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It's a truly fascinating piece, but wow, I didn't expect going in that I'd come out not liking him. On the other hand, I didn't really know anything about Liu Cixin or his work before now, so maybe this is all well-trodden ground for everyone else.
What a timely article on HN for me as I am reading through the Remembrance of Earth's Past Trilogy right now... certainly not the best sci-fi works I've ever read but some of the ideas are intriguing.
Imo, the second book was exceptional and as a standalone, one of the best sci-fi books of the past decade.
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> They phrased it this way: sure, we don't have a free press, and we have a benevolent tyrant running the place, but: I think the bigger problem is people completely mischaracterizing what Singapore is. Modern Singapore is nothing like a "benevolent tyranny". The best way to characterize it is probably to imagine a large, well-run city with strict laws, heavy bureaucracy, expansive regulation and government involveme…
Not trying to be annoying but your comment is more convincing of the opposite of what you're saying than of what you're saying.
- strict laws - heavy bureaucracy - expansive regulation - government involvement in business - politics are dominated by one political party
All of these give off a terrible impression. But I urge the reader to consider that none of these are unique to Singapore, and are in fact not uncommon among cities/town. Like it is not uncommon for city/state-level governments to be dominant by one party or another for generations. Nor is it uncommon for cities to have annoyingly or weirdly archaic and strict laws. (Singapore bans chewing gum? The US still bans the import of "Kinder Surprise").
I'm not the best writer for this sort of thing, but I just want to dispel this notion that Singapore is this magical, esoteric fascist paradise. It's just a city-state which leans more toward government regulation. Only once we stop treating it as exceptionally special can we actually discuss which policies and aspects of government work and don't work well.
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Mind you, weak && bad does not imply inconsequence. Try to put the PC for our time aside, and think about this again. In the cold and cruel universe, what would survive? Advance, advance at all costs. Edit: You don’t have to save the universe in bold to become a character. Being paper thin and then destroy the 3 dimensional universe, on behalf of the will of mankind?
She lets it end. No one apart from the mysterious (urg) race of aliens is trying to destroy the universe by collapsing it, they might as well be nothing, and story telling wise they're just a natural disaster without agency. She just stays in her dimensional safe box and doesn't take action. Her only actions are choosing to let things happen, but she's never the one putting them in action. Also, the goal isn't/should…
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Chen Xin is selected to represent the will of the mankind (or she would've been purged quickly after showing the inabilities) so the character should be thin in this sense, which reflects the very opposite character, `Thomas Wade`.
So I understand the story as, that humanity chose to destroy itself in honor of what they value.
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Devil's advocate here, but to be fair, there's a pretty decent likelihood that we in the west have indeed been "brainwashed" into believing that freedom is actually more important than these other things he's listing (health care, housing, education, etc...). If you set aside freedom as a goal in itself for a second, then it's actually worth asking: is freedom actually the most important factor leading to those other…
The problem with this sort of reasoning is that it relies on the benevolence of a dictatorship (and I don't use the term dictatorship pejoratively). It's all fine and good to have a system where people's needs are provided for and in general the populace is taken care of (for example, the housing situation in Singapore is very good and much better than places where people have to pay through the nose for shacks, like…
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Devil's advocate here, but to be fair, there's a pretty decent likelihood that we in the west have indeed been "brainwashed" into believing that freedom is actually more important than these other things he's listing (health care, housing, education, etc...). If you set aside freedom as a goal in itself for a second, then it's actually worth asking: is freedom actually the most important factor leading to those other…
Exactly. Honestly, having lived for a while in Singapore myself, I don't think there is much logical argument to be made against that. Another thing to be considered is that freedom in the West gets more and more relative latterly. Say the wrong thing in public (or even in private, if it is made public), and you can easily be fired, even denied future jobs. Is the overall degree of freedom in most Western countries t…
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If Britain were putting their dissidents and muslims in concentration camps I would be very vocally criticising my own country - which I suppose means I'd be a dissident earmarked for a concentration camp. I already do criticise on lots of other topics, and some of our worse moments of empire in history, or the lives ruined by UK's austerity dogma. I criticise the US too, and don't want to be just like them either. W…
"I'd be a dissident earmarked for a concentration camp" From what I remember of Duncan Campbell's Secret Society I believe the legislation for just emergency measures as interment of 'subversives' and other emergency measures was drafted during the Cold War - this would be expected to be passed by parliament in the event of a suitable emergency. I would suspect these things have never been thrown out but will still b…
Still that veneer of civility and rule of law is important, however artificial it sometimes seems. Democracy is all too fragile. I remember the nuclear war programme Threads, and the documentary at the same time - possibly Panorama - where some petty bureaucrat or councillor was positively itching for Armageddon to happen just so he could start shooting people. I think he only had a very minor place in the emergency hierarchy. It was his answer for every disagreement - shoot them - he must have mentioned it a dozen times!
See you in camp... :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Devil's advocate here, but to be fair, there's a pretty decent likelihood that we in the west have indeed been "brainwashed" into believing that freedom is actually more important than these other things he's listing (health care, housing, education, etc...). If you set aside freedom as a goal in itself for a second, then it's actually worth asking: is freedom actually the most important factor leading to those other…
The problem with this sort of reasoning is that it relies on the benevolence of a dictatorship (and I don't use the term dictatorship pejoratively). It's all fine and good to have a system where people's needs are provided for and in general the populace is taken care of (for example, the housing situation in Singapore is very good and much better than places where people have to pay through the nose for shacks, like…
"When a reporter recently challenged Liu to answer the middle-school questions about the “meaning” and the “central themes” of his story, he didn’t get a single one right. “I’m a writer,” he told me, with a shrug. “I don’t begin with some conceit in mind. I’m just trying to tell a good story.”" Does anybody have a link or know more about this ?