You probably already know that being an introvert has nothing to do with being shy. But you may not know that being an introvert has nothing to do with solitary book reading or movie watching either — a typical modern representation. Well, at the very least it's not true to the original meaning of the word coined by Jung. Introversion was pretty much redefined down the road to mean withdrawal and aloofness, as opposed to sociability.

Jung defined introversion as an "attitude-type characterised by orientation in life through subjective psychic contents," as opposed to extraversion, "an attitude-type characterised by concentration of interest on the external object." Simply put, introverts are focused on and influenced by the internal (the inside of their mind), while extraverts are focused on and influenced by the external (the outside of their mind, the minds of others).

These were the perfect definitions that should have stayed unmolested. It's sad that Jung himself muddied the waters with his further explanations, saying, for example, that introverts tend to be reserved and cautious, while extraverts tend to be open and daring. While this may be true (there is a correlation), ultimately, it confused people, and they started to use these coincidental traits as the new definition.

I understand this issue not because I've read an article on Wikipedia, but because I feel it. It doesn't matter to me if it's a solitary experience — when I read a book, I can feel the same kind of mental strain I feel midst any other act of focusing on others. Whether I listen to some dimwit at a loud crowded party or struggle with a mediocre novel far away from any living thing, I can feel the same kind of reluctance to engage, like I couldn't care less what their primitive minds can conjure. And even when their minds are far brighter than mine, the reluctance can still be there, with the desire to escape into my own head.

The act of reading usually implies some degree of reflection, and a great deal of imagination, but it's still not an ideal activity to represent true introversion since you still focus on and influenced by the external. Conversely, true extraverts may not enjoy some of the activities where they are assumed to thrive simply because they are the center of attention among a multitude of people. For instance, delivering lectures to large audiences. While there is some degree of engagement with the external (like when you try to read the audience and adjust your delivery accordingly), it is, in reality, mostly introspection: you gather your thoughts, recollect your memories, concentrate on your speech, generate explanations, formulate answers, figure out solutions, etc.

There exists a much better stereotypical representation of an introvert: someone who paints, writes, or composes, especially if they don't try to recreate a real world and instead only reference their inner mind. In other words, they opt for expressionism, not realism.

It's a shame the definitions were altered, because the original ones described something far more fundamental to human psychology, I believe, while the mere desire or tendency to socialize or be loud or be cautious can come and go depending on circumstances.

In this entry, I am going to share my opinion on the science fiction novel series "Remembrance of Earth's Past" (aka Three-Body) by Chinese writer Liu Cixin. Short summary: I consider Liu Cixin a naive novelist. But, similar to naive art, his works can hold value and be praised. I recommend Three-Body to everyone who wants something unusual and fancies sci-fi.

I completed the trilogy over the span of 268 days: from February ‎2 to October 26, 2024. I started to write the review soon after that, but suspended it till recently, for several reasons. The task turned out more laborious than I initially anticipated. I realized I had a lot to share. I wouldn't be content with a short overview. The scope of the task scared me away. But it was okay, I thought, to review the novel later: I would get the bigger picture, the minutiae would be forgotten, and my brain would process the story in the background, possibly coming up with some interesting conclusions. Now I am at that point when I start to forget important details, and I am not eager to re-read the novel for the sake of a more objective review. So I better write the review now.

I am going to peek in the book to get a quote, for example. But I will mostly write from memory, so minor inaccuracies may occur. There will be spoilers, but I will try to avoid them whenever I can.

First, let's make sure we are on the same page here: when I talk about naive art, I talk about something like "Hunting Dog" by Adolf Dietrich, and not about worthless hasty doodles some people call "naive art" in an attempt to parasitize on the term or make their doodles seem more profound.

Thus, I recognize the hard work of the author, his peculiar worldview, and his genuine attempt to write well. However, this writing style is not necessarily a good thing that makes the work better. In naive art, one could say, "I love this painting *because* of its clumsiness." Here, I am hesitant. I lean toward saying, "I love this novel *despite* its clumsiness."

Let's immediately jump into some concrete examples. This first one may seem like a random, biased attack, but you'll soon realize it's a coherent part of the author's all-around shallow understanding of the world.

Three-Body describes a universe that is cold and indifferent, harsh and ruthless, where everyone tries to exterminate everyone else. Liu Cixin tries to paint a grim picture and then, in all seriousness, drops this piece:

"Historically, the discovery of the dark forest state of the universe was a giant blow to most major religions, especially Christianity. In fact, the damage to religion was evident even early on during the Crisis Era. When Trisolaran civilization was discovered, Christians had to wrestle with the fact that the aliens were not in the Garden of Eden, and God never mentioned them in Genesis. For more than a century, churches and theologians struggled to complete a new interpretation of the Bible and of accepted doctrines — and just when they had almost succeeded in patching up the faith, the monster that was the dark forest appeared. People had to accept the knowledge that many, many intelligent civilizations existed in the universe, and if each civilization had an Adam and an Eve, then the population of Eden must have been about the same as the current population of Earth."

