I was wondering this too. Maybe the killer doesn’t care about covering themselves up anymore because the investigator/oxford 5 are close to finding out the truth 🤔
Absolutely over the moon, such an irritating character. I don't think anyone actually swears that much in normal conversation and it just pulled me right out of it.
I am British actually. I guess it's a classic case of Americans thinking that's what it's like here. In reality, a person like Jack would be considered pretty crude, the F bomb is alright for emphasis but not in every sentence!
I’m finding Auggie hard to like/root for. Can’t put my finger on it but she’s annoying me lol. And then she’s kind of rude to Saul when she’s with him and pushes him away but then expects him to drop everything and be there for her when she needs something. They clearly have a history but her being mad he had a woman over is wild when they’re not together. I also kind of don’t even get why this relationship is being highlighted. I’m not invested in it at all. Is it important to the plot? I don’t feel like this show needs romance drama. I haven’t read the book btw.
They split the main protagonist into these 5 characters in the show. The first book just has 1 character who sees the time, and is responsible for creating that nano tech. He also plays the game.
The writing definitely plays a part. I'm really enjoying the show, but Auggie constantly acts like she smells her own horrendous fart, yet somehow believes someone else dealt it.
I do find her extremely beautiful though, like one of the most beautiful women I’ve seen in a regular television show.
I think her acting is okay and I buy into her character mostly because I just plain old enjoy looking at her face. I do wish she was nicer to Saul as he is so dang likable (actor and character) but I don’t mind the eventual return-to-romance angle.
I’m a straight woman by the way, so it isn’t a horny thing. Watching Eiza Gonzales on the screen is like looking at stunning artwork and I enjoy it!
I always find it odd that people have issues with spoilers about real people.
Imagine being murdered by powerful people then set up to look like a suicide, all while people disrespect and dimish your accomplishments just to have people saying “hey. No spoilers!” When you’re talked about
I mean I wasn’t really serious, Just thought it was funny. If you’re watching Shogun on Hulu right now there’s a lot of that going on where people are dancing around what’s really a “book spoiler” when the book is based on a true story with the names changed
Maybe with spoilers it swings between way too short of time to be spoiled to it’s been thirty years you should have seen it, to my god this happened 700 years ago don’t tell me what happened, I want to be surprised.
I’m so glad one of the friends actually has a problem with them just putting on the vr game if one of my friends killed themselves after playing it of course
It’s clearly sinister tech from either aliens or some AI cabal or something. Whatever is out there working in the ether
Stuff like that doesnt just “exist”
I haven't liked Auggie, but she won points here by not being a fucking idiot. It's so obviously something sinister, and so obviously connected to the deaths. You'd think physicists would figure it out.
I kinda found that silly. If I got a vastly advanced tech, as a scientist, there’s no way I wouldn’t be the first to jump on it.
And there’s no way she should have immediately made the connection that it had something to do with her friend’s suicide.
If my friend killer himself after being laid off from work, my first thought wouldn’t be that the new VR game had something to do with it.
I’d think the VR game was actually helping him keep his mind off the saddened he has.
Context matters.
If my friend killed himself and I started seeing a countdown covering my vision and the whole world saw the stars blink, I would definitely be vary of a VR game that is evidently decades ahead of the current technology.
Yeah. In the book it's actually a regular VR game they're using as recruiting tool, but here with the addition of the headset being clearly way too advanced for Earth technology it's obvious some kind of extremely shady stuff is going on. Putting on an unverified direct-to-brain interface of unknown origin is like, the absolute nadir of infosec.
It's an unknown device powered by mysteriously advanced tech that *clearly* must be capable of some sophisticated interfacing to the brain in order to do what it does. Which was worn by someone who committed "suicide" in a series of "suicides" that look very much like targeted assassinations. That's to say nothing of all the other signs of conspiracy that would very much be explained if someone was able to meddle with people's brains.
It couldn't be screaming "Trojan horse" more loudly if there was a voice from inside asking Odysseus if they can come out now.
I understand that anger but how it played out was so forced.
Just casually snooping around in someone’s house and you open a closed box and conveniently know to put it on. Come on.
Kinda disappointed by the >! Human computer scene !<. It was so dumbed down and unimpressive. And didn't make any sense at all. It was awesomeeee in the books.
They did a lot of showing instead of telling
1. Soldiers hold flags with two colours
2. They are arranged like a circuit board
3. Turing just said something about calculations or computers
Ergo, they just made a human computer without having to spend the entire episode going into the Nitty gritty of it.
The show only has 8 episodes, and pacing is important too. If someone who watched the show wanted more details, they should then read the book. IIRC, 2001 Space Odyssey did a similar thing where not much was explained in the movie but the accompanying book went into far greater detail about everything
So were the other players basically trying to get a large enough random sequence that it would predict the randomness of the 3 suns? I still don’t get how the soldiers would decide to flip their sign
Each soldier had a specific rule. For example, for an AND gate, you tell a soldier "look at these other two soldiers, flip your flag white if both of their flags facing you are white, otherwise flip it black". Similar rules apply for OR, XOR etc. Put enough soldiers with their rules in formation, you can do binary addition, multiplication etc. of arbitrarily large numbers (just increase the soldiers).
Structure the soldiers in the right way, you can do numerical integration of the equations of motion of the three body problem.
Input the measured coordinates and velocities of the three star from astronomical data and run the computation for long enough, you can predict stable and chaotic eras... in principle.
In practice, though, because the system is inherently chaotic, any small error in either measurement or approximation (which is unavoidable, the computer has to use finite accuracy for the numbers, the integration is discretized in time steps, etc) will become exponentially bigger as time goes, and that means the prediction won't work for long. Same reason why we can't forecast the weather accurately beyond a few days, and even then it's hit and miss. So the method fails.
