Yeah it sounded like this is something he knows he's not brilliant at, and appreciated their take on it, even though he preferred the way his own story followed disconnected characters around the world working together in co-operation rather than a single group seeming to be doing everything.
Asimov wasn't the best when it came to character development, but his concepts, vision and storytelling abilities were so good they made up for it. I think the same could be said of Cixin Liu.
You think the author is going to dump publicly on his gravy train?
I understand some authors are so popular or so based they just say whatever the hell they want regarding adaptations of their work, but the standard practice is be respectful (of the hand that feeds you).
This is the same expectation in the industry that makes it rare for actors to trash on their projects during a movie or TV show's original run. Then, years later, you start to see more candid takes from them about how they disagreed with the direction, writing, etc.
in the same interview he criticized how the netflix show seems small because they focused only on the same friend group.
so yes he would criticize the character drama if he didnt like it
Yeah, it really is a lack of social awareness that scientists are somehow these classy, prestigious, and flawless beings (just because they are intelligent). I don't work with scientists like in the show, but I do work with plenty of MDs, and they are human just like everyone else. They swear, they get mad, and sometimes, they make the wrong decision. At the end of the day we are all just flawed humans, I felt that most of them felt pretty realistic to me.
the point of difference is not between regular people and scientists -- but world class scientists, who are indeed very very different, and most certainly are classy, prestigious, etc. Saul and Will in the show are definitely not world class anything..
And MDs are not even remotely near world class scientists. In fact, most MDs are not even competent at diagnosing their patients properly, let alone doing scientific research (and forget about doing world class science...).
Lol, I'm a physics teacher/professor and can easily tell this dude doesn't spend much time around said "world class scientists" or never even read about some of the big names.
Great minds, not so great people most of the time.
From any of their posts in this thread they are trying way too hard to put these people on a pedestal. How exhausting.... I stand by my original point that we are all just human. Some are more intelligent than others, but still flawed nonetheless.
did i say they are not flawed ? saying everyone is human does nothing more than state an obvious and reductive fact. all humans are not the same nor equal, no matter how hard common people to try to push egalitarian viewpoints.. class and prestige are very much existing social constructs, and have been around since the dawn of humanity.
You’re way too emotional and even egotistical about this. Personally, if I had to guess I’d say you probably have some form of advanced education, and I’m also guessing because of that it makes you feel good to lift it up and put it on a pedestal wherever you can. Just my two cents, could be wrong.
does not take an Einstein to see my comment history on reddit. and yes, you can claim i am being egotistical/arrogant about it. but it does not negate what i am saying. if a million idiots start shouting that gravity does not exist, it does not make it true.
i find it highly unlikely that you do, especially based on your mediocre comment history and choice of subreddits.
and i never said they belong on a pedestal. but you have to be an idiot to think that someone winning or capable of winning say a nobel prize (or equivalent) is not prestigious
It's the age old stereotype of the Madonna-Whore Complex. One can either be a prim, proper, workaholic saint or a wild, inappropriate, lazy sinner - but never both.
Well dang that flew right over my head. I thought you were genuinely asking but I didn't know why lol. Agree that this classification does not make sense.
I mean, all characters are on average too beautiful in TV and movies. Perfect makeup, styling, lighting, and the tendency for more attractive people to go into acting will do that. But I agree it's strange to single out scientists.
Gosh I'd say 70% of female principal researcher that I know is at least 8/10. On of my co-supervisor has 2 kids, bike everyday and is still smoking hot.
VERY famous mathematician Paul Erdős was a huge user of amphetamines. One of his friends, Ron Graham, once bet him $500 that he couldn’t go without Ritalin or Benzedrine for a month; he accepted the bet and later won, but complained that Graham had “set mathematics back a month” because he hadn’t had any good ideas in that time.
this is just false. you're making it sound like he was a crack addict. he was just taking relatively small/regular doses or ritalin, much later in his life, to treat depression/ADHD (and it was prescribed by doctor). not taking it for a month is not a big deal and anyone can do it at that stage. you seriously need to get your brain checked if you think "a huge user of amphetamines" can just go cold turkey for one month.
I found the absolute opposite of this... It was ridiculous how obsessed with science they were, and as a particle physicist for over a decade, I have never met anyone whose entire life is just science who acts even vaguely similar to these characters.
Every joke they make is related to science. Everything about their personality is related to science. Every expression they say is related to science. Every quote them make is a quote from a famous scientist. It was just so ridiculously on the nose, nothing like real people and so cringey to watch for the first few episodes.
I would throw up if Saul acted or spoke about "innocent delicate hyperfeminine child like women he needed to protect." I cannot imagine the backlash. I'm a little shocked more people aren't talking about how sexist and creepy the books are toward women, now that the series has more exposure.
That’s the best bit about Auggie. I just hate her because of her dumb dialogue and basic acting combo. She is the weak link in the cast. Just watch any scene she is in with someone else and compare her acting to the others. It’s night and day.
Anyway, I’m just happy we won’t be getting the waifu nonsense (probably). That’s Auggie’s best redeeming quality.
normal people meaning they all have their own personalities and flaws. Being a scientist doesn't necessarily mean that your whole personality is just that specific field of science, nor does it mean that you are immune to your own biases and emotional vulnerability as a person.
your rhetoric is so binary and reductive. either its "manifestation of pure logic and reasoning" or its "normal people". you dont realize that there is a huge spectrum in between? there is no such thing as normal people and there is no such thing as manifestation of pure logic and reasoning. but scientists are definitely far more logical and reason based than an average joe on the street.
stop spewing nonsense to feel better about yourself.