The discovery of alien civilizations became a devastating blow to Christianity because it meant there were way too many Adams and Eves in Eden? Excuse me?

I don't think the author was trying to be funny. He tried to be respectful to most human groups he mentioned in his novel, even to Al-Qaeda. Possibly, he knew nothing about Christianity but out of respect tried to research what it was about. And maybe out of respect he implied that Christianity still had influence in the 23rd century. And so he incorporated it into his story but did it in such a nonsensical way.

You don't need to study religions deeply in order to see how weird this is. You just need a modicum of common sense. If we take Christianity in particular, figurative interpretations of the Bible existed from the very beginning, as we know from the words of early scholars and theologians. Most Western scientists were historically Christians. Their discoveries contradicted the Bible, but that rarely undermined their beliefs because they didn't take the Holy Texts literally in the first place. Even modern scientists, such as Einstein and Hawking, talked of God freely, because their vision of God wasn't constrained to a "naked man on a cloud" (a notion which some feeble-minded atheists promote as the epitome of religion, and I assume it's the view on religion they may promote inside China.)

"The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who — in their grudge against traditional religion as the 'opium of the masses' — cannot hear the music of the spheres," said Einstein.

The idea that none of the discoveries before the 23rd century undermined Christianity in a way that aliens did because they made literal interpretations more difficult since there were now too many Adams and Eves that weren't mentioned in the text is utterly absurd. If anything, the discovery of aliens would probably make literal interpretations somewhat more popular since it would mean there could have really been walking talking gods among humans in the past. Anyway, the world of Three-Body is not very consistent. Despite this "giant blow" to "especially Christianity," humans became even more Christian and were building colossal glowing crosses that floated in the sky.

Next, let's talk about the author's understanding of geography. Imagine asking a five-year-old Chinese kid, "What countries, beyond China, do you know of?" What could they answer? "There's so-called russia, there's Japan... Across the ocean, there's America (bad!) And... Maybe, er... Europe?"

That's how Liu Cixin's understanding of the world comes across honestly. The novel doesn't present itself as one focused on a specific country or region. Instead, it jumps across the globe to highlight notable events that shaped the fate of humanity. And yet, half of all the names in the novel are clearly Chinese, the lesser half are clearly English, a substantial portion are clearly russian, and there are also several Japanese ones. Beyond very few exceptions, that's everything, as if no other cultures exist on Earth. There were probably more characters from russia than there were from Europe, and there were absolutely none from India or Africa, even though a third of all human population lives there, and even more is projected for the future.

Some of this weird distribution I can understand easily. The author is from China, and his desire to elevate China in fiction is natural. Moreover, his target audience was Chinese. He had to appeal to them so that the novel sold well. In light of his passionate patriotism, I even want to commend his bravery in displaying communist idolatry, like that of Mao Zedong, as something that can be detrimental to scientific research.

The distribution of characters beyond Chinese cannot be rationalized by anything except the author's quirkiness. It's possible that Liu Cixin thought something like, "So what if a third of the population lives in India or Africa or elsewhere? How many Nobel Prizes did they win, huh? They are backward peoples today, and it's safe to assume they will be backward peoples in the future. They will have no impact on the fate of humanity."

Should we tell him India won more Nobel Prizes than China? I'm not even commenting on Europe at this point.

Actually, both Africa and India (kind of) had their one moment of glory in the novel. Quote: "Two space cities in the distant city clusters near Uranus and Neptune, Africa II and Indian Ocean I, had declared independence in the past, but nothing had ultimately come of those efforts." (No one took those cities seriously.) This, and the fact that the city of Oceania was very poor, are the two single instances that I recall where the author allowed himself to display a group of people in a negative light.

As if to prove to the readers he knows some other countries and cultures beyond the selected few, the author could throw in some wacky statistically unlikely characters or situations into the story. For example, one of the main characters got randomly acquainted with an Indigenous Australian, whose people were almost extinct in the far future, who lived a primitive life, slept outside, and demonstrated how to dance like an Indigenous Polynesian. (WTF?)

These weird things cannot be explained by the shallow understanding of the world only. I believe the author is a somewhat weird person himself, as should become more clear with my next examples.

Imagine: you're in China; the year is 2272. You jump inside a random futuristic flying car. What do you think the passengers are listening to? According to Liu Cixin, it is entirely reasonable for them to listen to some ancient russian folk music. Not only that, the protagonist knows these songs and hopes to hear more. "Okay," you may say, "that's unrealistic but still possible." Unrealistic but still theoretically possible things can feel natural if they happen rarely and the characters acknowledge their existence with disbelief, surprise, or some comment. But the characters don't react to them like that. Next in the story, humanity starts to compare one of the protagonists to some character from an obscure 19th-century russian novel. Was the Earth of the 23rd century engulfed in the russian 19th-century culture? The author provides no comment on that, except for "people dug up an ancient story."