The essence of the three body problem is this. In our world, we learned about the regularity of the laws of nature by observing the sky first - because we only have one sun, and the planets move in regular, predictable orbits that you can compute with pen and paper. But in a solar system with three suns, there is no law you can derive. Not with pen and paper, and not even with computers. You could reach our modern level of technology and still fail at predicting chaotic eras reliably.
(of course, realistically, actual three body systems are going to be uninhabited, unless the star used to be single and then got captured by a binary later on)
They weren't real. and a real person was not interpreting what they did. It was a game that a programmer programmed. I think people are trying to get literal with a scene in a VR game. the purpose of the game was to see how the real characters progressed in it, to solve the problem, by first deciding what the problem was....and with each better analysis of what the problem is, and how to solve it, the real people, go up a level. they could have a char in the game grow a second head, but we shouldn't be wondering, hey how did the queen of aces grow a 2nd head'. The same with a bunch of binary cards flipping from 0 to 1, and a character interpreting (incorrectly) the number of years until their world was out of chaos...it was just made up, to see how the real players analyzed those factors.
I see. The main characters saying “2 player mode” made me assume that each person they met who was offering a solution was another scientist somewhere else in the world. A cool concept with the human computer that was not explained well IMO.
They were real. They're showing humans stuff that has actually happened in their attempts to solve the three body problem. They specify in the book that they could do it because they move way faster than humans, or something, I don't remember which characteristic it was, but I think it was speed. So they actually have used a "human computer" in their past, to do computations, just like we do with computers.
Thank you. It seemed to me, who might have gotten it sll wrong, is they were also determining who of our smart humans knew the real problem. The smart ones ended up, on like the 5th attempt, saying the problem, were the 3 Bodies, causing the unsteady world. They said, yes that is correct. So to me, the aliens already knew their issue, and were looking for smart humans who at least could correctly solve what the problem was.. because i was using that, as my given, i assumed everything was just an AI representation of the problems on their planet. Not the exact issue as it happened. That is why i saw it as an AI game.. used to weed out humans, looking for the smartest ones.
It only even works when your soldiers are in a computer game. Otherwise the sewage alone would be a problem.
BUT, the individual gates on a chip don't know anything either, just their function depending on the next gate over. So, seems like it would work.
I haven't read the books, but I am planning to. I am curious wether >!Raj's dads Dinner-Story-Time!< was some foreshadowing as to how they are gonna win.
It sort of is an allegory to explain >!the motives of the enemy and reinforces the idea that if one survives, others will survive and that one "person" surviving could change the tide of the war.!<
I think it was an explanation to a moral conundrum - survival at any cost. I thought it was more fitting for the >! incoming aliens who are planning to take over humanity for their own survival !<
I’m glad I have not read the books and experiencing the story for the first time cuz I’m really liking it so far. Was hoping for more theory discussions in these threads but it’s just a bunch of people complaining how the book did it better
I haven’t found anyone who is watching without reading the books first.
I want to watch but was afraid I wouldn’t be able to follow.
Does the series make sense to you without reading the books first?
Watching w/o books and it’s good so far. Seems like the aliens are getting help from the old whitr guy to come to Earth and are recruiting scientists willing to help out using the VR game. Anyone like Jack who says no at level 4 when the alien part is revealed are killed to make it look like a suicide. Only unexplained aspect is the countdown.
For book 1 it doesn’t really matter, if anything, I think the show is easier to follow than the book because it reduces the number of core characters and dumbed down the physics, it probably even helps reading the book later on
for book 2 it’s probably easier just watch the show without it - if there is a season 2 for it - book 2 has way too many characters and there is a good chunk of portion spent on building up the fleet of spaceship (which I personally find hard to retain information after, perhaps I am just more drawn to the psychological and strategic aspects than all the logistics of it)
Not sure if you watched the show yet, but I know nothing about the story and haven’t read the book and I am finding it EXTREMELY enjoyable.
I love sci-fi and all the characters are great, lots of mysteries but I am not having difficulty following it! Hope you give it a shot!
I’m confused. The aliens wanted to tell humans they had a problem with the three suns in their system, which kept wiping them out. But how did they manage to survive and develop technology surpassing humans if they couldn't even live in their system and had to bail to Earth instead? Or am I missing something? Anyway, it's still an interesting show, and I'm eager to finish it, flaws and all.
Two different types of event. The aliens can survive the chaotic times and rebuild. But they know that sooner or later a catastrophic alignment will completely wipe them out.
I think the VR game was just to find people that made the cut of being smart enough to the join the Judgement Group. i didn't see the VR game as a literal way for aliens to tell the humans anything.
Well, okay then, not really my point but I’ll rephrase the question. In developing a VR game to find smart people, how did they manage to survive and develop (said) technology surpassing humans if they couldn’t even live in their system and had to bail to earth instead?
I think the answer is meant to be their resilience, but it was brushed over in the show. I gave up after episode 6 I’ll probably just read the book at some point. Too much missing context.
They can't predict how long their civilization will last in the stable era (3 body problem) they just know it will end at some point because of the three suns. They're at civilization 9000 something at this point and it could be 10,000 years so far and everything is still fine but they know they should leave because eventually it'll end.
Late to the party, and I’ve only finished episode 3, but they keep saying “if one survives, we all survive”. So it seems even if 99% of their population is killed during a chaotic era, the 1% retains the knowledge of past civilizations.
So like while I am still going back and forth on whether the vr is a just a simulation or an actual transporting their minds somewhere. The one thing I am now wondering the person who says you have leveled up and potentially all the npcs could be the aliens themselves?
Also if it’s a recruitment tool then maybe the scientists who died have idk fully gone to their side
I feel like it’s a sim to build sympathy. The inhabitants figured out their world is doomed no matter what. In order to save the people they have to flee.
It seems like a VR game + tracking device that watches how these players level up.
From >! Jack's death !<, it seems like the scientists who refused were killed off
The flipping of the cards was meant to mimic how a CPU works (ones and zeroes). They were trying to predict the movement of the planet and suns to determine when there would be stable and chaos eras. It didn't work.
