Please...add UA-cam subtitles to people who is not native English speaker...is a little hard to understand you just by listening and you can add some of international audience...and is just one button to click on here and it's done
Pls tell me how I can watch the Chinese version. I'm a huge fan of 5he books but I do not like th3 Netflix version, I believe Netflix are telling a non-linear story so they can turn out season after season a make as much money as possible. Doesn't matter if its good just as long as its profitable. They so badly want another Game of thrones, which isn't surprising when you think who the writers are behind. Sorry for the rant. I subbed and liked the channel I think it's great......😊
it's not that the Trisolarans being a small fish in the Dark Forest isn't well communicated, it's that the Dark Forest concept hasn't even been established or revealed yet in the show.
But it's revealed that they're only 4 lightyears away (that's the closest star) and in the book Ye Wenjie knew immediately that it means the galaxy is full of intelligent life, otherwise it's very improbable that 2 habited star systems exist directly next to each other. But even in the book they don't think it further: what about the others - which is a good thing, because it would have been too much too early. Let's say the fact that they are only 4 years away foreshadows further complications without holding up the story.
Sophons went into your brain and changed your neuron paths so they provoke such a response to this video. This comment is pro Trisolarian propaganda. I formally denounce.
Great explanation. In the book it is clearer that building the Sophons was the largest and most advanced project the Trisolarans had ever attempted, and in the book there were many failed initial attempts. The Sophons were just the size of a proton and they are only able to affect tiny things also the size of atoms. They messed up subatomic particle experiments; They shot light particles into certain people's eyes to make a countdown; They messed with observatories detectors to make the "stars blink" (the background cosmic radiation in the book). In the book they didn't make the stars blink for everyone one Earth. That would've been too big an effect for the tiny Sophons to pull off.
Great points - but if plot holes were a problem... how about the fact that faster than light communication via entanglement already violates the no-communication theorem and you can't amplify a radio signal by pointing it at the sun. The dark forest theory also is an extremely simplified model and makes many assumptions that make it utterly unrealistic. The science in the book is more fantasy than science. This is true in all the books. Plot holes are everywhere in the series. I wish there weren't so many and the books should have gone through several more rounds of revisions, but hey, I guess one can't ask for near perfection unless you're reading The Stormlight Archive.
@@ThomasMeliWellness Although it's the common interpretation of entablement is that no information can be communicated between these particles, the fact is that we don't know how it works or if it's really impossible. For example , there are models using wormhole as an explanation for the link between particles. The San-ti may know things we don't, maybe this is mentioned in the books ?
@@ThomasMeliWellness it doesn't violate the faster than light communication actually. True information from point A gets transferred to point B instantly however there is no physical connection between that information. You'd have to actually fly from point A to point B to verify the information transfer. So it doesn't create any paradoxes because you as an observator still are bound by laws of physics
No they could have done it. We know that when they unravel protons to program them, the surface is perfectly reflectiv which makes the surface of their planet very cold during the process. When they make the sky blink, they do so by surrounding the Earth and changing which frequency of light can pass through, or not. It stays transparent to mostly everything but the background cosmic radiation. However, in the book they're much more subtle. Like, in the show they litterally reveal without a doubt to the whole world that they're here and aren't frienfly. Whereas in the book they only reveal themselves to the leaders once with the "you are bugs". I think it's when they innitiate the wallfacer project but I can't remember. However, they just do it to the eyes of those leaders in this meeting.
@@bajs932 You can use this to send messages back in time. Any instant connection between points in the universe can be used as a time machine. Any naked singularity can be used as a time machine, any faster than light travel can be used as a time machine. The problem I see with most science fiction that employs FTL is that they simplify the consequences of FTL being possible (time travel and breakdown of causality, bootstrap "paradoxes", etc). The trisolarians with FTL sophons should be able to predict the orbits of their suns, even if they are chaotic, using FLT and time travel of information. How? I particularly like the simplified explanation on the video "Why Going Faster-Than-Light Leads to Time Paradoxes" of the channel coolworlds by professor David Kipping.
It’s not lost! That’s the whole point of Luo Ji’s revelation as a wallfacer. The audience will discover the dark forest soon enough. The show is doing a great job to mirror the moment of discovery with as it happens in the book.
I agree! Even though Characters and storylines have been massively altered I think the show does a great job at conveying the narrative of the books so far.
@@mwe8414 Well the series has storyline from all three books. Basically it tells the full story of book one, and the start of book 2. While also threading in elements of book three's flashback scenes. If you really want to start a book close to where the series is, I'd recommend starting with Dark Forest. But the character names are really different, so you might not understand who is playing what role in the story.
That is not why sophon didn't do those kind of things, the simple answer is just that sophon is not that OP in the book, the show makes it so powerful that unecessary plot holes arise. The aliens also don't care if humans destroy Earth, they just need a stable system, they can live on Mars, Venus or asteroid belt just fine, Earth is just a nice bonus
Maybe, but they would have to terraform Mars to live on it, which wasn't something they were willing to commit to. Otherwise they wouldn't risk moving into an inhabited star system where the native civilization can discover dark forest deterrence at any time in the span of 400 years. They took a huge risk for Earth, and once they took that risk, Earth was essential to them. It's like when we find gold deposits in one area. We don't care if a volcano erupts and destroys it, we'll just find another area. But once we build mines, invest our resources towards extracting that gold deposit, suddenly a destruction of that area would be devastating. And that's just a mine. Imagine a civilization level undertaking over the span of 400 years only to come and discover a destroyed Earth.
@@BlizzPortthe gold analogy is great. Considering the dark forest theory, even if they went to Mars. Humans could have an issue with that too. As though humans have a claim to Mars
@@BlizzPort according to book 2, they while prefer having a planet ready for them when arriving, they don’t mind the literal scored Earth either otherwise they would give more thought about Diaz’s plan
or it's the dark forest hypothesis, they need to silence the neighbor human who like a crying baby sending signal reveal its position, regardless to let human live or not.
They very much do care if humans destroy earth. Their ships aren't equipped for terraforming or anything like that. They have technology, but one must keep in mind that this was basically their one shot that they devoted their entire civilizations resources to, for making the sophons and building ships to get to earth. While they are advanced, they are also very tiny, which requires a lot of them to do things that even a single human could easily accomplish physically. So it's like if we're trying to move a boulder, while a giant the size of a skyscraper can just easily pinch it up and toss it 5 miles away. So while they are powerful technologically, they do put in a lot of effort and resources to achieve these things, their whole civilization is devoted to it. The ones back on their homeworld are left behind to essentially die, because they used soo much of their civilizations resources to put this invasion together, that they literally can't afford to send a second invasion, at least not for a very long time, and by then their planet could be destroyed by their 3 suns. They fully expect that the ships they sent might be the only ones from their planet able to colonize earth. They also even had plans to try to keep intact human cities because they wanted to use them for their own habitation, or at least, the resources from it. This is partially because it's just soo much easier, because you already have processed materials to work with and things like running water and sewage and power lines, which while less advanced than them, is easier for them to convert to their needs than starting with absolutely nothing. The other part is they would still have to contend with wildlife. Even with their technology, there's a trillion bugs and other animals on earth, which would inevitably result in population losses for them, even if minor, and would still be something they'd want to avoid. They aren't a hive mind, even though they can communicate without speaking, so even though they behave like a collective in a way, they are a species of individuals. Even though they are very tiny, they're also very numerous, possibly numbering in the trillions, maybe even hundreds of trillions. On their planet, they likely had to make a lot of sacrifices and special arrangements. They could live in bunkers under ground, but for their size, that's very deep. They still need resources even just to rehydrate, and if the planet is scorched, even their bunker resources could be evaporated and destroyed. Same with things like food....if you're having to dehydrate your civilization for centuries or thousands of years, anything you tried to store would likely spoil by then, and you'd also only rehydrate when the planets ecosystem recovered....and that doesn't mean it will recover fully. It might already be barren on the surface for the most part, with all the surface water evaporated away, requiring them to get all their water from deep in the planet. That also means they need to make far more preparations for food production. What this all means is that when they rehydrate, not all of their bunker facilities survive, and they lose most of their people. This might be a bonus for requiring less resources, but they also lose most of their best minds. I'd imagine they try to store as much data as possible for future generations, but again, they likely lose a lot of it too. They've been doing this process for millions of years, so for them to only be a few hundred years more advanced than humans, shows just how much they've been set back. Most of their civilizations resources have been devoted to rebuilding over and over again, and ensuring they survive to be able to rebuild.
It's kinda frustrating seeing the reception of the show. As a book fan, I thought it was impossible to adapt. All things considered, they done a stupendous job translating it from the book to a TV show. They got a few plot holes in for spectacle, sure: the sophons editing camera feeds, the fact Will's brain probe malfunctioned too soon and thus is too slow and so on. However what I am seeing are people poking a lot of holes in the show that are things purposely convoluted meant to be revealed later. Why did they spend so much time with Will if the project was to fail? How did they develop cryotrchnology so quickly? Why was the stoner chosen to be a wallfacer if it's such an important job? Why are the sophons stifling progress on particle accelerators and not on the cryotech or naval engineering? If the San Ti are so powerful why aren't they coming faster? All questions to which the answer is "keep watching", but it feels like everything about the show is mired in mistrust on the showrunners because of their big blunder on the final seasons of Game of Thrones. People seem to forget that the GoT show was a masterpiece up until the point there was source material for them to fall back to, the show derailed once they ran out of source material and had to wing it. This is not the case here, the Rememberance of Earth's Past trilogy is already set in stone. People should get over the GoT blunder and take the show at its own terms, and just frigging WAIT FOR THE STORY TO UNFOLD!
@@saucevc8353 Are the sophons also sentient computers the size of earth in the books? If so you cannot blame D&D for doing the hacking the entire world in episode 5 when even a weaker computer would be able to do that.
@@saucevc8353Every time it doesn't make sense that a Sophon could do something the main answer is that it wasn't one of the Sophons, but ETO collaborators. The main exception is Wade's vision at the end. Dramatic effect I guess. It's a visual medium after all. But let's just say the Sophons can do that if they committed both of them for that minute or so to just this 1 place and person. And move on.
Maybe the directors have faith that the book fans will be enthusiastic to discuss these questions with non-readers. The passionate fans of ASOIAF maybe did the same for GOT.
Are sophons are not responsible for CCTV feed manipulation? are they responsible for the "You are Bugs" messages? Surely if they are capable of digital data manipulation they are capable of controlling dgital devices, vehicles and weapons. That's a huge plot hole to fill.
