Review: Dr Stone
post by ProgramCrafter (programcrafter) · 2024-09-29T10:35:53.175Z · LW · GW · 9 commentsContents
Premise Interpretation Stone World Reviewer's note Still Stone World Interpretation Ishigami Village, up to end of the Stone War Interpretation Wrapping up None 9 comments
Recently, I watched anime Dr Stone, and noticed that it was starting many thoughts like "why did social interactions turn out so?", "what might be the best way out of situation?" - in short, rationality-related. I really enjoyed watching with pauses to think for myself, and recommend it to all who are fine with anime.
In next three sections, I explain plot parts which felt especially inspiring to me, widening one's view on rationality - so, spoilers follow. Section "Wrapping up" deals with the whole show quality.
A reminder: this is fiction, not real-world evidence.
Premise
The protagonist, Senku Ishigami, is a "scientist" teen, excited to advance the world of technology. In particular, once he wanted to build a rocket; with some help and some years of exploring ideas, he achieved that dream, sending statuettes of his friends and himself to orbit.
Suddenly, birds began turning into stone. Senku noticed this phenomenon through social networks and, looking at reports from all over the world, managed to estimate the origin point of effect. Though, he wasn't able to discover any way to counteract the effect: very soon, the world was flooded with green energy, turning all humans into stone.
The teen noticed that he was still alive and began counting seconds to track the current season (as "waking up" in winter would be a probable death). And indeed, after a few thousand years the stone shell broke open, allowing Senku to start doing something. He also took care not to remove remaining pieces of stone, inferring that depetrification process involved some regeneration all around.
Interpretation
To this point, Senku has already 1) built a somewhat working rocket iterating over several possible designs, 2) discovered a petrification effect origin, 3) anticipated waking up and concentrated for survival. It should also be noted that he had a few friends who had fun with him but no girlfriends.
These behaviors align with acquiring knowledge (both from others' past observations and from actual world, highlighting both theoretical and empirical learning) and achieving goals, which are the points of epistemic and instrumental rationality respectively.
Stone World
In a stone world, Senku determined to revive all of humanity (which we only learn later) and restore technological civilization. He did some gathering and managed to start a campfire. (Note about anime accuracy: the teen could not start fire just rotating a branch with bare hands - as is often shown in cartoons - and had to use a tool instead, which seems more realistic). With help of his friend -- spuriously depetrified Taiju -- he discovered a way to wake up other statues conditional on them being intact.
A few months passed. With "miracle fluid" made, the teens went to depetrify their next friend Yuzuriha, only to be attacked by a few lions. (The story claims that this was the first attack, and that nor Senku nor Taiju had met lions in the area before.) Taiju, being reasonably strong, offered to hold the pride of lions off, sacrificing himself; Senku decided instead to revive a very strong person, Tsukasa Shishio, who was subsequently able to win the fight and vowed to protect all of them.
A few days later, Senku and Tsukasa discussed their goals and inferred that their ideas of best worlds clash, as Tsukasa wanted to build a "pure" world: not reviving those who don't do useful work in a wide sense, and not recreating dangerous technology like firearms (nor inventing even more powerful things).
The events continued with Tsukasa deciding to monopolize "miracle fluid" ingredients and to make Senku not restore technological civilization at all, possibly killing him to this end.
Reviewer's note
At this point, a thought rang aloud in my mind: "why do all the primeval situations end up in a conflict?" I believe the answer in this story is: Senku was reasonably sure that he could beat Tsukasa and then achieve a better world than a compromise, and vice versa. Also, Tsukasa might have had less social priming towards cooperation.
Still Stone World
Senku and his friends attempted to escape from Tsukasa. They didn't quite manage, so Senku "sacrificed" himself, being the main opponent to the other's goals; friends, left alone for a while and close to despair, finally found a piece of stone shell on Senku's body, which did regeneration and really revived him. Then, he left to find other people who were sending signals, recommending Taiju and Yuzuriha to become spies in Tsukasa's empire.
