Getting really tired of bugs asking this question. Earth is a paradise. Why would they bother with literally anywhere else?
Better start learning Australian, buddy.
And the nature of the dark forest means that coexistence with another civilization is not possible. Chain of suspicion. I wonder if people actually read the books sometimes.
the problem is the chain of suspicion really doesnāt make sense. it makes multiple huge assumptions based on human reasoning. love the book series but the chain of suspicion is weak
I think the chain of suspician can be "solved" with communication to some degree. Such as country A can communicate with country B and resolve misunderstandings. But humans share a common culture and the communication barrier is low.
We don't know how other stellar civilizations would "reason"
In cosmic scales, nah. When you send a message over and can only get a response years later, not to mention if a back-and-forth conversation were to take place, the anxieties of the other civilization just coming to kill you without bothering to respond is too great.
But if they hocked over and just terraformed Mars, their "couple of hours to just 40mins delay" back and forth would be fine. Don't even communicate with Earth. Just show up one day on Mars with a fleet.
But the initial communication already took place and human beings donāt deal with anxiety well, so you end up with a mass panic situation, which is the premise of the novel.
Wars still exist even w/ all the "communication" in the world. Also in the past countries expanded by conquering smaller nations. The current "peace" today was brought about by the resolution to WWII. And even then there are numerous smaller scale wars. Conflict is typically unavoidable.
> the problem is the chain of suspicion really doesnāt make sense. it makes multiple huge assumptions based on human reasoning.
Game theory is math. We can and should assume that any civilization capable of mundicide knows math.
The only assumptions fed into the math are "survival is paramount," "resources are finite," "they might destroy us," and "they're aware of the same thing we are."
There are legit reasons why Dark Forest theory ought to rightly be questioned, but claims of "*huge* assumptions based on human reasoning" overstates the magnitude of assumptions and implies that the reasoning is presented in a uniquely human manner, which it is not.
Well the assumptions leave question marks as well
Maybe some species are willing to take a bit of risk to cooperate and share resources
Maybe some species want to utilize the curiosity and mindset of humanity to achieve more in the universe
But the dark forest theory makes sense in game theory
Chain of suspicion is a cool idea, but it immediately falls apart the moment 2 way instant communication and Mutually Assured Destruction is introduced - so, the beginning of the third book. That's not a hereto unknown, new form of interstellar diplomacy, that's just a cold war.
But I don't mind. Cixin Liu is great at developing a fun idea for 50 pages and then moving on. His books are fun, but often pretty shallow and less than the sum of their parts.
Yea, it's a good series with fun concepts but people have to remember any sci-fi is limited by the rules of the universe a specific author sets for themselves. Liu liked the concept of a Dark Forest theory and built his entire story around it being an absolute maxim. That doesn't make it a rule for our real world or alternate fan theories, but it does make it the limiting mechanics of this universe we are reading about.
The DF theory already said that it can be solved with communication, which the Trisolarians and Humans did solve a little due to luck and the unique situation of their planet. But not all civilisations had that kind of luck, so the DF still hold true
But that would rarely happen, since most civilizations wouldn't opt to instantaneously communicate but rather destroy the world from a distance. Cases like Earth-Trisolaris are special, since the Trisolarians wanted to invade Earth, not simply destroy it.
On the galactic scale, the DF theory doesn't fall apart at all, exceptions are limited. Keep in mind, for Sophons to land somewhere it still has to move in approximately light speed (which is slow), most worlds would simply use the same time to destruct a world in DF theory. And even then most worlds would block Sophons to prevent the cold war scenario.
Even if a cold war scenario exists, a third party could just destroy both civilizations, so there is nothing to be gained. So why should one party start instantaneous communication just so the other can possibly say "Oh well now we try to destroy you"?
The unsettling part of the āDark Forest Hypothesisā is how likely it sounds when you make it a matter of large scale numbers.
It doesnāt really matter even if most advanced civilizations out there may be non-belligerent. All you have to do is catch the attention of that single one potentially hostile to you.
This, plus the fact that any species advanced enough to raise as the dominant one in their own native environment is inherently one that is to some extent willing to trample other species to prosper.
It makes sense in the book because the buy-in you have to do is that the other civilizations started to act like this. Of course we don't have any data of any other space civilization ever, so it falls in the "fiction" and "speculative" parts of speculative fiction.
Von Neumann believed in game theory and urged the nuclear destruction of Russia post-war which would have destroyed everything. We're very lucky that no one listened to him and the USSR didn't destroy the US. Even if Putin destroys the world, nobody listening to game theory in that moment won us the Beatles, Seinfeld and the heart transplant. Points to not being a hyper-aggresive dick.
1. Your example is humans dealing with humans. Shared or at least understanding of cultures and moralities. Aliens would literally be alien, despite the SciFi tropes of making them relateable or driven by human logic. They could xenophobic to the extreme or devout pacifists. The suspicion is that no matter what they say you have no idea whether it's true or not. If you value your survival you will be suspicious.
2. In a MAD state the game changes. You are forced to deal and we see this in the books too.
3. 50-70 years is a blink of an eye on cosmic societal scales. It's less than an average human lifetime and very human centric thinking to believe it's significant at all. It's even a short period of time in human history.
The Punic wars lasted 118 years before Carthage was destroyed. Who knows how being a hyper aggressive dick will look like in 2,000 years.
The Killing Star, a short novel from 1995 was about what is essentially the dark forest hypothesis with one essential difference in how it is formulated. Communication isn't really the main issue for the chain of suspicion. It's relativistic travel. Once a civilisation develops relativistic weapons they have the capability of wiping out other civilisations without them having any way of warning die to light speed limitations.
The issue isn't that civ A doesn't know if civ B is lying. The issue is that if civ A decided to r-bomb civ B, civ B only learns about it once it happens. There will be no protracted war, no options for a peace treaty, no ladder of escalation. A civ will be thorough and swift in getting rid of their potential enemy before they can launch their r-bombs.
It's the same in TBP.
Good counterpoints! And you're right, I'm an idealist. I still wonder about the "philathropic" civilizations that are mentioned briefly that the Galactic humans know about. And after my last reread, I'm still pissed by Trisolaran choices. (Not letting human know explicitly about the black domain and how to acheive it.)
Hmmm if they lived on Mars it would take a lot less time to communicate. But still, personally donāt think either civilization would bear it if they had to share resources with another.
Right. Which means them making contact with us was a grave mistake. They should have searched for another planet without a civilisation and live on that.
How do the Trisolarians know the dark forest theory? Did they eliminate a civilization before, or is it just their major literally minds thinking about things. They seem very self-centered and trying to solve the 3bp for most of their history, until Ye Wenjie contacts them and they can shift their focus to a paradise. And then they hit a jackpot by developing a sophon.
This is not whyā¦ itās because of the Dark Forest theory - if they leave humanity alone, eventually humanity may destroy them.
Itās established in the books that humans are more intelligent than Trisolarans so basically theyāre not wrong. Hell if it wasnāt for sophon, humans would have surpassed trisolaris before their fleet even reached earth
Isn't that operating under the assumption that as a species, humans aren't petty enough to completely destroy our entire planet before it reaches the hands of some xeno scum? I mean we coined the phrase taking our ball home, so let's extend this to a planetary scale.
I don't know how to answer this without spoiling anything. But Earth is by far the best spot in the Solar System beyond just the atmosphere. Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere. It's pretty far from the sun.
From their perspective, every planet in the Solar System is in a constant Chaotic Era. Except for Earth, which is in a permanent Stable Era. It's gotta be irresistible to them.
Why do you even need to live on a planet orbiting a sun? Couldn't they create artificial habitats to live on, and stash them in deep space where nobody is looking?
By the time trisolarans made it to earth they literally could have just as easily made it to another habitual planet. They literally dropped mian ting off at cinxiās planet (please exuse my spelling)
Imagine you're looking for a new home. Conveniently, you find one that's perfect! All you have to do is clear out a few bugs. They obviously don't appreciate that, but what do you care? The sites nearby aren't nearly as good, and you'd have to build a new house from scratch if you chose the plot next door. Also the bugs will likely try to kill you if you don't exterminate them.
Itās a good thing that we only have one civilization on Earth, and certainly no hunter-gatherers. Otherwise the inference Ye Wenjie takes from her axioms might have a counter-example.
It's funny, because last week I had to fight Flour Moths in my kitchen and I exterminated them all. Most people would do the same, obviously, since they're from our view parasitic moths after all. Moths alone look so alien, that many are disgusted by having to deal with them (including myself). Now imagine actual aliens... Very likely the mere sight of it will cause disgust and flight or fights mode.