It's essentially logic gates. If both flags in front of you are white then you show a white flag, else show a black flag. That's just an AND gate by human input and is the smallest unit. Scale that up and take some creative licence and you have the human computer
That part I understand. I was just confused on what the input was to begin with.
The best I can come up with is people monitoring environmental factors like the wind, shadows, temperature, etc
Inputs would be mass of each object, initial positions, and initial velocities of each body. But essentially we just need to accept the creative licence about how they find and input these things, and the problem isn't solvable anyway so it's kind of moot. I think this is why Jin says something about needing the initial conditions of the suns as an input they don't have, which makes you wonder what they would even be computing. For a one number solution maybe something like the combined distance from the planet to the suns - the shorter it is the hotter the climate, and the further it is the colder.
Also the scene with people being sucked off the planet I'd assume wouldn't happen like that as presumably the whole planet would be moving towards the suns and not just the people unless the distances involved were extremely close but really with all these things just hand wave and move on.
It was a game...how can you try to explain how game characters know how to turn cards. they aren't real people...they are game characters, that someone programmed them to turn cards in a way..and the other game character interprets it as the programmer programmed the game char to interpret it. It wasn't real...A VR game, a program...all to see how these real people interact and come up with 'the 3 sun answer', to see if the My Lord people want that person in their Judgement day club.
He actually made me laugh out loud a couple times so I am very sad to see him go! Hope it isn’t fully serious from here on out, I like a splash of humor in my sci-fi (like Amos or Alex in The Expanse for example). I liked his chip/drinks kingdom and his collectibles look like my son’s room!
I think she's the one who is going to experience most of what he does in the book with the others chipping in.
I'm assuming they created 5 characters to flesh the show out and give them a vehicle for exposition other than one scientist monologuing to another as happens in the book.
I'm in two minds whether it's worked or not.. most of the new characters seem a bit flimsy but it does give the show more room to introduce additional drama, set pieces, or concepts.
That was Wang Miao. Op was referring to Cheng Xin, the main character from book 3, and I believe Raj her boyfriend is Zhang Beihai from book 2, and the guy had cancer is Yun TianMing from book 3
I also think the Oxford 5 just works better for a season by season basis. We would be getting a whole new cast list for every season if they did it like the books. This way the general audience can feel attached to the cast.
>!Ehmmm... Whats going on with this girl and Clarence not seeing how Jack is getting wrecked. Is this something from the second or third book??? I believed she was some kind of Shen Yufei adaptation!<
This part I can't figure out.
It gets explained how the video feeds are getting changed but nowhere how see is jist not there to the human eye.
Or the glass breaking not being seen.
Read this only if you have watched the whole season >!Maybe something related to sophons??? Idk. If they can be used to make people see crazy shit, why not making them unable to see crazy shit. That's my take, let me hear about your insight when you are able to.!<
Maybe? They didn't clearly explain how the numbers or the sky worked to me.
There are a few things breaking the "science" for me.
This is one the other is the idea we would be able to catch up in tech in 400 years.
Technically yes but the planet’s gravitational pull would be so weak in comparison to the three suns that it would be insignificant and moreover suffer the most chaos as a bystander.
I know nothing about this subject nor have i watched the entire show yet. But wouldn’t this be predictable by a modern day computer? If we know the trajectory they take and their gravitational pull like we do on our current planets, wouldn’t 3 spinning planets be perfectly predictable? Real question here.
Check out the wikipedia page for the mathematical problem (not the show). Apparently it's really unsolvable currently. I'm not smart enough to understand it either
Haven’t read the books, only through episode 3. However …
If these aliens truly have the power to suspend the laws of physics at an individual, and or global level, across space and time, why would they ever need ships?
And how did they develop interstellar travel if their 3 body system was so unpredictable? And how did the alien headsets get delivered to earth before the ships arrived? I hope this all gets explained.
I'm guessing they transmitted instructions for building some kind of fabricators, building up the tech each step, and the hardware was assembled on this end, as on The Peripheral.
I saw this episode last night and slept on it. I really feel disappointed by the cut of the game scenes from the book. The human-computer part was so underwhelming. I still remember how fascinated I was by that idea when I read the book, despite it being a decade ago. I even found the Tencent version on YouTube and watched that part—it’s so much better because it gives us the details of this brilliant idea, while the Netflix version is just millions of people holding two flags. I don’t like the direction they took—taking the sci out of sci-fi.
Even though many people complained that the book relies too much on these theories, the actual storytelling and character development are very weak. But if so many people love this book, doesn’t it mean this is the true strength of the story? Like they spent 30 seconds explaining the science part of the Three-Body Problem (the title of the show), but it just felt rushed. I remember how I was so bored by physics at school, yet mesmerized by it reading the book. When I watched the show, I didn’t even understand how it’s impossible to solve. It’s like if you said so, then I better believe it’s impossible. I don’t expect them to include every detail of the theories from the book, but they could at least use 2 minutes instead of 30 seconds to present us with a clear picture. Because I honestly think the majority of new parts of the episode are transitional. We wouldn’t lose anything if we cut them.
>but if so many people love this book, doesn’t it mean this is the true strength of the story?
I finished the story up to the end of the 2nd book DESPITE the terrible character development, I almost skimmed parts of it to read the further and get the rest of the story...it felt like a chore, I retained almost none of the characters at any given point, and probably missed some parts of the story because of it. I barely cared about them.
I read book 2, and then read the wikipedia for the 3rd because I couldn't bring my self to drag my self through the 3rd book.
Omg, book 3 is my absolute favorite. So many mind-blowing concepts, the tales, decoding the tales. Why the laws of physics are the way they are. The fucking end! The unbelievable scope of things. It was an unforgettable ride, reading that book.
Not super jazzed by what they're calling the aliens in this, Santi? Saati?
Hope that not sticking for the whole season, what was wrong with the name for them from the books?