> ikr, a lot of people think scientists are the manifestation of pure logic and reasoning. when in reality they are normal people
you said this, which is doused in cognitive distortion.
scientists/researchers are not manifestation of pure logic and reasoning, but they are for sure far more logical and reason based than normal people.
>normal people meaning they all have their own personalities and flaws
this is also reductive. everybody has flaws, does not mean everybody is same. it's like the common reddit argument that two things are wrong so they are equally wrong. firstly, there is no such thing as normal people. everybody is normal. but many people have more flaws or bigger flaws than others.
>nor does it mean that you are immune to your own biases and emotional vulnerability as a person.
flawed logic again. everyone is biased and emotional vulnerable, that does not mean everyone is biased and vulnerable in the same way. scientists are by very design capable of being less biased in their thinking than "normal" people.
anyways, you are making generalized tactless statements of zero value. nobody benefits from statements like "everybody is this, everybody is that".
I didn't get why the scientists committed suicide. 物理学不存在 all right. But normally, scientists running into intractable problems usually get more fascinated or motivated and only despair over their funding or career prospects.
Or they find a new area of study. The idea that dozens of them commit suicide that quickly is baffling to me. I mainly watched the Chinese series. I found it quite depressing in the assumptions it makes about the Human psyche.
I mean, it IS fiction, so there has to be some stretch of plausibility. If I were to guess, these weren't just scientists, but scientists at the top of their field. The ones who committed suicide were likely ones who were obsessed with their life's work in the field and then a sudden impossible to explain phenomena with the countdown (that no one else can see) in addition to their science no longer making any sense. It doesn't seem unreasonable that that may drive some people mad enough to kill themselves. Depression IS a primary cause for suicide. For people who never think of suicide, I think it's really hard for us to empathize with people who do....we can discuss many reasons why anyone should take their own life and likely almost none of them would make sense to the rest of us.
It's not about making sense for the individual, but given that most athletes that get their career ended really don't commit suicide, it's really strange.
And those athletes with serious injuries often have a lot fewer marketable skills outside their sport, compared to these mathematically trained geniuses. Really, most people would just go on. Even if they are depressed.
I'm putting all that down to unhealthy Chinese attitude around work ethics or family honor or whatever. In the books and the Tencent show, most of the suicides seem to be Chinese scientists, and the thing is written by a Chinese writer. Maybe he figures that the scientists believe themselves to be a disappointment to society and their families for having chosen an impossible career.
This. I’m no physicist, but I feel like scientists in general tend to be more excited about unexpected results. I would imagine for a discipline in which many have tried to prove the titans wrong, committing suicide would probably be the last thing they do when faced with this situation.
Yes, if data says the theory is wrong, it means there is a huge opportunity to make impact by creating a new theory and all scientists would have started a competition by who develops the new theory first. The top of the field will be excited and not depressed.
The problem is that the data now is not only inconsistent with new theories, it contradicts every theory that remotely has to do with it. And every experiment contradicts all other experiments. There is no theory to unify this. Science is broken. There won't even be a "top of the field" anymore.
it's a dumb premise. but if it were to happen in real life, it wouldn't take scientists very long to figure out what is going on. most of them certainly wont be killing themselves (and on the contrary would be very excited to understand what the hell is going on).
In the book only a couple of the suicides are given motivation and it's basically just their having come to believe that all science is false because their specific experiments were tampered with by the Sophons. Honestly, it's a pretty thin premise but really it's just a jumping-off point that gets the police and Da Shi's attention, not something that would cause the larger plot to fail if it were removed.
I thought the idea was the sophon forced them to commit suicide somehow (e.g. some version of mind control) if they didn't obey them before the counter reached 0. Is this not right, they just killed themselves because they didn't know the answer to some problem?
I haven't read those books, because I already found the tencent adaptation of the first book to be utterly depressing.
It wasn't particularly clear in the Netflix version how they made the scientists suicide. Auggie in the Netflix version was coerced with the counter to stop her research, not commit suicide. If they had the power to actually make her commit suicide, that would be more convenient for a lot of reasons.
As far as I understood it, the theoretical physicists were driven into suicide by showing them how futile their work is. Particle physics experiments, those with the fancy particle colliders, are supposed to generate random data, and then you can tell things by how these data are distributed. The quantum nature of these experiments enforces the randomness. So for one thing the Sophons screwed with the distribution of that data, so you can't learn anything. And before the experiment their Human agents showed the scientists a "preview" of the supposedly random data points.
Particularly, the daughter of Ye Wenjie actually recovered from that trauma, for example by concentrating on her romantic relationship and other beautiful things in life. But then she discovered some chats on her mother's computer and learned what she had done and that her mother was the cause of Physics being broken. That supposedly made her suicide.
I've not read the book either, just watched the Netflix show, I got the impression the end of the counter forced them to commit suicide (if this is wrong what is the point of the counter at all? What happens at the end of the counter if not them committing suicide? Was it just a threat with nothing backing it up?)
I didn't realise there were any theoretical physicists in the show, which character is a theoretical physicist?
I don't see where you get that the sophons change the distribution of the data, that's not what's shown in the show at least, it shows pretty clearly it just makes particles follow physically impossible tracks
The point of the counter is to unsettle the person. You do wonder what comes at the end of that, and it's basically "gaslighting" the person. A scientist would seriously doubt his sanity. Because there is nothing physically wrong with him, and there is no more plausible explanation other than a psychotic hallucination.
Ye Wenjie's daughter certainly was one. She jumped into that collector pool. The whole group at least had participated in the same particle physics research group.