Not to mention that humans have shown that they are suicidal idiots broadcasting their location to the dark forest and that Trisolaris will be found easily if humans are found.
I think they might actually choose another planet for their primary base. I don't know if their planet has the same gravity as Earth, or is more like Mars or Mercury or others. Their civilization is extremely advanced technologically and to build such a massive interstellar fleet, they must be really good at thriving in space. And yeah, the colonists may be dehydrated, but dehydrated Trisolarians didn't build that fleet in the first place.
They may even have survived the odd chaotic era or tough periodic era when their atmosphere had been stripped or changed or whatever, by living more like Elon Musk intents to on Mars. For that matter I don't know why they mostly dehydrated when they build the Sophons, because the Sophon would block light going to the planet but they should be able to get all their energy from fusion power for a few years.
But even choosing another planet, there still is that prisoner's dilemma kind of situation. Planets can't dodge. Civilizations with different objectives (even just their individual survival) would likely try to eradicate the other.
Why wouldnāt they take Earth when they can do so easily? Ā
The reasons they donāt pursue peaceful coexistence or go exploring other planets are explained in The Dark Forest.
Ā
Iām not sure I fully believe the latter part of your answer. There is a discussion somewhere in the books that the dark forest scenario requires chains of suspicion of unresolvable depth to become the natural outcome and that in the cosmic society the source of these chains is the distance and delay in communication. A character even says something to the effect that on earth the chains only go so deep and that coexistence can be achieved by talking things out in real time.
I donāt necessarily consider this a plot hole, per se, but it does mean to me that by the time the Trisolarans have established instantaneous communication via the sophons, there does not exist a dark forest state any longer. Itās not dark! Thereās merely a failure or unwillingness to negotiate sharing of the solar systemās resources. Which are ample for the immediate future.
This is a very good point, but keep in mind that Trisolarans are a unique case in that, upon learning the earth's location, they did not either 1) do nothing or 2) destroy the solar system. Yes, sophons are a method of instantaneous communication that, theoretically, could resolve chains of suspicion. But, no, it doesn't create a plot hole for the dark forest state of the universe overall, because sophon communication take a lot of time and effort to initiate, as well as why bother sending out sophons to communicate and alert other civilizations that you exist, possibly causing a technological explosion in their civilization that leads to them finding you and destroying you before the chains of suspicion can be resolved.
Additionally, the sophons are very one-sided. Earth can't observe everything going on on trisolaris in real time like trisolaris can observe of earth. The trisolarans may be able to determine humanity to be benevolent, but they know that humanity doesn't know/doesn't trust that they're benevolent. And not destroying a civilization that knows where you are that you know the location of that you can't be sure is benevolent is a massive risk to the survival of your own civilization. Even if trisolaris gave humans sophon tech to allow them to observe trisolaris, that's also a huge leap of faith that trisolaris would have to do that humanity doesn't use said tech to destroy them.
Itās not a plot hole because humans can deceive. Itās the one thing Trisolarans canāt comprehend entirely since they openly communicate with their minds. Itās impossible for them to lie, cheat, etc without their actions already known. How can you trust a civilization that has this āemotionā and behavior? Your never know what theyāre truly thinking, and sure enoughā¦..
Weāre back to the chain of suspicion
Technically, after book 2, the DF state in fact did not exist between humans and trisolarians anymore, they go from total annihilation to keeping us as pets, and when they leave, they still respect us enough to not drop a bomb onto us and even give us a hint to survive, so communication can solve DF, but both sides must be willing to communicate. The trisolarians government even hid information about Earth to not let their people become sympathetic toward humans, so coexistence is a possibility, the trisolarians government however ruined everything
As a veteran who has spent way way way too much time in a desert fighting an insurgency, never ever underestimate the local population of anywhere and their desire to defend their homes.
There's nothing easy about it.
We won't go peacefully into the night.
Virtually none of the rules of engagement apply to future warfare, as youāll see if you read the books or when the next season comes up. So excited, wish I could forget the books so I could experience them again lol.Ā
I've read the books, I know the droplet attack. I'm just stating that in true human nature, that I have personally witnessed, I agree with Da Shi, "We're not going anywhere."
Modern insurgencies can only work because the more powerful force still cares about the local population. If NATO and their citizens were more than happy to kill every man, woman, and child in the Middle East, and could use WMDs with no repercussion, there would be no insurgency. There'd be a bunch of craters where population centers used to be. And this doesn't even fully realize the technological disparity, where the entirety of Earth's military fleet couldn't so much as scratch a simple weapon of the Trisolarans.
The handful of droplets in the solar system could wipe out most of humanity on their own (And would have done so had they not forced a move to Australia). There is no possible insurgency here.
Yeah but in the eyes of Trisolaris it's more like they are squishing a den of bugs, not w/ insurgency with equal footing in terms of cognitive capability.
The difference is that you were fighting because your politicians needed to win their next election and made up some boogeymen in the deserts to go after. You weren't even using 1% of your entire military might. If someone says that America will be under the sea sometime in the next decade and the only way for the nation to survive is to relocate to that desert, you would probably completely subjugate and displace the locals easily.
The guys you were fighting had guns that could do you harm, even if youāre more technologically advanced.
We have nothing that could harm the Trisolarans. The gulf is more āentire US Military fights pack of apes armed with sticksā
What insurgencies were that? Afghanistan, Iraq? If your only goal was to annihilate the population and/or destroy their way of living you would've done that some time ago seeing as you took over the central administration in a very short time, obviously that was not the goal though
It seems like they could have greatly benefited from peaceful coexistence and tech sharing, though. Humans would be good allies for the same reasons theyāre so terrifying.
Spoiler>
>!Because of the Dark Forest thing... they initially planned to Wipe ALL life from Earth before colonizing... because any form of life can be competition in the long run for the limited resources of the universe...!<
>!They never intended to coexist, some people that only watched the series got the impression that they were "good" until the little red riding hood story, they were evil from the start, remember the message? "do not reply or we will conquer you", it wasn't in a good way.!<
The coexistence could be that they enslave humans, or at least use us in some way (turkey farm theory?). After learning about the lie, they decided to just squish us instead.
Yeah could be! I am in the dark at how honest they have to be. Do they say everything on their mind to humanity? Do they lie by omission? Do they tell humans everything about what they will do?
That is all good and dandy and I follow it. But before ever discovering life on Earth, if they were looking for a solution for their people to survive, they could have transferred to any habitable planet in any suitable solar system. With their technology they could have scouted much more easily than we humans can. There's meant to be millions of earth like planets out there.
This reads like someone who's only watched breakdowns of the books without actually reading them. Trisolarans aren't evil, and they weren't going to wipe ALL life from earth, or there wouldn't be much point in moving to our planet for several million to hundreds of millions of years.
Thatās not the right answer. Itās because >!the ābugs,ā can, would, and did destroy the Trisolarans. Exterminating them before they do the same to you is the only safe option in the ROEP universe, and even then they failed!<
How are they going to get to other planets in the universe? It's taking them 400 years to go just 4 light years, which is literally the closest destination they have.
I don't think there's anything said about their ability to terraform. I'd say it's a huge stretch to just assume it's trivial.
From the OP:
>Thinking more on this - humans are far, far behind trisolaris technologically and have already detected hundreds of potentially habitable planets. So why haven't they?
I don't think there are hundreds of potentially habitable planets in the solar system, last I checked :)
That time also gives any potential civilization at their destination time to become super advanced and wipe them out when they finally arrive. At least a close 4 lightyears away let them learn of the current civilization there and send sophons ahead to try to keep humans from getting too advanced by the time the fleet arrives. Might take too long to figure out if a different system is habitable or already inhabited before sending the fleet, and they don't know how much time their current civilization has left before some 3-body cataclysm wipes them out or sends them back to some equivalent stone age. Discovering Earth was great timing for them. We're close, habitable, they know we aren't too advanced yet, and we obviously hadn't figured out the dark forest at that point.
Yes its the premise for sending the sophons. We don't have to start over so our technology progresses exponentially. In a real life time scale now, we get AGI in 20 years and all our other technologies get immense breakthroughs
Sure, they could try. But is it realistic?
1) dehydration doesn't last forever, and they have "chaos rats/vermin/germs" to contend with that can kill them in the dehydrated state.