Has the author no clue about what people read or listen to in the 21st century to make some predictions about the 23rd? What is going on? As if hearing our questions, the author then explains that the majority of the works of old were lost, and modern art is created by aliens. Additionally, he tries to introduce some variety, but it doesn't get less weird. For example, in his third book, he mentions Edgar Allan Poe. Despite Poe's popularity, I doubt that at least 1% of the human population read his story "A Descent into the Maelstrom," let alone remember its content. And yet, in Three-Body, when the characters enter a whirlpool, all 3 out of 3 of them, all coming from different backgrounds, immediately recall that story and start to discuss its content. There is no bloody chance that could ever happen in real life.

Here is one more example, to drive the point home: Cheng Xin said, "Anyone from the Earth has a kind of nostalgia for soil. Remember what Scarlett's father told her in Gone With the Wind? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin' for..." Why of course! Why do you even ask at this point? Of course I remember what Scarlett's father told her in Gone With the Wind. I am a Chinese scientist from the future. I spent most of my life doing research light-years away from the Earth. So of course I watched that movie. I watched it and every other black-and-white American movie from the early 20th century; that's what we do here. And, just like you, I memorized every name of every character. I memorized every line!

Liu Cixin's incorporation of works of art is utterly nonsensical. It feels like his thinking process was something like, "I know this poem/novel/song/movie. So it's safe to assume the rest of the human population also knows it. And thus it's only reasonable that each character of my novel also knows it." Looking back at all of it I now also consider he might have tried to low-key show off how cultured he was with all those references. So embarrassing.

I wrote so much but still haven't covered half of all the weird fuck-ups of the novel. Let's move on.

Humanity is portrayed as an incredibly, unrealistically stupid species. Even more stupid than they are in real life. And that is an embarrassingly low bar already. When humans realized everyone tried to exterminate everyone else in the universe, they tried to figure out how to survive. Praying to the giant glowing crosses was one of the solutions. Another suggestion was to brain-damage every human. I'm not kidding. Apparently, they thought aliens would see it from their distant stars and choose not to shoot Earth with their sci-fi guns (not worth it.) Liu Cixin implied that solution wasn't popular, but still popular enough to discuss it in length and mention that some radicals were poisoning drinking water in an attempt to achieve this goal.

Human stupidity gets super annoying sometimes. Here's a quote, not the real one, but it's essentially what happened in the novel at some point: "Hey fellow humans!" the Commander-in-Chief said, "Do you see that small alien spaceship? Yes, the one we know absolutely nothing about, except that it belongs to a hostile and far more technologically advanced species... What do you say we gather ALL our existing warships in one place and approach it? We will form a neat formation, look badass. We will fly very close to that bastard to take a good look. BUT! Don't worry! We will still keep some distance in case it explodes or something. Sounds good? WAIT! That's not everything! All your ships can fly very fast if you warm them up, right? Well, do NOT warm them up, please. Because, like, why? Why would you do that? You afraid? You little pussies? No? Then DON'T warm up your warships. Alright, let's go now! Nothing can go wrong!"

And NO ONE among thousands of humans inside hundreds of warships thought it was a bad idea before it was too late. No one! Except for one very old and very wise Chinese man...

Is this a grim sci-fi? It's a frigging meme.

But wait, aliens are stupid too! And no amount of fancy technology can convince you otherwise. Liu Cixin clumsily handicapped Trisolarans, saying they were incapable of understanding figurative speech. So when a human spy was transmitting intelligence to Earth in the form of allegories, they didn't understand that "boats" meant "spaceships," or that to "paint someone into a canvas" meant to "capture them into a two-dimensional space." And so they let it slide. And it would've been just half of the problem if it were consistent with the plot, but it wasn't! Earlier in the novel, we saw that Trisolarans were perfectly capable of figurative speech when they said humans were "bugs."

We also learn from the very beginning of the story that Trisolarans can easily interfere with human vision, even draw images on their retina, only to realize they will never use this strategic advantage ever again.

Here's another example, but I warn you: it's the biggest spoiler in the review, from here till the end of this paragraph. Trisolarans understood dark forest. They were part of it. They were trying to hide from alien civilizations and exterminate everyone who wasn't hidden. They were going to exterminate humans. They viewed them as a threat. And indeed humans proved to be a major threat when they destroyed Trisolarans' home world, killing, perhaps, the majority of all living Trisolarans. And yet, when they had the opportunity (and the excuse) to carry out their plans, they simply didn't. They decided to fuck off away from Earth somewhere into deep space because Liu Cixin said so (the official BS explanation: because it may get hot in this part of the galaxy in a hundred years or so).