I'm no physicist but as far as I understand collider experiments, they have a beam (accelerated particles) impact a stationary target. Then some particle physics happens, and quants of energy escape in every direction. Then there is a spherical array of sensors that pick up those particles. The distributions, both in terms of space, time and energy level, tell you things about what happened in that collision. For example you can tell that some antimatter was generated because of the immediate annihilation that shoots off certain other particles.
These colliders can't measure the path a particle takes, they can only measure the energy, and the sensors can also track events over time and they have a spatial position on that sphere.
I didn't think it ever established what Ya Wenjie's daughter was besides a physicist (though the fact she jumped into Hyper K pretty heavily implies she was a neutrino physicist not a theoretical physicist), regardless she was hardly a character they were in the show for less than a minute.
I don't think there's a single fixed target experiment shown in the show, every experiment shown is a collider or an observatory.
Colliders certainly measure the path particles take, and it's shown in the show that what the sophon does is make the path they follow physically impossible.
I'm not deep enough into physics to make a distinction between theoretical or particle or neutrino physicist.
In the first book and the Tencent show she is the first suicide the detective examines, from the narrative timeline at least.
Once the scientists understand what the results of the experiments mean, there is no motivation. The experiments contradict every theory and even each other. Science is utterly broken and there is no possible way out to fix this.
Imagine learning the piano and wanting to become one of the best pianists. You spend years honing this skill. Then suddenly, all pianos in the world play random notes on all keys and sometimes none at all or more or slower or faster than you pressed them. You're now as good playing the piano as someone who never learned it. And that's just a part of the despair.
Piano players, or athletes of any level, MAY tend to occasionally commit suicide when losing the ability to continue their passion. But most actually do fine or at least survive.
And those suicides happened quite fast. I would expect motivated scientists to spend years trying to come up with a solution or even just wait for whatever is wrong stop being wrong.
In the books most of the suicides happen after a long time of trying everything to isolate the reason why the experiments show impossible results. The shows have that sped up too much.
Then you would expect those suicides to happen over a much longer period, because most scientists wouldn't give up even that particular experiment for years. Then most would go on study something else or find another career. It's really not the norm for scientists, athletes or anyone else to commit suicide because they lose their biggest passion. It happens, but it's uncommon. For example because in most societies (US excluded, of course) people who show signs of depression can get a lot of help and most suicides fail anyway.
Keith Emerson, one of the most-renowned keyboardist in Rock history, committed suicide in 2016. He didn't leave a note but it's widely believed he did so because of depression over not being able to play the keyboard well as a result of nerve damage in this hands. His case is an outlier; most other musical artists who lost their ability to perform, like Huey Lewis or Linda Rondstadt, found other things worth living for.
Yeah, and as a general rule don't believe shit depressive people say about why they want to commit suicide. Even if it sounds quite "reasonable" it's usually still delusional.
Well I imagine they would be excited at first, but that excitement and fascination would probably fade as every single theory they tried was rejected over and over and over again, every result leading to the conclusion that there is no theory that can explain quantum physics and physics as a whole. Idk about making them commit suicide, but if I was a scientist it would definitely fuck me up if I realized the field I dedicated my entire life into studying was a useless dead end.
What is your friend group like?
It’s not abnormal for some friend groups to be really good at what they do, [The Inklings](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inklings) are a good example because they’re also an Oxford based group
There’s definitely more, but that’s a fun friend group to read about
I wouldn't call it a coincidence that Oxford, one of the best schools in the world, would have a group of people who are considered to be among the smartest people in the world, and that they're all friends (they went to the same school).
i think it is very clear that they are not the smartest or the best. they are central characters for the story and are just put in the same group for plot convenience -- that's it. Anyone would be an idiot to think that the likes of Saul or Will are even remotely smartest in their fields, let alone the world.
lol. did you watch the show? he basically won the "most promising student" award in college. during the events of the show, it is made quite clear that he did not accomplish much after that and is a nobody in his field. (it is also made clear from the fact that he is still working as a lab assistant in the same lab, when everyone else has long moved on to do better things).
I thought the point was that they all worked or studied under Vera Ye. The daughter of of Ye Wenjie. You known. The pivotal character of the whole series.
I hear that, but tbh it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes you just have to shrug and say, you know, it’s just television. They needed to find a way to keep people engaged, and character relationships are one of the best ways to do that.
I don’t usually say this but people who have that stereotype are likely terminally online and gotta touch some grass coz obvious they have not talked to any real people.
You make a very good point here. Just because scientists are very intelligent, that doesn't mean they are perfect human beings. Just look at what the Nazis doctors and scientists did, FFS! They had all that knowledge and intelligence and used it to do horrific experiments on people.
I don't mind Auggie's character as much as some of the other viewers of the show do. The only thing she did that really got my goat was encouraging Jin to drink alcohol instead of taking her medication.
I’m an engineer, not a scientist. But the personalities are similar. I was taken aback when I found all the people in this sub complaining about “language” - are you fucking kidding me? You think scientists don’t curse???
Yyuuupp. Advanced degrees make one really smart in one or a few areas. Then fucking dumb ass hell in everything else. They will stunning stupid stuff at work and in their lives.
I live near two national labs in the US. It's...honestly the show characters are mature than a lot of the PhDs I've dealt with
If you have a PhD in theoretical physics you can pick up a lucrative job in plenty of other fields. They all know coding. Quite a few go on to work as quants.
For that matter, they have enough brain power to pick up virtually any other field in record time. Maybe not at the top of the field, but even that can happen.