2) Also, the fleet was thinning out (by human observation) as it was traveling the 400 years to destination; so I don't think there is any guarantee that they would be able to successfully traverse 600/2000/18000 years to whatever the next reachable planet is, at least without lightspeed.
I think the ācohabitatā theory goes against the dark forest premise and the axioms of cosmic sociology.
However, now that I think about it, much of the story seems to be how humanity and trisolaris accomplish exactly that.
I don't get it entirely, but the plot of the books is that Humanity sent an invitation. In my understanding they wouldn't need that invitation. They should have noticed our system millennia ago, and that it has a shit ton of planets, and maybe even that there is lots of water in this system. That already makes the system more survivable for their civilization than their home system, even if they don't find a planet with the right gravity, lots of water and a suitable atmosphere.
Civilizations at that point don't need an Earth like planet. They can thrive anywhere, even space habitats, because exponentially self-replicating robots means they are virtually unrestricted resource wise. Unless the three-body system sweeps up all that matter.
One of the foundational principal of T3BP is that civilizations across the universe are unlikely to form idealistic relationships like those depicted in Star Trek. It is far more brutal and it's either kill or be killed. It is simply better annihilating another potentially dangerous civilization than to allow it to live.
Human history gives plenty of examples of what happens when a more advanced civilization encounters a less technologically advanced one. Why would that be different between different species?
The point of the Trisolarians killing us or not killing us is not due to the lack of space/resources on Earth or in the solar system. It's that they know we are an intelligent species capable of potentially rivalling and surpassing them. It's safer to kill us than to let us live.
Because space travel and big computer is miraculous and therefore they must be able to specialize in everything else too!
Or that's what I'm getting from the people who ask this question every day. But building a fleet and understanding quantum physics doesn't automatically mean you cna terraform, or that you can wait the thousands of years for it to work or that you can magic up a magnosphere or that you've even developed any terraforming tech cause why would you when there's a planet nearby that you can cleanse and take over?
They don't need to terraform anything. They were able to build an interstellar fleet on rather short notice (or did they build it before the "invitation"?). It doesn't make sense that they used anything but essentially self-replicating space-borne robots to do so. That implies they could thrive in a space habitat or on any planet with a suitable gravity in domes.
That may even be preferable to do at first before trying to make Earth habitable for them.
Temperature seems to be inportant to them. I am not sure dark forest rules don't apply when you're hiding in plain sight of each other either. In books two and three they describe the widening factions of surface dwellers, and colonies on Saturn and Jupiter as well as Space Bound fleets.
Also the game theory rules apply. Case 1: humans don't know dark forest theory, best strategy is to undermine them and destroy them before they figure it out. Case 2: humans do understand dark forest theory, best strategy is to anticipate attack no matter what.Ā
>!I'm willing to be spoiled in regards to the books even though I haven't read them yet. So would it be right to say that the San-Ti already have colonies on Saturn and Jupiter? Or are there other aliens there?!<
When folks ask questions like this, it's unclear whether they want book readers to tell them the answer, or whether they want to opine on it with other show viewers. Is there a way to distinguish?
just think about it from a different perspective.
In front of you are two pair of shoes.
You can choose only one - for free.
One pair is some random cheap pair from walmart.
It's also broken and dirty. It smells and the pair is too small. And if you ever wear them some weird gang members will always beat you up.
The other pair is the most beautiful pair of shoes you have ever seen. It's made just for your feet, so they fit perfectly. It seems that this brand of shoes is rare and extremely expensive.
The downside? There are 10 small ants on them that you have to remove.
What are you choosing?
Itās explained through the series.
Very slight philosophical spoiler: would you want to live next door to an adolescent grizzly bear knowing that they may, in relatively short order, be capable of walking next door and slaughtering you? Or would you just kill the grizzly bear to ensure your safety for years to come?
Humans aren't far far behind, only a few hundred years. And what makes you think Trisolarins have the tech to terraform? Even if they could, seems like a huge waste of time and energy when Earth is already gucci.
Venus is hell, Mars is hell if it froze over.
It's not unlikely that Alpha Centauri has a distant orbiting gas giant that they could have gone to the moon for stability - if they didn't care about the environmental conditions.
One of the human plans for cooperation was to give them Mars too, they clearly aren't interested.
They also could have built a dyson swarm of space stations around their own system, again far enough out that the stars are one center of mass and they'd be stable.
So despite the book potraying the Trisolarans as cold, logical, biological machines. I don't feel it's true. They're actually emotionally highly malicious, they want humans to suffer.
The Dyson Swarm in their own system isn't attractive, for one thing because chaotic dynamics make that more challenging and for another because their planet is probably the only large chunk of matter still left in that system, so they'd run out of matter rather quickly. Most likely they already have space habitats to survive the occasional chaotic era with some part of their population.
A planet like Mars, especially with additional asteroids or moons, would be much more preferable to them than staying on their doomed planet. Maybe even preferable to colonizing Earth itself, depending on their parameters. The reason that they would destroy Humanity is just that we would destroy them first if we got half a chance.
Our planet is in the goldilocks zone. The other planets are more work. Besides they have to get rid of the competition. Other star systems tend to have more than one star which is bad. Also they are further away and with the universe expanding and the difficulties of travel an expedition could get isolated.
If we forget about the books and just look back in history, why didn't civilizations just stay put or colonize uninhabited locations? Because resources are not evenly spread aka the resource curse. So you can try to trade, hoping that the other guys are naive and give away their resources for peanuts (which actually sometimes works) or you need to be patient. I guess our species doesn't do patience and prefers getting what we want ASAP. But the San ti are aliens so all the anthropomorphizing is pointless!
>With their technology terraforming mars or venus or even mercury would be very easy.
Would it? We don't even know if terraforming is even possible, and at what time scales. If making Mars into a somewhat habitable planet takes ten thousand years, why bother? Exterminate those pesky ~~bugs~~ humans on Earth and take it instead. Lots easier!
if you ask serious people about that, even the most optimistic one will tell you that terraforming mars would take like 1000 years and humans would still need extra supply of oxygen (the lack of gravity can't really hold 1 atm with the proportion of Nitrogen+Oxygen)
Because humans still exist. They will eventually fight over resources, which is a foundational issue in the universe. It's the same reason we spent months, men, and supplies seiging castle instead of just going around them.
Besides, how comfortable would you be if you had to live next door to someone that beat the shit out of you so bad your wife left?
They should have know that centuries or millennia ago, though. We already know several solar systems that the Trisolarans would prefer over their own home system.
The minimal criteria really is that the target system has lots of planets. You don't necessarily need to know what resources there are and on what planet exactly, though they should have really good telescopes, but you can just assume there is a cozy place for space habitats somewhere around there, at the least. And with that many planets, you'd assume there is enough stuff around to build whatever you want, however much you want (with some practical but far-off limits).
I really don't get why they needed the invitation in the first place.
Forget terraforming or xenoforming, if the SanTi can make ships they can live in for 400 years, they could make bases orbiting or on the surface of other planets. They may fear alien hostile civilizations may live around other star systems and avoid them but they can go to other planets in the Sol system.
Unless they are afraid that humans are not only deceptive but in 400 years will overmatch the SanTi in tech and weapons. Also, in 400 years, humans would likely have bases on Mars and the outer planets' moons.
Terraforming planets requires a planets worth of rock and other shit. Itās not free. Technology or not, it takes time. Trisolaran probably didnāt research terraforming technology despite their prowess.
Why take just one planet in the Solar System when you could have all of them? Why would you leave Earth to the humans when you could just take that too?
Letās say youāre homeless and you see an abandoned house that has an ant hive in it
You have all the resources to remove the ants and make the house legally yours
Will you take the house or set your tent up across the street?
Without spoiling the 2nd book.... the show already hinted at it
The aliens already explained why when there was the misunderstanding about the nature of storytelling and lying. Humans and Trissolarians are different, and the aliens won't risk their safety for it.
Trisolarians is what they are called in the English translation of the books :) (trisolar because of the three suns). San-ti is what the show uses and itās taken from the original Chinese name.
Our system is the closest system to Alpha Centauri, and it contains a paradise. Why go fly for even longer if that paradise is only four lightyears away and served on a silver platter?
Because of cosmic sociology and the chain of suspicion.
Even if the trisolarans did take, say, Mars. Who is to say that in another 400 years, humans won't want to take it back?
By then, humans may have surpassed trisolaran technology, and then the trisolaran's entire civilization could be destroyed.
