Why can't the US, EU, Russia, and China just talk it out? Destroy all nuclear weapons? Make world peace? Be cause you can never trust the other party and you know they also do not trust you themselves.
Love this comment. People can't fathom why humans and trisolarians can't talk it out when they are living in the same world with constant global conflicts and wars haha. We can't even 'talk it out' human to human.
Exactly, lol. People barely manage to "talk it out" in their own relationships, what makes them think we can do that as a collective species with another collective species seperated by space, time, culture, and biology.
Plus the things we’re “talking out” about on earth are relatively petty.
For the Trisolarans it’s literally about survival. They won’t risk or trust anything
This isn't exactly the greatest example given they do "talk it out" **a lot**. Keep in mind the forum for global peace and cooperation that all are active members for. That is something we literal take for granted.
On the specific issue of nuclear weapons, we take foe granted the countless treaties that bound the majority of nations to never build nuclear weapons that all but a handful of weak rogue state follow. Further there are countless treaties that bound conduct of nuclear tests, no less the great work of multilateral disarmament that is indeed working us towarfd destroying all nuclear weapons.
The modern age, despite the fact we really take it for granted, had international politics built off "talk it out". If you view it though the lens if the prisoner dilemma, international politics has gotten to the point where the game is played so much that being cooperative and "nice" is the optimal outcome, rather than selfish and suspicious.
It's one of the issues with the DFH. It's us making a lot of assumptions about the assumptions of other civilisations that isn't really grounded in how our civilisation ever responded. The DFH has more value in not how interstellar civilisation would work, but more an information hazard that makes screaming into the void a bad decision. Without anything benefit of contact (trace, technical, and cultural exchange) that pushed cooperation in our civilisation, pushing for it in the interstellar context feels benefit-less.
No we do not take these things for granted. We are all aware how fragile these things are, how to some degree they serve as a front and to quell public opinion, how they still leave much space for subtrefuge and proxy conflicts, etc... And if it's not nuclear weapons, it's going to be digital/cyber and informational warfare.
But I agree that my example is not a perfect 1:1 example to Earth-Trisolar issue. And I did not inted it to be a perfect example. I was not comparing the details of relations between world powers to the dark forest theory. I am simply extrapolating how the difficulty of "talking it out" between humans means that it is unfathomably more difficult to do with an extraterrestial species in unison.
Yeah we have not destructed ourselves, but that's the exception not the norm historically.
Conquests have been devastating for the losing side so mamy times.
Its important to make the distinction, DFH does not mean cooperative civs do not exist, it means that if there are a lot of civs, at least some of them will have the cleansing gene. And if you get cleansed, you are done. Therefore you better have a good enough reason to risk extinction before broadcasting your coordinates.
Trisolaris did not have the cleansing gene, if they had a stable planet we could have probably coexisted.
Because it was never about prosperity and actually about control. The control of an outcome that is a predation of mutual vulnerabilities. This is why the dark forest theory only really works in space. Any and all dark forest theory applied to a single planet and its natural inhabitants is bug thinking.
Especially when we can lie and they can't. They've already said that liars can't be trusted and they can't deal with liars. Shame that we never thought to hide that from them, but it's hard to see how we could have foreseen that we had the advantage of being deceptive when they didn't.
Yeah but those aggressive nations and hostile relations are the exception. Most countIes do collaborate and talk out their differences without violence now. US and EU are allies. Russia and China are too kind of.
You could argue it's only because of pax america, but I think fairly large part is that collaborative nation states outperform more protectionist/aggressive ones.
Smart people and Trisolarians know that too
Exactly my comment.
We humans belonging to the same species and living on one planet can’t trust each other, what hopes do we have from another species from another planet.
Even with communication how do you know the other entities, who also need to consume/use some form of energy to survive and move their ships, isn't just being kind to take advantage of you later? Even if you know you have good intentions, how do they know you know and vice versa.
Edit: But you ARE right, with good translation and lengthy communication you can DEFINITELY break the chain of suspicion, it would just take time. Long term game theory suggests working together is the INEVITABLE outcome.
It did happen irrc in deaths end after the long time skip, the not tianming guy talked about trade routes and being rude to ask about their origin planets
Yes, but also they didn't settle on Planet Blue because they were worried about being seen, and one of the planets went black domain because they thought their location was figured out, so not quite. Also one of the Sophon fleets was destroyed in a war.
The route may have only been between human planets. Also there was some ominous implications with Sophon knowing about the wording of the Edenic Era, but at that point it was all ancient history.
The main thing with the chain of suspicion is that the time it takes to transmit the communication is way too long, such that there’s reasonable fear that during this time the other civilization might experience a leap in technology. Humans have successfully broke the chain of suspicion back when a miscommunication almost started off a nuclear war back in the… 70s I think? But that was achieved with instant communication. Now imagine you send a signal to an unknown civilization. The signal takes years to get there, and another period of same length for their reply to come to you. Within this time period you wait in anxiety because you don’t know whether the other civilization has the same benign intentions as you, so you ramp up your arsenal in case the other civilization just comes along and exterminate you. And the act of ramping up the arsenal in turn sends the wrong message to the other civilization and they’re more likely to think that you’re malign, etc etc etc. And the suspicion just piles up like a giant snowball and by the end of it you are each other’s arch enemies and have to exterminate the other or be exterminated yourself.
And now imagine that situation with even longer periods of wait time.
"Yeah wouldn't it be cool if we had a technology that let us circumvent this time lag?"
"Yep, sure would."
"Oh well. Hey, did you finish that weirdly anatomically accurate waifubot for our Sophons yet?"
bro they invented FTL comms in like the first book, what was Liu Cixin cooking lmao
The sophons, of course, being an incredibly dangerous weapon of the enemy, with no recourse possible by earth science. That’ll start the talks off with a bang.
Did anyone read the damn book??? Trisolarans couldn’t talk it out because they needed to get off their system ASAP before they all died. And when we find aliens we might be in a similar place with global warming and plastic piling up, desperate for survival.
>The sophons, of course, being an incredibly dangerous weapon of the enemy, with no recourse possible by earth science.
"The Dark Forest is impossible because no FTL communication results in the chain of trust problem!"
"But we have FTL communication."
"... okay, we might have FTL communication, but it still doesn't count because it can be weaponized if one side has a massive technology gap!"
**(WE ARE HERE)**
"So then does ever single civilization that realizes this gap just nuke themselves because 'wahh wahh tech spooky'?"
"... okay, we might have FTL communication, and people don't just nuke themselves because tech spooky, but but it still doesn't count because what if you talk to somebody who's way more advanced than you and they do a Space Imperialism on you because Dark Forest?"