This whole thing reminds me of a quote from someone, "A writer cannot create a character who is smarter than they are."

Let's talk about suicides. There are way too many of them in this novel. At first, I didn't pay attention to it. But after seven or so characters planned or committed suicide, this madness became impossible to ignore.

One character decides to commit suicide because he's uncurably ill. Another character threatens to commit suicide because it would also cause harm to his enemies. Another character commits suicide because his secret plan is revealed. Another character commits suicide because she fails to serve her alien masters well. Another character commits suicide because he realizes how dark and cruel deep space is. Another character plans to commit suicide because she fails to deter aliens.

Perhaps the craziest suicides happened at the very beginning of the story. Scientists discovered that elementary particles behaved unpredictably. This was such a major blow to their understanding of the world that some of them ended up killing themselves. (WTF?)

If the majority of humans on Earth were suicidal, it would've made sense. But since the world the author describes is so different from the real world, and there is no explanation why, characters, societies, and even species don't feel authentic. Instead, they feel like shallow copies of the author himself.

Yes, it's an apt description. It's one of the cornerstones of his writing style. I'd expand and say the whole world and everything that happens in it doesn't feel authentic. Instead, it feels like a backyard inside the author's mind. I'm not saying it's a terrible thing necessarily, but it is what it is.

Let's talk about one more quirk: Three-Body's judicial system, or the complete lack of it. There was a character who transmitted a message to a hostile alien race, basically saying, "Here are our coordinates, please come and exterminate us." But after people discovered what she did, they simply questioned her. And then they let her go. However, maybe I didn't understand the plot. Maybe it was a flashback? At any rate, later in the story, we see her tombstone. She didn't hide: her name was inscribed on the stone. And yet, the novel doesn't mention any desecration of the place. You'd imagine the population would be outraged at the person who brought doom to their entire civilization.

Maybe the humans of Three-Body are distinctly non-violent and never wish to punish anyone? But that couldn't be further away from reality. When it was revealed that one of the characters planned to destroy the Solar system so that the aliens couldn't take it, the enraged crowd filled the streets and murdered him. Or here's another example. A person broadcasted the coordinates of a random faraway star system into the deep space. Soon, some aliens destroyed that star system. How did the human society react? At first, they didn't care at all. That fact remained unheeded. But when it proved to be the only viable way to exert power across the universe, they put the broadcaster on trial. They didn't even know if that star system had life, and yet they brought him to court for a possible xenocide.

Justice is an extension of reason: someone brings harm — you restrain them so there is no more harm. That's reasonable. The book often lacked any reason. Here's one more example. Humans created a robot for aliens to control remotely and be a kind of liaison. When the aliens thought human extinction was imminent, that alien-robot felt unrestrained and casually and gruesomely murdered people who misbehaved. When humans survived though, there were no repercussions for the alien-robot whatsoever. It wasn't stripped of its super-strong body, weapons, luxurious house, or title. And the characters kept interacting with it as if nothing unusual happened.

Looking back at everything I wrote I realize how perfectly "naive novelist" describes Liu Cixin. There's so much clumsiness in his book it can deter from reading. Maybe some people will find it cute or interesting; maybe they will try to uncover hidden messages or deep meaning within every quirk. For me though, it often felt as if the author wrote whatever came to his mind first, disregarding context, plot holes, or realism. It took me quite a long time to finish the trilogy considering I had all three books readily available to me. Even though I may've experienced trouble focusing, even though my reading speed was low, it's still safe to say I wasn't entirely absorbed. There were times when I didn't want to get back to reading for weeks.

Another deterrent was that the events unfolded slowly in a predictable manner, except for the last 5% of the story, where the author started to introduce many new rules of physics, seemingly in an attempt to finish the novel off quickly in an interesting way. When the rest of the novel did surprise me, it was an unpleasant kind of surprise when you stand up in disbelief and exclaim, "Oh, come on, they would never act like that!"

But I can't say any part of it was necessarily boring. And the English translations were well done. This is the part of the review where I start to describe the good parts. As I mentioned in my short summary above, I can still recommend the novel for reading. If you can manage to ignore the sprinkle of oddities, there is quite a lot of value.

First, let's address the elephant in the room, which is the dark forest. Liu Cixin wasn't the first writer to describe this model of the universe. But he was the first to give it a name and make it popular, which is arguably more important, and what I cannot believe never happened before his 黑暗森林 came to life in 2008. For that alone, I greatly appreciate the author. Today, dark forest is my personal second most viable explanation for why we haven't discovered any aliens yet, with the first one being that we haven't really looked yet, of course.

There were scientists who advocated strongly against active SETI or otherwise making Earth more visible. But it's hard to convince people when they haven't even yet considered that something like the dark forest is possible. Now it's finally engraved in human culture, and such conversations should be simpler.