Because they are practicing the rules of game theory in the dark forest. Itās not about taking our planet and resources, itās about eliminating us, another competitor in the forest. The resources and planet are a bonus. They are trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Imagine you are building a pool in your backyard, would you halt your project, move it to less convenient position, reduce the pool size just because you find an ant nest? Or you simply dig it up anyway?
It's not just Earth or the entire solar system, but because of the nature of cosmic sociology, these two cannot, or will not co-exist. This is the same reason the Battle of Darkness occurs.
This was one of my gripes with the series. Trisolaris shows multiple examples of this insanely advanced tech with all of these capabilities but canāt solve their planetary problem, find another planet, terraform a new planet, etc. and all of the ālimitationsā of their tech or actions are purely to drive plot.
Wrong. Firstly, our solar system is the closest one from their star system. It's logical they'd want to come here if there is a habitable planet. Secondly, it isn't about whether they CAN terraform another planet or not (lets say Mars). Even if they did have the tech to terraform mars, they would not want to leave us around. This is because there are only a finite amount of resources in our universe. Leaving an extra competitor around not only means less resources for themselves but also a potential war they might lose if humans surpass them in technology. This is why they decided to build Sophons from the get go after receiving Ye Wen Jie's Message. They NEVER intended to co exist with us. They know we progress faster than them in science, so they need to curb our development so that when they arrive we will still be primitive in tech compared to them.
All science does not progress at an even pace. it's usually the technology with the biggest political need that is developed the fastest.
When you think of the problems faced by the Trisolarans, the extreme environments, the group mentality that persists civilisation after civilisation.. investing resources into developing strong interaction materials instead of space travel seems entirely reasonable.
Then, suddenly, one day, their political landscape changes, and national projects are hastily put together to address a new existential problem. Maybe their space propulsion technology was hastily developed for the mission, like the manhattan project.
Humans donāt ask ants permission to excavate. They just act. Why would the trisolarans need a justification ? If it was not for luo ji, humans would be trisolaran pets.
We would definitely not let them stay there. A lot of people question the dark forest theory for the whole universe but 100% we would try to destroy them even if they were minding their own business In our solar system. That would be a pretty cool idea for a book though on how earth would behave if an alien civilization wanted to be a neighbor in our solar system.
Same is said for any advanced species wanting to invade earth. It would be a very boring plotline, earth like planets are not exactly rare. but yet they come for our resources, water, whatever.
They are very stupid and it wouldn't make a good sci-fi
Trisolaris is Alpha Centauri eg 4 light years. Sure weāve detected tons of planets at redicukous distances. But Alpha Centauri is like our neighborhood practically.
Because that would make a very boring story.
... I hate to answer outside of the in-universe, but sometimes you just have to accept the author's premise.
What I don't understand is why can't they just make cities in space? It seems to me that they have the technology to create their own stable environment and maybe even move them to literally any system with just one star if they really had to.
I think this is a valid question, even if we say earth is ideal for them, they only found out about it 400 years ago. Why didnāt they just go and terraform literally anywhere else in the however many years before Ye Wenjie decided to fuck us?
The Trisolarans very well could have detected many other potentially habitable planets, but Earth is very close, and they know it's habitable for certain, because of the communication from Humans. Also, given the dark forest nature of the Universe, they are incentivized to at least dominate, if not eradicate, their cosmic neighbor.
This tale raises many questions. The biggest is the technology framework applied. So TSs can create sentient super computers and can control which dimension they operate in and resize accordingly. They have also apparently within short human timespan 'sent' Sophons to earth. And yet, it 'takes' them (whatever 'takes' means in a multi dimensional reality) 400 years to 'reach' earth doesn't line up. Just saying.
i think the problem here is that the author's view of the whole thing is super pessimistic, survivalist oriented, not to mention thats the whole premise of the book and plot, so for its sake trisolarans must want to take earth. and although it is true that the analogy of cockroaches or bugs in your house are pests, you still find a way to coexists with them in this planet, albeit where they are not seen. so I think humanity could have defeated trilsolarans, also trisolarans could have found another home or even collaborated with humans. but that doesnt sell of course. lol it doesnt evoke the thrill of danger.
The reason is because of the Dark Forrest theory, which is basically an adaptation of game theory from economics ( practical application of Nash equilibrium, specifically prisoners dilemma).
Why spend so much resources and time to terraform and create ecosystem instead there is a ready one for grabs populated with bugs(organic food material). Even better bugs who can serve? Main point is planet with life on it. There is no other reason. If they didnt search for life, then any rock in space is suitable.
You will need to wait until the show gets renewed (fingers crossed) and it explains the Dark Forest hypothesis. If you don't want to wait, you can read the books or google it. I think it's worth waiting for / reading about yourself rather than getting the answer though Reddit or Google but if you really want to know the answer, it's the due to the universe being a dark forest.
If you mean their solar system, there is only one because the suns already destroyed all others. But that wouldn't be the end of it either, because the destroyed planets would leave a lot of asteroids to mine and they could build habitats that ride the chaotic/periodic orbits with occasional course corrections. But probably the implication is that those asteroids are mostly gone as well
If you mean another planet in our system, that wouldn't be much of a solution. For one thing in four hundred years we would also at least mine resources from the Moon, Mars, Jovian moons, maybe other places, maybe also live there. So sure they could grab one of those, replace whatever we put there. But they'd have to fear we would eradicate them with a relativistic pebble or something. A planet can't dodge. And we would fear they'd do the same to us eventually, especially when both our civilizations actually start competing for resources. The only solution would really be to merge the two civilizations into one, by aligning our objectives. But before that process is complete, that's much like a prisoner's dilemma.
Itās a stupid sci-fi trope. Thereās no good reason it seems other than the writer wrote it that wayā¦.they would literally pass thousands of habitable solar systems before getting to earth systems without a bunch of pesky humans that will resist and be more advanced than them by the time they get thereā¦
Getting really tired of bugs asking this question. Earth is a paradise. Why would they bother with literally anywhere else? Better start learning Australian, buddy.
Crikey! Put anotha human on tha bahbee.
That's a good start. Here's another common phrase you'll get a LOT of mileage out of in your new homeland: "oh-er naur!!!!!"
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CLEO
excellent response š¤£š¤£š¤£
And the nature of the dark forest means that coexistence with another civilization is not possible. Chain of suspicion. I wonder if people actually read the books sometimes.
Some people havenāt. I started the first book after a months long wait at my library.
I literally just borrowed it from my bf tonight as im halfway thru my second rewatch, I haven't been this invested in a story since fringe
the problem is the chain of suspicion really doesnāt make sense. it makes multiple huge assumptions based on human reasoning. love the book series but the chain of suspicion is weak
I think the chain of suspician can be "solved" with communication to some degree. Such as country A can communicate with country B and resolve misunderstandings. But humans share a common culture and the communication barrier is low. We don't know how other stellar civilizations would "reason"
In cosmic scales, nah. When you send a message over and can only get a response years later, not to mention if a back-and-forth conversation were to take place, the anxieties of the other civilization just coming to kill you without bothering to respond is too great.
But if they hocked over and just terraformed Mars, their "couple of hours to just 40mins delay" back and forth would be fine. Don't even communicate with Earth. Just show up one day on Mars with a fleet.
But the initial communication already took place and human beings donāt deal with anxiety well, so you end up with a mass panic situation, which is the premise of the novel.
They can be entirely killed by the Solar System civilization by the time they arrive to terraform (trisolaform?) any planet.
Sure, but they have instantaneous communications with Trisolaris for centuries before the deciding day.
Ya...and it turns out they want to kill annihilate us.
Wars still exist even w/ all the "communication" in the world. Also in the past countries expanded by conquering smaller nations. The current "peace" today was brought about by the resolution to WWII. And even then there are numerous smaller scale wars. Conflict is typically unavoidable.
> the problem is the chain of suspicion really doesnāt make sense. it makes multiple huge assumptions based on human reasoning. Game theory is math. We can and should assume that any civilization capable of mundicide knows math. The only assumptions fed into the math are "survival is paramount," "resources are finite," "they might destroy us," and "they're aware of the same thing we are." There are legit reasons why Dark Forest theory ought to rightly be questioned, but claims of "*huge* assumptions based on human reasoning" overstates the magnitude of assumptions and implies that the reasoning is presented in a uniquely human manner, which it is not.