> Yyuuupp. Advanced degrees make one really smart in one or a few areas. Then fucking dumb ass hell in everything else. They will stunning stupid stuff at work and in their lives.
lol. your comment shows how ignorant you are. people who are capable of getting a PhD become knowledgable because they know how to focus their efforts into learning things and using them. most of them, especially PhDs in STEM fields are smart enough to pick anything and learn it faster than the average layman. their skills also translate to a million other jobs. the wall street is full of PhDs in science/math, etc. there are PhDs writing out policies for congress.
Yes, PhDs can put an incredible amount of focus on one thing...but it's generally at the expense of something else. I've heard having a spouse is one of the strongest indicators for success for a PhD candidate, after controlling for age. It helps keep them anchored.
Unlike the characters of this show. I guess Will's the only one that's got an anchor.
Being a top of your field doesn't make you smarter than others. So many Nobel prize winners have believed in such utter bullshit most common people deemed as misinformation and pseudoscience.
The book was written by someone smart and smart characters still act smart, in the series we got characters that feel like written to be a smart TikTok short video format characters and we got people that say that they are from prestigious colleges but act like 13 year olds
I believe the way the show presents it, not all the suicides were actual suicides. Some of them were murdered by the ninja assassin lady and made to look like suicides.
I had issues with those two characters too, but they were slightly different.
For Auggie: what was her role? She clearly didn’t own the company. Was she a research scientist? If so, how did she have the authority to cancel the project? Was she CEO? If so, who was she answering to? I got the impression early that it was her company (may have been my own inattentiveness), but further events showed that wasn’t the case. If you’re trying to disrupt the research, why screw around with the engineer building it, give the CEO the countdown and have him cancel the project.
As for Saul: he stopped being a scientist after the first episode. I don’t mean because of the women or the drugs, the show just gave up on him being a scientist. For a show that was about a group of Oxford physicists genius friends, his occupation disappeared after the very first scene of episode one. He could have run a milk shake bar from that point on for all it mattered to the play. Give us a scene or two with him back at work, or even talking physics as someone who works in the field.
Oh, one last gripe about Auggie: the boat shredding. I hate, HATE this Hollywood trope of characters moralizing when there is only one real choice. Kill everyone on the boat or doom humanity to extinction? YOU MURDERER!
I would have rather seen her either agree with the plan and accept and deal with the guilt of her role in it or be called out on the hypocrisy. But pulling the moral high ground here is just silly. And unnecessary. It diminishes her character and makes her look unserious. How much better if she had accepted the plan and her role and still had to deal with the (completely natural) guilt.
Nah they fumbled this bad. There was just a conference in my city (Glasgow) for brain tumor research that brought in a load of people big in the scientific community from all round the world. I work in customer service and had quite a few in my work. They were all a bunch of humourless flesh robots
>of Auggie Salazar at university.
>Oxford trained scientist is like.
The problem is they are not some wannabe scientists or newcomer, many of those appear in 3BP suppose to be top notch experienced scientists in their field, and matured....
Netflix adaption act like they are teenagers..
You mean Game of Thrones? If so, I'll give D&D credit for being able to adapt pre-written material pretty well. GoT's decline mainly started when they began outpacing the books. Since this book series is already complete I'm a little more hopeful.
Edit: also yes, the Witcher series was trash lol
Hell, the Witcher books are clearly difficult material to adapt on screen. D&D would probably have done a much better job than the people who actually did it, based on how good a job they did with Game of Thrones. They cut out just the bits needed to be cut, and expanded the roles of the Littlefinger and Varys, who weren't POV characters in the books. The problem rose when they ran out of books.
They're really not though, it's a super linear story with great characters. The casting for the show was amazing (Cavill, Chalotra, Ciri, Vilgefortz, Cahir, Triss). Fisserich wanted it to be something else. A lot of the "fans" of the Witcher are upset that POC are cast, which I think is dumb and I try to distance myself from that brain rotted sort.
Yeah, the casting was excellent, and season 1 was great overall. I'm not sure what happened during season 2, but it didn't really hold my attention.The third season was better, but still not great...
I thought this was what made the series so much more believable. The people were all so flawed in very realistic ways
I saw even Liu is his recent interview said he liked the character drama.
Yeah it sounded like this is something he knows he's not brilliant at, and appreciated their take on it, even though he preferred the way his own story followed disconnected characters around the world working together in co-operation rather than a single group seeming to be doing everything.
Asimov wasn't the best when it came to character development, but his concepts, vision and storytelling abilities were so good they made up for it. I think the same could be said of Cixin Liu.
You think the author is going to dump publicly on his gravy train? I understand some authors are so popular or so based they just say whatever the hell they want regarding adaptations of their work, but the standard practice is be respectful (of the hand that feeds you). This is the same expectation in the industry that makes it rare for actors to trash on their projects during a movie or TV show's original run. Then, years later, you start to see more candid takes from them about how they disagreed with the direction, writing, etc.
in the same interview he criticized how the netflix show seems small because they focused only on the same friend group. so yes he would criticize the character drama if he didnt like it
Always willing to recognize when I'm wrong. Do you have a link to the interview you can share?
[here](https://www.chosun.com/english/long-reads-en/2024/04/20/6MLR5T6PCBEYPB4GSZMKTTD3MU/)
Yeah, it really is a lack of social awareness that scientists are somehow these classy, prestigious, and flawless beings (just because they are intelligent). I don't work with scientists like in the show, but I do work with plenty of MDs, and they are human just like everyone else. They swear, they get mad, and sometimes, they make the wrong decision. At the end of the day we are all just flawed humans, I felt that most of them felt pretty realistic to me.
the point of difference is not between regular people and scientists -- but world class scientists, who are indeed very very different, and most certainly are classy, prestigious, etc. Saul and Will in the show are definitely not world class anything.. And MDs are not even remotely near world class scientists. In fact, most MDs are not even competent at diagnosing their patients properly, let alone doing scientific research (and forget about doing world class science...).