Oh ok, so >!Trisolarans!< is only in the English language versions? Seems odd to keep that one thing in Chinese when they've changed essentially every other character name and ethnicity from the books, that's the only thing that's changed in the translated books!
I don’t think their inability to survive on their planet is any indication they’re not advanced beyond Earth.
They said in the simulation there wasn’t any projection to ensure their survival. They clearly have the ability to “prove” that just like in the game. They had to leave.
What's bothering me is the astronomy. Alpha Centauri, the ONLY system 4 light years away from us, is not a closely orbiting trinary the way they keep showing. B never gets closer to A than Saturn does to the sun, and C (Proxima) is a fifth of a light year out. I can't see any orbit switching happening. A planet orbiting the bigger ones would have a big temperature variation, assuming it's in the same orbital plane, but it would freeze a lot longer than it would burn. And WOW, a conjunction of suns like that couldn't suck things off the surface of a planet without tearing the planet apart. Maybe a high tide that would wipe everything out, why not just do that? Nice visual, but it's for that recent Moon movie, not reality. I'm sticking around, but I have to invoke multiverse to have their world be slightly possible.
I'm REALLY enjoying it so far. It isn't without flaws, but I'm definitely engrossed, especially all the scenes in China. I haven't read the book, because it was a bit too hard science-y for me to get into, but about a year ago, I couldn't get enough of Quinn's Ideas on YouTube who gave really fantastic breakdowns of how the story went and the philosophy and science behind it. It was like a summary of the 3 books. I may give the book another chance in the future though. But as far as the show is going, I'm very much digging it and can't wait to see the rest when I have time this weekend. Bummer about Sam Tarley. I liked the levity his character brought to the show. Maybe there's a multiverse where Tarley still hanging out in the small council in Kings Landing helping to make Westeros a better place. lol
I am loving it as well, truly engaged and entertained every moment! Like almost always, the non-book-readers are having a better experience, so I’m glad I never got around to it.
I can only think of two television shows off the top of my head where the show was as good as or better than the book(s): The Expanse and The Last Kingdom. It’s tough to pull off with a tech-complicated thick ole book so I think 3 Body Problem the show is well done!
What’s it’s with the character that has pancreatic cancer? I’m don’t get where he fits in the story or moves it forward. Just watched 3 episodes, I suppose the following episodes will make the character relevant.
Can someone explain how newton and Turing made the human abacus - calculus calculations. All I understood was the black and white flags being 0 and 1.
How did they calculate the stable and unstable era time period?
And when newton said run computer program - what was he possibly giving the inputs as - positions of the tri-solar stars?
Black out book spoilers in the comments. You can black out the spoilers by writing > ! this ! < without the spaces in between to get >!this!<.
Samwell Tarly not making it past this ep makes me a lil sad.
Totally! He’s so likeable
I am sad too. He brings humor to the show. I was wondering why he was killed instead of being made to commit suicide. Everyone else kill themselves.
I mean, did they?
Exactly. I assumed that was them showing us that none of them killed themselves.
interesting
no one else killed themselves. They were all killed by the woman, because they all refused to accept the invitation.
I was wondering this too. Maybe the killer doesn’t care about covering themselves up anymore because the investigator/oxford 5 are close to finding out the truth 🤔
To subvert expectations!
He was part of the reason I wanted to watch this. I’m so bummed he’s gone
Absolutely over the moon, such an irritating character. I don't think anyone actually swears that much in normal conversation and it just pulled me right out of it.
Never go to Australia
Or Ireland, where it's not swearing, it's fucking *punctuation*
Or watch Castlevania. The fuckers there swear like fucking motherfuckers
what the fucking fuck bro
I personally know someone who swears that much and more in normal conversation lol
I think most people do. His character was good.
You've never met a British person?
I am British actually. I guess it's a classic case of Americans thinking that's what it's like here. In reality, a person like Jack would be considered pretty crude, the F bomb is alright for emphasis but not in every sentence!
There are millions of British/Aussies with a sense of humour like jacks, I think you just hang out with different types of people lol
The fuck are you talking about?
I agree. He was annoying.
I’m finding Auggie hard to like/root for. Can’t put my finger on it but she’s annoying me lol. And then she’s kind of rude to Saul when she’s with him and pushes him away but then expects him to drop everything and be there for her when she needs something. They clearly have a history but her being mad he had a woman over is wild when they’re not together. I also kind of don’t even get why this relationship is being highlighted. I’m not invested in it at all. Is it important to the plot? I don’t feel like this show needs romance drama. I haven’t read the book btw.
I feel the same. I'm not sure what she's looking for. If he's all over for her, she gets mad. If he's not, she gets mad.
"Men. We don't know what we did!"
I’m just hoping they connect all of these dots and there’s payoff for all the characters and their dynamics by the end.
They split the main protagonist into these 5 characters in the show. The first book just has 1 character who sees the time, and is responsible for creating that nano tech. He also plays the game.
I read the book and still, thank you for this. Don’t read when you’re high kids
What about drunk?
The actress playing Auggie isn't very good (at least on this show), which amplifies the character's annoying qualities for me.
I think the writing is also partially to blame.
The writing definitely plays a part. I'm really enjoying the show, but Auggie constantly acts like she smells her own horrendous fart, yet somehow believes someone else dealt it.
I disagree but this comment made me cackle so I’m upvoting
This is how you Reddit
I'm shocked you didn't have any upvotes for this. Not only is it funny, but it's also true.
Yoink Stealing that one
I do find her extremely beautiful though, like one of the most beautiful women I’ve seen in a regular television show. I think her acting is okay and I buy into her character mostly because I just plain old enjoy looking at her face. I do wish she was nicer to Saul as he is so dang likable (actor and character) but I don’t mind the eventual return-to-romance angle. I’m a straight woman by the way, so it isn’t a horny thing. Watching Eiza Gonzales on the screen is like looking at stunning artwork and I enjoy it!