Apart from that, I appreciate the novel's general tendency to make you think. It made me ponder over a variety of topics. Is the mutual assured destruction an effective strategy for lasting peace? Or is it a backdoor for blackmail and ultimate doom? How can we prevent someone from abusing mutual assured destruction for their personal gain? What kind of governance is optimal for the survival of species? How to balance collectivism with individualism? The person who was working for aliens, who betrayed humanity, could that be me? Would I see aliens as superior because of their technology or would I also consider other traits? What traits should I weigh? Wouldn't really superior species view the inferior ones as part of the ecosystem?

I wasn't always a fan of the author's general tendency to dramatize, but that tendency also gifted us with a lot of impactful scenes. The Battle of Darkness... By coincidence, I was also listening to some dramatic music while I was reading it, so that scene made me cry, a lot. (It also made me very angry that humans didn't come up with a more rational solution that would've brought a much greater net positive. It sometimes felt as if the author hated humankind with all his heart, and expressed that hatred by displaying them as inept infants destined to their doom. I'm not against that attitude per se, but it can become annoying when it seeps throughout a story.) The Battle of Darkness deserves a whole separate blog post. "It doesn't matter. It's all the same," says one of the characters with a sad smile, realizing he won't be the one to survive but that the human species will survive nonetheless. The Battle of Darkness made me wonder whether collectivism is part of the common sense to which we should appeal, or whether individuals are inherently and utterly selfish (i.e. their interests never go beyond those of their immediate physical body) and we better treat them as such.

Earlier I said it felt as if the author wrote whatever came to his mind first, disregarding context. As it turns out, it's not always a bad thing. There's a common practice in novel writing of avoiding anything that's irrelevant to the progression of the story. Some may know it as the "Chekhov's gun," named after a writer who gave, frankly, a piece of terrible advice: "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." I won't elaborate much on why it's bad, but in short, it makes your writing too predictable, tunnel-vision-afflicted, unrealistic, superficial, artificial. Many Western writers consciously or unconsciously follow this rule. Liu Cixin doesn't.

Now I realize there were, in fact, times when I was surprised in a positive way. Here's one example. People were evacuating Earth in panic. The protagonist bumped into a class of elementary schoolers but was only able to save three of them. There was an elaborate introduction to those kids and their abilities, and I was already imagining their life as cosmic refugees living on the protagonist's spaceship, only to realize those kids are never to be mentioned in the story again. What was the purpose of that interaction? Perhaps the author wanted to share his opinion on how to prioritize who is to be saved and who must be left behind. Perhaps he wanted the readers to feel the pressure. Whatever it was, those kids were irrelevant to the progression of the story, and I think that's fine.

Here's another example. There was a lengthy introduction to how humans created a miniature black hole, how they tried to understand it, how a person viewed as both a madman and a genius said it was speaking to him, how he jumped inside and appered to be frozen in time, and how they tried to contact him to no avail. I was pretty sure that black hole would play its role, unexpectedly prevent an alien invasion or something. But it didn't. It was never mentioned again. The author was probably just having fun describing all that.

And one last example. A character became blind suddenly, seemingly for no reason. After a while, she regained her sight. I was confident someone was behind all this. I was expecting an explanation. But there was none. Her blindness didn't even affect the plot. She made no fatal mistakes because of it or anything like that. It was there for the sake of being there. Apparently, she lost her sight naturally because of the mental stress, and it was the author's strange way of conveying how great that stress was.

All of that felt like broken promises, but it was actually refreshing. A good novel imitates life, and life doesn't make promises. A good novelist, I believe, describes a world as it is. They mustn't hold your hand tightly, leading from point A to point B along a straight narrow path that never branches. They let you explore and experience.

The majority of my entries praise AI or complain about human retards. It gets annoying. But I try not to treat myself too harshly for it. In the end, it is who I am. A person who regards intelligence, rationality, and progress as the most important things in the universe (at least until the supreme intelligence calculates they are not) and a person who acutely feels the absence of these things. A person whose mind is often preoccupied with these topics.

A reasonable concern may follow, “Why do I waste my time here and not go and actually contribute to the progress, do a scientific research or something?” The fact that I have these views implies nothing further. Even if I were Mr. Smarty Pants easily capable of advancing progress, it doesn’t mean I would necessarily enjoy it. But I do enjoy unrestrained writing.