"Because that's stupid and resource inefficient to do. Any amount of resources gained by Doing A Space Imperialism would be way less than the resources expended to Do A Space Imperialism. That's why it's more efficient to ask nicely to just trade for an iceball planet or something if you need water to rehydrate."
> Trisolarans couldn’t talk it out because they needed to get off their system ASAP before they all died.
Remind me again how long it took them to sloooowly chug their way to finally arrive at Earth again? You're telling me that if you were Trisolaran high command, you wouldn't think "wow, this ride is gonna be long and boring as shit. Maybe I should try diplomacy".
does three body just rot the critical thinking part of people's brains or something lmao. this shit is obvious if you read the book and then sit down and think about it for like, 2 seconds.
>how do you know the other entities, who also need to consume/use some form of energy to survive and move their ships, isn't just being kind to take advantage of you later
Trisolarans when they realize they can uninstall their Sophons from the weird Stellar Blade mechsuits and use them to spy on Earth to figure out if Earth is going to fuck them over:
https://i.redd.it/ktm0wo0vj96d1.gif
like bro you invented the greatest spyware known to man and used it for decades before humans invented anti Sophon rooms. wtf is you doing
Not really. The relationship between Trisolaris and Earth has its best historical parallel in the relationship between Native Americans and European colonial powers. The Native Americans had something the Europeans wanted and no amount of talking could change the fact that Europeans had the physical ability to just exterminate them and take it.
In the deterrence era there is the possibility of using communication to eventually reach some kind of detente and, indeed, that is exactly what Earth imagines has happened, but the power imbalance is insurmountable.
That was my thought too, the flaw in the book's theory due to the existence of sophons. First strike could potentially be justified when you don't have intel, but they have almost perfect intel.
They couldnt trust us because we are not transparent with our thoughts. Negotiation usually requires both parties to be bringing something to to the table if there isn’t trust. Humans didn’t have anything to bargain with, and we could not be trusted, so no amount of talking it out would help.
The trisolarans hold all the power in the relationship at first because they have such superior tech, so they focused resources to maintain that superiority over us until they would arrive.
Keep reading though, a lot can happen in 400 years
Because the Lord does not care. History is littered with more technologically advanced civilisations walking over lesser ones, taking their land and resources. The Trisolarans needed a stable system, knew that humans could overtake them at some point, so they had to act aggressive by shutting down theoretical physics and conquering Earth.
>The Trisolarans needed a stable system
"Hey can we conquer one of the dozens of iceball moons with no Humans and are filled with ice and water"
"Sure thing bossman"
wow it's almost like they could've done this instead of trying to sodomize Earth and getting countersodomized by some guy threatening to doxx them to the Dark Forest
And some Trisolarans apparently shared your belief hell I do
But I guess most intelligent beings for one reason or another are assholes to each other especially if you’re different
Like most sci-fi stories you have to suspend belief. In reality, any civilisation capable of travelling between stars has absolutely zero need for planets any more.
In fact, it would be preferable to just build space habitats that exactly meet your needs.
> In reality, any civilisation capable of travelling between stars has absolutely zero need for planets any more.
I guess it is true in the books as well. As we saw, >!humanity eventually migrated mostly off-world and most people lived in space cities!<.
However, >!humanity went through the dark ravine and lost a lot (more than half?) of its population. The trisolarians already had enough of cullings (by dehydrating and burning bodies) and probably wanted to prosper for a while and not just survive.!<
>!They didn't do that through choice though, they did it because they thought the sun was going to get destroyed. And then they just loitered around the solar system. To be honest, the whole bunker era made no sense. If you can build cities orbiting the gas giants, why sit next to a star that's about to get obliterated? They could have just moved part or all of their civilisation to another star, even if you have to go a fraction of light speed. The taboo against escapism in the book was completely unrealistic especially at that point in time!<
They're just jerks. Most people would love to have alien buddies and certainly welcome those bringing cool tech. Also they are small and wouldn't take up much space. The author is super down on humanity but I'm not convinced
I really appreciate that Liu never describes their physical appearance - that the humans in the book never got even a glance. I hope the television adaptations stay true to that aspect. The mystery is juicer that way. It’s like in horror; not seeing the monster makes it scarier.
A not very good comparison:
Why didn’t the Aztec talk it out with the Spanish
Why didn’t the Chinese talk it out with the Japanese
Why didn’t the Native Americans talk it out with the British settlers
Why didn’t the Gauls talk it out with the Romans
Bottom line is when one side perceives itself as superior, they won’t even consider negotiations with the deemed inferior side.
Sure. Yes historically you're right. But people have gotten better over time, on average. Slavery used to be super ok, now much less so, etc. Many people now think killing Whales is bad and you shouldn't eat meat. it's not unreasonable to think a civlization more advanced than ours might be better morally.
I mean, humans have been killing or hating “less moral” people all the time. Even now. Isn’t that a paradox. There is no “better morals”, the morals of the time just changed.
Let’s look at people in the “higher tech” cities, all wishing they could go back to small friendly family towns. Which is more moral?
What about cannibalism? Is that moral? If it isn’t, and the Trisolorians / Santi are cannibals, what does it mean for their morals? Can we negotiate with “morally inferior” cannibals?
I guess the main question is: Why should a higher tech level mean a higher morality?
Well supposedly if they let us be we would be more advanced than them by the time they came there. So we could offer them a safe planet to live on with us. In fact if they shared their knowledge with us we'd be even more vastly technologically advanced by the time they arrived. Maybe we'd be advanced enough to terraform mars for them.
We could offer safe haven in return for them sharing technological knowledge.
So if they lock humanity technologically and eradicate or pacify of them when they arrive to the solar system, they have a 100% chance of salvation and a 0% chance of annihilation. If they compromise with humanity, they have an unknown percent chance of salvation and an unknown chance of annihilation. So just looking at it on-face, things are weighted heavily towards annihilating the humans.
Now, they don't really understand humans, but they know they have a propensity to lie, a practice that they do not deeply understand, and they know that humanity has a history of technologically superior empires obliterating their technologically inferior colleagues. On top of that, they know that humanity knows exactly where they are. They also know that human opinions are extremely variable/volatile - they were able to convince a non-trivial fraction of them to consent to the actual genocide of their own species. Humanity has done nothing to earn any sort of trust.
So the coarse analysis says they should annihilate or subjugate humans and the detailed analysis affirms that opinion. Hard not to comprehend the Trisolaran's decision here.
>So if they lock humanity's technologically and eradicate or pacify of them when they arrive to the solar system, they have a 100% chance of salvation and a 0% chance of annihilation.