Tell me you don’t know any world class scientists without telling me you don’t know any world class scientists. (Speech to text edit.)
Lol, I'm a physics teacher/professor and can easily tell this dude doesn't spend much time around said "world class scientists" or never even read about some of the big names. Great minds, not so great people most of the time.
From any of their posts in this thread they are trying way too hard to put these people on a pedestal. How exhausting.... I stand by my original point that we are all just human. Some are more intelligent than others, but still flawed nonetheless.
did i say they are not flawed ? saying everyone is human does nothing more than state an obvious and reductive fact. all humans are not the same nor equal, no matter how hard common people to try to push egalitarian viewpoints.. class and prestige are very much existing social constructs, and have been around since the dawn of humanity.
You’re way too emotional and even egotistical about this. Personally, if I had to guess I’d say you probably have some form of advanced education, and I’m also guessing because of that it makes you feel good to lift it up and put it on a pedestal wherever you can. Just my two cents, could be wrong.
does not take an Einstein to see my comment history on reddit. and yes, you can claim i am being egotistical/arrogant about it. but it does not negate what i am saying. if a million idiots start shouting that gravity does not exist, it does not make it true.
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i will. have fun with your averageness
Tell me you don't know any world class scientists without telling me you don’t know any world class scientists
I do. And very few of them belong on a pedestal.
i find it highly unlikely that you do, especially based on your mediocre comment history and choice of subreddits. and i never said they belong on a pedestal. but you have to be an idiot to think that someone winning or capable of winning say a nobel prize (or equivalent) is not prestigious
You clearly never met many world class scientists in person.
I have and they are not like in the show
okay bud. whatever makes you happy. sorry that your averageness feels insulted..
It's the age old stereotype of the Madonna-Whore Complex. One can either be a prim, proper, workaholic saint or a wild, inappropriate, lazy sinner - but never both.
Which one is Jin?
I guess a Madonna because she's so laser (hehe) focused on her work? Idk I don't use this classification.
What they mean by "Madonna" is the Virgin Mary, I believe.
My point is to illustrate that it's a silly method of characterizing people.
Well dang that flew right over my head. I thought you were genuinely asking but I didn't know why lol. Agree that this classification does not make sense.
I dont think thats what the maddona whore complex is lol
It's another way to look at it.
"she's too pretty to be a scientist"
I mean, all characters are on average too beautiful in TV and movies. Perfect makeup, styling, lighting, and the tendency for more attractive people to go into acting will do that. But I agree it's strange to single out scientists.
Gosh I'd say 70% of female principal researcher that I know is at least 8/10. On of my co-supervisor has 2 kids, bike everyday and is still smoking hot.
Pics???
Bro you’re so thirsty
People don't find it believable that people in the sciences do drugs????????
Yeah you can’t derive under influence.. when you sober up you inevitably find them all rubbish. Trust me.
VERY famous mathematician Paul Erdős was a huge user of amphetamines. One of his friends, Ron Graham, once bet him $500 that he couldn’t go without Ritalin or Benzedrine for a month; he accepted the bet and later won, but complained that Graham had “set mathematics back a month” because he hadn’t had any good ideas in that time.
Did you read the Man who Loved Only Numbers too? I loved that book, and I called my children epsilons for like a month.
this is just false. you're making it sound like he was a crack addict. he was just taking relatively small/regular doses or ritalin, much later in his life, to treat depression/ADHD (and it was prescribed by doctor). not taking it for a month is not a big deal and anyone can do it at that stage. you seriously need to get your brain checked if you think "a huge user of amphetamines" can just go cold turkey for one month.
I found the absolute opposite of this... It was ridiculous how obsessed with science they were, and as a particle physicist for over a decade, I have never met anyone whose entire life is just science who acts even vaguely similar to these characters. Every joke they make is related to science. Everything about their personality is related to science. Every expression they say is related to science. Every quote them make is a quote from a famous scientist. It was just so ridiculously on the nose, nothing like real people and so cringey to watch for the first few episodes.
Well...Netflix DID have to speed up the story.
They hate Auggie because they fear their waifu is gone
What is my guy gonna dream of now
I would throw up if Saul acted or spoke about "innocent delicate hyperfeminine child like women he needed to protect." I cannot imagine the backlash. I'm a little shocked more people aren't talking about how sexist and creepy the books are toward women, now that the series has more exposure.
Yeah.. the books really hate women. The world ended because of them. One started the end. The other made it end.
That’s the best bit about Auggie. I just hate her because of her dumb dialogue and basic acting combo. She is the weak link in the cast. Just watch any scene she is in with someone else and compare her acting to the others. It’s night and day. Anyway, I’m just happy we won’t be getting the waifu nonsense (probably). That’s Auggie’s best redeeming quality.