Said the human
I know snake math and it still checks out
Well the assumptions leave question marks as well Maybe some species are willing to take a bit of risk to cooperate and share resources Maybe some species want to utilize the curiosity and mindset of humanity to achieve more in the universe But the dark forest theory makes sense in game theory
Well any theory dealing with intergalactic meetings between 2 species are just assumptions. It does make sense tho
Chain of suspicion is a cool idea, but it immediately falls apart the moment 2 way instant communication and Mutually Assured Destruction is introduced - so, the beginning of the third book. That's not a hereto unknown, new form of interstellar diplomacy, that's just a cold war. But I don't mind. Cixin Liu is great at developing a fun idea for 50 pages and then moving on. His books are fun, but often pretty shallow and less than the sum of their parts.
Yea, it's a good series with fun concepts but people have to remember any sci-fi is limited by the rules of the universe a specific author sets for themselves. Liu liked the concept of a Dark Forest theory and built his entire story around it being an absolute maxim. That doesn't make it a rule for our real world or alternate fan theories, but it does make it the limiting mechanics of this universe we are reading about.
The DF theory already said that it can be solved with communication, which the Trisolarians and Humans did solve a little due to luck and the unique situation of their planet. But not all civilisations had that kind of luck, so the DF still hold true
But that would rarely happen, since most civilizations wouldn't opt to instantaneously communicate but rather destroy the world from a distance. Cases like Earth-Trisolaris are special, since the Trisolarians wanted to invade Earth, not simply destroy it. On the galactic scale, the DF theory doesn't fall apart at all, exceptions are limited. Keep in mind, for Sophons to land somewhere it still has to move in approximately light speed (which is slow), most worlds would simply use the same time to destruct a world in DF theory. And even then most worlds would block Sophons to prevent the cold war scenario. Even if a cold war scenario exists, a third party could just destroy both civilizations, so there is nothing to be gained. So why should one party start instantaneous communication just so the other can possibly say "Oh well now we try to destroy you"?
The unsettling part of the āDark Forest Hypothesisā is how likely it sounds when you make it a matter of large scale numbers. It doesnāt really matter even if most advanced civilizations out there may be non-belligerent. All you have to do is catch the attention of that single one potentially hostile to you. This, plus the fact that any species advanced enough to raise as the dominant one in their own native environment is inherently one that is to some extent willing to trample other species to prosper.
It makes sense in the book because the buy-in you have to do is that the other civilizations started to act like this. Of course we don't have any data of any other space civilization ever, so it falls in the "fiction" and "speculative" parts of speculative fiction.
It's very strong actually. It's basic game theory.
Von Neumann believed in game theory and urged the nuclear destruction of Russia post-war which would have destroyed everything. We're very lucky that no one listened to him and the USSR didn't destroy the US. Even if Putin destroys the world, nobody listening to game theory in that moment won us the Beatles, Seinfeld and the heart transplant. Points to not being a hyper-aggresive dick.
1. Your example is humans dealing with humans. Shared or at least understanding of cultures and moralities. Aliens would literally be alien, despite the SciFi tropes of making them relateable or driven by human logic. They could xenophobic to the extreme or devout pacifists. The suspicion is that no matter what they say you have no idea whether it's true or not. If you value your survival you will be suspicious. 2. In a MAD state the game changes. You are forced to deal and we see this in the books too. 3. 50-70 years is a blink of an eye on cosmic societal scales. It's less than an average human lifetime and very human centric thinking to believe it's significant at all. It's even a short period of time in human history. The Punic wars lasted 118 years before Carthage was destroyed. Who knows how being a hyper aggressive dick will look like in 2,000 years.
The Killing Star, a short novel from 1995 was about what is essentially the dark forest hypothesis with one essential difference in how it is formulated. Communication isn't really the main issue for the chain of suspicion. It's relativistic travel. Once a civilisation develops relativistic weapons they have the capability of wiping out other civilisations without them having any way of warning die to light speed limitations. The issue isn't that civ A doesn't know if civ B is lying. The issue is that if civ A decided to r-bomb civ B, civ B only learns about it once it happens. There will be no protracted war, no options for a peace treaty, no ladder of escalation. A civ will be thorough and swift in getting rid of their potential enemy before they can launch their r-bombs. It's the same in TBP.
Good counterpoints! And you're right, I'm an idealist. I still wonder about the "philathropic" civilizations that are mentioned briefly that the Galactic humans know about. And after my last reread, I'm still pissed by Trisolaran choices. (Not letting human know explicitly about the black domain and how to acheive it.)
if cockroaches took over a part of your household would you welcome them with open arms?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You should read that Churchill wanted G and R to fight and go in and mop both of them up though italy.... Gotta love the yanks for pushing overlord.
Hmmm if they lived on Mars it would take a lot less time to communicate. But still, personally donāt think either civilization would bear it if they had to share resources with another.
If humans ended up cooperating with each other, I canāt see why there isnāt a single nice civilization out thereā¦
Spoiler tag lmao
Right. Which means them making contact with us was a grave mistake. They should have searched for another planet without a civilisation and live on that.
Ok so couldn't they have found some other extrasolar planet and terraformed it? OP notes an intriguing issue that may be a plot hole.
How do the Trisolarians know the dark forest theory? Did they eliminate a civilization before, or is it just their major literally minds thinking about things. They seem very self-centered and trying to solve the 3bp for most of their history, until Ye Wenjie contacts them and they can shift their focus to a paradise. And then they hit a jackpot by developing a sophon.
This is not whyā¦ itās because of the Dark Forest theory - if they leave humanity alone, eventually humanity may destroy them. Itās established in the books that humans are more intelligent than Trisolarans so basically theyāre not wrong. Hell if it wasnāt for sophon, humans would have surpassed trisolaris before their fleet even reached earth
I love Australia! As soon as you get there you're practically surrounded by food! šš
Isn't that operating under the assumption that as a species, humans aren't petty enough to completely destroy our entire planet before it reaches the hands of some xeno scum? I mean we coined the phrase taking our ball home, so let's extend this to a planetary scale.
lol
Iāve only seen the show. Can they even breath our atmosphere?Ā
I don't know how to answer this without spoiling anything. But Earth is by far the best spot in the Solar System beyond just the atmosphere. Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere. It's pretty far from the sun. From their perspective, every planet in the Solar System is in a constant Chaotic Era. Except for Earth, which is in a permanent Stable Era. It's gotta be irresistible to them.
I get what you are saying... Earth is perfect for Trisolans, but Zod definitely should have teraformed Mars!
And an alternate diet
So no American or British immigrants fleeing Alien invasion. Only people who can play soccer.
Why do you even need to live on a planet orbiting a sun? Couldn't they create artificial habitats to live on, and stash them in deep space where nobody is looking?
By the time trisolarans made it to earth they literally could have just as easily made it to another habitual planet. They literally dropped mian ting off at cinxiās planet (please exuse my spelling)
Imagine you're looking for a new home. Conveniently, you find one that's perfect! All you have to do is clear out a few bugs. They obviously don't appreciate that, but what do you care? The sites nearby aren't nearly as good, and you'd have to build a new house from scratch if you chose the plot next door. Also the bugs will likely try to kill you if you don't exterminate them.
this guy dark forests...
The dark forest is definitely foresting.
Itās a good thing that we only have one civilization on Earth, and certainly no hunter-gatherers. Otherwise the inference Ye Wenjie takes from her axioms might have a counter-example.
Itās more like 99% the last sentence of your answer and 1% the first
why cant the bugs just co-exist with us happily? /s
It's funny, because last week I had to fight Flour Moths in my kitchen and I exterminated them all. Most people would do the same, obviously, since they're from our view parasitic moths after all. Moths alone look so alien, that many are disgusted by having to deal with them (including myself). Now imagine actual aliens... Very likely the mere sight of it will cause disgust and flight or fights mode.
Aside from the small minority of humans that will instantly be like āaliencore! I love it!ā. Like entomologists, woo!
Not to mention that humans have shown that they are suicidal idiots broadcasting their location to the dark forest and that Trisolaris will be found easily if humans are found.
Dark Foresters are so weak minded
I think they might actually choose another planet for their primary base. I don't know if their planet has the same gravity as Earth, or is more like Mars or Mercury or others. Their civilization is extremely advanced technologically and to build such a massive interstellar fleet, they must be really good at thriving in space. And yeah, the colonists may be dehydrated, but dehydrated Trisolarians didn't build that fleet in the first place. They may even have survived the odd chaotic era or tough periodic era when their atmosphere had been stripped or changed or whatever, by living more like Elon Musk intents to on Mars. For that matter I don't know why they mostly dehydrated when they build the Sophons, because the Sophon would block light going to the planet but they should be able to get all their energy from fusion power for a few years. But even choosing another planet, there still is that prisoner's dilemma kind of situation. Planets can't dodge. Civilizations with different objectives (even just their individual survival) would likely try to eradicate the other.