Interpretation
To this point, Senku has 1) remembered primitive tech and reconstructed some of it; 2) inferred Tsukasa's motives a bit before he said them out loud, then managed to withhold some information about his own capabilities; 3) remembered to distrust Tsukasa's protection vow (or just not took it seriously, which is a bit more probable considering power of terminal goals overriding whatever was said); 4) hidden his chance for a "second" life.
That's a good level of social interaction - both of obtaining information about others and of being convincing. Those are identical to the points of epistemic and instrumental rationality respectively.
Ishigami Village, up to end of the Stone War
From then, Senku concentrated on restoring technological advances, impressing other people from a village he met so that they joined him. He simultaneously cured a Very Important Person from village, won in a tournament (the second feat came pretty much randomly, though) and impressed others, so he became the village's chieftain.
There were a few battles against Tsukasa's Empire of Might, which primarily scared people but had zero casualties, with only one exception. Once, the battle stalled because of some fumes which were spreading along the ground; Hyoga (Tsukasa's right hand man) decided to check if those were toxic, and kicked two of his own soldiers there, indeed killing them (as the gas came from sulfuric acid spring).
Senku was not exploring any new tech during that, preferring instead to build what was possible. He with the villagers built a pair of cellphones and an armored car, which they used to take Empire of Might's base bloodlessly. A few threats to blow everything up were exchanged, but finally Tsukasa agreed to a ceasefire... Hyoga was not pleased with this outcome and stabbed his leader, but immediately got jailed, while Tsukasa was saved by cryopreservation.
Interpretation
In particular, these arcs demonstrate Senku's ideas: keep everyone alive whenever possible even if very hard, and make technology for the benefit of humanity.
As Senku doesn't attempt discovering new things, he does not count as a scientist in my opinion. Instead, he anticipates events, finds best items to solve problems, and can reach his goals (as shown in next seasons as well); in other words, he is a rationalist.
Wrapping up
Dr Stone has scenes-inlets describing some processes (both physical and chemical); some bloggers have verified those to be real (but somewhat simplified, including shorter taken time), matching claim of the anime itself "based on real concepts but fictional events". There are some implausible things, but I feel that probability decreases smoothly over watching anime - in contrast to some works, where some characters' actions can only be explained by authorial fiat.
Emotionally, the show didn't feel the slightest bit "dark", but instead was inspiring for me. It is based on becoming stronger and stronger. There are antagonists, but those avoid destroying everything of value; instead, conflicts are value-based.
The anime is not a good guide for either rationality or living in primitive society, I guess (after all, it is fiction!); however, it is a good reminder of what it means to be rational and grounded in reality. I recommend watching Dr Stone (or reading, as there's a manga version) to whoever doesn't find anime style repulsive.
9 comments
Comments sorted by top scores.
comment by gwern · 2024-10-03T02:35:57.395Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
At this point, a thought rang aloud in my mind: "why do all the primeval situations end up in a conflict?" I believe the answer in this story is: Senku was reasonably sure that he could beat Tsukasa and then achieve a better world than a compromise, and vice versa. Also, Tsukasa might have had less social priming towards cooperation.
As it happened, I recently watched all of Dr Stone too, and have mixed feelings about it but a lot of my observations are in the same vein.
I think you underplay the extremity of this: Tsukasa's problem is that Senku wins by default in this scenario. As soon as Senku revives a few dozen more people and reveals that the secret is nitric acid produced from bat guano (among many other possible sources), Tsukasa has basically lost. Even if he kills Senku then, there may well be a chemist or someone among the revived, who can easily replicate it. The revival of humanity means Tsukasa will soon be flooded by millions or billions of hostile intelligences; Tsukasa can then no more influence meaningfully the future of the world by punching all those millions of agents than he could in the original contemporary world where he was a successful MMA martial artist. He gets only one shot at controlling the future of humanity.
