The universe is a dark forest-three-body II: dark forest

Liu's "Three-body" is a masterpiece in the history of science fiction in China, and won the Best Novel Award in the 73rd Hugo Award. This award is called the Nobel Prize in science fiction, which shows the greatness of this novel. I still remember the first time I read this novel, especially when I read the second Dark Forest. The shock it brought me slowed me down for a whole week, and I felt that my world view was subverted. This time, I revisited the second part that shocked me the most and tried to write my own thoughts. The language is inevitably immature, but I will try my best to record my thoughts.

The whole novel is based on two universal axioms and two terms "chain of doubt" and "technological explosion", which are the key to the whole novel. These concepts were put forward at the beginning of the novel, then turned to other aspects of description, and finally revealed the ultimate significance of these concepts. At the beginning of the novel, people on the earth already knew the existence of the three-body and knew that the three-body sent two wise men to lock the earth's science and technology, and the three-body fleet would eventually come. This has caused a global panic, but it is precisely because the three men are more advanced beings, their minds are completely open, and they know nothing about familiar strategies such as conspiracy and disguise. Therefore, the earth people took advantage of this advantage and launched a project called "face-to-face plan". The selected people are called "face people". They have almost supreme power and don't need to explain their actions to anyone. Similarly, an organization called ETO, because of its despair of mankind, chose to help the trio destroy mankind. They launched the corresponding "wall-breaking plan" for the "side wall plan", and the corresponding candidate was called "wall-breaking person". They need to reveal their ultimate goal by analyzing the behavior of "Mian", peel off the cocoon on silk and remove the disguise on the surface of various behaviors.

Every novel has a hero, and this novel is no exception. The hero's name is Luo Ji, and the English name is LOGIC. However, before being selected as a "one-sided person", the hero did not have the consciousness and sense of responsibility to bear the fate of mankind. He is an astronomer, but he is always cynical about everything. Perhaps it is this attitude of "what does the world have to do with me?" This makes the Santi people feel scared. He is the only one of all the "face protectors" who was appointed by Santi to kill. Like all TV programs, with the aura of the protagonist, he narrowly escaped the murder of three people again and again. Through hibernation technology, he reached the future of more than 200 years. At that time, most people lived underground, and the concept of home was gone. People live on the "branches and leaves" of "big trees", and LCD screens are everywhere. It is also in the short-term technological progress that people mistakenly think that they can compete with the advanced three-body man, and human beings are no longer afraid of the attack of the three-body man. After more than 200 years, the name "the man who is against the wall" has gradually been forgotten by people, and this name is also considered as a ridiculous product after the first great panic. No one cared about the former "savior" until a three-body detector called "water drop" by naive people unexpectedly attacked more than 2,000 proud starships, and people suddenly realized that the technology of the earth was still in childhood compared with the three-body detector.

Then, Luo Ji, our hero, began to shoulder the responsibility entrusted to him by human beings more than 200 years ago, and revealed the basic picture of the sociology of the universe through the dialogue with Shi Qiang (simply explained as his head of security). The first is the axiom of cosmic civilization: 1. Survival is the most fundamental need of civilization. 2. Civilization keeps growing, but the total amount of matter in the universe remains unchanged. Then there are the terms "chain of suspicion" and "technology explosion".

"Doubt chain" means that I know what you think, but you will still doubt what I think of you, and I will doubt what you think of me ... Such suspicion will continue to circulate until there is no communication, forming a chain, that is, a chain of suspicion. From the perspective of game theory, it is that two civilizations cannot form common knowledge. And if we put this doubt in the vast universe, there is no doubt that this doubt will continue because of the distance in space. "Big Bang": Human civilization has a history of 5,000 years, the life history of the earth is several billion years, and the development of modern science and technology is 300 years. From the time scale of the universe, this is not development at all, but explosion! The possibility of technological leap is the explosive buried in every civilization. If it is ignited by internal or external factors, it will explode with a bang! The earth is 300 years old, but there is no reason to think that human beings are the fastest growing civilizations in the universe, and the technological explosion of other civilizations may be more rapid.