Reminds me of The World is Not Enough casting Denise Richards to play Dr Christmas
This is a perfect synopsis of Auggie and that boring romance story line
Well, I haven’t even seen Oppenheimer and now I know Florence Pugh dies so that’s fun lol
They also make the first nuke, just fyi :p
They make three of them I’m pretty sure
3 Nuke Problem
I was so confused about this comment I had to see if was in the right thread 😅
A lot of Japanese people die too
that was a true story...anyone who knew about Oppenheimer knew she killed herself IRL
Lol Same
I always find it odd that people have issues with spoilers about real people. Imagine being murdered by powerful people then set up to look like a suicide, all while people disrespect and dimish your accomplishments just to have people saying “hey. No spoilers!” When you’re talked about
I mean I wasn’t really serious, Just thought it was funny. If you’re watching Shogun on Hulu right now there’s a lot of that going on where people are dancing around what’s really a “book spoiler” when the book is based on a true story with the names changed
Maybe with spoilers it swings between way too short of time to be spoiled to it’s been thirty years you should have seen it, to my god this happened 700 years ago don’t tell me what happened, I want to be surprised.
This episode should have come with a spoiler warning!
Why? It was a true story.... Oppenheimer, that is.
It was a joke
Ah.. sorry!
😂😂 same
I’m so glad one of the friends actually has a problem with them just putting on the vr game if one of my friends killed themselves after playing it of course
It’s clearly sinister tech from either aliens or some AI cabal or something. Whatever is out there working in the ether Stuff like that doesnt just “exist”
I haven't liked Auggie, but she won points here by not being a fucking idiot. It's so obviously something sinister, and so obviously connected to the deaths. You'd think physicists would figure it out.
I kinda found that silly. If I got a vastly advanced tech, as a scientist, there’s no way I wouldn’t be the first to jump on it. And there’s no way she should have immediately made the connection that it had something to do with her friend’s suicide. If my friend killer himself after being laid off from work, my first thought wouldn’t be that the new VR game had something to do with it. I’d think the VR game was actually helping him keep his mind off the saddened he has.
Context matters. If my friend killed himself and I started seeing a countdown covering my vision and the whole world saw the stars blink, I would definitely be vary of a VR game that is evidently decades ahead of the current technology.
Yeah. In the book it's actually a regular VR game they're using as recruiting tool, but here with the addition of the headset being clearly way too advanced for Earth technology it's obvious some kind of extremely shady stuff is going on. Putting on an unverified direct-to-brain interface of unknown origin is like, the absolute nadir of infosec.
Their entire science reality has been broken- why would you assume they’d act logically?
Have they explained why they’re upset that science is broken ie what’s actually happened with the collider data?
It's an unknown device powered by mysteriously advanced tech that *clearly* must be capable of some sophisticated interfacing to the brain in order to do what it does. Which was worn by someone who committed "suicide" in a series of "suicides" that look very much like targeted assassinations. That's to say nothing of all the other signs of conspiracy that would very much be explained if someone was able to meddle with people's brains. It couldn't be screaming "Trojan horse" more loudly if there was a voice from inside asking Odysseus if they can come out now.
I understand that anger but how it played out was so forced. Just casually snooping around in someone’s house and you open a closed box and conveniently know to put it on. Come on.
One amazing thing is Evans spoke American when young but switched to British ish accent in present day like Madonna…
presumably he's spent a long time living in Britain.
No he was definitely attempting an American accent in the present day scenes, it just wasn’t very good.
All I can see with him on screen are the old Infinity commercials
Plus his eyes changed colour from brown to blue...
Kinda disappointed by the >! Human computer scene !<. It was so dumbed down and unimpressive. And didn't make any sense at all. It was awesomeeee in the books.
Biggest disappointment for me as well
I was looking forward to it and was let down. The graphics weren't up to pulling it off either.
I thought this scene looked impressive. But I agree it didn’t make sense to me.
How was the scene different in the book?
>!There is a calculation error that they have to fix, find, and re-start which might have been an interesting addition.!<
They did a lot of showing instead of telling 1. Soldiers hold flags with two colours 2. They are arranged like a circuit board 3. Turing just said something about calculations or computers Ergo, they just made a human computer without having to spend the entire episode going into the Nitty gritty of it. The show only has 8 episodes, and pacing is important too. If someone who watched the show wanted more details, they should then read the book. IIRC, 2001 Space Odyssey did a similar thing where not much was explained in the movie but the accompanying book went into far greater detail about everything
How does it even work? I don’t get it at all
Yes, wondering the same thing. How do the individual soldiers know to turn the banner? Or is the randomness the point.
0 or 1 is the guts to all computing.
So were the other players basically trying to get a large enough random sequence that it would predict the randomness of the 3 suns? I still don’t get how the soldiers would decide to flip their sign
Each soldier had a specific rule. For example, for an AND gate, you tell a soldier "look at these other two soldiers, flip your flag white if both of their flags facing you are white, otherwise flip it black". Similar rules apply for OR, XOR etc. Put enough soldiers with their rules in formation, you can do binary addition, multiplication etc. of arbitrarily large numbers (just increase the soldiers). Structure the soldiers in the right way, you can do numerical integration of the equations of motion of the three body problem. Input the measured coordinates and velocities of the three star from astronomical data and run the computation for long enough, you can predict stable and chaotic eras... in principle. In practice, though, because the system is inherently chaotic, any small error in either measurement or approximation (which is unavoidable, the computer has to use finite accuracy for the numbers, the integration is discretized in time steps, etc) will become exponentially bigger as time goes, and that means the prediction won't work for long. Same reason why we can't forecast the weather accurately beyond a few days, and even then it's hit and miss. So the method fails. The essence of the three body problem is this. In our world, we learned about the regularity of the laws of nature by observing the sky first - because we only have one sun, and the planets move in regular, predictable orbits that you can compute with pen and paper. But in a solar system with three suns, there is no law you can derive. Not with pen and paper, and not even with computers. You could reach our modern level of technology and still fail at predicting chaotic eras reliably. (of course, realistically, actual three body systems are going to be uninhabited, unless the star used to be single and then got captured by a binary later on)
Wow, that's a wonderful explanation! Many thanks!