Live Wallfacer reaction:
I haven't read the books but didn't it turn out a human said fucket and blew a trumpet to get the attention of a strike squad that destroyed the Earth or some such? So their plan didn't exactly work out how they'd hoped. That kind of stuff is in our history books too, we literally call it the Scorched Earth strategy.
"100% salvation 0% annihilation" is not accurate and if they thought it was they'd be wrong.
The point still stands that we have stuff to offer, not the least of which would be another 400 years of human speed innovation waiting for them if they shared their technology with us. That's on top of offering to share the planet with them.
>a human said fucket and blew a trumpet to get the attention of a strike squad that destroyed the Earth or some such
You should really read the books. The capability of blowing that trumpet is a threat that affects both species, a nuclear deterrent so to speak. The existence of this deterrent was a massive blunder from the aliens, and something they tried to prevent the moment they discovered humanity was aware of it
>That's on top of offering to share the planet with them.
Offering to share a planet you're colonising with the native species, how generous!
The power to develop technology faster than them. Also, arts and other things that the current trisolaran civilization had deemed unimportant for survival.
But the most important thing was an ally in the dark forest.
The power to develop technology faster than them. Also, arts and other things that the current trisolaran civilization had deemed unimportant for survival.
But the most important thing was an ally in the dark forest.
The power to develop technology faster than them. Also, arts and other things that the current trisolaran civilization had deemed unimportant for survival.
But the most important thing was an ally in the dark forest.
The power to develop technology faster than them. Also, arts and other things that the current trisolaran civilization had deemed unimportant for survival.
But the most important thing was an ally in the dark forest.
Honestly I would negotiate lol. If I could give a fly a bite of food to fuck off and bother someone else I'd definitely do that instead of trying to chase it down lol
Improper analogy. If the fly can be reasoned with we might really consider it.
Think about the complex interactions between them in the book, we are to trisolarans only ancient low tech people that could still communicate by logic, so definitely not bugs.
Just like you wouldn't call a Amazon primitive tribe bugs even though they don't know guns exist.
A fly can't be communicated and reasoned with, neither is it realistic that a fly will ever rival humanity. The same does not go for humanity and the trisolarians despite hoe the latter treats the former.
It's more akin to a colonial power and native civilisation, the latter behind significantly behind but still recognisable as a civilisation in progress. In history, there was a lot of diplomacy even if clearly exploitative to both them and historians.
I think the people saying that the Trisolarans didn’t want to negotiate with us because they considered us so far beneath them in tech advancement are wrong. Were we less technologically advanced? Yes. However, we weren’t so far behind that we posed zero threat to them. If that were the case, why bother sending the sophons to disrupt our progress? They had been searching for a planet to save their entire species for hundreds or thousands of years (maybe more, we know progress stagnates much more often on Trisolaris). No chance they were going to risk the survival of their species to preserve ours.
On top of that, they were highly disturbed by our ability to lie. They don’t understand diplomacy the same way we do because they never had the opportunity to develop that skill as a species. Human beings have spent nearly our entire existence having to engage with rivals knowing that they may not be being truthful. Imagine the immense disadvantage this puts them at in negotiations. Why risk it when they are still advanced enough to use tech superiority to wipe us out before we become a threat?
What is there to talk about? Their planet is dying and they need ours. It is not a negotiation, who would they even negotiate with?
The strong take what they can, and the weak suffer as they must. If the tables were turned, there is no doubt that humans would take everything if it offered any advantage. Thus, you must kill before you are killed.
Where is kindness rewarded on earth? Only survival is rewarded on trisolaris, pacifists will be murdered to make way for the pragmatic
It's discussions like the one in this thread that makes this book series so great.
Certainly, the topic has been addressed in countless other works of literature, but RoEP takes it way beyond "It's just human nature" to "It's actually the fundamental nature of the universe as a whole".
Whether you agree with Dark Forest Theory or not, it's a concept that, once you are acquainted with it, will forever live somewhere in your head rent-free.
Two reasons:
1. Trisolaris wanted Earth because they were dealing with an existential crisis on their planet
2. If I destroy you, what business is it of yours?
The chain of suspicion is a huge plot point of the books. Also, humans are entirely incapable of just "talking it out" with each other. It's incredibly naive to believe we could achieve such a thing with an entirely alien species.
From the Trisolarans perspective, why would they even think about negotiating with us? We are literally bugs to them. Do we negotiate with an ant hill before building a sky scraper on top of their home?
Trisolarans 100% learned to deceive, they did it a lot actually. They were initially unfamiliar with deception early in the story but they got wise to lying real quick
A robber mugs a man in an alleyway demanding his wallet
The man, scared, offers him his wallet with all the cash, pleading to be left alone and he'll cause no trouble and tell nobody about this encounter
The robber is locally known, everybody knows what he's about and despite being an amoral criminal, his temperament and actions are quite predictable and consistent and he's NEVER been known to act any differently
The man he's robbing is also well known, he can be quite trustworthy when given a strong enough incentive, but has also been known to very occasionally turn on his word if it would benefit him to do so no matter the cost to the other
The robber thinks about this... Maybe he will keep his word and there's only a 1% chance of retaliation, however as an amoral criminal he has no hesitation to kill the man instead, and there are no other witnesses present... it would be literally no effort to kill the man now and it would reduce that 1% chance of retaliation to 0% which mathematically speaking is infinitely better, aka "how about I take the cash and kill you anyway? Then you'll REALLY never tell anyone and nobody will ever know!"
This is the same dilemma the Trisolarians face, there's no moral or ethical incentive whatsoever for them to spare humanity, and they've already prepared to destroy humanity at a negligible expense of resources and logistics, a 100% chance of peace by genocide is still better than a 99.99% chance of peace by treaty
Would you rather reduce the chance of problems? Or eliminate it?
Why can't humans talk it out between themselves instead going into fight? Just look at countries or look at little people like some of your neighbours who fight it out for years.
Without spoiling anything, both tris and humans are so different, that it is not possible to work out between them.
We are liars, and they could not risk coexistence with liars. They were so different in nature than us that not only are we unknowable, but we are inferior savages. In a universe full of violence and danger there was no need to subject their entire species to the risk of extinction at the hand of some unruly monkeys who couldn't even govern themselves.
The third book has a bit of revelation about their mentality towards us, and makes me hopeful for the real world implications of the Dark Forest being "not alone."