A plot hole D&D caused. Sophons don't have these capabilities in the books. The changes are cool for spectacles, and it's great that Tatiana has superpowers, but D&D didn't think them through.😅
In the books, Sophons can only manipulate digital data at a slow rate. To fix the plot hole, you may understand the declaration of war as something took a long time for Sophons to prepare.
@@tremarley9648 In the third book, a special device has to be made to interface with Sophons effectively. Perhaps Sophons can hack a device to release a virus or receive its transmission, but it would take a while. 🤦
@@tremarley9648 Thinking more physically, as a particle with positive charge, Sophon can also generate electromagnetic wave by flying around, which can be picked up by radio.
The sophons are still OP in so many ways: 1) They violate the laws of quantum physics in that they can be used for communication repeatedly without losing entaglement. 2) They violate the laws of conservation of momentum and energy in that they can be seen changing direction at near 90 degrees to accelerate into the path of a test particle travelling at near c. It was also never explained how they managed to slow down when they first reached earth. The enegies required for these accelerations and decelerations are more than enough to affect things at a macroscopic scale as demonstrated by the energies required for the particle accelerators on earth and E=mc^2. 3) They can apparently "see" these test particles travelling at near c, approaching so as to enable them to plan an intercept. 4) They can "see" macroscopic entities. How? They cannot use light as they are too small to be affected by rays in that part of the spectrum.
@@lianghao7128 There are fundamental limits relating wavelength, time and resolution for any sort of wave that make that impossible even in theory (It's why gravitational wave detectors have to be so big)
@@Clistes What 4th dimension? Why not the 452nd dimension? Or the 19th? What if they use magic? What if they pray to god and god does it? In what way are any of these suggestions any less plausible than what is presented? They would be ridiculously OP in all these cases and all are neither more nor less credible.
@@SmileyEmoji42 you know that 4th dimension is time right? you know that we, humans proved that there are more then 3 dimensions? more then 4 even. If they can create sophons, I can't see reason why they can't operate in 4 dimensions. you know, the fact that you see sci-fi through our human achievements, then well it's a waste of time discussing with you. You are not bothered with instant dehydration but sophons bother you . . .
That's because the only plausible way for the ETO to create headsets like this is to employ alien tech or blueprints - because that technology simply doesn't exist. It becomes ludicrous really - because even if they sold the headsets for $10,000 each they would become a wealthy corporation overnight, their graphics processing is something NVidia cannot do ... and NVidia is one of the world's top 3 most valuable companies
I wouldn't say they forgot. This is kind of a revelation when Luo Ji starts the Deterrance Era. It's in line with the sequence of events from the books, at this point Earth believes the trisolarians are peak civilization.
Sure they are. They just started their very first experiment with the 4th spatial dimension when they build the Sophons. Only a few hundreds years ahead of humans. It's clear by the end of the series that there have been many civilizations in the Universe that have access to all 11 spatial dimensions; Each dimension adding an order of magnitude more complexity and power than the ones below it.
The Trisolarans used the sophons to mess with Thomas Wade’s jet. They did that specifically to show him that they are in control. So, I believe the sophons can do a lot more than what we know. Don’t forget each sophon is basically a super artificial intelligence.
i was under the impression that they forced hallucinations on him making Wade think that his plane was having issues.....considering the speech and the dead body she spoke of. I think this was lost in translation but the fact that the jet viewed from the outside seemed perfectly fine and no warning lights were lit meant it was just a visual thing, just like the clocks seen in the eyes.
@@sabriath If they can create auditory, kinesthetic and visual hallucinations to that degree they can fool any of Wade's bodyguards into seeing him as an enemy combatant and he'd be instantly shot.
That's the netflix adaptation. You didn't listen anything of what she said huh 😑. The only order given to Soyphon was only to mess with scientific capacity of the human race any you see in the show have been added.
My issue is that sophons just don’t behave in conjunction with actual quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement does not allow for information transfer, or transfer or any kind, it just makes a mirror set of particles, which only continue to mirror each other while in this state, once either changes the symmetry is broken.
If the sophons can decrypt a hard drive and enter a virtual reality game and hack every display to display things then yes they are capable of hacking into cars as well.
I don’t think the show failed at portraying the santi as a small fish so much as they chose not to do that, just like in the books they start off as the big bad guy before we learn more about the universe, it’s just the first season they don’t even know about the dark forest yet
I'm pretty sure it has more to do with the fact that there are only 2 sophons and their capabilities are limited due to opportunity cost, they can only do so much at any one time. Due to that, they have to prioritize targets. Also, we humans are good at fighting cancer, not great, but we can cure many cancers. So focusing one sophon on killing one particular person instead of spying or sabotage would be quite an extreme measure.
it might take a sophon a mere moment. They can also blind drivers and pilots and apparently do projections the size of earth. maybe blinding the world is an option or block sunlight.
I feel like what the Trisolarians are doing makes perfectly sense. They are on a one-way trip to earth and bound to that destination almost. They do not have enough resource to scout somewhere else, so every step has to be cautious, especially since they have learned about human history and our tendencies PLUS they have troubles interacting with other species due to them not being able to really read in-between the lines since another being that can think "abstactly" and does not share a hive-mind with them, is too unpredictable for them. They also cannot lie, only withhold information humans could potentially cause them to involuntarily leak unwanted information if they keep up conversations, which they might have to do anyway to make sure that humans don't fall into said "last resort self-destruct" mode.
I don’t think the show failed to do anything at all. It was fantastic. Anyone that has any sense or knowledge about xenobiology or alien life would know that there’s no reason to compare humanity to aliens. Two totally independently species with very little overlapping things in common. The audience watching the show shouldn’t assume anything because this is an alien species far far away.
Many of the criticisms levelled at the show and the books mistakenly assume that TBP is supposed to be "hard" science fiction, when it's actually a fantasy sci-fi story like Star Wars and should be judged as such. Development of Sophons is explained to require actual physical manipulation of higher dimensions. This is so incredibly advanced and disparate from the rest of the San Ti story line that we have to assume the author consciously decided that he wasn't going to even try to maintain internal consistency and just tell what he believed was a cool story. So don't try to pick apart the story for its science -- it's fantasy sci-fi and no more.
What constitutes “hard” and “soft” sci-fi is quite relative, but I completely resent your characterization here. For one, Star Wars is neither hard nor soft Sci-Fi, it’s full-on fantasy. That’s not just my opinion, Lucas himself admits this. People call it Sci-Fi just because it’s set in space and uses futuristic-looking gizmos, but it doesn’t really attempt to explain its events or its tech using science (theoretical or otherwise). And not to mention the entire narrative is centered around a supernatural element. Jedi are literally just Space Wizards. Their powers are magic. Not even like “I’m using 120% of my brain” pseudoscience. It’s full blown fucking magic lol
Another video I watched, the creator stated that science fiction is not really about hard science or not. Because the question is what makes a science fiction book, science fiction. One thing they have in common is that they explore morality, ethics, and possibilities. They are in sense religious books. They are guides for future possibilities. The hard or science is irrelevant. Star wars is not really a science fiction story as it doesn't explore morality, possibilities, and ethics. Its pure fantasy. Despite taking place in space.
By the end of the season i was left with the overwhelming impression that the aliens aren't trying destroy or conquer humanity, they are trying to unite and/or encourage the technological growth of humanity through the threat of a common enemy, this is either the case or a really bad job was done and a there's is fact a bunch of plot holes.
Having not read the books, and having only seen the show, I could say that the aliens are pushing humanity to learn and grow in an attempt to have humanity one day come pick them up off their uninhabitable world. The trisolarins can't lie.. says who? The trisolarins?
2 things. -You can tell from the first few episodes and the characters actions... There are plot holes aplenty. -This is from the same show runners that brought you Game of Thrones. They have already made quite a few... choices with the source material. Overall, the show is extremely palatized for a Netflix audience.
To be fair that is a difficult to pack that level of detail in 8 episodes. Hopefully we get further seasons to fully realize the Santi/Trisolarans limitations. As well as properly delve into the even bigger issue they are trying to hide from in the Dark Forest.
It's just another scale. Obviously the ships don't need to be human scale. And anyway, humans build stuff much bigger than we are, so where exactly do you see the problem?
I agree - the size of the brain roughly correlates among differing species with the number of neuron connections which then also correlates with memory and capacity for learning. To suggest that aliens the size of grains of sand can become more technologically advanced than us is also to suggest that ants could do the same.
why does the video thumbnail text say "why sophons can't destroy us?" that's not a question. shouldn't it say "why sophons can't destroy us" without the question mark, or "why can't sophons destroy us?" which IS a question
I always felt this was a mistake on the part of the Trisolarians. Why tip your hand? They could just as easily not said anything. The only explanation was hubris, or perhaps since they (at the time) didn't understand deception, they simply didn't know they SHOULDNT tell their plan wjen asked
Even if you don't understand deception, you can't not not understand information. People can't act on information they don't have. Expending energy to give your enemy information is a very silly goose approach to your own anti-extinction plan.
They control the narrative by speaking when they did. They learned we can lie, which means the government could lie to its own people, using the productivity of an ignorant population while slowly breaking the truth to them. By revealing themselves to everyone and then telling the truth of Sophons, the people panic wanting to know whats up and the government can't reassure them knowing the enermy is listening.
That's another thing as well. How can a species evolve intelligence without deception? I know that the trisolarans are kinda like ants and do everything collectively but still
Great video. It is lost on a lot of watchers that the Sophons are not weapons. They are pure EW and psychological warfare based. And I think a lot of that involves the technology being inherently dangerous, givin both escalation problems and the fact that the microverse is dangerous... having already destroyed the Trisolarian capital once in revenge for messing with their domain. Add in the fact that on the galactic scale, the trisolarians are more of a hiding civilization than a cleansing one, and it makes sense. I believe The Dark Forest seasons will explain this much better.