Quoting Luo Ji's explanation of Shi Qiang in the novel is: "I am weaker than you. After receiving your exchange information, I learned of your existence, and the chain of suspicion between us was established. During this period, I may have a technical explosion at any time, and I will walk far ahead of you and become stronger than you. You know, on the scale of the universe, hundreds of years is just a flick of a finger, and I know that your existence and the information you get from communication are probably the best fuse for technological explosion. Therefore, even if I am just a baby civilization, a budding civilization, it is full of dangers for you. If you are better than me, since I can find you, then one day you can also find me, so there will be a string of doubts between us; If you are weaker than me, but there may be a technical explosion at any time, it will become the first situation. To sum up, first, let you know my existence; Second, it is dangerous for me to let you exist, which violates the first axiom. "

Based on the above information, the law of the dark forest in the universe is as follows: "The universe is a dark forest, and every civilization is a hunter with a gun, sneaking in the forest like a ghost, gently pushing the branches in the way, trying not to make a sound, and even breathing must be careful: he must be careful, because there are hunters sneaking like him everywhere in the forest. If he finds other life, there is only one thing he can do: shoot and destroy it. In this forest, others are a hell and an eternal threat. Any life that exposes its existence will soon be eliminated. This is the picture of cosmic civilization, which is the explanation of Fermi paradox. " This is why the universe is always dark.

When I first started reading these, my world view experienced the process of collapse and reconstruction. After all, the information I have been receiving, including movies and books, is that human beings are actively looking for contact with aliens, eager to find traces of other life, and spare no effort to spread human information to outer space. It's hard to accept this information suddenly, but when you think about it, it seems to be the same. How else can we explain Fermi's paradox? (Fermi Paradox: Theoretically speaking, human beings can fly to various planets in the Milky Way within 6.5438+0 million years. Then aliens should have come to earth as long as they evolved 654.38+0 million years before humans. In other words, Fermi's paradox shows such a paradox: A. Aliens exist-scientific inference can prove that aliens evolved much earlier than humans, and they should have come to the earth and existed somewhere. B. aliens don't exist-so far, humans haven't found any clues about the existence of aliens. )

What impressed me most in the novel is Liu's description of human nature, which is found in all aspects of the novel and can be said to permeate between the lines of the novel. At the beginning of the great panic, Luo Ji, regarded as a faceless man, experienced the separation from his wife and realized the law of the dark forest. In order to test his conjecture, he sent a "spell" to the universe through the sun, but it was despised and laughed at by people. When the conjecture was verified, human beings once again regarded Luo Ji as a "god" from the "crushed" underground. "Use it like a pearl and discard it like a shoe" is this kind of behavior.

"Death is not your enemy, eternity is."

This sentence reminds me of a sentence in Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Forest, "Death is not the opposite of life, but lasts forever as a part of life." These two sentences are all about life and death, but the emphasis is different. Because people yearn for eternity, desperately pursue eternity and compete with each other, a series of pains and tragedies have arisen. Death is the most natural state that every living thing will enter, but human beings can't accept and face it calmly.

Hiding yourself by faithfully mapping the universe is the only way to integrate into eternity.

This sentence is a description of the perfect "water drop", but at first glance I think it is more about the role of Zhang Beihai, who has been hiding himself so deeply that no one can see through him. After successfully pretending to be a triumphalist, after two centuries of long waiting, he finally ushered in the dawn of victory. As a soldier, he finally sacrificed himself and became a "new human".

"What's it to you to destroy you?"

When the "water drop" called "Tears of the Virgin Mary" penetrated more than 2,000 starships, there was a sentence in the novel "If I destroy you, it's none of your business", which touched me greatly. Yes, survival is the most fundamental need of civilization, not to say that what you do is right or wrong. When the other party has absolute power to crush you, any reason is not important. Just like ants do something wrong. You will step on them when you walk, but you will not give any explanation when you step on an ant. In the third film "Death Forever", a "small piece of paper" that came to the singer's planet can reduce the dimension of the whole solar system, and all life becomes a two-dimensional picture, without life. What does this moment have to do with you?

"I have a dream that one day, the bright sunshine can shine into the dark forest."

At the end of the novel, Luo Ji talks with a threesome, which is what he said. I believe this is also the message that the author Liu wants to convey. I think of a sentence in The Wandering Earth: No matter where the final result leads human history, we all choose hope. Even with the suffocating law of the dark forest, I believe, "Maybe the bud of love exists in other parts of the universe, and we should encourage her to sprout and grow everywhere." 20 19.2. 19