There was a time, long ago, when internet brainrots (users) could have voiced nonsense, and you’d think they’re simply incapable of doing otherwise, incapable of running the necessary Google query, incapable of analyzing a tiny bit of data. Those things are way more difficult than communication. No longer can you be this condescending. If a person is capable of talking (typing), they are also perfectly capable of using an AI and, as such, testing their messages for validity. Brainrots today are as dim as ever, but they no longer lack the ability to verify information on their own. This leads to a situation where you can’t help but see them less and less as innocent prisoners of their own deficiency and more and more as malicious actors. Take this particular brainrot, for example, who inspired me to write about it:

“obviously soviet downfall was happening even without Gorbachev but it doesn't mean people can't blame him. For ex, holocaust would have happened even without Hitler, does it mean that he is innocent?”

I can’t help but notice their attempt to push certain braindead, detrimental implications. The first one is that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was something to blame a person for, and that it wasn’t a completely unnatural formation based on coercion and repression in the first place, where the majority of nations sought independence from Moscow. Then, there’s a bizarre parallel with Hitler and a message anti-Semitic at its core, hinting that the hatred for Jews was so natural and widespread that Hitler’s role in the Holocaust was practically irrelevant.

An AI, of course, recognizes these fallacies easily. “The structure of the argument serves to both condemn Gorbachev while simultaneously downplaying Hitler’s responsibility — a combination that points to concerning ideological motivations. The false equivalence between these very different historical events serves no legitimate analytical purpose and instead appears designed to blur moral distinctions for ideological ends.” It even provides some context I wasn’t aware of. For example, apparently, blaming Gorbachev for treason is a well-established brainwashing technique that the russian degenerates practice among themselves.

Don’t treat brainrots condescendingly. Whether you value humankind, progress, or truth, these creatures are detrimental to them all, now more intentional than ever. And I do hope some mechanism for limiting their influence gets rolled out soon.

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There isn’t much more to be said here.

I've seen a YouTube video. Its topic is now irrelevant. In that video, there was a clip of a woman saying something. She was from Ukraine and allegedly spoke Ukrainian, but the author wasn't sure. He asked the viewers who knew to comment and confirm.

The woman was clearly speaking Ukrainian indeed. I thought, "Well, there are probably not many people here who watch this English-speaking author and know Ukrainian. I may be of some help." I scrolled to the comment section. To my surprise, there was already an abundance of replies meant to "clarify" the matters. They said... she spoke russian.

It is hard for me to convey the stir of emotions I experienced rifling through those comments. Yet it may be even harder for you to rationalize it. "Some false information circulates the web. So what? It happens all the time!" It may seem trivial on the surface. I feel I should explain all the different ways in which this situation is fucked up.

1. There are different types of falsehood. "Mao Zedong was the smartest person on the planet" is a false statement. Or is it? What definition of smartness must we use? Can we know for sure what he was aiming for? Can we read his mind and see what mental calculations he was performing? Such a statement, while being obviously false, is impossible to prove or refute.

"The Earth is flat," "The Moon landing never happened," and "The communist famines were natural disasters" are also false statements. They are provably false. However, this kind of statements people usually firmly believe in. Moreover, you'd need a certain level of intelligence to evaluate them. And not everyone is able to perform the necessary research and analysis. The people who say these things aren't necessarily lying and don't necessarily have malicious intent. They believe what they say and are incapable of seeing the truth.

"I did not kill them" said by the murderer is another kind of falsehood. This is where things start to get ugly. It's not subjective, and it's not something you must research and analyze. It is a deliberate lie.

When someone hears a person speaking language A and tells you they spoke language B, it is a deliberate lie.

There are a lot of people (at least in the English-speaking world) who peddle nonsense such as, "Russian degenerates are innocent! They simply say what they were brainwashed to say! They are isolated from the world! They have no access to the truthful information!" ...Don't they have access to their own fucking memory of their own fucking language?? [1]

2. Lying about a murder is bad. But at least such a thing doesn't occur often. It's not a national concern.

The comments I saw, on the other hand, were not isolated cases. They were predominant. They had hundreds of likes. It was a collective effort.

There were, of course, some truthful comments. And there were some puzzled replies asking why would anyone lie about this thing. I assume those were left by Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Georgians, maybe a few Westerners — anyone who knew either Ukrainian or russian language but wasn't plagued by the russian brain-damaging culture. Unfortunately, these peoples are outnumbered by the degenerates in the real world, so their comments were sparse, had fewer likes, and were often met with dismissive responses. (Among which, "Haha keep coping! *laughing emoji*" and "You are a hypocrite! *clown emoji*" They are so fucking absurd their messages can be physically painful to read.)

I didn't see a single comment saying, "I am a russian (and not a degenerate), so I know pretty darn well she did not speak russian in that clip. What the heck are you on guys?"

So here is what we have: the degenerates in their majority chose to promote a deliberate lie collectively.

3. Lying about a murder is bad. But at least such a thing is easy to understand. The murderer simply tries to save his ass.