OK I think I understand: So the Sophons are limited to ONLY the following; Observation, Communication, Interfering with Particle collisions and "Casting Illusions" (think Mysterio from Spiderman Far from Home, just projecting images into or from the sky or directly into people's eyes) A Sophon ability (that doesn't exist) that the Netflix show might cause confusion on, is that "Sophons can hack stuff" which it what it looked like was happening near the end of the show on 2 main occasions; the car hack, and the "you are bugs" message. The car hack, according to this video, was a result of a human guided by the Sophon. And the "You are bugs" scene was actually different in the books, as that message was only shown to the main characters, not the whole world. So I guess this is just a case of the show runners wanting to make a scene more dramatic at the expense of not explaining something and creating a plot hole that people can nit pick. So the first 2 abilities, Observation and Communication are pretty simple, it just makes the Sophons the perfect, unstoppable, near omniscient Spy with the only thing it can't do being read minds (since the San-Ti probably don't have a good enough understanding of the Human Brain to program that into the tech given their short period of time they had to prepare the Sophons). With these two capabilities alone the Sophons are pretty powerful and causes lots of problems for humanity as demonstrated in both the book and the show. With the ability to Interfere with Particle Collisions, that probably sounds like something that can do more than just mess up our data from Particle Accelerators You may be thinking things like "why don't they just use to it fuck up our DNA and kill people on earth one by one" or "if it can be accelerated to close to speed of light, why don't they just use it as a missile that can destroy stuff". Well first of think about the missile application; if you use a computer as a cannon ball, you might be able to destroy something or kill someone, but then you can't use the computer any more... And this logic can also apply to DNA, to destroy DNA or cells or change the molecular structure of things, you need a lot of energy to break the chemical bonds, so that goes back to the ramming use, if it was used that way it would probably be a one use and then it's destroyed. These are just really small super computers, NOT nanobots. So the best thing it can do is nudge subatomic particles in particle accelerators slightly to mess up results. I know the show depicted it as bashing the particles head on, but firstly those subatomic particles are smaller than protons so probably can't damage Sophons, and 2ndly you only need to nudge these particles slightly to mess up scientific data and make it not match the scientist's predictions by making it random and nonsensical. You also might be thinking that the Casting Illusions can be used to kill all the important people in the world through visual deception, so just do that. And they did! They made many of the top scientists commit suicide at the start of the show as a result of these illusions by just showing them a countdown and having the members of ETO threaten them to stop their work. They did exactly that. But if you are thinking more direct ways of killing people through illusions like tricking them when they are alone to fall into danger, like making them walk on to train tracks or off a bridge by projecting images. Well the San-Ti don't understand the concept of deception because they communicate telepathically meaning all their thoughts are public so it is impossible to lie in their culture and the concept of a "lie" is literally an alien concept to them. So they can threaten people, but they can't deceive them. Also you have to look at the San-Ti as intelligent but not super intelligent. They have may have more advanced technology than Earth, but they still only had a few decades to plan their invasion after they first discovered earth. An invasion that involves 400 years of space travel, where the enemies have lots of time to prepare a counter attack while the San-Ti are just drifting through space with limited resources. In the end, game theory and strategy can be the deciding factor in winning a battle or war (Ask David and Goliath), and unlike technology, there doesn't seem to be that big of a gap of strategic intelligence between them. In fact if anything Earth has more experience in war and strategy due to the cultural differences of the San-Ti always being united in their Survival due to their chaotic home world, while Earth always having wars over each other's differences. And 1 last point. I hear people pointing out some physical impossibilities with the Sophon such as "that's not what quantum entanglement means, you still can't communicate information faster than light" and other points of "umm actually..." that is not worth listing. And to that I say; it's science fiction, not everything has be limited to our understanding of science. The author just wants to convey that the San-Ti have more advanced tech than us, and that they want to maintain that advantage while they travel to us by sabotaging our further understanding of Physics. The later books explore parts of Physics that we don't understand yet like Dark Matter, Dark Energy, 10 Dimensions, the speed of light and black holes, and he gives his own solutions to these unknows in Physics, in this work of FICTION. You could just say that the form of communication used by the San-Ti through their Sophon Technology is using another aspect of quantum entanglement through higher dimensions that we just don't understand yet and never will because of the sabotage. I can't prove if it's right or not because it's just fiction, meaning if the author says it works and doesn't contradict himself, then it works.
Season 1 of the Netflix adaptation may not have delved deeply into the intricacies of the Sophons' capabilities, but it's important to recognize the constraints of storytelling within a single season. The series prioritized establishing the foundation of the narrative, introducing key characters, and setting the stage for future developments. I believe that the Sophons' abilities and their significance will be further explored in Season 2, especially with the introduction of the Wallfacer project and the exploration of the dark forest theory. Additionally, it's worth noting that the Sophons themselves are enigmatic and manipulative entities. It's unlikely that they would openly disclose the extent of their powers to Earthlings, especially if it undermines their strategic advantage. Therefore, while Season 1 may not have provided a comprehensive explanation of the Sophons' capabilities, it's reasonable to expect that future seasons will delve deeper into this aspect of the story.
@@sandeepkarkhanis2273 They are a hive mind. So they can't lie to each other. They didn't know what lying was until humans explained it to them. And you don't have to lie, you can misdirect or withhold information.
The question is why do the aliens reveal their hand? Why reveal to the humans the existence of the sophons (a powerful sentient computer the size of a proton)? If they had kept that information hidden, the wallfacer project would never exist.
Trisolarans do not possess the ability to lie or deceive, unlike humans. One could argue that in certain situations, the need to lie is unnecessary to conceal one’s intentions, (hide ones hand) per say. It’s also intriguing that the entity revealing the existence of their Sophons is Sophon itself-a sentient AI. It remains unclear in the show whether Sophon possesses the ability to deceive, given its origins from the Trisolarans. If humans lacked a particular quality or emotion, could they intentionally imbue it into an AI? Perhaps theoretically possible, but ethically questionable. When creating a sentient AI, it’s essential for it to operate within laws comprehensible to its creators. Introducing an unfamiliar quality could jeopardize communication and understanding, potentially rendering interaction with the AI difficult or even perilous. Moreover, there seems to be no motive for Sophon or the Trisolarans to hide their power, in fact it is the opposite given that the Trisolarans want to instill fear in humans and break their science. Humans were already aware of the Trisolaran’s ability to monitor human existence; they simply lacked insight into their method of perception. Consequently, the revelation of the Sophons’ existence, along with their mode of operation, carries minimal significance as humans lack the knowledge to replicate or even understand them. While these arguments align with my perspective, they may ultimately be subject to critique or dismissed as a result of poor writing. You decide.
@@minaahmed340 and that's another thing that had me scratching my head. They claim they don't know how to lie but yet know how to project lies and hallucinations to humans to the point that those humans delete themselves. The aliens know how to manipulate sub-atomic particle results to stifle human progress. That's a falsehood they're already doing. These are the inconsistencies I picked up from the show.
@@bjo004they had input from humans to create these plans and were told what would scare and divide people. In my opinion, the show is not very clear about how much of the confusion created by the sophons is the planning and handiwork of the ETO
@@Fablessss But since the Sophons are sentient wouldn't they learn to lie a deceive once in contact with humans? While i have not read the books the show captivated me and i did some research. It seems that they are capable of learning
I saw it very similar to how nuclear weapons were used to end world war 2. There are some historians that wonder how they would have been used after the first 2, had the emperor not forced the hand of the military by announcing surrender himself. Marshall stated in the years following the war that there was never any real consideration to drop the bomb on Tokyo. He stated the reasoning was two fold. The first was that Tokyo had already been the focus of the most intense bombing in history, and early use of the bomb wanted to be used on a relatively untouched and undamaged city, so that the Japanese leadership would know that all of the devastation was from the bomb itself, and not from any previous bombing, for the psychological impact of the total devastation being from a single bomb. The second reason was that bombing Tokyo, what would amount to a "decapitation strike", would cause a collapse in the command structure that was necessary to facilitate the impending surrender. If you cause both the logistical and psychological panic that there is no one in charge of your own people, you instill into the people you are trying to impose your will onto a feeling that now everything that can possibly be done must be done, and you might inadvertently lengthen the transfer process by not leaving anyone left with the authority within the country to act in ways that benefit both sides during the demilitarization phase that needs to happen next.
Thanks for this breakdown, I thought I understood the concepts of the (netflix) series but bringing up the Kardishev scale about a type 2 civ and the hack being human intervention really helped. Awesome show will check out the book now.
But all this dark forest stuff you are talking about hardly hasn't been talked about in the show, because the show is set mostly in the first book. They will probably explain all this galactical/cosmical hierarchy and other stuff in later seasons.
From what I recall of the novel, the sophons are, at the end of the day, extremely limited in mass and, therefore, extremely limited in the amount of work they can perform without suffering degradation due to entropy. So, they can manipulate the laws of physics on large volumes of space to imprint messages on the night sky or insert random fluctuations in high energy physics experiments, but they cannot redirect asteroids or even levitate an apple.
Hmm. Since sophons can make people see whatever the San-Ti want them to see, that should already be game over. Just make everyone permanently blind or make every digital display always display nothing.
That's a lotta sophons. In the show, I think there were only two throughout season one. But in the book there were many more. I imagined thousands or millions though, nowhere near a one to one ratio with the population. In the book, sophons would sometimes display text on the retinas of ETO members, but nothing like what we see in the show where they cause characters to see things. In addition, the book makes an effort to express that a sophons capabilities are limited when they are folded up and proton sized. There is a scene early on in The Dark Forest where Earth develops anti-sophon-unfolding capabilities. It takes many minutes for a sophon to unfold to full size, during which time Earths nuclear weapons would be deployed against them. A sophon never again unfolds in the book.
To understand Sophon, take this quizz: Imagine you want to take over a remote island inhabited by ants. Only thing you can do is to send a tiny robot which can interfere with ant's smell. You want to wipe out the ants but do not want alert the ants into frantic mode leading to total destruction of the island. How are you going to program this robot?
Im going to start by not telling the ants I'm here and consider them insects. Even if I dont know how to lie, I know what happens when others dont have the same information i do. Which is by the way, the basis of lying.
Simply because its just the first season. In the 2nd and 3rd books, there you will find out how small fry the Trisolarians are, there are civilazations many times over more powerful than they are that a destruction of a small quadrant of a galaxy is just a mere nuisance, a chore that is insignificant and yet one may need to accomplish. For Earth which is just a bug for them, the most cost effective measure of solution may suffice, with as minimal disruption as possible to their day to day lives. A mundane occurence for a Type 3 civilization.
0:50 that is absurd. If the sophons are as powerful as portrayed in the Netflix series, they could stop humans by simply killing them all or simply by destroying our tech (which in the series they show they are capable of that). There is just no possible retaliation.
They can't kill everyone instantly. It would take them a long time to do so, long enough for government to take drastic measures. In the show all we see is that they can cause one by one person to commit suicide. They didn't directly kill anyone.
@@BlizzPort They can make humans see whatever the hell they want (which implies that they can make them blind also) and they can even control our technology. They would not need to even kill us, just mess up our tech and make us all blind. Like I said, the powerfulness of the sophons in the Netflix series makes the plot of the series completely absurd. Proof of that is that in the book they are nothing like it. They suicides are not even explained as to how they happen but if the sophons are responsible, that could also work to destroy humanity.