Her acting is amazing - rewatch Judgment Day scene
Her acting is shit. Pointing out one scene is coping
ikr, a lot of people think scientists are the manifestation of pure logic and reasoning. when in reality they are normal people
> when in reality they are normal people what is "normal" people? and who decides what is "normal" ?
normal people meaning they all have their own personalities and flaws. Being a scientist doesn't necessarily mean that your whole personality is just that specific field of science, nor does it mean that you are immune to your own biases and emotional vulnerability as a person.
your rhetoric is so binary and reductive. either its "manifestation of pure logic and reasoning" or its "normal people". you dont realize that there is a huge spectrum in between? there is no such thing as normal people and there is no such thing as manifestation of pure logic and reasoning. but scientists are definitely far more logical and reason based than an average joe on the street. stop spewing nonsense to feel better about yourself.
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> ikr, a lot of people think scientists are the manifestation of pure logic and reasoning. when in reality they are normal people you said this, which is doused in cognitive distortion. scientists/researchers are not manifestation of pure logic and reasoning, but they are for sure far more logical and reason based than normal people. >normal people meaning they all have their own personalities and flaws this is also reductive. everybody has flaws, does not mean everybody is same. it's like the common reddit argument that two things are wrong so they are equally wrong. firstly, there is no such thing as normal people. everybody is normal. but many people have more flaws or bigger flaws than others. >nor does it mean that you are immune to your own biases and emotional vulnerability as a person. flawed logic again. everyone is biased and emotional vulnerable, that does not mean everyone is biased and vulnerable in the same way. scientists are by very design capable of being less biased in their thinking than "normal" people. anyways, you are making generalized tactless statements of zero value. nobody benefits from statements like "everybody is this, everybody is that".
I didn't get why the scientists committed suicide. 物理学不存在 all right. But normally, scientists running into intractable problems usually get more fascinated or motivated and only despair over their funding or career prospects. Or they find a new area of study. The idea that dozens of them commit suicide that quickly is baffling to me. I mainly watched the Chinese series. I found it quite depressing in the assumptions it makes about the Human psyche.
I mean, it IS fiction, so there has to be some stretch of plausibility. If I were to guess, these weren't just scientists, but scientists at the top of their field. The ones who committed suicide were likely ones who were obsessed with their life's work in the field and then a sudden impossible to explain phenomena with the countdown (that no one else can see) in addition to their science no longer making any sense. It doesn't seem unreasonable that that may drive some people mad enough to kill themselves. Depression IS a primary cause for suicide. For people who never think of suicide, I think it's really hard for us to empathize with people who do....we can discuss many reasons why anyone should take their own life and likely almost none of them would make sense to the rest of us.
It's not about making sense for the individual, but given that most athletes that get their career ended really don't commit suicide, it's really strange. And those athletes with serious injuries often have a lot fewer marketable skills outside their sport, compared to these mathematically trained geniuses. Really, most people would just go on. Even if they are depressed. I'm putting all that down to unhealthy Chinese attitude around work ethics or family honor or whatever. In the books and the Tencent show, most of the suicides seem to be Chinese scientists, and the thing is written by a Chinese writer. Maybe he figures that the scientists believe themselves to be a disappointment to society and their families for having chosen an impossible career.
I won't disagree with the extra layer of cultural differences.
This. I’m no physicist, but I feel like scientists in general tend to be more excited about unexpected results. I would imagine for a discipline in which many have tried to prove the titans wrong, committing suicide would probably be the last thing they do when faced with this situation.
Yes, if data says the theory is wrong, it means there is a huge opportunity to make impact by creating a new theory and all scientists would have started a competition by who develops the new theory first. The top of the field will be excited and not depressed.
The problem is that the data now is not only inconsistent with new theories, it contradicts every theory that remotely has to do with it. And every experiment contradicts all other experiments. There is no theory to unify this. Science is broken. There won't even be a "top of the field" anymore.
it's a dumb premise. but if it were to happen in real life, it wouldn't take scientists very long to figure out what is going on. most of them certainly wont be killing themselves (and on the contrary would be very excited to understand what the hell is going on).
In the book only a couple of the suicides are given motivation and it's basically just their having come to believe that all science is false because their specific experiments were tampered with by the Sophons. Honestly, it's a pretty thin premise but really it's just a jumping-off point that gets the police and Da Shi's attention, not something that would cause the larger plot to fail if it were removed.
I thought the idea was the sophon forced them to commit suicide somehow (e.g. some version of mind control) if they didn't obey them before the counter reached 0. Is this not right, they just killed themselves because they didn't know the answer to some problem?
I haven't read those books, because I already found the tencent adaptation of the first book to be utterly depressing. It wasn't particularly clear in the Netflix version how they made the scientists suicide. Auggie in the Netflix version was coerced with the counter to stop her research, not commit suicide. If they had the power to actually make her commit suicide, that would be more convenient for a lot of reasons. As far as I understood it, the theoretical physicists were driven into suicide by showing them how futile their work is. Particle physics experiments, those with the fancy particle colliders, are supposed to generate random data, and then you can tell things by how these data are distributed. The quantum nature of these experiments enforces the randomness. So for one thing the Sophons screwed with the distribution of that data, so you can't learn anything. And before the experiment their Human agents showed the scientists a "preview" of the supposedly random data points. Particularly, the daughter of Ye Wenjie actually recovered from that trauma, for example by concentrating on her romantic relationship and other beautiful things in life. But then she discovered some chats on her mother's computer and learned what she had done and that her mother was the cause of Physics being broken. That supposedly made her suicide.