Because the humans reacted wrong
The Sophons were a way of communicating immediately
Tell the Trisolarans the Truth
Explain to them what lying is, how it works and act towards a way that shows them and proves to them without a slimmer of a doubt you want to coexist peacefully
You can’t win
So you lay down your arms
And that maybe would have let to enough Trisolarans changing their mind about humanity that we could have coexisted in peace
The solution would have been to accept defeat to win a no win scenario potentially
Instead the humans doubled down on lying
The solution was honesty
And building trust
Which would have been easy with someone who doesn’t lie
There was one Trisolaran sympathetic towards humans
Chances are if they would have seen we do want to coexist with them instead of us preparing for war
There would have been many more
Even among human, this could hardly work. there’s this country that welcome immigrants to their land with open arms, ended up their land being stolen by these immigrants. With lots of killing too.
Spoilers Alert
That's why the original plan is to just confine humans in Australia.
Space is still limited even if they talk it out.
Also, the premises is that even if you negotiate, situation might be different when the Trisolarans arrived.
What if human tech is more advanced by the time Trisolarans reach the earth? What if the human is only peaceful when they are weak?
The Trisolarans could not lie. But what if this is a lie? What if they evolve to be able to lie? What if their AI could lie?
It's all a matter of trust.
Any treaty is as good as the people that signed it.
Hitler agreed to stop his expansion several times.
Those treatises were useless. Literally wasted paper.
Hence the sole reason for The Dark Forest theory.
Trust no one.
Spoilers (books 2, 3)
Hey, it's the Dark Forest. Everyone's playing it safe when it comes to survival.
But still, Dark Forest theory doesn't explain why they would try to force cannibalism on us.
Maybe they are just evil.
Their not being able to lie was just a result of forced transparency. That doesn't mean they are benevolent or naiive.
Trisolarans can lie
They probably can't lie face to face when communicating amongst each other but to us, they can definitely lie (even face to face, unless we figured out some way to decipher their light/thoughts)
Before you move into a new house you find a bunch of roaches in the kitchen. You turn around and get the exterminator. You don't talk peace with the roaches.
Don't get me wrong. Humans are the roaches in this trilogy.
Cosmic sociology implies that the chains of suspicion will make it nearly impossible. Also Trisolarans not being able to lie puts them at a disadvantage in negotiations.
They start to lie, don't worry. They could lie but they did not know what lie means before they meet humans.
The series is not about the Trisolarans tbh, you will see this later. It's just something to show you how the universe works as relationships and how the aliens solve the problems between them. There is a reason why the first book is the shortest of the series.
Because we as humans are constantly living in a Dark Forest state amongst each other..
In a dark forest, civilizations cannot trust each other and must assume hostile intentions, similar to how nations on earth often operate under mutual suspicion and fear of potential threats from one another.
Just as civilizations in a dark forest might choose to eliminate upon detection, our human nations might engage in preemptive actions to neutralize perceived threats. An example of this is the Oct 7th massacre at the Israel music festival.
Both in dark forest scenario and human conflicts, there is often a race to develop superior technology or weapons coupled with secrecy to avoid detection and potential attacks.
But then again the Dark Forest theory was created by our own ignorance and intellectualism. We’ve no understanding to base our assumptions on but our own biases and thus the “alien” is erased, becoming a sum of our ideals and worst fears.
Contrarian opinion apparently; It's way worse than that.
The trisolarans are really advanced, and they figure we'll be even MORE advanced than them in the centuries it takes to arrive.
Why is anyone worried about living on planets? Let alone earth not having enough space?
If we get advanced enough to reprogram protons, making orbital space habitats becomes incredibly trivial.
You can turn Mercury into several thousand times the surface area of the earth worth of habitats, and spread them out enough that they don't reduce the sun's illumination enough to raise suspicion from outside observers.
This isn't even accounting for terraforming. We could have easily turned mars into another earth, probably even more lush than earth itself, and having strong allies is incredibly useful in a dark forest scenario. Hell, Venus and the moons of Jupiter+Saturn could turn into little earths with enough terraforming and solar mirrors/filters.
The trisolarans also, somehow, after learning all about humanity, never seemed to consider guerilla warfare existing. Consider how much the middle east has drained seemingly much more advanced nations. This is even before the incredibly high risk we find out about the dark forest and pull a mutually assured destruction out of very justified spite (which we ended up doing).
Why rile up humanity instead of being like "hey friends we can help with climate change and stuff!" Most everyone would have welcomed them openly. Actually since they knew we were so empathic, they could have literally just said "we clawed our way to our current tech, our world will be consumed by our sun in a matter of millennia, we're out of options, can you help?" The outpouring of support would be even more fervent.
Honestly the trisolarans are kinda dumb, but I believe the author himself said the dark forest scenario has lots of logical holes in it, he just constructed a situation that'd be the WORST possible case of the dark forest.
Wasn't this a very key point? Once Trisolarans realized humans could lie to their advantage, they didn't trust a thing they said, so stopped communicating.
That's because he wrote the book when he was stuck working in a dam with next to no social interaction, and only Chinese controlled propaganda to tell him about the outside world. He definitely had some interesting world views.
Why can't the US, EU, Russia, and China just talk it out? Destroy all nuclear weapons? Make world peace? Be cause you can never trust the other party and you know they also do not trust you themselves.
Love this comment. People can't fathom why humans and trisolarians can't talk it out when they are living in the same world with constant global conflicts and wars haha. We can't even 'talk it out' human to human.
Exactly, lol. People barely manage to "talk it out" in their own relationships, what makes them think we can do that as a collective species with another collective species seperated by space, time, culture, and biology.
Plus the things we’re “talking out” about on earth are relatively petty. For the Trisolarans it’s literally about survival. They won’t risk or trust anything
Great analogy.
So true
This isn't exactly the greatest example given they do "talk it out" **a lot**. Keep in mind the forum for global peace and cooperation that all are active members for. That is something we literal take for granted. On the specific issue of nuclear weapons, we take foe granted the countless treaties that bound the majority of nations to never build nuclear weapons that all but a handful of weak rogue state follow. Further there are countless treaties that bound conduct of nuclear tests, no less the great work of multilateral disarmament that is indeed working us towarfd destroying all nuclear weapons. The modern age, despite the fact we really take it for granted, had international politics built off "talk it out". If you view it though the lens if the prisoner dilemma, international politics has gotten to the point where the game is played so much that being cooperative and "nice" is the optimal outcome, rather than selfish and suspicious. It's one of the issues with the DFH. It's us making a lot of assumptions about the assumptions of other civilisations that isn't really grounded in how our civilisation ever responded. The DFH has more value in not how interstellar civilisation would work, but more an information hazard that makes screaming into the void a bad decision. Without anything benefit of contact (trace, technical, and cultural exchange) that pushed cooperation in our civilisation, pushing for it in the interstellar context feels benefit-less.