@@BlizzPort in the Netflix series they clearly show that they are capable of imprinting your retina with whatever they want (so potentially they can make you blind) and also mess up our technology. That kind of power makes a huge plot hole that cannot be justify by the series standards. They can apparently even make people commit suicide, something that is not even explained in the series.
Kinda silly that the Tri-Solarians can open up a proton to the size of a planet, build super computers within that structure, wrap it up and then shoot it to earth at near the speed of light... Why didn't they wrap up their entire fleet into a sophon and then unwrap it in orbit? to build the super computer inside the proton means they can introduce 3 dimensional objects into N dimensional space so they've effectively already discovered a way to travel at 99% of the speed of light.
In the first book, if I remember well, they say exactly that: that they can't build circuits inside the opened proton. Instead they manipulate the strong nuclear force in the now 2d membrane of the proton to create the circuits. And that took a LOT of time for them.
Haven't read the books, but it makes sense the Trisolarians wouldn't do something drastic like wipe out humanity. Humans are developing faster than Trisolarans, so humanity might survive and come looking for revenge with superior technology. Also under the Dark Forest paradigm, you don't want to make a big display of your presence or technology, because there is always something out there bigger and scarier than you. You don't want to draw attention to yourself.
I agree. I've just made a new video that covers exactly this. The biggest reason imo why every civilization is a natural threat is because even type 1 civilization can develop weapons that are almost impossible to counter. Take relativistic weapons that travel as fast as the signal they're emitting/reflecting. The moment you detect one at the edge of your solar system it's already nanoseconds away from the impact.
@@otmanh Next video will be on this. In a nutshell, they travel at 99% of the speed of light, though speed alone is not the main advantage. At those speeds relativistic effects kick in. Will let you know when I upload the video in few days.
@@antred11 That's a very hard point to argue with. Also weren't the Trisolarians the ones sending signals to earth? How are they not endangering themselves by doing that?
Great Video!!! Thank you for a great, succinct explanation of a few questions I had. And although I really enjoyed the show, these are all things that made me think they could defeat us and put us back into the stone age before even arriving. And all it would have taken is a few minutes in the show, like literally the length of your video or less. Which you also made to get right to the point. Well done.
@@spamfilter32 No, it isn’t, because you won’t know if the other side has pressed the button until it’s too late and it’s almost impossible to intercept a light speed object.
@@requiemlul3140 MAD isn't about being able to intercept the RKV's sent towards you. It is about being able to send your own back in retaliation. If they can retaliate, you never strike first. MAD works, or humans would already be extinct.
"Do not push the pink-skins to the thin ice." Star Trek: Anaxar But what still has not been addressed is that if they have that much power, then they should have the ability to throw their threatening sun's out of their system.
In the books, the attacks are made because the San Ti didn't want the Dark Forest secret uncovered, and the initial axioms of Dark Forest theory was passed by Ye Wenjie to Luo Ji (Saul), so this was probably the hidden message.
The hidden message was that Einstein should have stayed quiet, he should not have attracted gods attention, he was not on the same level. This led to the attack on Einstein from God in the same way as transmitting Earths location deep into space attracted the attention of the Sen Ti (This links to the book on the Fermi Paradox, where is everyone? they are being quiet as a mouse to survive, that's where they are!). She wrapped the message around the joke assuming the Sen Ti cannot understand humour. I took it as Ye Wenjie finally faced her daughters loss due to her own hubris so she gave Saul and humanity a steer on survival, The Sun Ti saw this and unsure of her influence had her killed.
The one thing I don’t totally grasp is how the siphons could be used to effect the speaker, to have conversations on my the ship. Can a something proton sized modulate sound, magnetic or electronic waves in that speaker
thats really easy since the Siphon is an unfolded proton with a + charge it would interfere with the electrical signal to the speaker in a specific frequency that would produce the sound that it wanted or encoded within the original electrical signal. Effectively it would be a controlled version of a "bit flip".
Good point. Kinda like in Matrix they burned the sky in desperation. If Earth ecosystem gets destroyed, the entire Trisolaran voyage would be for nothing.
I'm not sure if the sophon was actually being used and programmed with the purpose of interfering with the collider results. My impression was that there was a fundamental property of the sophon that humans were not aware of and it disrupted the results simply by its presence, not by executing some sort of function. This is why they cannot permanently alter the results.
I believe the sophons could indeed destroy all humanity. However, their intensions are key. Perhaps they are trying to make humanity care about its own species a bit more, condition them so that when they arrive, a proper peace treaty could be established. If humanity does not value its own life, how can they be trusted to value the Trisolarons?
This is the best answer i have found on live to how to reach others civilizations on anywhere...make them to care about own life and start to all the individuals work together to create science and think about interspecies living together
Spoilers from the second book and third book: They never wanted peace. They were deceiving humanity with seemingly good intentions to make them feel safe which leads to them acting arrogant and careless. As soon as they got their chance, they tried to wipe out humanity without hesitation.
I think Cixin made a mistake with allowing Sophons to do instantaneous quantum communication with the host planet. Because causality and general relativity is something he explores a lot in the subsequent novels, and this really puts a bad plot hole in it. The Sophons can achieve everything else by unfolding in parts. It spies by unfolding to few micro meters and vibrating with the air (sound) or receiving photons (video). It moves by unfolding a little and letting a stray air molecule hit it, and refolding immediately so it doesnt get hit again by something else. It moves through solids by folding itself more to 2D or going 4D and just teleporting. It can't unfold in solids or liquids because it has no space to unfold to, that's why it can't give everyone cancer.
Biggest flaw: if wallfacers are having an advantage not being read their thoughts and so on…why? Trisolarans could literally refine the issue, via connecting their sophon with trisolaran csndidate and refining the process and later in real time, share the update to sophon on Earth snd voila, sophons can read minds, thoughts and connect tohuman mind, and wallfacers are done, humanity is done. If not possible, this possibilty should be explored and explained why not. Otherwise, it is s huge plot hole.
It's far from being a large plothole (the amount of "plothole" messages in threads like this one is insane. Is there a nitpicking award that you all fight over? ;-) ). The answer is that for all their internal n-dimensional supercomputer complexity, they are just 2 single Protons. Their physical effect in our 4D daily experience is miniscule, literally sub-atomic. The Sophons can "do" almost nothing. Messing up scatter diagrams and exciting photo-sensitive cells in the eye is about all they can do - apart from communicating. And even communicating is hard. You need more than a single proton to build a wifi hotspot. They would need a special adapter and a lot of effort to manipulate that single loudspeaker Evans uses to communicate. Somehow amplifying proton motions to signal. And using some miniscule effect to communicate back. It can't be a direct wifi/mobile connection because that single proton doesn't have the energy or 4D spacetime presence to establish a wifi protocol.
@@oerthling agreed. The Trisolarians used up all their resource to built those 4 sophons. They are on a one-way trip almost to earth. They couldn't and cannot afford to "experiment" and invest more resource into that. If someone would find out that their thoughts would be read, they might as well cause a global scaled panic where we all self-destruct. We are already butthurt and cannot ineract with each other on earth with our resource disputes. We are all fighting over it because of the mere concept of money. Knowing mankind's history and potential tendencies, they have to be extremely cautious with their actions, especially since they cannot read our minds. The trilogy has been awarded for reasons, the author studied physics, he's not a stupid person. On the internet, everyone can critique but refrain from jumping to conclusions too fast. Any critique is welcome though, but don't label it as a prophet's ultimate statement.
The fact that later in book. The peace era is brought upon by a deadman switch which assure mutual destruction by revealing both of their location is proof of that theory.
The critique of the unexplained limitation of the sophon is correct, very well explained as I had forgotten from when I had read the book. But not about the limitations of trisolarans as an alien species in the dark forest context. That also in the TBP book was unexplained, only comes in the Dark forest, so we have to wait for that. It is an extremely hard narrative to put on tv or film so I understand they might fail in some parts
In the books the reason they dont use the sophons for more than observation and sabotaging physics experiment results is because they arent capable of more than that, they may be complex computers but they are only the size of a subatomic particle and there are very few of them. The strategy the whole time was to keep humanity at a low level of tech until they arrived by hindering scientific progress, thats it, that was all they needed to do. And it worked, the only reason humanity prevailed was because of the mutually assured destruction plan using the dark forest theory which didnt require advancing science or tech further than humanity already had.
My whole question watching the show was = what is telling scientists that anything that any research that they will conduct from now on will give real and correct results ? If the aliens manipulated reality ? Which led me to : why did they think that sending will in the space would work ? Or on the contrary, how can they be sure that it didn’t work ? But apparently all those answers are in the other books and will be solved in the next seasons so i can’t wait
Video was great - One question I would love to hear your thoughts on is can you do a video on how whats going on with the actual alien phenomena that is being revealed through declassified dod footage might relate to this awesome series
Why didn't the San-Ti use the sophon technology to create a form of warp technology for travel? Then they could settle anywhere they can travel, as long as conditions and existing life forms permitted their settlement. Of course, they may have actually used the same tech to stabilize their planet by making shrinking the two smaller stars and using them for fuel in either spaceship (which would have a rudimentary Alcubierre drive or star drive, or even for their energy sources!
well the fact that the trialarians or however you spell them, only a small fish in a big pond is not meant to be known yet in the series and will only be discovered in later seasons. like how the book did.
If the sophons can affect nuclear processes as depicted, they're already are moving faster than light. Also, if they can somehow block out all the stars for everyone at the same time, they're certainly affecting macroscopic objects.
1. didn’t get why they travel at 1% of light sped for being so advanced as to create a sophon. 2. Also found the Oxford 5 characters motivation all over the place in the show- salacar is traumatic from using nanotechnology in Panama but doesn’t see the wider impact of aliens coming over, instead of helping further ; wade may be a terrible boss / person - if she could do better, she should step up and help solve the problem 3. Couldn’t santi find another place in the universe to live? 4. Didn’t get the ending with the rocket launch with one of the Oxford 5 on it failing and wade whispering something into the physicists ear? 5. If a person whispered something into someone’s ears and covered with the palms - could sophons still know what it was?
The Chinese version of the series, perhaps, offers a greater level of detail with regard to this type of thing, althout it probably can miss on other points. It's available with English subtitles as well. 30 great episodes, of amazing quality and great acting and slightly different cultural feeling. There are little differences in explaining the timeline of events and other points like the video game and more and it's a great production as well. No idea why Netflix had to compress it all in 10 eps. Anyway, I didn't read the book but I can tell that watching both versions was definitely no waste of time. The book must be amazing.