On the other hand, why on earth would anyone lie about a person speaking this or that language? It may not be immediately obvious, but I think it makes perfect sense. It aligns well with the twisted logic that the Kremlin tries to establish. It goes something like this: "That place has ethnic russians or russian speakers, which means it is our rightful area of influence, which means we can use our military force, especially to protect our oppressed people." A big portion of the announced pretext was shamelessly stolen, word for word, from Adolf Hitler's speeches where he explained why they must protect Germans in Poland. And aptly so: if that story worked for Germans with their rigorously controlled radios and newspapers, it would surely work for russians with their mildly censored internet.

Subconsciously, the degenerates understood what they must do to support their pretext internationally. They started to inflate the number of russian speakers in Ukraine. And, to counter that, Ukrainians tried to downplay their number. No one denied there were millions of them. But examples speak louder than figures and better influence public perception. Even one single instance of a person from Ukraine speaking russian signifies a little victory for the degenerates and their narrative.

As I thought about it more, I realized there might be another simple reason hidden in plain sight. It's possible that the degenerates were trolling. That is, they were trying to inflict emotional damage on those who knew the truth and cared about it. And I must humbly admit that they succeeded. I was agitated. Whenever I think I know the degenerates well, they negatively surprise me. They find unexpected ways to prove they are much worse than perceived. I am partly writing all of this because I was trolled so successfully. Writing helps me vent and process information. People have no bloody idea how often they mistake a regular russian degenerate, whose fervent wish to cause trouble emanates from within, for a money-paid "Kremlin troll." Or maybe they do understand but don't want to be seen as rude or "racist" or some other bullcrap.

Either way, their goal was to cause harm. This is another ugly dimension of this ugly incident. What do we have so far? The degenerates in their majority chose to promote a deliberate lie collectively in order to inflict damage on a group of people.

4. From centuries ago to the present day, Moscow has been practicing ethnic cleansing on its subjugated territories. Today, they burn Ukrainian books on the occupied Ukrainian land. In the Soviet era, they assassinated Ukrainian writers. I don't want to linger on this last point. I believe it is crystal clear that such a historical context makes the thing I witnessed even more disturbing.

I think that's enough explanations for now.

When you see messages like "Fascism is the best system" or "9/11 was an inside job" or "British Empire brought prosperity to India" or any other speculative unpopular message coming seemingly from a mental asylum escapee, you may feel uneasy or frustrated. Yet, as I hopefully clearly demonstrated, there can be messages orders of magnitude more malicious and hideous in their nature, even when appearing innocent.

I am greatly relieved at the recent news about the degenerates being cut off from YouTube. Public spaces are no place for the lying scum. [2] It won't fix all the problems, of course. But the platform will surely be a little bit more healthy.

It was not the initiative of the gutless and irresponsible YouTube management. The unsung hero is the management of so-called russia itself. Thank you, evil russian elites! (When will you assemble the degenerates for a bloody civil war already?)

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[1] Maybe some of them do experience trouble with language comprehension. About a decade ago, I spoke to a lot of random russians using their local social networks. I noticed how poorly most of them knew their own first language. It's not just that I made fewer mistakes despite never studying in a russian school. Many of them communicated in a way almost unintelligible, as if they were drunk typing. I kid you not. Not like "Gonna check tis a lil later," which is not even erroneous. More like "Going this to cheking a litel leiter." 

(All contrarians will call bullshit at this point. It's not something you see in English indeed. And whatabout all those photos where they read books in Moscow subway, unlike stoopid muricans who only eat burger?? Whatabout Tolstoevsky?? In reality, this disparity is easy to explain. Even the most delusional misinformed contrarian who thinks that the average russian speaker gets a better education than the average English speaker must know that English is a relatively simple language. In English, you either know a word, or you don't. That's not the case for russian.)

I also recall talking to a person and saying something like, "You need to differentiate this and that." He replied, "Differentiate? The fuck does that word mean?" That word was used many times in the recorded lectures which he praised and recommended to watch. He praised lectures the content of which he did not understand. But that was a praiseworthy response: to admit you don't know something. The majority of rustards would have pretended they understood what I said and provided some pseudointellectual passive-aggressive garbage in response. There is a widespread snobbery in their culture, but that is a whole separate topic.

In light of that, I assume there could have been some people whose messages had no malicious intent. Many russian words sound similar to those you can find in Ukrainian. Some person may have genuinely thought, "Okay, I didn't understand everything the woman said. And the parts I think I understood sounded a bit off. But that's natural! That's how I perceive words every day! I am 100% positive she spoke russian. Now let's dive deep into those comments and be helpful! And if anyone questions me, let's be aggressive, just like my dad taught me before he was neutralized!"

But you have to ask yourself, could a person of such intelligence really watch a video in a foreign language? The same applies to the foreigners who may have studied russian. Their number pales in comparison to that of the native speakers to begin with. Could it be that all those people imagined they heard a familiar word or two and rushed to provide a definite answer? There is a chance such non-malicious people appeared, but that chance is small.

