The Three-Body Problem

I have just finished reading The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, the first in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy.

My introduction to the trilogy was through the netflix show which currently has one season out that covers the first book. When I finished the season I couldn’t let go of the story, Liu’s imagined universe was too captivating. To satiate my undying curiosity I watched every second of this 4 hour youtube video summarizing the whole trilogy but that wasn’t enough so I decided to get hold of the books. I plan to finish the other two before the end of summer.

The premise of the books can be summarized as an exploration of the following observation:

“There is a strange contradiction revealed by the naivete and kindness demonstrated by humanity when faced with the universe: On Earth humankind can step onto another continent, and without a thought, destroy the kindred civilizations found there through warfare and disease. But when they gaze up to the stars, they turn sentimental and believe that if extraterrestrial intelligence exists, they must be civilizations bound by universal, noble and moral constraints, as if cherishing and loving different forms of life are parts of a self-evident universal code of conduct” - author’s postscript.

The book is a cautionary tale advising human civilization on our sentiments towards extraterrestrials, should they exist. For most people this is an irrelevant discussion because everyday life already has enough problems and 'aliens' don't feel like an immediate challenge. However, we do have a challenge...or threat on the horizon, that will probably be the same as coming into contact with aliens and that is AGI (more on this later though, still gathering my thoughts). The book does present something else though worth considering, which might be a bit more grounded and relatable:

How much suffering, on a personal level, can justify betraying humanity?

Using “humanity” might be too grand for the question to be relatable so you can substitute ‘humanity’ for nation, tribe, clan, or family. Also in this context betrayal means the complete severing of empathy for the collective and allowing the profound pain inflicted upon you by a few to permanently eclipse any sense of loyalty, love, or obligation to the rest.

In the book, the character who betrayed humanity watched her own mother denounce her father during a brutal public execution. His murderers were his own teenage students and his only crime was an ideological difference. She then inherited her father’s “sins” and endured years of brutal labor, eventually being framed for a crime and sent to a dark, freezing prison. After experiencing the absolute worst of what humanity had to offer, was she justified in surrendering the fate of humanity to an alien civilization?

A parting quote:

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago