So recently, Matt Finestone has been interacting with our larger community, and his twitter handle has always intrigued me (3body.eth). So that was fresh in my mind when, shopping at a bookstore, I spotted “The Three Body Problem” by… Liu Cixin, who also has been discussed. Of course, I tore into the sci-fi book immediately, and was so struck by a few passages that I thought Matt may have been pointing us at it all along. Now, there’s been a long list of films discussed in various forums, but I can’t recall seeing any mentions of this book. The plot generally involves a struggle against mysterious threatening forces, and salvation can only be found by playing a hyper-realistic VR video game.
This gem appears on page 134: “In my line of work, it’s all about putting together many apparently-unconnected things. When you piece them together the right way, you get the truth.” Doesn’t that sound like a guide to tinfoil? Then, on page 137: “I can guarantee you that the enemy is incredibly powerful. Those in charge are terrified… if killing you would solve the problem, you’d all be dead by now. But the most effective technique remains disrupting your thoughts.” Like COINTELPRO, maybe? Interestingly, considering recent developments involving Kanye, the Ye family features prominently in the book (many of the events take place in China).
With the number 134 still on my mind, I searched through “The Big Short” and found that, at 1:33:00, Dr. Burry is writing to his investors about being in a fraudulent market. And right at 1:34:00, the 2007 housing market begins to fail. By 1:36:00, Morgan Stanley is asking to buy Front Point’s credit default swaps.
So far, interesting tinfoil, no? Then I found that, exactly at 1:34:30 into “Fight Club”, comes this threatening message to a nearly-emasculated power broker: “Look- the people you are after are the people you rely on. We cook your meals. We haul your trash. We connect your calls. We drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not fuck with us.”
I’m really feeling that last quote as we head into 2024; how about you?
(Lurker since 2020, hodler since Feb 2021)
I recall he said something about it being related to planetary motion in space.
If you have only 2 bodies, you can derive the equations of motion very easily and you get Kepler’s laws.
But if you add a 3rd body, then there’s no way to obtain their equations of motion and you must use numerical methods to calculate their motion step by step.
Theres more to the idea of the 3body problem as well, where two objects can exist in a binary relationship for a long long long time, but adding a 3rd object almost always complicates the gravitational pull enough to cause chaos. There are some interesting motions that evade this problem, but most will succumb
Yes, there’s a LOT more in this book - the chaos and efforts to solve the three-body problem, plus SETI, military and police action, human relations - very dense but enjoyable. The statements I noted above stood out for me, but I imagine there are many more others might notice. Crowd-sourced research has been a very entertaining part of my last 3 years.