So a more realistic scenario than what actually happens for narrative shonen reasons, would be something like, Senku is revived after Tsukasa mistakenly thinks he's killed Senku, hikes a week or two away, finds one of Japan's myriad of caves/mountains and bat guano, starts reviving people, and a year later, Tsukasa's hunter-gatherers, venturing afield after a hard winter, discover that there's dozens of settlements of thousands of revived people who are busy reviving more. And then the modern world is irreversibly on the way to a reboot and there is nothing some teenagers dressed up like Fist of the North Star villains can do about it, because they can't revive many people themselves without defeating the whole point. (They'd either revive too few to matter, or wind up reviving their own worst enemies.) It is all-or-nothing. Eventually, even with narrative necessity and endless bad luck, Senku wins completely anyway; Tsukasa loses everything and has to settle for being bought off, in essence, because Senku manages to accumulate enough of a technological advantage even without any additional revivals. (The series unconvincingly says that Tsukasa's politics were superficial and so he got what he really wanted in the end, to try to rationalize how it worked out for him. Seems like cope to me!)
It is, in fact, remarkably similar to nuclear weapons or pandemics or even more so, AI, in terms of how unleashing a particular process almost immediately becomes irreversible, and so the phase immediately before the unleashing becomes all-important (even though it may look completely trivial, and looks like 2 highschoolers bickering over being a tankie and how awful a world with mortgages in it is, or some nerds arguing about speculative physics, or a lab tech sneezing in the street).
Replies from: dr_s, programcrafter↑ comment by dr_s · 2024-12-18T15:18:50.045Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Tsukasa loses everything and has to settle for being bought off, in essence, because Senku manages to accumulate enough of a technological advantage even without any additional revivals. (The series unconvincingly says that Tsukasa's politics were superficial and so he got what he really wanted in the end, to try to rationalize how it worked out for him. Seems like cope to me!)
The story plays a bit of a sleight of hand there with Tsukasa having the additional motivation of saving his little sister, which is a pity because they could have at least played up a bit more his conflict with Ryusui (who really seems to stand for everything he hates). But I suppose given his situation, gracefully accepting defeat is reasonably within his personality. He's not insane or bloodthirsty. After realising he's lost, lashing out would only mean humanity risks losing it all, while he can't win any more anyway. Besides his whole cadre has shown itself to be either incompetent or willing to betray him (the amount of people who either switched to Senku's side at the first sign of technology or downright backstabbed him is staggering), so maybe he's just realised his cause never had much of a chance to begin with. He basically never found another idealist like him; he pressganged some people who had no other alternative and found a few thugs who only wanted a chance to be violent assholes. That's not how you build a functional army.
Replies from: gwern↑ comment by gwern · 2024-12-18T18:01:47.291Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yeah, it's definitely something of a deus ex machina gimmick. Tsukasa just plain lost and the logical ending is for him to be stoned or killed - but gosh darn it, they just wanted him around too much and to redeem him somehow, so hey! here's this other thing which has not been foreshadowed or meaningfully written into his characterization or worldbuilding, like, at all. I rolled my eyes when I saw that twist coming. Even given the Dr Stone formula of wildly swerving between 'shonen' and 'Robinsonade', it was poorly done.
(Ryusui would've been a better negation of Tsukasa, but would have been tricky to to make that work. If you are at the point his naval skills really matter, the Tsukasa war has to be over already as the exponential cascade should've already long passed irreversibility by the time you have the manpower to build sailing ships rather than, say, a dugout canoe.)
Replies from: programcrafter↑ comment by ProgramCrafter (programcrafter) · 2024-12-18T20:18:38.788Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Tsukasa just plain lost and the logical ending is for him to be stoned or killed
except that
1) there is sometimes too much of such hostility in the real world,
2) some people can legitimately be redeemed - that is, they change thinking strategies and approximations to their values when they see what has been created (re: Einstein's reaction to atomic bomb creation),
3) I don't think anyone depicted in the anime would have valued fairness/consistency/other base for punishing Tsukasa - and with death penalty, no less - over compassion.
Authors might have held the position [LW · GW] (shout-out to @the gears to ascension [LW · GW]!) "[we] want literally every human to get to go to space often and come back to a clean and cozy world. This currently seems unlikely. Let's change that." Even if they haven't: there is such vibe, and I somewhat endorse it!