I understand your point, it's clearly a different cultural setting so it might seem weird for many of us who do not live in China. But acting is actually great. It's all subjective anyway. :-D
Humans: "Oh look, a highly advance gigantic spaceship ! They must be here to save us from the Trisolarians !" Spacecraft: "We are the Borgs ! You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile !"
In the book the sophon technology is explained that it is a modified Meson particle device in 2 dimensions which made it impossible to be detected. By human standards. The Meson communicated the information via Quantum Entanglement. All though the purpose of the Sophons is the same it wasn't exaggeratedly OP and illustrated like in the show. The point of the sophons is to scout and sabotage the humans as much as possible to deter any form of retaliation of their invasion. It's as if the producers of the show are not down to earth with the book and want to put their own spin on the story which can potentially be disrespectful to the main source material. If the sophons are as advanced in the show were they could manipulate spacetime in multiple dimensions then the point of the main premise will be contrived. The point of the Trsolarians sending the sophons is to give time since they cannot travel more than the speed of light given their current warp technology but since they can do this "space techy dimensional thingy" would you not think they can warp space to a greater degree and just teleport an entire planet destroying armada and invade Earth? Story over.
First, congratulations for the initiative on explain the sófons powers and limits. About the atempt of the terrorist to kill the person who would be an wallface, I have a question which I coud not respond reading the book many times: how coud the terrorists or the Trisolarians possibly know that guy would be a problem for them in a future? Or did the trisolarians tried to kill all the others wallfacers, feeling to be important to neutralize all of them? This part of the book/series did not make sense to me. So, please, if someone can clarify this point I will apreciate. Please forgive my poor english.
I haven't read the books yet but will wait. One problem with the series is the ability of the sophons to see virtually everything which would give the aliens and their supporters almost absolute power to stop human resistance. Another problem was the use of nano fibers to slice up the ship this would have put the hard drive at extreme risk of being destroyed although the information they found did not seem much use?
Yes, though only potentially. They can't spy on, lets say, 30 conversations at the same time, and most of their energy is used on interfering with particle collisions. That's their main purpose, to prevent particle physics from developing. Even so, agencies have to assume they're spied on at all times because you never know. This is why PIA proposed building a particle accelerator on the Moon to further limit Sophon recon abilities. Essentially forcing one Sophon to be 24/7 stranded on the Moon. The risk of nano fibers is addressed in the books somewhat vaguely. In a nutshell, by having nano fibers 50cm apart, the chance of slicing a hard drive was roughly 4% (50cm / 1-2cm thickness of the hard drive), which they found preferable to every other alternative. Now in the show the ship pretty much melts, but in the books the main ship structure remains, the steel welds back as soon as the nano fiber passes through.
Ive read book one after really enjoying the show. You are right that science is much better done in the book, but the show focuses more on interesting characters which I prefer. The book characters feel shallow with the exception of Ye Wenjie. Also I prefer the show's decision of not giving us a trisolarian's perspective.
Actually I think the restraint was bc of guardian civilizations that cloak themselves in such superior advancement that they can see or use more dimensions and unthinkable abilities. So I'm thinking they don't need to provoke those guardians who look out for intelligent lifeforms building their advancement slowly and not destroying others. Like Singers civilization.
So far, the series does a great job at portraying the trisolarins. As far as humanity knows well into the second book, I do believe. The Trisolarins are the most powerful species in the universe. It's not until that other star is destroyed that we realize just how hopeless it is.
Hello there. Thanks for the video. One finger typing this on my phone :) I like the brainwork in this story. I have not read the books (yet). I try to understand the sophon CGI in the show. Sophon being basically a proton is supposed to be a spyware for Santi. Meaning their purposes isn't to interract with matter is it? If so, how can it temper with the collider. Back to the visuals... so they expanded the proton by unlocking N dimension. They installed a computer on it and then they folded the dimensions back? What is the mirror sky curtain supposed to be? Sorry, for my bad English.
My problem with the sophons is that, while they make the plot move along, they also undermine one of the main pillars of the Dark Forest theory. FTL communication really lessens the chain of suspicion. Also trisolarans could solve all their own problems by unfolding sophons to control the amount of starlight getting to their own planet. They can block signals leaving earths sun. Ect
After the Trisolar Syzygy ripped the planet in half, the Trisolarins realized that getting scorched was the least of their problems. The planet ultimately falling into one of the Suns or careening into deep space, I believe, were the ultimate concerns. Anyway, why do you say FTL communication undermines the COS? I don’t quite understand.
The resoning about the sophons is bonkers. If the cancer rate simply increased no one ever would have recognised it as a 2D whatever alien invasion... Humans would have simply struggled to stop it and died out, without erradicating anything.
Although I understand the sophons are an apparatus to advance the plot, they fundamentally could not work. Even if these world sized supercomputer were collapsed back to proton size, the very fact that they're so miniscule would severely limit their ability to do or observe anything. Every single information carrying particle they interacted with would either smash them into a decay chain, or bump them wildly off course with no predictable outcome of the route. Also, protons are quantum objects, so either the sophons can know exactly where they are, but not where they're going, or where they're going, not where they are, making any kind of pre-determined travel impossible. Sophons are a neat idea, but much too OP. I would've preferred the idea that the Trisolarians, knowing that they'd have to evacuate their planet at some point, sent out small but efficient probes to sit and monitor potential systems the Trisolarians might consider moving to, hanging out at the far reaches of the Solar System waiting for activation from deep sleep. Oh, and no, quantum entanglement still does not allow information to be conveyed between two physical states at a speed greater than C. It's the old Chinese Room problem; Communication is meaningless if both entities transmit the proposition 'True/False' to each other at the same time, which entangled particles do when their wave function collapses.
What I don't get is how the Sophons can make people hallucinate or how they even interact wit the world at all... Like, how did they make the whole universe blink to humans, or what can they do exactly, how can they change the results of physics experiments. I think the show may have introduced problems, IDK, they don't explain anything... Didn't read the books. Edit: I did understand that most of the work was done by humans, but still, how can 2 sentient AI the size of a protons make people hallucinate all those things? How does it talk to people or make countdowns appear before their eyes?
As I understood it, Sophons can take their primal form, which is a membrane roughly the size of Earth on which Trisolarans at the beginning etched digital circuits, before collapsing it down to subatomic scale. But while in this form, it can't do much, other than project images like black sky (essentially hiding the stars behind it). This is a hard sci-fi element, if based on science, it's very loosely based.
I think that with so much effort the Trisolarans put in these sophons they could have built a space station as large as a planet (like the sophons in the other dimensions) and could happily line on that station on a stable orbit around their suns (bigger radius).
@@somaf74they already have things like that, and they are excellent at surviving, but they dream of a paradise planet. They don’t want to simply keep existing
@BlizzPort yes, once I learned about the Sophons, my assumption was that they either unfolded and refolded in quick succession, or unfolded and then transitioned from transparent to opaque the way we can do with fancy windows by running electric current through them. Either way, this would explain why none of the space telescopes picked up the flickering night sky, because they would be all on the other sudee of the unfolded sophon. I understand why they changed it from the CMB to the night sky in the show. People with little scientific literacy would not know what the cmb is, so the show would have to spend time on exposition talking about it and that would drag the show for most of the audience. I think the You are bugs hack being attributable to the sophons is a huge corner painting for the show. If the sophons can do that. They can completely shut down all technology on earth.
If they’re so technically advanced, why don’t they just find a planet that’s closer to them also, they could survive almost anything supposedly the planet they lived on, blew up and fire whatever so they can survive all kinds of things, so why don’t they find a plan closer
Really funy, how FTL is considered as soft sci-fi, although there are plenty theoretical concepts, which allow it even inside ill conceived Einstein equations, yet proton-size computers are considered as hard sic-fi, although there is not even single theory, how that thing could work not only in our universe, but in any dimension or universe.
I'm curious what your opinion is on the Chinese tencent version of Three Body. I just finished it myself and found myself preferring the tencent version.
Latest video on 3 body problem: ua-cam.com/video/Fc0N_7S3IWE/v-deo.html
Another problem is, why did the aliens reveal all their plans and explained why physics went wrong all of a sudden ? They could have left us in doubt.
Please...add UA-cam subtitles to people who is not native English speaker...is a little hard to understand you just by listening and you can add some of international audience...and is just one button to click on here and it's done
@@AlienMetatron For some reason this is the only video where it won't enable automatic captions.
I'll see what I can do.
If there are bigger fish out there, then why wasn't it discussed either in the Netflix series or the books???
Pls tell me how I can watch the Chinese version. I'm a huge fan of 5he books but I do not like th3 Netflix version, I believe Netflix are telling a non-linear story so they can turn out season after season a make as much money as possible. Doesn't matter if its good just as long as its profitable. They so badly want another Game of thrones, which isn't surprising when you think who the writers are behind. Sorry for the rant. I subbed and liked the channel I think it's great......😊
it's not that the Trisolarans being a small fish in the Dark Forest isn't well communicated, it's that the Dark Forest concept hasn't even been established or revealed yet in the show.
But it's revealed that they're only 4 lightyears away (that's the closest star) and in the book Ye Wenjie knew immediately that it means the galaxy is full of intelligent life, otherwise it's very improbable that 2 habited star systems exist directly next to each other. But even in the book they don't think it further: what about the others - which is a good thing, because it would have been too much too early. Let's say the fact that they are only 4 years away foreshadows further complications without holding up the story.
That’s intentional. Just like in the books people must believe trisolarians are undefeatedable great foe
Agreed, from memory the existence of other more advanced Aliens only came later in the book series .
@@bztube888that very concept was used by Luo Ji to deter the Trisolaran Invasion as the wallfacer.
The Dark Forest hypothesis is silly anyway, almost as silly as the fermi paradox is to begin with.
Sophones made this video, this is pro Trisolarian propaganda. I formally denounce
😂
Sophons went into your brain and changed your neuron paths so they provoke such a response to this video. This comment is pro Trisolarian propaganda. I formally denounce.
Your disobedience has been noticed.
You are a threat
🤡
Great explanation. In the book it is clearer that building the Sophons was the largest and most advanced project the Trisolarans had ever attempted, and in the book there were many failed initial attempts. The Sophons were just the size of a proton and they are only able to affect tiny things also the size of atoms. They messed up subatomic particle experiments; They shot light particles into certain people's eyes to make a countdown; They messed with observatories detectors to make the "stars blink" (the background cosmic radiation in the book). In the book they didn't make the stars blink for everyone one Earth. That would've been too big an effect for the tiny Sophons to pull off.
