote a note about it: > There is zero chance people would go insane due to the emergence of a philosophical paradox like this. The laws of physics are full of mind-bending paradoxes in the real world, but they have no effect on the average person's state of mind. They are not relevant to our day-to-day pursuit of money, popularity, food, entertainment, friendship, sex, etc. ... I don't know why people have a tendency to write stories about a philosophical idea leading to insanity, when such a thing clearly doesn't match reality. I fell prey to the same temptation with my [story I wrote in high school], but that was more believable since in my story only the protagonist was driven insane by the phenomenon, not the whole society.

schwartzworld 5y ago

Reading it in paperback definitely made me feel less bad when I threw the book across the room

tinalumfoil 5y ago

> The trisolarans use a device that meddles with the results of particle experiments, to make the results super unexpected, so the scientists will commit suicide out of desperation I actually liked that concept, and I think if participle experiments unexpectedly stopped working a lot of scientists would lose heart. But (SPOILERS), I couldn't get over the mechanism they used. They program two protons to effectively do their bidding flying around the world causing havoc. They communicate with the protons instantly and the protons can move around on their own, hear and see everything, effect people's vision, effect equipment. Honestly it wasn't really clear where the capabilities ended. It seemed so plot-convenience-y that it ruined the first half of the book for me. Which, despite people's criticisms here, I did like.

garmaine 5y ago
> I actually liked that concept, and I think if participle experiments unexpectedly stopped working a lot of scientists would lose heart. Actual physicist here. We LIVE for that moment when the experiment does something unexpected. That’s when new discoveries are made, and our understanding of the world turned upside down. We got into the field hoping for a moment like that to happen within our lifetime. Suicide? Hell no, we’d be giddy for excitement wanting to see what happens next. Liu Cixin doesn’t have the faintest clue about scientists and what motivates them. I put down the book as soon as that part happened.
- rhn_mk1 5y ago
  Keep in mind that (SPOILERS) the scientists were aware that their results were being manipulated. That's what the suicide note said, and that's also seen in the countdown that was clearly the result of an intelligent being.
  - garmaine 5y ago
    Which, again, would be a fantastically amazing discovery, perhaps the greatest ever in the history of science. A physicist would be salivating at the possibilities. But iirc it started off with a whole history of physics grad students offing themselves when their experiments didn’t work out or confirmed negative results, not just the one you are referring to.

csallen 5y ago

(SPOILERS) Was the point of the sophon meddling to make the scientists commit suicide? I thought the point was to simply prevent the gathering of experimental evidence, which would stymie progress. The scientist suicides were just an unintended (if hokey and unbelievable) side effect, and it didn't seem like the plot depended on them.

SkyMarshal 5y ago
That was my reading of it too. The suicides were only a side-effect of the real objective, and perhaps more credible in Asian culture where historically, suicides were a means of redeeming oneself for a great failure, shame, or loss of face. But they were not the main objective of the Trisolarians’ intervention. The main objective was to sabotage particle accelerators and thus prevent humanity from understanding the full subatomic structure of matter, which is the key to scientific and technological advancement. Thus humanity would not be able to defend itself when the Trisolarian fleet arrived to colonize Earth 400yrs later.

jandrese 5y ago

The sophons were so annoying. So they build these god-in-a-box fundamental particles that would be perfect for scouting out all nearby solar systems for habitable planets, and they instead use them only to give the human race a wedgie. Also, humanity just deciding one day that exploration is lame and unfair so they'll forever be against letting people leave the solar system was beyond annoying. And that forever is forever, humanity as a whole never changes their mind, even when they're being murdered by the dumbest smart weapon of all time.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SkyMarshal 5y ago
> Also, humanity just deciding one day that exploration is lame and unfair so they'll forever be against letting people leave the solar system was beyond annoying. This is one aspect I liked of the books because it is an exploration into the difficulty of big decision-making, and how various human biases can result in poor decisions. Numerous critical decisions were wrong throughout the series, - the battle plan of the first engagement vs the Trisolaris probe, choice of Luo Ji’s successor, banning light speed research, strategy for defending against a Dark Forest attack, etc. This may partly derive from the world view of a Chinese author who is old enough to know about all of the CCP’s big decisions and failures over the years - Great Leap Forward (famine), Cultural Revolution (destroyed knowledge, science, and truth), Tiananmen Square, etc. Another compelling aspect was that it faced humanity with an adversary that was not only technologically superior, but also superior at decision-making and strategy. Every decision the Trisolarans made was clearly calculated, and all possible outcomes clearly understood by them. They were only thwarted in the end by random dumb luck (the human broadcast ships and Trisolaris escort probes flying through a region of space that disabled the probes). I found it all culturally and psychologically insightful.
- slyall 5y ago
  I remember when I first read it I found the periodic "mass panics" unrealistic. As in about 10 times in the book the entire world population goes nuts. Then I remembered Chinese history.

mdoms 5y ago

enragedcacti 5y ago

> The trisolarans use a device that meddles with the results of particle experiments, to make the results super unexpected, so the scientists will commit suicide out of desperation. you are combining to different things here. One aspect is that they use the sophons to stimy research into particle physics so that humans can't advance into understanding higher dimensionality, etc. The second, unrelated aspect is using the sophons to effectively terrorize scientists in non particle physics fields into either submission or suicide by gaslighting them about the nature of the universe. The purpose of the countdown timer and blinking the universal background radiation from the main character's perspective was to make his life a living nightmare until he agreed to stop his nanoparticle research.