Replies from: dr_s↑ comment by dr_s · 2024-12-22T12:01:20.341Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Senku definitely holds that position, and of the authors I wouldn't be surprised if Boichi at least did - he is famously a big lover of classic science fiction. If you check out his Dr. Stone: Byakuya solo spinoff manga, it starts out as a simple side story, showing the life of Senku's dad and his astronauts companions in space, and then spirals out in a completely insane direction involving essentially an AI singularity (understandably, it's not canon).
There is a certain "Jump heroes shouldn't kill wantonly" vibe I guess but truth be told Jump heroes have gotten significantly more willing to dirty their hands recently (now Kagurabachi seems set to become the next big thing, and Chihiro has a body count in the dozens at this point). So I don't think editorial fiat explains this either.
It's really part of the manga's fantasy, as in, realistically, sure, Tsukasa would have been killed or kept in stone. But just like everyone is able to make up really complicated fully functioning devices with rudimentary means, everyone is able to reach Aumann Agreement within a relatively short time of being proven wrong. That's just how the world rolls.
↑ comment by ProgramCrafter (programcrafter) · 2024-10-03T17:16:06.389Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There is also an alternative realistic scenario where Tsukasa [temporarily?] wins. That happens if upon killing Senku, Tsukasa buries or destroys his body himself.
Though, to get a scientist not trying to undermine the empire, Tsukasa would need to play Newcomb-like Omega (conditioning reviving the scientist on him cooperating, as any other option qualifies as a ignorable threat). Not getting any science advances would put the tribe on the edge of loss (due to illnesses, Petrification Kingdom, inability to revive people fast enough, inability to anticipate outcomes of any specific revival order, etc).
Replies from: gwern↑ comment by gwern · 2024-10-03T17:43:31.223Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yes, while Tsukasa has no particular reason to think Senku could revive himself, he might have done that out of simple guilt/regret. Just one of many reasons that specific plan was very shonen-idiotic. (Your tolerance for Dr Stone's strange blend of oscillating rapidly between shonen-idiocy where everyone is holding idiot balls 24/7 in a world which makes zero sense, and Robinson Crusoe STEM nerd ratfic, will determine how much you enjoy it, I think.)
But even if Tsukasa accidentally deals with Senku in a definitive way, he still has the same basic issue: many people can defect and trigger a civilization-level reboot on their own, and he only has to screw up once. No matter how many 'statues' he destroys locally to prevent revival, and how carefully he selects who to revive, it just doesn't work statistically. (Even handwaving away the wildly absurd worldbuilding which postulates that there can be at least 2 stable villages of hundreds or thousands of humans living at an advanced tech level for 3000+ years without anyone ever recolonizing the rest of the world.) His preferred plan leaves way too much 'hardware overhang'; he needs a singleton, and it's not obvious where he'd ever get that.
(And the worldbuilding further implies that Tsukasa's plan is doomed because Senku is merely the first to wake up due to a double coincidence of location & his mental activity, and all the intact statues would revive eventually worldwide, and neither Tsukasa nor his successors could handle that.)
Replies from: dr_s↑ comment by dr_s · 2024-12-22T12:40:51.483Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Not just that, but as per manga spoilers:
The US already have a bunch of revived people going, including a Senku-level rationalist and scientist who has discovered the revival fluid in parallel and is in fact much less inclined to be forgiving and wants the exact opposite of Tsukasa, to take advantage of the hard reset to build a full technocracy. By the time Senku & co arrive there, they already have automatic firearms and WW1-era planes. So essentially Tsukasa's plan was always absolutely doomed. Just like it has happened before, one day backwards isolationist Japan would wake up to find US gunships with superior firepower at its gates and it would be able to do nothing at all to stop them.
comment by keltan · 2024-09-30T07:21:05.093Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I really loved Dr Stone. It gave me the feeling that the science as magic sequences gave me. A deep appreciation for reality and the power it brings an individual to understand it deeply. I really hope to have more rationalists watch it in future.
I also recommend “Science fell in love, so I tried to prove it” for stats nerds. And “My Hero Academia” as the main character embodies “Tsuyoku Naritai!”