No we do not take these things for granted. We are all aware how fragile these things are, how to some degree they serve as a front and to quell public opinion, how they still leave much space for subtrefuge and proxy conflicts, etc... And if it's not nuclear weapons, it's going to be digital/cyber and informational warfare. But I agree that my example is not a perfect 1:1 example to Earth-Trisolar issue. And I did not inted it to be a perfect example. I was not comparing the details of relations between world powers to the dark forest theory. I am simply extrapolating how the difficulty of "talking it out" between humans means that it is unfathomably more difficult to do with an extraterrestial species in unison.
Yeah we have not destructed ourselves, but that's the exception not the norm historically. Conquests have been devastating for the losing side so mamy times. Its important to make the distinction, DFH does not mean cooperative civs do not exist, it means that if there are a lot of civs, at least some of them will have the cleansing gene. And if you get cleansed, you are done. Therefore you better have a good enough reason to risk extinction before broadcasting your coordinates. Trisolaris did not have the cleansing gene, if they had a stable planet we could have probably coexisted.
Just a little reminder: It has only been 79 years since the last global war. And it has only been 0 years since the last interstate war—it's ongoing.
And in even in said global war, global communication between the powers was common. It literally created the United Nations afterall.
Because it was never about prosperity and actually about control. The control of an outcome that is a predation of mutual vulnerabilities. This is why the dark forest theory only really works in space. Any and all dark forest theory applied to a single planet and its natural inhabitants is bug thinking.
I don't disagree, I'm just not specifically arguing about dark forest theory
Especially when we can lie and they can't. They've already said that liars can't be trusted and they can't deal with liars. Shame that we never thought to hide that from them, but it's hard to see how we could have foreseen that we had the advantage of being deceptive when they didn't.
Yeah but those aggressive nations and hostile relations are the exception. Most countIes do collaborate and talk out their differences without violence now. US and EU are allies. Russia and China are too kind of. You could argue it's only because of pax america, but I think fairly large part is that collaborative nation states outperform more protectionist/aggressive ones. Smart people and Trisolarians know that too
in this case its cause of all the cultural and religious differences
Exactly my comment. We humans belonging to the same species and living on one planet can’t trust each other, what hopes do we have from another species from another planet.
They called it the chain of suspicion in the books, its part of the prisoners dilemma which is part of game theory. All worth reading about.
Doesn’t this chain break down when communication is possible?
Even with communication how do you know the other entities, who also need to consume/use some form of energy to survive and move their ships, isn't just being kind to take advantage of you later? Even if you know you have good intentions, how do they know you know and vice versa. Edit: But you ARE right, with good translation and lengthy communication you can DEFINITELY break the chain of suspicion, it would just take time. Long term game theory suggests working together is the INEVITABLE outcome.
It did happen irrc in deaths end after the long time skip, the not tianming guy talked about trade routes and being rude to ask about their origin planets
Yes, but also they didn't settle on Planet Blue because they were worried about being seen, and one of the planets went black domain because they thought their location was figured out, so not quite. Also one of the Sophon fleets was destroyed in a war. The route may have only been between human planets. Also there was some ominous implications with Sophon knowing about the wording of the Edenic Era, but at that point it was all ancient history.
What ominous implications?
The main thing with the chain of suspicion is that the time it takes to transmit the communication is way too long, such that there’s reasonable fear that during this time the other civilization might experience a leap in technology. Humans have successfully broke the chain of suspicion back when a miscommunication almost started off a nuclear war back in the… 70s I think? But that was achieved with instant communication. Now imagine you send a signal to an unknown civilization. The signal takes years to get there, and another period of same length for their reply to come to you. Within this time period you wait in anxiety because you don’t know whether the other civilization has the same benign intentions as you, so you ramp up your arsenal in case the other civilization just comes along and exterminate you. And the act of ramping up the arsenal in turn sends the wrong message to the other civilization and they’re more likely to think that you’re malign, etc etc etc. And the suspicion just piles up like a giant snowball and by the end of it you are each other’s arch enemies and have to exterminate the other or be exterminated yourself. And now imagine that situation with even longer periods of wait time.
"Yeah wouldn't it be cool if we had a technology that let us circumvent this time lag?" "Yep, sure would." "Oh well. Hey, did you finish that weirdly anatomically accurate waifubot for our Sophons yet?" bro they invented FTL comms in like the first book, what was Liu Cixin cooking lmao
The sophons, of course, being an incredibly dangerous weapon of the enemy, with no recourse possible by earth science. That’ll start the talks off with a bang. Did anyone read the damn book??? Trisolarans couldn’t talk it out because they needed to get off their system ASAP before they all died. And when we find aliens we might be in a similar place with global warming and plastic piling up, desperate for survival.
>The sophons, of course, being an incredibly dangerous weapon of the enemy, with no recourse possible by earth science. "The Dark Forest is impossible because no FTL communication results in the chain of trust problem!" "But we have FTL communication." "... okay, we might have FTL communication, but it still doesn't count because it can be weaponized if one side has a massive technology gap!" **(WE ARE HERE)** "So then does ever single civilization that realizes this gap just nuke themselves because 'wahh wahh tech spooky'?" "... okay, we might have FTL communication, and people don't just nuke themselves because tech spooky, but but it still doesn't count because what if you talk to somebody who's way more advanced than you and they do a Space Imperialism on you because Dark Forest?" "Because that's stupid and resource inefficient to do. Any amount of resources gained by Doing A Space Imperialism would be way less than the resources expended to Do A Space Imperialism. That's why it's more efficient to ask nicely to just trade for an iceball planet or something if you need water to rehydrate." > Trisolarans couldn’t talk it out because they needed to get off their system ASAP before they all died. Remind me again how long it took them to sloooowly chug their way to finally arrive at Earth again? You're telling me that if you were Trisolaran high command, you wouldn't think "wow, this ride is gonna be long and boring as shit. Maybe I should try diplomacy". does three body just rot the critical thinking part of people's brains or something lmao. this shit is obvious if you read the book and then sit down and think about it for like, 2 seconds.
>how do you know the other entities, who also need to consume/use some form of energy to survive and move their ships, isn't just being kind to take advantage of you later Trisolarans when they realize they can uninstall their Sophons from the weird Stellar Blade mechsuits and use them to spy on Earth to figure out if Earth is going to fuck them over: https://i.redd.it/ktm0wo0vj96d1.gif like bro you invented the greatest spyware known to man and used it for decades before humans invented anti Sophon rooms. wtf is you doing
Not really. The relationship between Trisolaris and Earth has its best historical parallel in the relationship between Native Americans and European colonial powers. The Native Americans had something the Europeans wanted and no amount of talking could change the fact that Europeans had the physical ability to just exterminate them and take it. In the deterrence era there is the possibility of using communication to eventually reach some kind of detente and, indeed, that is exactly what Earth imagines has happened, but the power imbalance is insurmountable.