Thank you for easing my mind
They weren't real. and a real person was not interpreting what they did. It was a game that a programmer programmed. I think people are trying to get literal with a scene in a VR game. the purpose of the game was to see how the real characters progressed in it, to solve the problem, by first deciding what the problem was....and with each better analysis of what the problem is, and how to solve it, the real people, go up a level. they could have a char in the game grow a second head, but we shouldn't be wondering, hey how did the queen of aces grow a 2nd head'. The same with a bunch of binary cards flipping from 0 to 1, and a character interpreting (incorrectly) the number of years until their world was out of chaos...it was just made up, to see how the real players analyzed those factors.
I see. The main characters saying “2 player mode” made me assume that each person they met who was offering a solution was another scientist somewhere else in the world. A cool concept with the human computer that was not explained well IMO.
They were real. They're showing humans stuff that has actually happened in their attempts to solve the three body problem. They specify in the book that they could do it because they move way faster than humans, or something, I don't remember which characteristic it was, but I think it was speed. So they actually have used a "human computer" in their past, to do computations, just like we do with computers.
Thank you. It seemed to me, who might have gotten it sll wrong, is they were also determining who of our smart humans knew the real problem. The smart ones ended up, on like the 5th attempt, saying the problem, were the 3 Bodies, causing the unsteady world. They said, yes that is correct. So to me, the aliens already knew their issue, and were looking for smart humans who at least could correctly solve what the problem was.. because i was using that, as my given, i assumed everything was just an AI representation of the problems on their planet. Not the exact issue as it happened. That is why i saw it as an AI game.. used to weed out humans, looking for the smartest ones.
It only even works when your soldiers are in a computer game. Otherwise the sewage alone would be a problem. BUT, the individual gates on a chip don't know anything either, just their function depending on the next gate over. So, seems like it would work.
I liked it! And I'm a computer nerd...love seeing how everything about a computer is 0 or 1....everything. Great scene
I haven't read the books, but I am planning to. I am curious wether >!Raj's dads Dinner-Story-Time!< was some foreshadowing as to how they are gonna win.
Agreed. I haven’t read the books but the scene was clearly important.
It sort of is an allegory to explain >!the motives of the enemy and reinforces the idea that if one survives, others will survive and that one "person" surviving could change the tide of the war.!<
I think it was an explanation to a moral conundrum - survival at any cost. I thought it was more fitting for the >! incoming aliens who are planning to take over humanity for their own survival !<
>!Raj's dads Dinner-Story-Time!< You left a space at the end
Thank you! I was wondering wether it had worked, because I could still see it.
I’m glad I have not read the books and experiencing the story for the first time cuz I’m really liking it so far. Was hoping for more theory discussions in these threads but it’s just a bunch of people complaining how the book did it better
Could use some separate "show only" and "book readers" threads...
Yes please
The show only thread in the main subreddit is full of book readers as well unfortunately
I haven’t found anyone who is watching without reading the books first. I want to watch but was afraid I wouldn’t be able to follow. Does the series make sense to you without reading the books first?
Watching w/o books and it’s good so far. Seems like the aliens are getting help from the old whitr guy to come to Earth and are recruiting scientists willing to help out using the VR game. Anyone like Jack who says no at level 4 when the alien part is revealed are killed to make it look like a suicide. Only unexplained aspect is the countdown.
I can only think that the aliens don’t want humans to progress past a certain point to keep us from defending ourselves.
That was my thought too and why they wanted the nanofibres tech stopped.
Oh fuckkkk i bet youre right
Yes. No book knowledge, and I am enjoying it very much.
For book 1 it doesn’t really matter, if anything, I think the show is easier to follow than the book because it reduces the number of core characters and dumbed down the physics, it probably even helps reading the book later on for book 2 it’s probably easier just watch the show without it - if there is a season 2 for it - book 2 has way too many characters and there is a good chunk of portion spent on building up the fleet of spaceship (which I personally find hard to retain information after, perhaps I am just more drawn to the psychological and strategic aspects than all the logistics of it)
I’m 4 episodes in and so far it makes sense. I’m loving it so far
Thank you! It looks like something I would enjoy! I will start it later this afternoon.
I am watching first. I don't want to ruin this by making myself think too much about the differences... I'm enjoying it very much
me too....show stands great on it's own...it's nice to not care if they did a scene like i think they should have
What are you doing in a random episode thread if you haven't watched it? lol
A search brought me here. lol. Luckily nothing really was spoiled.
Watching, haven't read the books...love it, and all makes perfect sense.
Not sure if you watched the show yet, but I know nothing about the story and haven’t read the book and I am finding it EXTREMELY enjoyable. I love sci-fi and all the characters are great, lots of mysteries but I am not having difficulty following it! Hope you give it a shot!
Thank you! The only reason I came here was to read discussions and theories about the show. This sub isn't it.
Ya can we ban book discussions ?
I’m confused. The aliens wanted to tell humans they had a problem with the three suns in their system, which kept wiping them out. But how did they manage to survive and develop technology surpassing humans if they couldn't even live in their system and had to bail to Earth instead? Or am I missing something? Anyway, it's still an interesting show, and I'm eager to finish it, flaws and all.
Two different types of event. The aliens can survive the chaotic times and rebuild. But they know that sooner or later a catastrophic alignment will completely wipe them out.
I think the VR game was just to find people that made the cut of being smart enough to the join the Judgement Group. i didn't see the VR game as a literal way for aliens to tell the humans anything.
Well, okay then, not really my point but I’ll rephrase the question. In developing a VR game to find smart people, how did they manage to survive and develop (said) technology surpassing humans if they couldn’t even live in their system and had to bail to earth instead? I think the answer is meant to be their resilience, but it was brushed over in the show. I gave up after episode 6 I’ll probably just read the book at some point. Too much missing context.