[2] While the implemented approach is far from ideal, I do believe we must fight disinformation. This seemingly goes against libertarianism and its freedom of speech. It's a big topic, so I will address it very briefly. I still have libertarian views, but it does not mean I want to implement everything libertarianism describes everywhere in the world right about now. It will be a disaster if society acts irrationally, wages wars, or is in a state of some existential crisis, for example.

Why do many chess players act like they are some sort of intellectual elite? You guys waste your time and energy learning a skill that is utterly useless anywhere in the world except for the game of chess. Someone so impractical and shortsighted should rather be concerned about having a mental disorder or brain damage. Maybe stop being so damn pretentious? (It must be clarified that I am exaggerating here for a comical effect. Not sure if that’s something a chess player can recognize.)

Why do we associate “losers” with someone who is playing video games and not someone who is playing chess? At least video games can teach you something useful. Most of them develop your spatial awareness. Shooters give you some rudimentary understanding of real-life warfare. Cooperative games teach you to understand and prioritize your team’s needs. And so on.

When it comes to board games specifically, there are so many better alternatives. For example, Texas hold ’em. It is an objectively amazing game. It requires two whole domains of applicable skills.

The first domain is social. You must be able to read people and influence them. To play well, you will have to answer questions such as: Is she a careful player or is she acting? Is that a suppressed joy on his face? How long should I wait, what body language should I use, and what bid should I place so that they all think I am bluffing?

The second domain is mathematical. You must be able to quickly estimate your chance of getting this or that combination, your opponents’ chances, the amount of money worth the risk, etc. You may call it the “intuition for numbers” which, I’d argue, is important for anyone who is interested in anything beyond the mundane “What should I watch on Netflix next?”

Another great praiseworthy board game is Scrabble. It improves your literacy. If Scrabble were as popular as chess, the world would be a better place.

It annoys me that chess is so popular. Because of this, when I watch any video about any unrelated board game, YouTube starts to push on me all these chess recommendation videos with cringe thumbnails.

This was my dream on the morning of December 3, 2024.

In my dream, I was exterminating livestock together with some other woman. Presumably, we used our bare hands for the job. It was now the turn of a big pig. But I couldn’t force myself to hurt the animal. I pulled a gun for the job.

With my right hand, I tried to aim the gun carefully behind the pig’s head. With my left hand, I rubbed its belly, calming it down and cheering it up. The woman was seemingly more experienced. She showed me how to hold the gun, how to hold the head of the animal, and where to shoot for the best result.

The pig turned into a little girl of three or four years old. In my dream, this was nothing worthy of a surprise or even a notice.

As I was curling the girl’s head closer to her body, as instructed, she had a glimpse of understanding of what was happening. She became visually anxious and started to call to her friend. It was not a scream for help though. She eagerly wanted to see them soon but displayed no resistance. It was as if she wanted to tell them something important. Her last words.

What could she possibly have important to say? Whatever she may have felt was important would have been in reality insignificant. It was best to end her mental suffering immediately. It took me only a second to recognize true intentions, weigh the options, and even linger from the lack of determination. But it was a very long and painful second. I finally pulled the trigger.

Her blood started to seep through her neck. I didn’t want her blood to get unclean from the contact with the surface where she was lying. I took her gently into my arms and moved her elsewhere.

I then recalled the reasoning behind today’s actions. I had seen it. It was crystal clear. With this certainty, a farmer harvests his crops. He does not stop to ponder, “Must I not harvest? Does the wheat or the carrots or the cotton plants want to live and enjoy the sunshine?” My cold calculating mind saw everywhere and considered everything and left no room for the slightest hesitation. And yet, and yet…

It felt so bad. I wondered what I could do to best commemorate the girl, to express warmth, tenderness, and most earnest appreciation for the years she lived. The only right answer came naturally: I am obliged to cook her well and consume her fully.

I loathed the human world! The world where you were compelled — even by law! — to suppress your feelings for the deceased loved ones and surrender their bodies to the cold and filthy ground drenched with the stink of the detestable rotting strangers cramped there all around. Where the rains will flood their final resting chambers, where the worms will gnaw their molding faces.

My eyes were filled with tears. I went outside. In the clear winter sky, I was greeted by the awe-inducing Sun. It was pure white, with a flaming red outline. It shone so bright that the horizon in proximity appeared pitch-black. But there was more. It was accompanied by the smaller suns — a phenomenon people call “sun dogs.” And there was more: those suns had their own sun-companions. There were around nine shining orbs in the sky. It felt so unreal yet not entirely impossible, like a double or triple rainbow. This breathtaking sight made me very excited. I called to my mother to come and witness the miracle. Though very soon I started to realize that the smaller suns were in reality nothing more than the light from the street lamps in the distance.