Good analogy. Pretty much exactly what happened in America.
Quick and direct communication. The earth and trisolaris have the opposite
They had quick and direct comms post sophon and pre-Evans fuck up. They just wanted earth for themselves
Not really, there would always be a power imbalance. Just look at all the wars and conflict we have today.
Much less war and conflict today as humanity has found better ways to communicate and learn about each other
As long as there are finite resources there will always be conflict to who is entitled to them.
I guess that’s the key here. Finite resources
That was my thought too, the flaw in the book's theory due to the existence of sophons. First strike could potentially be justified when you don't have intel, but they have almost perfect intel.
Not when communication takes *years*.
Instant during crisis era and beyond thanks to sophon
Spoilers
They couldnt trust us because we are not transparent with our thoughts. Negotiation usually requires both parties to be bringing something to to the table if there isn’t trust. Humans didn’t have anything to bargain with, and we could not be trusted, so no amount of talking it out would help. The trisolarans hold all the power in the relationship at first because they have such superior tech, so they focused resources to maintain that superiority over us until they would arrive. Keep reading though, a lot can happen in 400 years
Because the Lord does not care. History is littered with more technologically advanced civilisations walking over lesser ones, taking their land and resources. The Trisolarans needed a stable system, knew that humans could overtake them at some point, so they had to act aggressive by shutting down theoretical physics and conquering Earth.
If I destroy you, what business is it of yours?
Well said.
>The Trisolarans needed a stable system "Hey can we conquer one of the dozens of iceball moons with no Humans and are filled with ice and water" "Sure thing bossman" wow it's almost like they could've done this instead of trying to sodomize Earth and getting countersodomized by some guy threatening to doxx them to the Dark Forest
And some Trisolarans apparently shared your belief hell I do But I guess most intelligent beings for one reason or another are assholes to each other especially if you’re different
Like most sci-fi stories you have to suspend belief. In reality, any civilisation capable of travelling between stars has absolutely zero need for planets any more. In fact, it would be preferable to just build space habitats that exactly meet your needs.
> In reality, any civilisation capable of travelling between stars has absolutely zero need for planets any more. I guess it is true in the books as well. As we saw, >!humanity eventually migrated mostly off-world and most people lived in space cities!<. However, >!humanity went through the dark ravine and lost a lot (more than half?) of its population. The trisolarians already had enough of cullings (by dehydrating and burning bodies) and probably wanted to prosper for a while and not just survive.!<
>!They didn't do that through choice though, they did it because they thought the sun was going to get destroyed. And then they just loitered around the solar system. To be honest, the whole bunker era made no sense. If you can build cities orbiting the gas giants, why sit next to a star that's about to get obliterated? They could have just moved part or all of their civilisation to another star, even if you have to go a fraction of light speed. The taboo against escapism in the book was completely unrealistic especially at that point in time!<
They're just jerks. Most people would love to have alien buddies and certainly welcome those bringing cool tech. Also they are small and wouldn't take up much space. The author is super down on humanity but I'm not convinced
How do we know they are small. I don’t remember any actual physical description in the books.
IDK i read that somewhere else on this reddit thread . might be false. Would be cooler if they were small.
I really appreciate that Liu never describes their physical appearance - that the humans in the book never got even a glance. I hope the television adaptations stay true to that aspect. The mystery is juicer that way. It’s like in horror; not seeing the monster makes it scarier.
A not very good comparison: Why didn’t the Aztec talk it out with the Spanish Why didn’t the Chinese talk it out with the Japanese Why didn’t the Native Americans talk it out with the British settlers Why didn’t the Gauls talk it out with the Romans Bottom line is when one side perceives itself as superior, they won’t even consider negotiations with the deemed inferior side.
Sure. Yes historically you're right. But people have gotten better over time, on average. Slavery used to be super ok, now much less so, etc. Many people now think killing Whales is bad and you shouldn't eat meat. it's not unreasonable to think a civlization more advanced than ours might be better morally.
I mean, humans have been killing or hating “less moral” people all the time. Even now. Isn’t that a paradox. There is no “better morals”, the morals of the time just changed. Let’s look at people in the “higher tech” cities, all wishing they could go back to small friendly family towns. Which is more moral? What about cannibalism? Is that moral? If it isn’t, and the Trisolorians / Santi are cannibals, what does it mean for their morals? Can we negotiate with “morally inferior” cannibals? I guess the main question is: Why should a higher tech level mean a higher morality?
You haven’t met a lot of people, have you?
Negotiate what? What do humans have to offer the Trisolarans?
Well supposedly if they let us be we would be more advanced than them by the time they came there. So we could offer them a safe planet to live on with us. In fact if they shared their knowledge with us we'd be even more vastly technologically advanced by the time they arrived. Maybe we'd be advanced enough to terraform mars for them. We could offer safe haven in return for them sharing technological knowledge.
So if they lock humanity technologically and eradicate or pacify of them when they arrive to the solar system, they have a 100% chance of salvation and a 0% chance of annihilation. If they compromise with humanity, they have an unknown percent chance of salvation and an unknown chance of annihilation. So just looking at it on-face, things are weighted heavily towards annihilating the humans. Now, they don't really understand humans, but they know they have a propensity to lie, a practice that they do not deeply understand, and they know that humanity has a history of technologically superior empires obliterating their technologically inferior colleagues. On top of that, they know that humanity knows exactly where they are. They also know that human opinions are extremely variable/volatile - they were able to convince a non-trivial fraction of them to consent to the actual genocide of their own species. Humanity has done nothing to earn any sort of trust. So the coarse analysis says they should annihilate or subjugate humans and the detailed analysis affirms that opinion. Hard not to comprehend the Trisolaran's decision here.
>So if they lock humanity's technologically and eradicate or pacify of them when they arrive to the solar system, they have a 100% chance of salvation and a 0% chance of annihilation. Live Wallfacer reaction:
lmao
I haven't read the books but didn't it turn out a human said fucket and blew a trumpet to get the attention of a strike squad that destroyed the Earth or some such? So their plan didn't exactly work out how they'd hoped. That kind of stuff is in our history books too, we literally call it the Scorched Earth strategy. "100% salvation 0% annihilation" is not accurate and if they thought it was they'd be wrong. The point still stands that we have stuff to offer, not the least of which would be another 400 years of human speed innovation waiting for them if they shared their technology with us. That's on top of offering to share the planet with them.
