In a piece at Bloomberg Niall Ferguson quotes Liu Cixin’s science fiction novel, The Dark Forest:
The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost … trying to tread without sound … The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life — another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod — there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people … any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out.
Something to reflect on in a foreign policy context.
Sounds like he’s read Darwin, red in tooth and claw. No room for alliances. Another thing, if this is what he writes, it’s what he’s allowed to. Very dark.
That’s Tennyson:
although there are attestations of similar expressions as early as 1837. In other words it antedates Darwin.
Good book. Good writer. Only started reading Chinese sic fi authors a few years ago. Now we have US authors trying to write and capture the Chinese style. Slightly different world view makes it different. Actual quote is reminiscent of lot of the older mythology. A lot of that was pretty nasty stuff.
Steve
To put a counter-spin, Dark Forest’s sequel, Death’s end, involves an idealistic protagonist who stays true to that idealism.
Human nature is complex.
Nations have no morals, only interests. However from the brief quotation provided it sounds like Cixin is taking that to an extreme, not surprising considering the Middle Kingdom’s xenophobic attitude towards other peoples and nations. Nations like people constantly form alliances, temporary to be sure, in order to not have to be Argus-eyed towards every other nation. That’s why animals and people form herds, schools, packs, school cliques, etc.
OT- Cowen cited a nice piece he liked on how people think. It is worth reading, if noting else just to have this list by Balko which looks at many millions of arrests, tickets, searches, jury selection etc. and how race affects those choices.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/opinions/systemic-racism-police-evidence-criminal-justice-system/
One should not take that quote and apply it to a culture.
The book itself states the “dark forest†rests on assumptions that does not apply to human interactions; even at the civilization level.
It is like taking a quote from Foundations and relating it to the US in the 1940’s.
steve:
The article to which you link is two years old, with the numbers updated for 2020. I’ve read it.
I do think that policing has a systemic problem but not one that will be addressed by the measures that are being proposed. The problem is one of trust. People in black communities distrust the police too much and police officers distrust blacks more than the situation on the ground supports.
The Twitter thread to which you linked is interesting, steve. It also illustrates the limitations of the form. That should be a blog post.
Agree. I guess those long twitter threads appeal to some people, but not me. They sometimes have really useful info but the form makes it harder to process. Maybe just because I am older.
Steve