2018-01-24.md

January 29, 2018 · View on GitHub

Book: Three-body problem

Liu Cixin

"It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race."
The Adventists would like to destroy the human race by means of an alien power; the Redemptionists worship the alien civilization as a god; the Survivors wish to betray other humans to buy their own survival.
The focus of Christianity is Man.
He believed that technological progress was a disease in human society. The explosive development of technology was analogous to the growth of cancer cells, and the results would be identical: the exhaustion of all sources of nourishment, the destruction of organs, and the final death of the host body.
it would be impossible to stop the madness of humanity.

behind the “C:>” was a bottomless abyss.
She learned about something called FORTRAN, which allowed you to program using a language close to natural language.
Strategic blind spots are extremely dangerous.

The laws of physics are invariant across space and time.
[during the Chinese Revolution] "Ohm’s law you called resistance law, Maxwell’s equations you called electromagnetic equations, Planck’s constant you called the quantum constant"
Kardashev Scale amount of energy a civilization is able to use for communication.
Monte Carlo Method the essential idea is using randomness to solve problems.
“This is the six-dimensional body of the proton projected into three-space.” (WTF?)
Preliminary Analysis of the Influence of Extraterrestrial Civilizations on Human Social and Political Trends
the signal wave was an abstract view of the universe: one end connected to the endless past, the other to the endless future
Jovian (refers to the Roman god Jupiter) means all the planets were similar to Jupiter

Big-character are handwritten, wall-mounted posters using large-sized Chinese characters, used as a means of protest, propaganda, and popular communication
Taikonauts: chinese astronaut
Fu Xi: character of chinese mythology
Mozi chinese philosopher.

"Does it represent the yearning for order, or the surrender to chaos?"
"I can only dance in my chains."
“Emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.”
"The next day I kept on thinking about the three spheres dancing in emptiness."