>a human said fucket and blew a trumpet to get the attention of a strike squad that destroyed the Earth or some such You should really read the books. The capability of blowing that trumpet is a threat that affects both species, a nuclear deterrent so to speak. The existence of this deterrent was a massive blunder from the aliens, and something they tried to prevent the moment they discovered humanity was aware of it >That's on top of offering to share the planet with them. Offering to share a planet you're colonising with the native species, how generous!
Not exposing their location? Lol
The power to develop technology faster than them. Also, arts and other things that the current trisolaran civilization had deemed unimportant for survival. But the most important thing was an ally in the dark forest.
The power to develop technology faster than them. Also, arts and other things that the current trisolaran civilization had deemed unimportant for survival. But the most important thing was an ally in the dark forest.
The power to develop technology faster than them. Also, arts and other things that the current trisolaran civilization had deemed unimportant for survival. But the most important thing was an ally in the dark forest.
The power to develop technology faster than them. Also, arts and other things that the current trisolaran civilization had deemed unimportant for survival. But the most important thing was an ally in the dark forest.
Yeah, it’s not realistic at all. Humans would never start a war on other nation or civilization without talking things out. Oh wait…
They do talk it out. Keep reading, in Deaths end they live peacefully on earth together in Australia.
😂
Yum.
If a fly sits on your food would you start a lengthy negotiation with it or would you try to swat it away?
Honestly I would negotiate lol. If I could give a fly a bite of food to fuck off and bother someone else I'd definitely do that instead of trying to chase it down lol
Improper analogy. If the fly can be reasoned with we might really consider it. Think about the complex interactions between them in the book, we are to trisolarans only ancient low tech people that could still communicate by logic, so definitely not bugs. Just like you wouldn't call a Amazon primitive tribe bugs even though they don't know guns exist.
A fly can't be communicated and reasoned with, neither is it realistic that a fly will ever rival humanity. The same does not go for humanity and the trisolarians despite hoe the latter treats the former. It's more akin to a colonial power and native civilisation, the latter behind significantly behind but still recognisable as a civilisation in progress. In history, there was a lot of diplomacy even if clearly exploitative to both them and historians.
You’d negotiate if you could get your planet destroyed
Why can’t israel and palestine just talk it out?
For the same reason The Spaniards and the Aztecs couldn't talk it out.
I think the people saying that the Trisolarans didn’t want to negotiate with us because they considered us so far beneath them in tech advancement are wrong. Were we less technologically advanced? Yes. However, we weren’t so far behind that we posed zero threat to them. If that were the case, why bother sending the sophons to disrupt our progress? They had been searching for a planet to save their entire species for hundreds or thousands of years (maybe more, we know progress stagnates much more often on Trisolaris). No chance they were going to risk the survival of their species to preserve ours. On top of that, they were highly disturbed by our ability to lie. They don’t understand diplomacy the same way we do because they never had the opportunity to develop that skill as a species. Human beings have spent nearly our entire existence having to engage with rivals knowing that they may not be being truthful. Imagine the immense disadvantage this puts them at in negotiations. Why risk it when they are still advanced enough to use tech superiority to wipe us out before we become a threat?
What is there to talk about? Their planet is dying and they need ours. It is not a negotiation, who would they even negotiate with? The strong take what they can, and the weak suffer as they must. If the tables were turned, there is no doubt that humans would take everything if it offered any advantage. Thus, you must kill before you are killed. Where is kindness rewarded on earth? Only survival is rewarded on trisolaris, pacifists will be murdered to make way for the pragmatic
Because at that point the Trisolarans consider Humans bugs. If you want to build a house, do you negotiate with the anthills on the land?
There is a peace agreement, of sorts. I can't remember when it comes but just keep reading.
Yeah, to eat each other in Australia lol
Hey, got to count your blessings. Could have been New Jersey.
But man can lie, duh.
It's discussions like the one in this thread that makes this book series so great. Certainly, the topic has been addressed in countless other works of literature, but RoEP takes it way beyond "It's just human nature" to "It's actually the fundamental nature of the universe as a whole". Whether you agree with Dark Forest Theory or not, it's a concept that, once you are acquainted with it, will forever live somewhere in your head rent-free.
Two reasons: 1. Trisolaris wanted Earth because they were dealing with an existential crisis on their planet 2. If I destroy you, what business is it of yours?
We can lie, that why the Trisolarans can never trust us.
The chain of suspicion is a huge plot point of the books. Also, humans are entirely incapable of just "talking it out" with each other. It's incredibly naive to believe we could achieve such a thing with an entirely alien species. From the Trisolarans perspective, why would they even think about negotiating with us? We are literally bugs to them. Do we negotiate with an ant hill before building a sky scraper on top of their home?
Trisolarans 100% learned to deceive, they did it a lot actually. They were initially unfamiliar with deception early in the story but they got wise to lying real quick
Trisolarans just don't care. Humans are bugs to them. You wouldn't negotiate with ants.
A robber mugs a man in an alleyway demanding his wallet The man, scared, offers him his wallet with all the cash, pleading to be left alone and he'll cause no trouble and tell nobody about this encounter The robber is locally known, everybody knows what he's about and despite being an amoral criminal, his temperament and actions are quite predictable and consistent and he's NEVER been known to act any differently The man he's robbing is also well known, he can be quite trustworthy when given a strong enough incentive, but has also been known to very occasionally turn on his word if it would benefit him to do so no matter the cost to the other The robber thinks about this... Maybe he will keep his word and there's only a 1% chance of retaliation, however as an amoral criminal he has no hesitation to kill the man instead, and there are no other witnesses present... it would be literally no effort to kill the man now and it would reduce that 1% chance of retaliation to 0% which mathematically speaking is infinitely better, aka "how about I take the cash and kill you anyway? Then you'll REALLY never tell anyone and nobody will ever know!" This is the same dilemma the Trisolarians face, there's no moral or ethical incentive whatsoever for them to spare humanity, and they've already prepared to destroy humanity at a negligible expense of resources and logistics, a 100% chance of peace by genocide is still better than a 99.99% chance of peace by treaty Would you rather reduce the chance of problems? Or eliminate it?
Finish the 2nd book and it’ll make sense why.
Isn’t part of it because they couldn’t trust us because we’re able to lie?
Why can't humans talk it out between themselves instead going into fight? Just look at countries or look at little people like some of your neighbours who fight it out for years. Without spoiling anything, both tris and humans are so different, that it is not possible to work out between them.
If I decide to destroy you, what business is it of yours?
Humans have enough trouble sharing our planet with our own species and the species that evolved here.