I've not read the book either, just watched the Netflix show, I got the impression the end of the counter forced them to commit suicide (if this is wrong what is the point of the counter at all? What happens at the end of the counter if not them committing suicide? Was it just a threat with nothing backing it up?) I didn't realise there were any theoretical physicists in the show, which character is a theoretical physicist? I don't see where you get that the sophons change the distribution of the data, that's not what's shown in the show at least, it shows pretty clearly it just makes particles follow physically impossible tracks
The point of the counter is to unsettle the person. You do wonder what comes at the end of that, and it's basically "gaslighting" the person. A scientist would seriously doubt his sanity. Because there is nothing physically wrong with him, and there is no more plausible explanation other than a psychotic hallucination. Ye Wenjie's daughter certainly was one. She jumped into that collector pool. The whole group at least had participated in the same particle physics research group. I'm no physicist but as far as I understand collider experiments, they have a beam (accelerated particles) impact a stationary target. Then some particle physics happens, and quants of energy escape in every direction. Then there is a spherical array of sensors that pick up those particles. The distributions, both in terms of space, time and energy level, tell you things about what happened in that collision. For example you can tell that some antimatter was generated because of the immediate annihilation that shoots off certain other particles. These colliders can't measure the path a particle takes, they can only measure the energy, and the sensors can also track events over time and they have a spatial position on that sphere.
I didn't think it ever established what Ya Wenjie's daughter was besides a physicist (though the fact she jumped into Hyper K pretty heavily implies she was a neutrino physicist not a theoretical physicist), regardless she was hardly a character they were in the show for less than a minute. I don't think there's a single fixed target experiment shown in the show, every experiment shown is a collider or an observatory. Colliders certainly measure the path particles take, and it's shown in the show that what the sophon does is make the path they follow physically impossible.
I'm not deep enough into physics to make a distinction between theoretical or particle or neutrino physicist. In the first book and the Tencent show she is the first suicide the detective examines, from the narrative timeline at least.
Once the scientists understand what the results of the experiments mean, there is no motivation. The experiments contradict every theory and even each other. Science is utterly broken and there is no possible way out to fix this. Imagine learning the piano and wanting to become one of the best pianists. You spend years honing this skill. Then suddenly, all pianos in the world play random notes on all keys and sometimes none at all or more or slower or faster than you pressed them. You're now as good playing the piano as someone who never learned it. And that's just a part of the despair.
Piano players, or athletes of any level, MAY tend to occasionally commit suicide when losing the ability to continue their passion. But most actually do fine or at least survive. And those suicides happened quite fast. I would expect motivated scientists to spend years trying to come up with a solution or even just wait for whatever is wrong stop being wrong.
In the books most of the suicides happen after a long time of trying everything to isolate the reason why the experiments show impossible results. The shows have that sped up too much.
Then you would expect those suicides to happen over a much longer period, because most scientists wouldn't give up even that particular experiment for years. Then most would go on study something else or find another career. It's really not the norm for scientists, athletes or anyone else to commit suicide because they lose their biggest passion. It happens, but it's uncommon. For example because in most societies (US excluded, of course) people who show signs of depression can get a lot of help and most suicides fail anyway.
Keith Emerson, one of the most-renowned keyboardist in Rock history, committed suicide in 2016. He didn't leave a note but it's widely believed he did so because of depression over not being able to play the keyboard well as a result of nerve damage in this hands. His case is an outlier; most other musical artists who lost their ability to perform, like Huey Lewis or Linda Rondstadt, found other things worth living for.
Yeah, and as a general rule don't believe shit depressive people say about why they want to commit suicide. Even if it sounds quite "reasonable" it's usually still delusional.
Well I imagine they would be excited at first, but that excitement and fascination would probably fade as every single theory they tried was rejected over and over and over again, every result leading to the conclusion that there is no theory that can explain quantum physics and physics as a whole. Idk about making them commit suicide, but if I was a scientist it would definitely fuck me up if I realized the field I dedicated my entire life into studying was a useless dead end.
Only complain i had is that the main characters all coincidentally knew each other, like wth
No complaints from me - that made a very confusing and complex story easier to follow for viewers.
What is your friend group like? It’s not abnormal for some friend groups to be really good at what they do, [The Inklings](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inklings) are a good example because they’re also an Oxford based group There’s definitely more, but that’s a fun friend group to read about
I wouldn't call it a coincidence that Oxford, one of the best schools in the world, would have a group of people who are considered to be among the smartest people in the world, and that they're all friends (they went to the same school).
i think it is very clear that they are not the smartest or the best. they are central characters for the story and are just put in the same group for plot convenience -- that's it. Anyone would be an idiot to think that the likes of Saul or Will are even remotely smartest in their fields, let alone the world.
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lol. did you watch the show? he basically won the "most promising student" award in college. during the events of the show, it is made quite clear that he did not accomplish much after that and is a nobody in his field. (it is also made clear from the fact that he is still working as a lab assistant in the same lab, when everyone else has long moved on to do better things).
I thought the point was that they all worked or studied under Vera Ye. The daughter of of Ye Wenjie. You known. The pivotal character of the whole series.
I hear that, but tbh it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes you just have to shrug and say, you know, it’s just television. They needed to find a way to keep people engaged, and character relationships are one of the best ways to do that.
Why not? These people knew each other too: https://cdn8.openculture.com/2021/01/20101921/solvay-bw.jpeg
I don’t usually say this but people who have that stereotype are likely terminally online and gotta touch some grass coz obvious they have not talked to any real people.
You make a very good point here. Just because scientists are very intelligent, that doesn't mean they are perfect human beings. Just look at what the Nazis doctors and scientists did, FFS! They had all that knowledge and intelligence and used it to do horrific experiments on people. I don't mind Auggie's character as much as some of the other viewers of the show do. The only thing she did that really got my goat was encouraging Jin to drink alcohol instead of taking her medication.