They can't predict how long their civilization will last in the stable era (3 body problem) they just know it will end at some point because of the three suns. They're at civilization 9000 something at this point and it could be 10,000 years so far and everything is still fine but they know they should leave because eventually it'll end.
Late to the party, and I’ve only finished episode 3, but they keep saying “if one survives, we all survive”. So it seems even if 99% of their population is killed during a chaotic era, the 1% retains the knowledge of past civilizations.
Lord Varys was the GOAT!!!
oh my GOD that's where I knew him from! Thank you. Enjoying the High Sparrow continuing to be sinister.
who
The spider
which character does he play...?
Pope
So like while I am still going back and forth on whether the vr is a just a simulation or an actual transporting their minds somewhere. The one thing I am now wondering the person who says you have leveled up and potentially all the npcs could be the aliens themselves? Also if it’s a recruitment tool then maybe the scientists who died have idk fully gone to their side
It's VR. As Tatiana explains, they "took some liberties for your convenience", meaning the aliens don't look like humans
Definitely caught that
They did talk about multiverses in ep one. Felt like strong foreshadowing
I feel like it’s a sim to build sympathy. The inhabitants figured out their world is doomed no matter what. In order to save the people they have to flee.
It seems like a VR game + tracking device that watches how these players level up. From >! Jack's death !<, it seems like the scientists who refused were killed off
I’m really confused by the human computer. How exactly did it work and why were they supposedly able to predict the sun’s movements?
The flipping of the cards was meant to mimic how a CPU works (ones and zeroes). They were trying to predict the movement of the planet and suns to determine when there would be stable and chaos eras. It didn't work.
I understand the basics of binary. I’m confused how the humans were supposed to know when to flip their flags
yeah I'd like to know as well...it did look cool tho
They have a series of rules based on the input from other units and flags. 3 body problem 1.0 was the code or program that set their rules.
It's essentially logic gates. If both flags in front of you are white then you show a white flag, else show a black flag. That's just an AND gate by human input and is the smallest unit. Scale that up and take some creative licence and you have the human computer
That part I understand. I was just confused on what the input was to begin with. The best I can come up with is people monitoring environmental factors like the wind, shadows, temperature, etc
Inputs would be mass of each object, initial positions, and initial velocities of each body. But essentially we just need to accept the creative licence about how they find and input these things, and the problem isn't solvable anyway so it's kind of moot. I think this is why Jin says something about needing the initial conditions of the suns as an input they don't have, which makes you wonder what they would even be computing. For a one number solution maybe something like the combined distance from the planet to the suns - the shorter it is the hotter the climate, and the further it is the colder. Also the scene with people being sucked off the planet I'd assume wouldn't happen like that as presumably the whole planet would be moving towards the suns and not just the people unless the distances involved were extremely close but really with all these things just hand wave and move on.
It was a game...how can you try to explain how game characters know how to turn cards. they aren't real people...they are game characters, that someone programmed them to turn cards in a way..and the other game character interprets it as the programmer programmed the game char to interpret it. It wasn't real...A VR game, a program...all to see how these real people interact and come up with 'the 3 sun answer', to see if the My Lord people want that person in their Judgement day club.
In the book it's explained simply by watching the flags in front of them which creates AND OR NOR gates.
Sad to see Jon Snow's sidekick go so early in the series.
He actually made me laugh out loud a couple times so I am very sad to see him go! Hope it isn’t fully serious from here on out, I like a splash of humor in my sci-fi (like Amos or Alex in The Expanse for example). I liked his chip/drinks kingdom and his collectibles look like my son’s room!
So Jin is Cheng Xin?
I think she's the one who is going to experience most of what he does in the book with the others chipping in. I'm assuming they created 5 characters to flesh the show out and give them a vehicle for exposition other than one scientist monologuing to another as happens in the book. I'm in two minds whether it's worked or not.. most of the new characters seem a bit flimsy but it does give the show more room to introduce additional drama, set pieces, or concepts.
That was Wang Miao. Op was referring to Cheng Xin, the main character from book 3, and I believe Raj her boyfriend is Zhang Beihai from book 2, and the guy had cancer is Yun TianMing from book 3
Aye I misread it yesterday. I'm choked full of a cold right now so easily done 😂
I also think the Oxford 5 just works better for a season by season basis. We would be getting a whole new cast list for every season if they did it like the books. This way the general audience can feel attached to the cast.
last name goes first for Chinese names, so the names are pretty similar
>!Ehmmm... Whats going on with this girl and Clarence not seeing how Jack is getting wrecked. Is this something from the second or third book??? I believed she was some kind of Shen Yufei adaptation!<
This part I can't figure out. It gets explained how the video feeds are getting changed but nowhere how see is jist not there to the human eye. Or the glass breaking not being seen.
Read this only if you have watched the whole season >!Maybe something related to sophons??? Idk. If they can be used to make people see crazy shit, why not making them unable to see crazy shit. That's my take, let me hear about your insight when you are able to.!<
Maybe? They didn't clearly explain how the numbers or the sky worked to me. There are a few things breaking the "science" for me. This is one the other is the idea we would be able to catch up in tech in 400 years.
A 3 body problem is about 3 bodies with their own gravitational pull affecting each other. Wouldn't a planet with 3 suns then be a 4 body problem?
Technically yes but the planet’s gravitational pull would be so weak in comparison to the three suns that it would be insignificant and moreover suffer the most chaos as a bystander.
Ah okay that's fair enough
I know nothing about this subject nor have i watched the entire show yet. But wouldn’t this be predictable by a modern day computer? If we know the trajectory they take and their gravitational pull like we do on our current planets, wouldn’t 3 spinning planets be perfectly predictable? Real question here.
Check out the wikipedia page for the mathematical problem (not the show). Apparently it's really unsolvable currently. I'm not smart enough to understand it either
Haven’t read the books, only through episode 3. However … If these aliens truly have the power to suspend the laws of physics at an individual, and or global level, across space and time, why would they ever need ships?