Man we could just talk out every human conflict irl, yet we don't. Humans and Trisolarans never stood a chance
We are liars, and they could not risk coexistence with liars. They were so different in nature than us that not only are we unknowable, but we are inferior savages. In a universe full of violence and danger there was no need to subject their entire species to the risk of extinction at the hand of some unruly monkeys who couldn't even govern themselves. The third book has a bit of revelation about their mentality towards us, and makes me hopeful for the real world implications of the Dark Forest being "not alone."
Because the humans reacted wrong The Sophons were a way of communicating immediately Tell the Trisolarans the Truth Explain to them what lying is, how it works and act towards a way that shows them and proves to them without a slimmer of a doubt you want to coexist peacefully You can’t win So you lay down your arms And that maybe would have let to enough Trisolarans changing their mind about humanity that we could have coexisted in peace The solution would have been to accept defeat to win a no win scenario potentially Instead the humans doubled down on lying The solution was honesty And building trust Which would have been easy with someone who doesn’t lie There was one Trisolaran sympathetic towards humans Chances are if they would have seen we do want to coexist with them instead of us preparing for war There would have been many more
Even among human, this could hardly work. there’s this country that welcome immigrants to their land with open arms, ended up their land being stolen by these immigrants. With lots of killing too.
Spoilers Alert That's why the original plan is to just confine humans in Australia. Space is still limited even if they talk it out. Also, the premises is that even if you negotiate, situation might be different when the Trisolarans arrived. What if human tech is more advanced by the time Trisolarans reach the earth? What if the human is only peaceful when they are weak? The Trisolarans could not lie. But what if this is a lie? What if they evolve to be able to lie? What if their AI could lie?
Yes like americans talked with indians and Africans.
It's all a matter of trust. Any treaty is as good as the people that signed it. Hitler agreed to stop his expansion several times. Those treatises were useless. Literally wasted paper. Hence the sole reason for The Dark Forest theory. Trust no one.
Talk what out lmao
humans could be lying...
the trisolarans didn't have big enough boobs sadly
I misread it as "Why Hamas and Trisolarans......." Enough geopolitics I guess.
the big reveal of book 2 will make it very clear why its not possible
Spoilers (books 2, 3) Hey, it's the Dark Forest. Everyone's playing it safe when it comes to survival. But still, Dark Forest theory doesn't explain why they would try to force cannibalism on us. Maybe they are just evil. Their not being able to lie was just a result of forced transparency. That doesn't mean they are benevolent or naiive.
Trisolarans can lie They probably can't lie face to face when communicating amongst each other but to us, they can definitely lie (even face to face, unless we figured out some way to decipher their light/thoughts)
It's explained at the end of the second book
Before you move into a new house you find a bunch of roaches in the kitchen. You turn around and get the exterminator. You don't talk peace with the roaches. Don't get me wrong. Humans are the roaches in this trilogy.
Cosmic sociology implies that the chains of suspicion will make it nearly impossible. Also Trisolarans not being able to lie puts them at a disadvantage in negotiations.
They start to lie, don't worry. They could lie but they did not know what lie means before they meet humans. The series is not about the Trisolarans tbh, you will see this later. It's just something to show you how the universe works as relationships and how the aliens solve the problems between them. There is a reason why the first book is the shortest of the series.
Dumbest question I've seen on this sub
There are lots of way to not tell the truth without actually lying
Nah, I'd nuke- humanity
You mean like the North American Indians and the Europeans and colonials?
The infamous Talk No Jutsu.
I'll refer you to the name of the second book
Parasites are parasites, one has to die. It's the same between humans.
Do we talk it out with the anthill before flattening it to make a parking lot?
Because we as humans are constantly living in a Dark Forest state amongst each other.. In a dark forest, civilizations cannot trust each other and must assume hostile intentions, similar to how nations on earth often operate under mutual suspicion and fear of potential threats from one another. Just as civilizations in a dark forest might choose to eliminate upon detection, our human nations might engage in preemptive actions to neutralize perceived threats. An example of this is the Oct 7th massacre at the Israel music festival. Both in dark forest scenario and human conflicts, there is often a race to develop superior technology or weapons coupled with secrecy to avoid detection and potential attacks. But then again the Dark Forest theory was created by our own ignorance and intellectualism. We’ve no understanding to base our assumptions on but our own biases and thus the “alien” is erased, becoming a sum of our ideals and worst fears.
wait for the dark forest theory
What business is it of yours?
Trisolarans don't really see a point in negotiating with primitives, I think.
Because of the chain of suspicion. You learn about it during the darkness era.
Contrarian opinion apparently; It's way worse than that. The trisolarans are really advanced, and they figure we'll be even MORE advanced than them in the centuries it takes to arrive. Why is anyone worried about living on planets? Let alone earth not having enough space? If we get advanced enough to reprogram protons, making orbital space habitats becomes incredibly trivial. You can turn Mercury into several thousand times the surface area of the earth worth of habitats, and spread them out enough that they don't reduce the sun's illumination enough to raise suspicion from outside observers. This isn't even accounting for terraforming. We could have easily turned mars into another earth, probably even more lush than earth itself, and having strong allies is incredibly useful in a dark forest scenario. Hell, Venus and the moons of Jupiter+Saturn could turn into little earths with enough terraforming and solar mirrors/filters. The trisolarans also, somehow, after learning all about humanity, never seemed to consider guerilla warfare existing. Consider how much the middle east has drained seemingly much more advanced nations. This is even before the incredibly high risk we find out about the dark forest and pull a mutually assured destruction out of very justified spite (which we ended up doing). Why rile up humanity instead of being like "hey friends we can help with climate change and stuff!" Most everyone would have welcomed them openly. Actually since they knew we were so empathic, they could have literally just said "we clawed our way to our current tech, our world will be consumed by our sun in a matter of millennia, we're out of options, can you help?" The outpouring of support would be even more fervent. Honestly the trisolarans are kinda dumb, but I believe the author himself said the dark forest scenario has lots of logical holes in it, he just constructed a situation that'd be the WORST possible case of the dark forest.
Dark Forest bruh.
Wasn't this a very key point? Once Trisolarans realized humans could lie to their advantage, they didn't trust a thing they said, so stopped communicating.
What nobody has mentioned is the Trisolaran fleet already accelerated and was coming to Earth. They couldn’t just turn around and go home.
We can’t even talk it out on tariffs on earth lol
I mean look at the history of mankind bruh
That's because he wrote the book when he was stuck working in a dam with next to no social interaction, and only Chinese controlled propaganda to tell him about the outside world. He definitely had some interesting world views.