Great points - but if plot holes were a problem... how about the fact that faster than light communication via entanglement already violates the no-communication theorem and you can't amplify a radio signal by pointing it at the sun. The dark forest theory also is an extremely simplified model and makes many assumptions that make it utterly unrealistic. The science in the book is more fantasy than science. This is true in all the books. Plot holes are everywhere in the series.
I wish there weren't so many and the books should have gone through several more rounds of revisions, but hey, I guess one can't ask for near perfection unless you're reading The Stormlight Archive.
@@ThomasMeliWellness
Although it's the common interpretation of entablement is that no information can be communicated between these particles, the fact is that we don't know how it works or if it's really impossible. For example , there are models using wormhole as an explanation for the link between particles. The San-ti may know things we don't, maybe this is mentioned in the books ?
@@ThomasMeliWellness it doesn't violate the faster than light communication actually. True information from point A gets transferred to point B instantly however there is no physical connection between that information. You'd have to actually fly from point A to point B to verify the information transfer. So it doesn't create any paradoxes because you as an observator still are bound by laws of physics
No they could have done it.
We know that when they unravel protons to program them, the surface is perfectly reflectiv which makes the surface of their planet very cold during the process. When they make the sky blink, they do so by surrounding the Earth and changing which frequency of light can pass through, or not. It stays transparent to mostly everything but the background cosmic radiation.
However, in the book they're much more subtle. Like, in the show they litterally reveal without a doubt to the whole world that they're here and aren't frienfly. Whereas in the book they only reveal themselves to the leaders once with the "you are bugs". I think it's when they innitiate the wallfacer project but I can't remember. However, they just do it to the eyes of those leaders in this meeting.
@@bajs932 You can use this to send messages back in time. Any instant connection between points in the universe can be used as a time machine. Any naked singularity can be used as a time machine, any faster than light travel can be used as a time machine. The problem I see with most science fiction that employs FTL is that they simplify the consequences of FTL being possible (time travel and breakdown of causality, bootstrap "paradoxes", etc). The trisolarians with FTL sophons should be able to predict the orbits of their suns, even if they are chaotic, using FLT and time travel of information. How? I particularly like the simplified explanation on the video "Why Going Faster-Than-Light Leads to Time Paradoxes" of the channel coolworlds by professor David Kipping.
It’s not lost! That’s the whole point of Luo Ji’s revelation as a wallfacer. The audience will discover the dark forest soon enough. The show is doing a great job to mirror the moment of discovery with as it happens in the book.
Exactly
It felt rushed...12 to 16 Episodes would've done better
I agree! Even though Characters and storylines have been massively altered I think the show does a great job at conveying the narrative of the books so far.
I finished the series where and what book should I start with to continue from the series
@@mwe8414 Well the series has storyline from all three books. Basically it tells the full story of book one, and the start of book 2. While also threading in elements of book three's flashback scenes. If you really want to start a book close to where the series is, I'd recommend starting with Dark Forest. But the character names are really different, so you might not understand who is playing what role in the story.
That is not why sophon didn't do those kind of things, the simple answer is just that sophon is not that OP in the book, the show makes it so powerful that unecessary plot holes arise. The aliens also don't care if humans destroy Earth, they just need a stable system, they can live on Mars, Venus or asteroid belt just fine, Earth is just a nice bonus
Maybe, but they would have to terraform Mars to live on it, which wasn't something they were willing to commit to. Otherwise they wouldn't risk moving into an inhabited star system where the native civilization can discover dark forest deterrence at any time in the span of 400 years. They took a huge risk for Earth, and once they took that risk, Earth was essential to them.
It's like when we find gold deposits in one area. We don't care if a volcano erupts and destroys it, we'll just find another area. But once we build mines, invest our resources towards extracting that gold deposit, suddenly a destruction of that area would be devastating. And that's just a mine. Imagine a civilization level undertaking over the span of 400 years only to come and discover a destroyed Earth.
@@BlizzPortthe gold analogy is great.
Considering the dark forest theory, even if they went to Mars. Humans could have an issue with that too.
As though humans have a claim to Mars
@@BlizzPort according to book 2, they while prefer having a planet ready for them when arriving, they don’t mind the literal scored Earth either otherwise they would give more thought about Diaz’s plan
or it's the dark forest hypothesis, they need to silence the neighbor human who like a crying baby sending signal reveal its position, regardless to let human live or not.
They very much do care if humans destroy earth. Their ships aren't equipped for terraforming or anything like that. They have technology, but one must keep in mind that this was basically their one shot that they devoted their entire civilizations resources to, for making the sophons and building ships to get to earth. While they are advanced, they are also very tiny, which requires a lot of them to do things that even a single human could easily accomplish physically. So it's like if we're trying to move a boulder, while a giant the size of a skyscraper can just easily pinch it up and toss it 5 miles away. So while they are powerful technologically, they do put in a lot of effort and resources to achieve these things, their whole civilization is devoted to it. The ones back on their homeworld are left behind to essentially die, because they used soo much of their civilizations resources to put this invasion together, that they literally can't afford to send a second invasion, at least not for a very long time, and by then their planet could be destroyed by their 3 suns. They fully expect that the ships they sent might be the only ones from their planet able to colonize earth.
They also even had plans to try to keep intact human cities because they wanted to use them for their own habitation, or at least, the resources from it. This is partially because it's just soo much easier, because you already have processed materials to work with and things like running water and sewage and power lines, which while less advanced than them, is easier for them to convert to their needs than starting with absolutely nothing. The other part is they would still have to contend with wildlife. Even with their technology, there's a trillion bugs and other animals on earth, which would inevitably result in population losses for them, even if minor, and would still be something they'd want to avoid. They aren't a hive mind, even though they can communicate without speaking, so even though they behave like a collective in a way, they are a species of individuals. Even though they are very tiny, they're also very numerous, possibly numbering in the trillions, maybe even hundreds of trillions.
On their planet, they likely had to make a lot of sacrifices and special arrangements. They could live in bunkers under ground, but for their size, that's very deep. They still need resources even just to rehydrate, and if the planet is scorched, even their bunker resources could be evaporated and destroyed. Same with things like food....if you're having to dehydrate your civilization for centuries or thousands of years, anything you tried to store would likely spoil by then, and you'd also only rehydrate when the planets ecosystem recovered....and that doesn't mean it will recover fully. It might already be barren on the surface for the most part, with all the surface water evaporated away, requiring them to get all their water from deep in the planet. That also means they need to make far more preparations for food production. What this all means is that when they rehydrate, not all of their bunker facilities survive, and they lose most of their people. This might be a bonus for requiring less resources, but they also lose most of their best minds.
I'd imagine they try to store as much data as possible for future generations, but again, they likely lose a lot of it too. They've been doing this process for millions of years, so for them to only be a few hundred years more advanced than humans, shows just how much they've been set back. Most of their civilizations resources have been devoted to rebuilding over and over again, and ensuring they survive to be able to rebuild.
It's kinda frustrating seeing the reception of the show. As a book fan, I thought it was impossible to adapt. All things considered, they done a stupendous job translating it from the book to a TV show. They got a few plot holes in for spectacle, sure: the sophons editing camera feeds, the fact Will's brain probe malfunctioned too soon and thus is too slow and so on.
However what I am seeing are people poking a lot of holes in the show that are things purposely convoluted meant to be revealed later. Why did they spend so much time with Will if the project was to fail? How did they develop cryotrchnology so quickly? Why was the stoner chosen to be a wallfacer if it's such an important job? Why are the sophons stifling progress on particle accelerators and not on the cryotech or naval engineering? If the San Ti are so powerful why aren't they coming faster?
All questions to which the answer is "keep watching", but it feels like everything about the show is mired in mistrust on the showrunners because of their big blunder on the final seasons of Game of Thrones.
People seem to forget that the GoT show was a masterpiece up until the point there was source material for them to fall back to, the show derailed once they ran out of source material and had to wing it. This is not the case here, the Rememberance of Earth's Past trilogy is already set in stone. People should get over the GoT blunder and take the show at its own terms, and just frigging WAIT FOR THE STORY TO UNFOLD!
The sophon question is valid though. All the other things are explained in the book but this is just a change that makes no sense.
@@saucevc8353 indeed, and I acknowledged that in my point.
@@saucevc8353 Are the sophons also sentient computers the size of earth in the books?
If so you cannot blame D&D for doing the hacking the entire world in episode 5 when even a weaker computer would be able to do that.
@@saucevc8353Every time it doesn't make sense that a Sophon could do something the main answer is that it wasn't one of the Sophons, but ETO collaborators.
The main exception is Wade's vision at the end. Dramatic effect I guess. It's a visual medium after all.
But let's just say the Sophons can do that if they committed both of them for that minute or so to just this 1 place and person. And move on.
Maybe the directors have faith that the book fans will be enthusiastic to discuss these questions with non-readers. The passionate fans of ASOIAF maybe did the same for GOT.
Are sophons are not responsible for CCTV feed manipulation? are they responsible for the "You are Bugs" messages? Surely if they are capable of digital data manipulation they are capable of controlling dgital devices, vehicles and weapons. That's a huge plot hole to fill.
A plot hole D&D caused. Sophons don't have these capabilities in the books. The changes are cool for spectacles, and it's great that Tatiana has superpowers, but D&D didn't think them through.😅
In the books, Sophons can only manipulate digital data at a slow rate. To fix the plot hole, you may understand the declaration of war as something took a long time for Sophons to prepare.
@@TheChappaaihow did the sophons effect the loudspeaker to have conversations?
@@tremarley9648 In the third book, a special device has to be made to interface with Sophons effectively. Perhaps Sophons can hack a device to release a virus or receive its transmission, but it would take a while. 🤦
@@tremarley9648 Thinking more physically, as a particle with positive charge, Sophon can also generate electromagnetic wave by flying around, which can be picked up by radio.
The sophons are still OP in so many ways:
1) They violate the laws of quantum physics in that they can be used for communication repeatedly without losing entaglement.
2) They violate the laws of conservation of momentum and energy in that they can be seen changing direction at near 90 degrees to accelerate into the path of a test particle travelling at near c. It was also never explained how they managed to slow down when they first reached earth. The enegies required for these accelerations and decelerations are more than enough to affect things at a macroscopic scale as demonstrated by the energies required for the particle accelerators on earth and E=mc^2.
3) They can apparently "see" these test particles travelling at near c, approaching so as to enable them to plan an intercept.
4) They can "see" macroscopic entities. How? They cannot use light as they are too small to be affected by rays in that part of the spectrum.
Maybe they can use gravity to "see".