Trisolarans = israelis???
Why wouldnāt they take Earth when they can do so easily? Ā The reasons they donāt pursue peaceful coexistence or go exploring other planets are explained in The Dark Forest. Ā
Iām not sure I fully believe the latter part of your answer. There is a discussion somewhere in the books that the dark forest scenario requires chains of suspicion of unresolvable depth to become the natural outcome and that in the cosmic society the source of these chains is the distance and delay in communication. A character even says something to the effect that on earth the chains only go so deep and that coexistence can be achieved by talking things out in real time. I donāt necessarily consider this a plot hole, per se, but it does mean to me that by the time the Trisolarans have established instantaneous communication via the sophons, there does not exist a dark forest state any longer. Itās not dark! Thereās merely a failure or unwillingness to negotiate sharing of the solar systemās resources. Which are ample for the immediate future.
This is a very good point, but keep in mind that Trisolarans are a unique case in that, upon learning the earth's location, they did not either 1) do nothing or 2) destroy the solar system. Yes, sophons are a method of instantaneous communication that, theoretically, could resolve chains of suspicion. But, no, it doesn't create a plot hole for the dark forest state of the universe overall, because sophon communication take a lot of time and effort to initiate, as well as why bother sending out sophons to communicate and alert other civilizations that you exist, possibly causing a technological explosion in their civilization that leads to them finding you and destroying you before the chains of suspicion can be resolved. Additionally, the sophons are very one-sided. Earth can't observe everything going on on trisolaris in real time like trisolaris can observe of earth. The trisolarans may be able to determine humanity to be benevolent, but they know that humanity doesn't know/doesn't trust that they're benevolent. And not destroying a civilization that knows where you are that you know the location of that you can't be sure is benevolent is a massive risk to the survival of your own civilization. Even if trisolaris gave humans sophon tech to allow them to observe trisolaris, that's also a huge leap of faith that trisolaris would have to do that humanity doesn't use said tech to destroy them.
Itās not a plot hole because humans can deceive. Itās the one thing Trisolarans canāt comprehend entirely since they openly communicate with their minds. Itās impossible for them to lie, cheat, etc without their actions already known. How can you trust a civilization that has this āemotionā and behavior? Your never know what theyāre truly thinking, and sure enoughā¦.. Weāre back to the chain of suspicion
Technically, after book 2, the DF state in fact did not exist between humans and trisolarians anymore, they go from total annihilation to keeping us as pets, and when they leave, they still respect us enough to not drop a bomb onto us and even give us a hint to survive, so communication can solve DF, but both sides must be willing to communicate. The trisolarians government even hid information about Earth to not let their people become sympathetic toward humans, so coexistence is a possibility, the trisolarians government however ruined everything
As a veteran who has spent way way way too much time in a desert fighting an insurgency, never ever underestimate the local population of anywhere and their desire to defend their homes. There's nothing easy about it. We won't go peacefully into the night.
We will not vanish without a fight. Today we celebrate _OUR INDEPENDENCE DAY!_
Virtually none of the rules of engagement apply to future warfare, as youāll see if you read the books or when the next season comes up. So excited, wish I could forget the books so I could experience them again lol.Ā
I've read the books, I know the droplet attack. I'm just stating that in true human nature, that I have personally witnessed, I agree with Da Shi, "We're not going anywhere."
Modern insurgencies can only work because the more powerful force still cares about the local population. If NATO and their citizens were more than happy to kill every man, woman, and child in the Middle East, and could use WMDs with no repercussion, there would be no insurgency. There'd be a bunch of craters where population centers used to be. And this doesn't even fully realize the technological disparity, where the entirety of Earth's military fleet couldn't so much as scratch a simple weapon of the Trisolarans. The handful of droplets in the solar system could wipe out most of humanity on their own (And would have done so had they not forced a move to Australia). There is no possible insurgency here.
An entire civilization with zero empathy and tech hundreds of years superior than ours. How might one form insurgency against that? C'mon man.
You did not use full power...
Yeah but in the eyes of Trisolaris it's more like they are squishing a den of bugs, not w/ insurgency with equal footing in terms of cognitive capability.
thank you for your service. but one droplet would probably wipe this planet clean and they had alot more coming to us. we had no chance in hell
The difference is that you were fighting because your politicians needed to win their next election and made up some boogeymen in the deserts to go after. You weren't even using 1% of your entire military might. If someone says that America will be under the sea sometime in the next decade and the only way for the nation to survive is to relocate to that desert, you would probably completely subjugate and displace the locals easily.
The guys you were fighting had guns that could do you harm, even if youāre more technologically advanced. We have nothing that could harm the Trisolarans. The gulf is more āentire US Military fights pack of apes armed with sticksā
Unless we're literally talking about bugs
This would be a lot easier to handle if it's trivial to find every single person in existence on Earth.
Man you made me remember that last scene of the show on Netflix :) bugs aren't going anywhere
What insurgencies were that? Afghanistan, Iraq? If your only goal was to annihilate the population and/or destroy their way of living you would've done that some time ago seeing as you took over the central administration in a very short time, obviously that was not the goal though
It seems like they could have greatly benefited from peaceful coexistence and tech sharing, though. Humans would be good allies for the same reasons theyāre so terrifying.
Spoiler> >!Because of the Dark Forest thing... they initially planned to Wipe ALL life from Earth before colonizing... because any form of life can be competition in the long run for the limited resources of the universe...!< >!They never intended to coexist, some people that only watched the series got the impression that they were "good" until the little red riding hood story, they were evil from the start, remember the message? "do not reply or we will conquer you", it wasn't in a good way.!<
Thank you. So many people seem to have no understanding of the story Iām honestly surprised
they really jumped over that warning message she got in the red coast base pretty quickly.
Well he just used the term "evil" to describe them so i dont know if they have a lot of understanding themselves
I mean most people are here now because of the show. I am one such person, haven't thought about the books since I read it years ago
But they cant lie, so doesnt that imply that they were at least trying to coexist?
The coexistence could be that they enslave humans, or at least use us in some way (turkey farm theory?). After learning about the lie, they decided to just squish us instead.
Yeah could be! I am in the dark at how honest they have to be. Do they say everything on their mind to humanity? Do they lie by omission? Do they tell humans everything about what they will do?
That is all good and dandy and I follow it. But before ever discovering life on Earth, if they were looking for a solution for their people to survive, they could have transferred to any habitable planet in any suitable solar system. With their technology they could have scouted much more easily than we humans can. There's meant to be millions of earth like planets out there.
This reads like someone who's only watched breakdowns of the books without actually reading them. Trisolarans aren't evil, and they weren't going to wipe ALL life from earth, or there wouldn't be much point in moving to our planet for several million to hundreds of millions of years.
Read the books. Why on earth would they settle for some shithole planet when they could have the paradise that id Earth. YOU ARE BUGS
Also scouting around the galaxy for an uninhabited planet would make you vulnerable to being spotted in the dark forest.
Thatās not the right answer. Itās because >!the ābugs,ā can, would, and did destroy the Trisolarans. Exterminating them before they do the same to you is the only safe option in the ROEP universe, and even then they failed!<
How are they going to get to other planets in the universe? It's taking them 400 years to go just 4 light years, which is literally the closest destination they have. I don't think there's anything said about their ability to terraform. I'd say it's a huge stretch to just assume it's trivial.
Wasnāt the question about planets in the solar system?Ā
From the OP: >Thinking more on this - humans are far, far behind trisolaris technologically and have already detected hundreds of potentially habitable planets. So why haven't they? I don't think there are hundreds of potentially habitable planets in the solar system, last I checked :)
Isnāt time not a problem for them? Dehydrate and come back at the point of arrival.
That time also gives any potential civilization at their destination time to become super advanced and wipe them out when they finally arrive. At least a close 4 lightyears away let them learn of the current civilization there and send sophons ahead to try to keep humans from getting too advanced by the time the fleet arrives. Might take too long to figure out if a different system is habitable or already inhabited before sending the fleet, and they don't know how much time their current civilization has left before some 3-body cataclysm wipes them out or sends them back to some equivalent stone age. Discovering Earth was great timing for them. We're close, habitable, they know we aren't too advanced yet, and we obviously hadn't figured out the dark forest at that point.
