Bit late to the party and mostly meandering from the footnote but I’ve been thinking about this as well. +1 for the reference to Liu Cixin’s Three-Body problem series (Rememberance of Earth’s Past). Warning mild spoilers below although I’ve tried to keep them to a minimum.
While the physics used were super sci-fi, this has been the best book series I’ve read that really made me ‘feel’ the concepts of Longtermism and how they related to x-risk on a planetary scale. Few thoughts:
Two bits I thought were particularly well done were a) the experiences of those waking up from hibernation tech (they woke up to a world significantly different than they predicted, and you could feel their disorientation) and b) the Australia chapter where you really get a sense of how horrific worst case x-risks might be
The speculative fiction on how society might respond to lots of these existential challanges also seems like good material to be able to reference and try to find solutions to in a common cultural language. E.g. as discussed here (Including referencing how a particular scenario is not like the one described).
The fact that it is written by one of the most popular Chinese Fiction writers seems like a major positive in terms of providing common ground for international cultural common ground between representatives of superpowers.
A counterpoint to promoting this may be his personal comments on politics in modern China, but I didn’t get the impression that his writing in the series was problematically anti-democratic.
I don’t want to update too much on something like ‘this is a representative view of how Chinese society tends to think about the long-term future’. If anyone has any insight on this I’d love to know.
Would it be a good idea to promote reading Liu Cixin’s books on these merits above? How does it compare to other longtermist fiction for Instilling Cultural Longtermism?
I’m unsure about the tractability and desireability of a date-on-consititution-change. My major crux would be how much bipartisan support you could get.
Bit late to the party and mostly meandering from the footnote but I’ve been thinking about this as well. +1 for the reference to Liu Cixin’s Three-Body problem series (Rememberance of Earth’s Past). Warning mild spoilers below although I’ve tried to keep them to a minimum.
While the physics used were super sci-fi, this has been the best book series I’ve read that really made me ‘feel’ the concepts of Longtermism and how they related to x-risk on a planetary scale. Few thoughts:
Two bits I thought were particularly well done were a) the experiences of those waking up from hibernation tech (they woke up to a world significantly different than they predicted, and you could feel their disorientation) and b) the Australia chapter where you really get a sense of how horrific worst case x-risks might be
The speculative fiction on how society might respond to lots of these existential challanges also seems like good material to be able to reference and try to find solutions to in a common cultural language. E.g. as discussed here (Including referencing how a particular scenario is not like the one described).
The fact that it is written by one of the most popular Chinese Fiction writers seems like a major positive in terms of providing common ground for international cultural common ground between representatives of superpowers.
A counterpoint to promoting this may be his personal comments on politics in modern China, but I didn’t get the impression that his writing in the series was problematically anti-democratic.
I don’t want to update too much on something like ‘this is a representative view of how Chinese society tends to think about the long-term future’. If anyone has any insight on this I’d love to know.
Would it be a good idea to promote reading Liu Cixin’s books on these merits above? How does it compare to other longtermist fiction for Instilling Cultural Longtermism?
I’m unsure about the tractability and desireability of a date-on-consititution-change. My major crux would be how much bipartisan support you could get.