@@lianghao7128 There are fundamental limits relating wavelength, time and resolution for any sort of wave that make that impossible even in theory (It's why gravitational wave detectors have to be so big)
@@SmileyEmoji42 what if they operate on 4th dimention ? if so they can do things that for us seems imposible.
@@Clistes What 4th dimension?
Why not the 452nd dimension?
Or the 19th?
What if they use magic?
What if they pray to god and god does it?
In what way are any of these suggestions any less plausible than what is presented?
They would be ridiculously OP in all these cases and all are neither more nor less credible.
@@SmileyEmoji42 you know that 4th dimension is time right? you know that we, humans proved that there are more then 3 dimensions? more then 4 even.
If they can create sophons, I can't see reason why they can't operate in 4 dimensions. you know, the fact that you see sci-fi through our human achievements, then well it's a waste of time discussing with you. You are not bothered with instant dehydration but sophons bother you . . .
The netflix show didn't explain clearly that human loyalists are doing the physical hacking & creating items like the VR headsets etc..
That's because the only plausible way for the ETO to create headsets like this is to employ alien tech or blueprints - because that technology simply doesn't exist.
It becomes ludicrous really - because even if they sold the headsets for $10,000 each they would become a wealthy corporation overnight, their graphics processing is something NVidia cannot do ... and NVidia is one of the world's top 3 most valuable companies
THe adaptation didnt forgot to say that the Trisolarans are small fish in the universe. It is done at the end of the second book.
She didn't say they forgot, she said that was lost.
If there is a season 2 it may be found 😂
They are not small fish lmfao
I wouldn't say they forgot. This is kind of a revelation when Luo Ji starts the Deterrance Era. It's in line with the sequence of events from the books, at this point Earth believes the trisolarians are peak civilization.
Sure they are. They just started their very first experiment with the 4th spatial dimension when they build the Sophons. Only a few hundreds years ahead of humans. It's clear by the end of the series that there have been many civilizations in the Universe that have access to all 11 spatial dimensions; Each dimension adding an order of magnitude more complexity and power than the ones below it.
@@zachstober767 yeah they are.... it's just that humans are even smaller
Think about this. A “small fish” on the universe level took a look at us and said “yeah I think we can take ’em”
The hunter fired his shotgun and thought no one would notice. lol
But they were stupid enough to let us know that they are our enemy!
Yeah... we're even smaller
@@sphinxtan9158 shoulda used a poison blowdart...
You’ll see why the trisolarans are “small fishes” in the third book
The Trisolarans used the sophons to mess with Thomas Wade’s jet. They did that specifically to show him that they are in control. So, I believe the sophons can do a lot more than what we know. Don’t forget each sophon is basically a super artificial intelligence.
i was under the impression that they forced hallucinations on him making Wade think that his plane was having issues.....considering the speech and the dead body she spoke of. I think this was lost in translation but the fact that the jet viewed from the outside seemed perfectly fine and no warning lights were lit meant it was just a visual thing, just like the clocks seen in the eyes.
@@sabriath If they can create auditory, kinesthetic and visual hallucinations to that degree they can fool any of Wade's bodyguards into seeing him as an enemy combatant and he'd be instantly shot.
That's the netflix adaptation. You didn't listen anything of what she said huh 😑. The only order given to Soyphon was only to mess with scientific capacity of the human race any you see in the show have been added.
The show stepped up the ability and powers of sophons far more than the books, which is not a good choice. It opens loopholes.
Plotholes*
Софоны в книге заслонили на некоторое время солнца системы, почему этим не воспользовались?
narrator of this video sounds like she is a sophon ai herself. lmao
My issue is that sophons just don’t behave in conjunction with actual quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement does not allow for information transfer, or transfer or any kind, it just makes a mirror set of particles, which only continue to mirror each other while in this state, once either changes the symmetry is broken.
If the sophons can decrypt a hard drive and enter a virtual reality game and hack every display to display things then yes they are capable of hacking into cars as well.
In the book, the sophons was running at the speed of light, displaying information on the human retina.
@@lianghao7128 We can only comment on the Netflix show - where sophons are capable of full blown auditory and visual hallucinations for Wade
Much more infact, this book and series is interesting but has so many plotholes where you are just expected believe no matter what.
Mess with the scientific advancement of the human race - only order given to sophon. u wlc
I don’t think the show failed at portraying the santi as a small fish so much as they chose not to do that, just like in the books they start off as the big bad guy before we learn more about the universe, it’s just the first season they don’t even know about the dark forest yet
Sophones: What have you done?
Butcher: Scorched Earff
I'm pretty sure it has more to do with the fact that there are only 2 sophons and their capabilities are limited due to opportunity cost, they can only do so much at any one time. Due to that, they have to prioritize targets.
Also, we humans are good at fighting cancer, not great, but we can cure many cancers.
So focusing one sophon on killing one particular person instead of spying or sabotage would be quite an extreme measure.
it might take a sophon a mere moment. They can also blind drivers and pilots and apparently do projections the size of earth. maybe blinding the world is an option or block sunlight.
I feel like what the Trisolarians are doing makes perfectly sense. They are on a one-way trip to earth and bound to that destination almost. They do not have enough resource to scout somewhere else, so every step has to be cautious, especially since they have learned about human history and our tendencies PLUS they have troubles interacting with other species due to them not being able to really read in-between the lines since another being that can think "abstactly" and does not share a hive-mind with them, is too unpredictable for them. They also cannot lie, only withhold information humans could potentially cause them to involuntarily leak unwanted information if they keep up conversations, which they might have to do anyway to make sure that humans don't fall into said "last resort self-destruct" mode.
I don’t think the show failed to do anything at all. It was fantastic. Anyone that has any sense or knowledge about xenobiology or alien life would know that there’s no reason to compare humanity to aliens. Two totally independently species with very little overlapping things in common. The audience watching the show shouldn’t assume anything because this is an alien species far far away.
Many of the criticisms levelled at the show and the books mistakenly assume that TBP is supposed to be "hard" science fiction, when it's actually a fantasy sci-fi story like Star Wars and should be judged as such. Development of Sophons is explained to require actual physical manipulation of higher dimensions. This is so incredibly advanced and disparate from the rest of the San Ti story line that we have to assume the author consciously decided that he wasn't going to even try to maintain internal consistency and just tell what he believed was a cool story. So don't try to pick apart the story for its science -- it's fantasy sci-fi and no more.
What constitutes “hard” and “soft” sci-fi is quite relative, but I completely resent your characterization here. For one, Star Wars is neither hard nor soft Sci-Fi, it’s full-on fantasy. That’s not just my opinion, Lucas himself admits this. People call it Sci-Fi just because it’s set in space and uses futuristic-looking gizmos, but it doesn’t really attempt to explain its events or its tech using science (theoretical or otherwise). And not to mention the entire narrative is centered around a supernatural element. Jedi are literally just Space Wizards. Their powers are magic. Not even like “I’m using 120% of my brain” pseudoscience. It’s full blown fucking magic lol
If u don't like it don't watch it. No one forcing you. 😂 Jealous baby🍼
@@Nobita-xz3ov moron
Another video I watched, the creator stated that science fiction is not really about hard science or not. Because the question is what makes a science fiction book, science fiction. One thing they have in common is that they explore morality, ethics, and possibilities. They are in sense religious books. They are guides for future possibilities. The hard or science is irrelevant. Star wars is not really a science fiction story as it doesn't explore morality, possibilities, and ethics. Its pure fantasy. Despite taking place in space.
By the end of the season i was left with the overwhelming impression that the aliens aren't trying destroy or conquer humanity, they are trying to unite and/or encourage the technological growth of humanity through the threat of a common enemy, this is either the case or a really bad job was done and a there's is fact a bunch of plot holes.
Having not read the books, and having only seen the show, I could say that the aliens are pushing humanity to learn and grow in an attempt to have humanity one day come pick them up off their uninhabitable world. The trisolarins can't lie.. says who? The trisolarins?
2 things.
-You can tell from the first few episodes and the characters actions... There are plot holes aplenty.
-This is from the same show runners that brought you Game of Thrones. They have already made quite a few... choices with the source material.
Overall, the show is extremely palatized for a Netflix audience.
To be fair that is a difficult to pack that level of detail in 8 episodes.
Hopefully we get further seasons to fully realize the Santi/Trisolarans limitations.
As well as properly delve into the even bigger issue they are trying to hide from in the Dark Forest.
How could an Alien race the size of a grain of sand build a fleet of ships?
Machines
Tiny ships.
It's just another scale. Obviously the ships don't need to be human scale.
And anyway, humans build stuff much bigger than we are, so where exactly do you see the problem?
I agree - the size of the brain roughly correlates among differing species with the number of neuron connections which then also correlates with memory and capacity for learning. To suggest that aliens the size of grains of sand can become more technologically advanced than us is also to suggest that ants could do the same.
Nanomachines, Son!
why does the video thumbnail text say "why sophons can't destroy us?" that's not a question. shouldn't it say "why sophons can't destroy us" without the question mark, or "why can't sophons destroy us?" which IS a question
Hehe, good point :)))
My bad there.
Wtf? I'm not a native English...but that is any difference on this? And i read your comment like 6 times to try understand
oh heving only watched the series this does really clear things up for me. thank you to explain.
I always felt this was a mistake on the part of the Trisolarians. Why tip your hand? They could just as easily not said anything. The only explanation was hubris, or perhaps since they (at the time) didn't understand deception, they simply didn't know they SHOULDNT tell their plan wjen asked
Even if you don't understand deception, you can't not not understand information.
People can't act on information they don't have. Expending energy to give your enemy information is a very silly goose approach to your own anti-extinction plan.
They control the narrative by speaking when they did. They learned we can lie, which means the government could lie to its own people, using the productivity of an ignorant population while slowly breaking the truth to them. By revealing themselves to everyone and then telling the truth of Sophons, the people panic wanting to know whats up and the government can't reassure them knowing the enermy is listening.
That's another thing as well. How can a species evolve intelligence without deception? I know that the trisolarans are kinda like ants and do everything collectively but still
They want humans to fear them.
"We will make humans Fear again" there you go u wlc
Great video. It is lost on a lot of watchers that the Sophons are not weapons. They are pure EW and psychological warfare based. And I think a lot of that involves the technology being inherently dangerous, givin both escalation problems and the fact that the microverse is dangerous... having already destroyed the Trisolarian capital once in revenge for messing with their domain. Add in the fact that on the galactic scale, the trisolarians are more of a hiding civilization than a cleansing one, and it makes sense. I believe The Dark Forest seasons will explain this much better.
Love the narrator's voice. I thought it was part of the show.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's an AI voice.