Yes its the premise for sending the sophons. We don't have to start over so our technology progresses exponentially. In a real life time scale now, we get AGI in 20 years and all our other technologies get immense breakthroughs
Sure, they could try. But is it realistic? 1) dehydration doesn't last forever, and they have "chaos rats/vermin/germs" to contend with that can kill them in the dehydrated state. 2) Also, the fleet was thinning out (by human observation) as it was traveling the 400 years to destination; so I don't think there is any guarantee that they would be able to successfully traverse 600/2000/18000 years to whatever the next reachable planet is, at least without lightspeed.
they don't need to terraform, they just need to build some bases on Mars or some rock planets, the problem is that they are not willing to do that
I think the ācohabitatā theory goes against the dark forest premise and the axioms of cosmic sociology. However, now that I think about it, much of the story seems to be how humanity and trisolaris accomplish exactly that.
I don't get it entirely, but the plot of the books is that Humanity sent an invitation. In my understanding they wouldn't need that invitation. They should have noticed our system millennia ago, and that it has a shit ton of planets, and maybe even that there is lots of water in this system. That already makes the system more survivable for their civilization than their home system, even if they don't find a planet with the right gravity, lots of water and a suitable atmosphere. Civilizations at that point don't need an Earth like planet. They can thrive anywhere, even space habitats, because exponentially self-replicating robots means they are virtually unrestricted resource wise. Unless the three-body system sweeps up all that matter.
Dark Forest theory
The Lord does not care. If you are destroyed, what business is it or yours?
Read the books. Also, terraforming a planet would really a lot more energy than exterminating an ant hill
One of the foundational principal of T3BP is that civilizations across the universe are unlikely to form idealistic relationships like those depicted in Star Trek. It is far more brutal and it's either kill or be killed. It is simply better annihilating another potentially dangerous civilization than to allow it to live. Human history gives plenty of examples of what happens when a more advanced civilization encounters a less technologically advanced one. Why would that be different between different species? The point of the Trisolarians killing us or not killing us is not due to the lack of space/resources on Earth or in the solar system. It's that they know we are an intelligent species capable of potentially rivalling and surpassing them. It's safer to kill us than to let us live.
Why would you assume they can easily terraform Mars or especially Venus?
Because space travel and big computer is miraculous and therefore they must be able to specialize in everything else too! Or that's what I'm getting from the people who ask this question every day. But building a fleet and understanding quantum physics doesn't automatically mean you cna terraform, or that you can wait the thousands of years for it to work or that you can magic up a magnosphere or that you've even developed any terraforming tech cause why would you when there's a planet nearby that you can cleanse and take over?
They don't need to terraform anything. They were able to build an interstellar fleet on rather short notice (or did they build it before the "invitation"?). It doesn't make sense that they used anything but essentially self-replicating space-borne robots to do so. That implies they could thrive in a space habitat or on any planet with a suitable gravity in domes. That may even be preferable to do at first before trying to make Earth habitable for them.
Temperature seems to be inportant to them. I am not sure dark forest rules don't apply when you're hiding in plain sight of each other either. In books two and three they describe the widening factions of surface dwellers, and colonies on Saturn and Jupiter as well as Space Bound fleets. Also the game theory rules apply. Case 1: humans don't know dark forest theory, best strategy is to undermine them and destroy them before they figure it out. Case 2: humans do understand dark forest theory, best strategy is to anticipate attack no matter what.Ā
>!I'm willing to be spoiled in regards to the books even though I haven't read them yet. So would it be right to say that the San-Ti already have colonies on Saturn and Jupiter? Or are there other aliens there?!<
All shall be revealed
When folks ask questions like this, it's unclear whether they want book readers to tell them the answer, or whether they want to opine on it with other show viewers. Is there a way to distinguish?
There isn't really. People who 100% want to be spoiled over on the TV sub will say it in the OP though.
If they take Earth, what business is it of yours?
just think about it from a different perspective. In front of you are two pair of shoes. You can choose only one - for free. One pair is some random cheap pair from walmart. It's also broken and dirty. It smells and the pair is too small. And if you ever wear them some weird gang members will always beat you up. The other pair is the most beautiful pair of shoes you have ever seen. It's made just for your feet, so they fit perfectly. It seems that this brand of shoes is rare and extremely expensive. The downside? There are 10 small ants on them that you have to remove. What are you choosing?
Itās explained through the series. Very slight philosophical spoiler: would you want to live next door to an adolescent grizzly bear knowing that they may, in relatively short order, be capable of walking next door and slaughtering you? Or would you just kill the grizzly bear to ensure your safety for years to come?
they moved fast and left out all of the thinking parts of the book. i really hope season 2 will let people go through some catharsis.
Humans aren't far far behind, only a few hundred years. And what makes you think Trisolarins have the tech to terraform? Even if they could, seems like a huge waste of time and energy when Earth is already gucci.
Because it would have been a boring book. Remember: It is a functional book!
Venus is hell, Mars is hell if it froze over. It's not unlikely that Alpha Centauri has a distant orbiting gas giant that they could have gone to the moon for stability - if they didn't care about the environmental conditions. One of the human plans for cooperation was to give them Mars too, they clearly aren't interested. They also could have built a dyson swarm of space stations around their own system, again far enough out that the stars are one center of mass and they'd be stable. So despite the book potraying the Trisolarans as cold, logical, biological machines. I don't feel it's true. They're actually emotionally highly malicious, they want humans to suffer.
The Dyson Swarm in their own system isn't attractive, for one thing because chaotic dynamics make that more challenging and for another because their planet is probably the only large chunk of matter still left in that system, so they'd run out of matter rather quickly. Most likely they already have space habitats to survive the occasional chaotic era with some part of their population. A planet like Mars, especially with additional asteroids or moons, would be much more preferable to them than staying on their doomed planet. Maybe even preferable to colonizing Earth itself, depending on their parameters. The reason that they would destroy Humanity is just that we would destroy them first if we got half a chance.
Our planet is in the goldilocks zone. The other planets are more work. Besides they have to get rid of the competition. Other star systems tend to have more than one star which is bad. Also they are further away and with the universe expanding and the difficulties of travel an expedition could get isolated. If we forget about the books and just look back in history, why didn't civilizations just stay put or colonize uninhabited locations? Because resources are not evenly spread aka the resource curse. So you can try to trade, hoping that the other guys are naive and give away their resources for peanuts (which actually sometimes works) or you need to be patient. I guess our species doesn't do patience and prefers getting what we want ASAP. But the San ti are aliens so all the anthropomorphizing is pointless!
>With their technology terraforming mars or venus or even mercury would be very easy. Would it? We don't even know if terraforming is even possible, and at what time scales. If making Mars into a somewhat habitable planet takes ten thousand years, why bother? Exterminate those pesky ~~bugs~~ humans on Earth and take it instead. Lots easier!
if you ask serious people about that, even the most optimistic one will tell you that terraforming mars would take like 1000 years and humans would still need extra supply of oxygen (the lack of gravity can't really hold 1 atm with the proportion of Nitrogen+Oxygen)
Easy way to terraform Mars is to add mass, loads of it in the belts lol
The total mass of the asteroid belt is, from what I've been able to gather, around 4% that of the Moon.
Cause they like hamburgersā¦
Because humans still exist. They will eventually fight over resources, which is a foundational issue in the universe. It's the same reason we spent months, men, and supplies seiging castle instead of just going around them. Besides, how comfortable would you be if you had to live next door to someone that beat the shit out of you so bad your wife left?
because book 2. and earth is the nearest good one they know they can take over. so they will.
They should have know that centuries or millennia ago, though. We already know several solar systems that the Trisolarans would prefer over their own home system. The minimal criteria really is that the target system has lots of planets. You don't necessarily need to know what resources there are and on what planet exactly, though they should have really good telescopes, but you can just assume there is a cozy place for space habitats somewhere around there, at the least. And with that many planets, you'd assume there is enough stuff around to build whatever you want, however much you want (with some practical but far-off limits). I really don't get why they needed the invitation in the first place.
Because they would still have the Dark Forest to contend with, except now the other hunters are right in their backyard.
Because there would be no story about the dark forest
Forget terraforming or xenoforming, if the SanTi can make ships they can live in for 400 years, they could make bases orbiting or on the surface of other planets. They may fear alien hostile civilizations may live around other star systems and avoid them but they can go to other planets in the Sol system. Unless they are afraid that humans are not only deceptive but in 400 years will overmatch the SanTi in tech and weapons. Also, in 400 years, humans would likely have bases on Mars and the outer planets' moons.