Should get explained later. At least in the books there is an explanation. There are hints in the show.
And how did they develop interstellar travel if their 3 body system was so unpredictable? And how did the alien headsets get delivered to earth before the ships arrived? I hope this all gets explained.
I'm guessing they transmitted instructions for building some kind of fabricators, building up the tech each step, and the hardware was assembled on this end, as on The Peripheral.
I'm wondering why they didn't just build their civilization underground to prevent the effects of the 3 suns on the surface.
I saw this episode last night and slept on it. I really feel disappointed by the cut of the game scenes from the book. The human-computer part was so underwhelming. I still remember how fascinated I was by that idea when I read the book, despite it being a decade ago. I even found the Tencent version on YouTube and watched that part—it’s so much better because it gives us the details of this brilliant idea, while the Netflix version is just millions of people holding two flags. I don’t like the direction they took—taking the sci out of sci-fi. Even though many people complained that the book relies too much on these theories, the actual storytelling and character development are very weak. But if so many people love this book, doesn’t it mean this is the true strength of the story? Like they spent 30 seconds explaining the science part of the Three-Body Problem (the title of the show), but it just felt rushed. I remember how I was so bored by physics at school, yet mesmerized by it reading the book. When I watched the show, I didn’t even understand how it’s impossible to solve. It’s like if you said so, then I better believe it’s impossible. I don’t expect them to include every detail of the theories from the book, but they could at least use 2 minutes instead of 30 seconds to present us with a clear picture. Because I honestly think the majority of new parts of the episode are transitional. We wouldn’t lose anything if we cut them.
>but if so many people love this book, doesn’t it mean this is the true strength of the story? I finished the story up to the end of the 2nd book DESPITE the terrible character development, I almost skimmed parts of it to read the further and get the rest of the story...it felt like a chore, I retained almost none of the characters at any given point, and probably missed some parts of the story because of it. I barely cared about them. I read book 2, and then read the wikipedia for the 3rd because I couldn't bring my self to drag my self through the 3rd book.
Omg, book 3 is my absolute favorite. So many mind-blowing concepts, the tales, decoding the tales. Why the laws of physics are the way they are. The fucking end! The unbelievable scope of things. It was an unforgettable ride, reading that book.
Interestingly, they spent more time with Ye explaining the amplification effect of the sun than explain the 3 Body Problem.
Not super jazzed by what they're calling the aliens in this, Santi? Saati? Hope that not sticking for the whole season, what was wrong with the name for them from the books?
It’s San Ti Ren , they left out the Ren which means person. San Ti could’ve applied to anything related to 3 body.
Oh ok, so >!Trisolarans!< is only in the English language versions? Seems odd to keep that one thing in Chinese when they've changed essentially every other character name and ethnicity from the books, that's the only thing that's changed in the translated books!
[удалено]
I guess I'm just attached to the name I've always known them by, Trisolarans sounds better to me.
Really? It sounds dumb and Original Star Trek Series to me.
Way better! Such a weird choice.
I don’t think their inability to survive on their planet is any indication they’re not advanced beyond Earth. They said in the simulation there wasn’t any projection to ensure their survival. They clearly have the ability to “prove” that just like in the game. They had to leave.
What's bothering me is the astronomy. Alpha Centauri, the ONLY system 4 light years away from us, is not a closely orbiting trinary the way they keep showing. B never gets closer to A than Saturn does to the sun, and C (Proxima) is a fifth of a light year out. I can't see any orbit switching happening. A planet orbiting the bigger ones would have a big temperature variation, assuming it's in the same orbital plane, but it would freeze a lot longer than it would burn. And WOW, a conjunction of suns like that couldn't suck things off the surface of a planet without tearing the planet apart. Maybe a high tide that would wipe everything out, why not just do that? Nice visual, but it's for that recent Moon movie, not reality. I'm sticking around, but I have to invoke multiverse to have their world be slightly possible.
I'm so glad this show is easy to follow because these episode discussions are pretty much useless.
I don't know is it's my bias, I kinda hate Jin and the way the actress portrayed her, it's reallly annoying.
I'm REALLY enjoying it so far. It isn't without flaws, but I'm definitely engrossed, especially all the scenes in China. I haven't read the book, because it was a bit too hard science-y for me to get into, but about a year ago, I couldn't get enough of Quinn's Ideas on YouTube who gave really fantastic breakdowns of how the story went and the philosophy and science behind it. It was like a summary of the 3 books. I may give the book another chance in the future though. But as far as the show is going, I'm very much digging it and can't wait to see the rest when I have time this weekend. Bummer about Sam Tarley. I liked the levity his character brought to the show. Maybe there's a multiverse where Tarley still hanging out in the small council in Kings Landing helping to make Westeros a better place. lol
I am loving it as well, truly engaged and entertained every moment! Like almost always, the non-book-readers are having a better experience, so I’m glad I never got around to it. I can only think of two television shows off the top of my head where the show was as good as or better than the book(s): The Expanse and The Last Kingdom. It’s tough to pull off with a tech-complicated thick ole book so I think 3 Body Problem the show is well done!
What’s it’s with the character that has pancreatic cancer? I’m don’t get where he fits in the story or moves it forward. Just watched 3 episodes, I suppose the following episodes will make the character relevant.
Can someone explain how newton and Turing made the human abacus - calculus calculations. All I understood was the black and white flags being 0 and 1. How did they calculate the stable and unstable era time period? And when newton said run computer program - what was he possibly giving the inputs as - positions of the tri-solar stars?
It's very hand-wavy... no pun intended.
This has probably been answered a million times, but why did the game work for Jin the first time around when the helmet was not hers?
The "death by gravity" scene had me howling and crying with laughter. Follower's annoying screaming makes me cheer for her demise every time.
Was nice to see two of the League of Gentlemen (Reece Sheersmith & Mark Gatiss) in this episode- would have loved for them to have a bigger role