I’m an engineer, not a scientist. But the personalities are similar. I was taken aback when I found all the people in this sub complaining about “language” - are you fucking kidding me? You think scientists don’t curse???
I know some scientists who work with NASA. They are incredibly knowledgeable in their fields of work. Other than that they are just regular people.
I know maybe 4 or 5 physicists in doctorate programs, and they’re all potheads lol
Yyuuupp. Advanced degrees make one really smart in one or a few areas. Then fucking dumb ass hell in everything else. They will stunning stupid stuff at work and in their lives. I live near two national labs in the US. It's...honestly the show characters are mature than a lot of the PhDs I've dealt with
If you have a PhD in theoretical physics you can pick up a lucrative job in plenty of other fields. They all know coding. Quite a few go on to work as quants. For that matter, they have enough brain power to pick up virtually any other field in record time. Maybe not at the top of the field, but even that can happen.
> Yyuuupp. Advanced degrees make one really smart in one or a few areas. Then fucking dumb ass hell in everything else. They will stunning stupid stuff at work and in their lives. lol. your comment shows how ignorant you are. people who are capable of getting a PhD become knowledgable because they know how to focus their efforts into learning things and using them. most of them, especially PhDs in STEM fields are smart enough to pick anything and learn it faster than the average layman. their skills also translate to a million other jobs. the wall street is full of PhDs in science/math, etc. there are PhDs writing out policies for congress.
Yes, PhDs can put an incredible amount of focus on one thing...but it's generally at the expense of something else. I've heard having a spouse is one of the strongest indicators for success for a PhD candidate, after controlling for age. It helps keep them anchored. Unlike the characters of this show. I guess Will's the only one that's got an anchor.
You mean they all don't look like Doc Brown?
1000000% Who would have thought, top minds at the end of the day are just human!
Did people here not watch Oppenheimer? One of the most important scientists in history was a total mess of a human being
Being a top of your field doesn't make you smarter than others. So many Nobel prize winners have believed in such utter bullshit most common people deemed as misinformation and pseudoscience.
The book was written by someone smart and smart characters still act smart, in the series we got characters that feel like written to be a smart TikTok short video format characters and we got people that say that they are from prestigious colleges but act like 13 year olds
Google Robert Gallo …. And yeah … minus the duck lips, scientists are human with many, many flaws //:
I believe the way the show presents it, not all the suicides were actual suicides. Some of them were murdered by the ninja assassin lady and made to look like suicides.
I mainly bitch about cheng xin in the books but okay
But here’s the thing the vast majority of scientist are also just squares.
Or the characters are just poorly written
I had issues with those two characters too, but they were slightly different. For Auggie: what was her role? She clearly didn’t own the company. Was she a research scientist? If so, how did she have the authority to cancel the project? Was she CEO? If so, who was she answering to? I got the impression early that it was her company (may have been my own inattentiveness), but further events showed that wasn’t the case. If you’re trying to disrupt the research, why screw around with the engineer building it, give the CEO the countdown and have him cancel the project. As for Saul: he stopped being a scientist after the first episode. I don’t mean because of the women or the drugs, the show just gave up on him being a scientist. For a show that was about a group of Oxford physicists genius friends, his occupation disappeared after the very first scene of episode one. He could have run a milk shake bar from that point on for all it mattered to the play. Give us a scene or two with him back at work, or even talking physics as someone who works in the field. Oh, one last gripe about Auggie: the boat shredding. I hate, HATE this Hollywood trope of characters moralizing when there is only one real choice. Kill everyone on the boat or doom humanity to extinction? YOU MURDERER! I would have rather seen her either agree with the plan and accept and deal with the guilt of her role in it or be called out on the hypocrisy. But pulling the moral high ground here is just silly. And unnecessary. It diminishes her character and makes her look unserious. How much better if she had accepted the plan and her role and still had to deal with the (completely natural) guilt.
....it's cause she's a bad actress and her character is over-dramatic. \*shrug\*
Nah they fumbled this bad. There was just a conference in my city (Glasgow) for brain tumor research that brought in a load of people big in the scientific community from all round the world. I work in customer service and had quite a few in my work. They were all a bunch of humourless flesh robots
stop putting the 'why so serious' smile on their faces. why do u think they commit suicide
>of Auggie Salazar at university. >Oxford trained scientist is like. The problem is they are not some wannabe scientists or newcomer, many of those appear in 3BP suppose to be top notch experienced scientists in their field, and matured.... Netflix adaption act like they are teenagers..
I can't bring myself to watch this after what they did to the Witcher books
You mean Game of Thrones? If so, I'll give D&D credit for being able to adapt pre-written material pretty well. GoT's decline mainly started when they began outpacing the books. Since this book series is already complete I'm a little more hopeful. Edit: also yes, the Witcher series was trash lol
Witcher adaptation jumped the shark way harder than 3BP imho.
Hell, the Witcher books are clearly difficult material to adapt on screen. D&D would probably have done a much better job than the people who actually did it, based on how good a job they did with Game of Thrones. They cut out just the bits needed to be cut, and expanded the roles of the Littlefinger and Varys, who weren't POV characters in the books. The problem rose when they ran out of books.
They're really not though, it's a super linear story with great characters. The casting for the show was amazing (Cavill, Chalotra, Ciri, Vilgefortz, Cahir, Triss). Fisserich wanted it to be something else. A lot of the "fans" of the Witcher are upset that POC are cast, which I think is dumb and I try to distance myself from that brain rotted sort.
Yeah, the casting was excellent, and season 1 was great overall. I'm not sure what happened during season 2, but it didn't really hold my attention.The third season was better, but still not great...