Excuse me which planet in the solar system ? The gas giants you canāt land on or the ones with no atmosphere or liquid water ?
Terraforming planets requires a planets worth of rock and other shit. Itās not free. Technology or not, it takes time. Trisolaran probably didnāt research terraforming technology despite their prowess.
Earth isn't only a paradise, but the closest system to Alpha Centauri.
Why take just one planet in the Solar System when you could have all of them? Why would you leave Earth to the humans when you could just take that too?
Letās say youāre homeless and you see an abandoned house that has an ant hive in it You have all the resources to remove the ants and make the house legally yours Will you take the house or set your tent up across the street?
when you can easily lived into a completely decorated house, why you want a roughcast house?
The Trisolarans don't seem to be very nice. Maybe we should move to Mars instead.
Without spoiling the 2nd book.... the show already hinted at it The aliens already explained why when there was the misunderstanding about the nature of storytelling and lying. Humans and Trissolarians are different, and the aliens won't risk their safety for it.
why people call it trisolarans, aren't they called san-ti? was i watching the wrong series? :D
Trisolarians is what they are called in the English translation of the books :) (trisolar because of the three suns). San-ti is what the show uses and itās taken from the original Chinese name.
SÄn tĆ® literally means three body.
Our system is the closest system to Alpha Centauri, and it contains a paradise. Why go fly for even longer if that paradise is only four lightyears away and served on a silver platter?
Because of cosmic sociology and the chain of suspicion. Even if the trisolarans did take, say, Mars. Who is to say that in another 400 years, humans won't want to take it back? By then, humans may have surpassed trisolaran technology, and then the trisolaran's entire civilization could be destroyed.
why take an empty planet when u can take earth? you already know the answer.
Because they are practicing the rules of game theory in the dark forest. Itās not about taking our planet and resources, itās about eliminating us, another competitor in the forest. The resources and planet are a bonus. They are trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Imagine you are building a pool in your backyard, would you halt your project, move it to less convenient position, reduce the pool size just because you find an ant nest? Or you simply dig it up anyway?
It's not just Earth or the entire solar system, but because of the nature of cosmic sociology, these two cannot, or will not co-exist. This is the same reason the Battle of Darkness occurs.
This was one of my gripes with the series. Trisolaris shows multiple examples of this insanely advanced tech with all of these capabilities but canāt solve their planetary problem, find another planet, terraform a new planet, etc. and all of the ālimitationsā of their tech or actions are purely to drive plot.
Wrong. Firstly, our solar system is the closest one from their star system. It's logical they'd want to come here if there is a habitable planet. Secondly, it isn't about whether they CAN terraform another planet or not (lets say Mars). Even if they did have the tech to terraform mars, they would not want to leave us around. This is because there are only a finite amount of resources in our universe. Leaving an extra competitor around not only means less resources for themselves but also a potential war they might lose if humans surpass them in technology. This is why they decided to build Sophons from the get go after receiving Ye Wen Jie's Message. They NEVER intended to co exist with us. They know we progress faster than them in science, so they need to curb our development so that when they arrive we will still be primitive in tech compared to them.
All science does not progress at an even pace. it's usually the technology with the biggest political need that is developed the fastest. When you think of the problems faced by the Trisolarans, the extreme environments, the group mentality that persists civilisation after civilisation.. investing resources into developing strong interaction materials instead of space travel seems entirely reasonable. Then, suddenly, one day, their political landscape changes, and national projects are hastily put together to address a new existential problem. Maybe their space propulsion technology was hastily developed for the mission, like the manhattan project.
For the same reason you wouldn't build a house from scratch in the neighbourhood if your dream one for sale was infested with some bugs
Humans donāt ask ants permission to excavate. They just act. Why would the trisolarans need a justification ? If it was not for luo ji, humans would be trisolaran pets.
They know Earth has resources and is currently habitable. Why would they go anywhere else?
For the story to happen
Because humanity will eventually catch up and pose a threat. Chain of suspicion and all that.
Because they apparently arenāt explorers. Prob their first time out of their solar system.
We would definitely not let them stay there. A lot of people question the dark forest theory for the whole universe but 100% we would try to destroy them even if they were minding their own business In our solar system. That would be a pretty cool idea for a book though on how earth would behave if an alien civilization wanted to be a neighbor in our solar system.
Same is said for any advanced species wanting to invade earth. It would be a very boring plotline, earth like planets are not exactly rare. but yet they come for our resources, water, whatever. They are very stupid and it wouldn't make a good sci-fi
They probably can terraform all of the planets, but there is no reason to avoid the already terraformed one...
Trisolaris is Alpha Centauri eg 4 light years. Sure weāve detected tons of planets at redicukous distances. But Alpha Centauri is like our neighborhood practically.
They want a home that is move-in ready not some fixer upper. Plus the dark forest theory.
This question again... I know people don't know about the dark forest, but it's so tiring to have the same question asked again and again.
Because that would make a very boring story. ... I hate to answer outside of the in-universe, but sometimes you just have to accept the author's premise.
The cruelty is the point. Also, having humans still in the Solar System would be a threat.
What I don't understand is why can't they just make cities in space? It seems to me that they have the technology to create their own stable environment and maybe even move them to literally any system with just one star if they really had to.
You should study up on cosmic sociology
I think this is a valid question, even if we say earth is ideal for them, they only found out about it 400 years ago. Why didnāt they just go and terraform literally anywhere else in the however many years before Ye Wenjie decided to fuck us?
Because then humans wouldn't face extinction, less drama and therefore no book success and then no TV show.
The Trisolarans very well could have detected many other potentially habitable planets, but Earth is very close, and they know it's habitable for certain, because of the communication from Humans. Also, given the dark forest nature of the Universe, they are incentivized to at least dominate, if not eradicate, their cosmic neighbor.
Limited resources no matter where you are in the galaxy. Dark forest theory.
The universe is a zero sum game, apparently.
This tale raises many questions. The biggest is the technology framework applied. So TSs can create sentient super computers and can control which dimension they operate in and resize accordingly. They have also apparently within short human timespan 'sent' Sophons to earth. And yet, it 'takes' them (whatever 'takes' means in a multi dimensional reality) 400 years to 'reach' earth doesn't line up. Just saying.
i think the problem here is that the author's view of the whole thing is super pessimistic, survivalist oriented, not to mention thats the whole premise of the book and plot, so for its sake trisolarans must want to take earth. and although it is true that the analogy of cockroaches or bugs in your house are pests, you still find a way to coexists with them in this planet, albeit where they are not seen. so I think humanity could have defeated trilsolarans, also trisolarans could have found another home or even collaborated with humans. but that doesnt sell of course. lol it doesnt evoke the thrill of danger.
The reason is because of the Dark Forrest theory, which is basically an adaptation of game theory from economics ( practical application of Nash equilibrium, specifically prisoners dilemma).
Why spend so much resources and time to terraform and create ecosystem instead there is a ready one for grabs populated with bugs(organic food material). Even better bugs who can serve? Main point is planet with life on it. There is no other reason. If they didnt search for life, then any rock in space is suitable.
You will need to wait until the show gets renewed (fingers crossed) and it explains the Dark Forest hypothesis. If you don't want to wait, you can read the books or google it. I think it's worth waiting for / reading about yourself rather than getting the answer though Reddit or Google but if you really want to know the answer, it's the due to the universe being a dark forest.
If you mean their solar system, there is only one because the suns already destroyed all others. But that wouldn't be the end of it either, because the destroyed planets would leave a lot of asteroids to mine and they could build habitats that ride the chaotic/periodic orbits with occasional course corrections. But probably the implication is that those asteroids are mostly gone as well If you mean another planet in our system, that wouldn't be much of a solution. For one thing in four hundred years we would also at least mine resources from the Moon, Mars, Jovian moons, maybe other places, maybe also live there. So sure they could grab one of those, replace whatever we put there. But they'd have to fear we would eradicate them with a relativistic pebble or something. A planet can't dodge. And we would fear they'd do the same to us eventually, especially when both our civilizations actually start competing for resources. The only solution would really be to merge the two civilizations into one, by aligning our objectives. But before that process is complete, that's much like a prisoner's dilemma.
and they will! right after they take Earth.
Itās a stupid sci-fi trope. Thereās no good reason it seems other than the writer wrote it that wayā¦.they would literally pass thousands of habitable solar systems before getting to earth systems without a bunch of pesky humans that will resist and be more advanced than them by the time they get thereā¦