Reading Notes: 'Is nature really natural?'

This article is reprinted from the answer by user Qi dao yu de zhi wei on Zhihu

"Is nature really natural?"
————Yang Dong

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So many answers, yet none mention this line.

You might have forgotten who Yang Dong was, only remembering the saints and heroes. After all, she was just a person who died in the first part of the series, and this line wasn't revealed until the third part.

Yang Dong is Ye Wenjie's daughter, the child who was described in great detail, and who was not ordinary from a young age.

From Wang Miao's perspective, Yang Dong was a woman he admired, but she was merely seen as one of the scientists in "The Science Boundary" who were tricked by the 智子 (Zhi Zi, a term referring to a fictional entity in the story) and committed suicide. But was it really that simple?

At the end of Death's End, Ding Yi said the following.

Ding Yi continued, "In the early crisis, when the 智子 first disrupted the accelerator, several people committed suicide. At the time, I thought they were irrational. For theorists, seeing such experimental data should have been exciting. But now I understand, these people knew more than I did. For example, Yang Dong must have known more than I did, thought further than I did. She might have known some things we still don't know. Could it be that only the 智子 creates illusions? Could it be that illusions only exist at the end of the accelerator? Could it be that the rest of the universe is as pure as a virgin, waiting for us to explore? Unfortunately, she took everything she knew with her."

In the third part, we learn that Yang Dong had already cracked Ye Wenjie's computer and discovered the situation of the Three-Body.

Yang Dong did something that was the first time she had ever done something behind her mother's back: she restored part of the deleted information. The amount of information was huge, and she spent several days reading it, learning the secret of her mother and the Three-Body world.

She already understood that the experimental results had been disrupted by the 智子.

But compared to Ding Yi and others who were worried about the locked foundation of science, she thought even deeper.

"Is nature really natural?"

"Then, how much has the universe been altered by life, and to what extent and depth? The latter question terrified Yang Dong. She knew she couldn't save herself, so she stopped thinking, trying to turn her thoughts into a black void. Still, one final question stubbornly remained in her subconscious: Is nature really natural?"

Just the Three-Body could have such an impact, let alone more advanced civilizations.

Perhaps at that time, she had already understood the Three-Body, the Dark Forest, and even the cosmic war that uses the laws of the universe.

Everything in the universe is no longer innocent. The fundamental laws we rely on, three dimensions, the speed of light, everything is just a toy of war.

And it wasn't until countless years later, after the destruction of the solar system, that we began to understand the hints from Guan Yifan, who had entered the four-dimensional tomb.

Perhaps Ye Wenjie's contemplation of the Dark Forest also originated from her daughter.

In reality, as Ye Wenjie's daughter, Yang Dong was very intelligent.

"In the photo, Yang Dong's big eyes revealed a kind of fear that made Wang Miao tremble, as if the world outside the photo terrified her. The second thing Wang Miao noticed was a thick notebook placed in the corner of the desk. What puzzled him first was the material of the notebook; he saw a childish inscription on the cover: 'Yang Dong's birch bark notebook.' Only then did he realize it was made of birch bark. Time had turned the silvery birch bark into a dark yellow. He reached out to touch it, hesitated, and then pulled his hand back.

"Look, those are Winter's childhood drawings," said Yang's mother from the doorway.

Wang Miao picked up the birch bark notebook and gently flipped through the pages. Each drawing had a date, obviously added by her mother, as he had seen when he first entered. Wang Miao also noticed something that made him somewhat puzzled: from the dates on the drawings, Yang Dong was already over three years old. Usually, children of that age could draw relatively clear shapes of people or objects; but Yang Dong's drawings were still just random and chaotic lines. From them, Wang Miao sensed a strong anger and despair, a kind of frustration and helplessness at not being able to express something. This feeling was not something an ordinary child of her age would have."

Compared to Zhang Henghai and Luo Ji, who saw the Dark Forest and tried to preserve the torch of civilization, Yang Dong saw even further.

Guan Yifan shook his head, as if struggling under the effects of hypergravity, "The Dark Forest state is the entirety of our survival, but for the universe, it's just a minor matter. If the universe is a battlefield — in fact, it is — then in the trenches between the positions, snipers kill those who accidentally expose themselves, such as communication officers or cooks. This is the Dark Forest state. For war, it's a minor matter; but the true interstellar war, you haven't seen it yet."

Because the Dark Forest is nothing compared to the universe's true nature. The reality of the universe is even more desolate.

Therefore, long before the Zeroers made the broadcast, long before the beginning of the crisis era, long before humans truly looked into space, at that time, humans had not yet experienced the concept of dimension reduction, nor had they thought about the reduced speed of light,
this human woman had already seen the emptiness of physics and the end of the universe. Hence, she chose to die.

This character is the most underestimated one. Compared to the 'vases' and 'saints' of the Three-Body, she is the truly intelligent female in Liu Cixin's pen, and even Ding Yi felt inferior to her.

In this desolate story, she is the heroine representing desolation.