Either way, it makes the channel. 🍻
It's an AI called pi. If I'm not wrong, it's the 4th or 5th voice from the list. It's almost frightening how realistic their voices are.
@yadhuareji wow, really. The voice sound so real.
OK I think I understand:
So the Sophons are limited to ONLY the following; Observation, Communication, Interfering with Particle collisions and "Casting Illusions" (think Mysterio from Spiderman Far from Home, just projecting images into or from the sky or directly into people's eyes)
A Sophon ability (that doesn't exist) that the Netflix show might cause confusion on, is that "Sophons can hack stuff" which it what it looked like was happening near the end of the show on 2 main occasions; the car hack, and the "you are bugs" message. The car hack, according to this video, was a result of a human guided by the Sophon. And the "You are bugs" scene was actually different in the books, as that message was only shown to the main characters, not the whole world. So I guess this is just a case of the show runners wanting to make a scene more dramatic at the expense of not explaining something and creating a plot hole that people can nit pick.
So the first 2 abilities, Observation and Communication are pretty simple, it just makes the Sophons the perfect, unstoppable, near omniscient Spy with the only thing it can't do being read minds (since the San-Ti probably don't have a good enough understanding of the Human Brain to program that into the tech given their short period of time they had to prepare the Sophons). With these two capabilities alone the Sophons are pretty powerful and causes lots of problems for humanity as demonstrated in both the book and the show.
With the ability to Interfere with Particle Collisions, that probably sounds like something that can do more than just mess up our data from Particle Accelerators You may be thinking things like "why don't they just use to it fuck up our DNA and kill people on earth one by one" or "if it can be accelerated to close to speed of light, why don't they just use it as a missile that can destroy stuff". Well first of think about the missile application; if you use a computer as a cannon ball, you might be able to destroy something or kill someone, but then you can't use the computer any more... And this logic can also apply to DNA, to destroy DNA or cells or change the molecular structure of things, you need a lot of energy to break the chemical bonds, so that goes back to the ramming use, if it was used that way it would probably be a one use and then it's destroyed. These are just really small super computers, NOT nanobots. So the best thing it can do is nudge subatomic particles in particle accelerators slightly to mess up results. I know the show depicted it as bashing the particles head on, but firstly those subatomic particles are smaller than protons so probably can't damage Sophons, and 2ndly you only need to nudge these particles slightly to mess up scientific data and make it not match the scientist's predictions by making it random and nonsensical.
You also might be thinking that the Casting Illusions can be used to kill all the important people in the world through visual deception, so just do that. And they did! They made many of the top scientists commit suicide at the start of the show as a result of these illusions by just showing them a countdown and having the members of ETO threaten them to stop their work. They did exactly that. But if you are thinking more direct ways of killing people through illusions like tricking them when they are alone to fall into danger, like making them walk on to train tracks or off a bridge by projecting images. Well the San-Ti don't understand the concept of deception because they communicate telepathically meaning all their thoughts are public so it is impossible to lie in their culture and the concept of a "lie" is literally an alien concept to them. So they can threaten people, but they can't deceive them.
Also you have to look at the San-Ti as intelligent but not super intelligent. They have may have more advanced technology than Earth, but they still only had a few decades to plan their invasion after they first discovered earth. An invasion that involves 400 years of space travel, where the enemies have lots of time to prepare a counter attack while the San-Ti are just drifting through space with limited resources. In the end, game theory and strategy can be the deciding factor in winning a battle or war (Ask David and Goliath), and unlike technology, there doesn't seem to be that big of a gap of strategic intelligence between them. In fact if anything Earth has more experience in war and strategy due to the cultural differences of the San-Ti always being united in their Survival due to their chaotic home world, while Earth always having wars over each other's differences.
And 1 last point. I hear people pointing out some physical impossibilities with the Sophon such as "that's not what quantum entanglement means, you still can't communicate information faster than light" and other points of "umm actually..." that is not worth listing. And to that I say; it's science fiction, not everything has be limited to our understanding of science. The author just wants to convey that the San-Ti have more advanced tech than us, and that they want to maintain that advantage while they travel to us by sabotaging our further understanding of Physics. The later books explore parts of Physics that we don't understand yet like Dark Matter, Dark Energy, 10 Dimensions, the speed of light and black holes, and he gives his own solutions to these unknows in Physics, in this work of FICTION. You could just say that the form of communication used by the San-Ti through their Sophon Technology is using another aspect of quantum entanglement through higher dimensions that we just don't understand yet and never will because of the sabotage. I can't prove if it's right or not because it's just fiction, meaning if the author says it works and doesn't contradict himself, then it works.
Season 1 of the Netflix adaptation may not have delved deeply into the intricacies of the Sophons' capabilities, but it's important to recognize the constraints of storytelling within a single season. The series prioritized establishing the foundation of the narrative, introducing key characters, and setting the stage for future developments. I believe that the Sophons' abilities and their significance will be further explored in Season 2, especially with the introduction of the Wallfacer project and the exploration of the dark forest theory.
Additionally, it's worth noting that the Sophons themselves are enigmatic and manipulative entities. It's unlikely that they would openly disclose the extent of their powers to Earthlings, especially if it undermines their strategic advantage. Therefore, while Season 1 may not have provided a comprehensive explanation of the Sophons' capabilities, it's reasonable to expect that future seasons will delve deeper into this aspect of the story.
ChatGPT TwT but yeah
But the santi don’t lie right ?
@@sandeepkarkhanis2273 They are a hive mind. So they can't lie to each other. They didn't know what lying was until humans explained it to them. And you don't have to lie, you can misdirect or withhold information.
I think that videos like this will help the showrunners as they work through season 2
The question is why do the aliens reveal their hand? Why reveal to the humans the existence of the sophons (a powerful sentient computer the size of a proton)? If they had kept that information hidden, the wallfacer project would never exist.
I mean they don't know how to lie so maybe that's why idk
Trisolarans do not possess the ability to lie or deceive, unlike humans. One could argue that in certain situations, the need to lie is unnecessary to conceal one’s intentions, (hide ones hand) per say. It’s also intriguing that the entity revealing the existence of their Sophons is Sophon itself-a sentient AI. It remains unclear in the show whether Sophon possesses the ability to deceive, given its origins from the Trisolarans.
If humans lacked a particular quality or emotion, could they intentionally imbue it into an AI? Perhaps theoretically possible, but ethically questionable. When creating a sentient AI, it’s essential for it to operate within laws comprehensible to its creators. Introducing an unfamiliar quality could jeopardize communication and understanding, potentially rendering interaction with the AI difficult or even perilous.
Moreover, there seems to be no motive for Sophon or the Trisolarans to hide their power, in fact it is the opposite given that the Trisolarans want to instill fear in humans and break their science. Humans were already aware of the Trisolaran’s ability to monitor human existence; they simply lacked insight into their method of perception. Consequently, the revelation of the Sophons’ existence, along with their mode of operation, carries minimal significance as humans lack the knowledge to replicate or even understand them.
While these arguments align with my perspective, they may ultimately be subject to critique or dismissed as a result of poor writing. You decide.
@@minaahmed340 and that's another thing that had me scratching my head. They claim they don't know how to lie but yet know how to project lies and hallucinations to humans to the point that those humans delete themselves. The aliens know how to manipulate sub-atomic particle results to stifle human progress. That's a falsehood they're already doing. These are the inconsistencies I picked up from the show.
@@bjo004they had input from humans to create these plans and were told what would scare and divide people. In my opinion, the show is not very clear about how much of the confusion created by the sophons is the planning and handiwork of the ETO
@@Fablessss But since the Sophons are sentient wouldn't they learn to lie a deceive once in contact with humans? While i have not read the books the show captivated me and i did some research. It seems that they are capable of learning
I saw it very similar to how nuclear weapons were used to end world war 2. There are some historians that wonder how they would have been used after the first 2, had the emperor not forced the hand of the military by announcing surrender himself. Marshall stated in the years following the war that there was never any real consideration to drop the bomb on Tokyo. He stated the reasoning was two fold. The first was that Tokyo had already been the focus of the most intense bombing in history, and early use of the bomb wanted to be used on a relatively untouched and undamaged city, so that the Japanese leadership would know that all of the devastation was from the bomb itself, and not from any previous bombing, for the psychological impact of the total devastation being from a single bomb. The second reason was that bombing Tokyo, what would amount to a "decapitation strike", would cause a collapse in the command structure that was necessary to facilitate the impending surrender. If you cause both the logistical and psychological panic that there is no one in charge of your own people, you instill into the people you are trying to impose your will onto a feeling that now everything that can possibly be done must be done, and you might inadvertently lengthen the transfer process by not leaving anyone left with the authority within the country to act in ways that benefit both sides during the demilitarization phase that needs to happen next.
Can you do a video on things the show does differently than the books and another video on things they could consider doing differently?
Thanks for this breakdown, I thought I understood the concepts of the (netflix) series but bringing up the Kardishev scale about a type 2 civ and the hack being human intervention really helped. Awesome show will check out the book now.
But all this dark forest stuff you are talking about hardly hasn't been talked about in the show, because the show is set mostly in the first book. They will probably explain all this galactical/cosmical hierarchy and other stuff in later seasons.
From what I recall of the novel, the sophons are, at the end of the day, extremely limited in mass and, therefore, extremely limited in the amount of work they can perform without suffering degradation due to entropy. So, they can manipulate the laws of physics on large volumes of space to imprint messages on the night sky or insert random fluctuations in high energy physics experiments, but they cannot redirect asteroids or even levitate an apple.
Hmm. Since sophons can make people see whatever the San-Ti want them to see, that should already be game over. Just make everyone permanently blind or make every digital display always display nothing.
That's a lotta sophons. In the show, I think there were only two throughout season one. But in the book there were many more. I imagined thousands or millions though, nowhere near a one to one ratio with the population.
In the book, sophons would sometimes display text on the retinas of ETO members, but nothing like what we see in the show where they cause characters to see things.
In addition, the book makes an effort to express that a sophons capabilities are limited when they are folded up and proton sized. There is a scene early on in The Dark Forest where Earth develops anti-sophon-unfolding capabilities. It takes many minutes for a sophon to unfold to full size, during which time Earths nuclear weapons would be deployed against them. A sophon never again unfolds in the book.
ive never read the books or knew anything about this before watching the show and i knew immediately that they were a type 2... its abundantly clear.
To understand Sophon, take this quizz:
Imagine you want to take over a remote island inhabited by ants. Only thing you can do is to send a tiny robot which can interfere with ant's smell.
You want to wipe out the ants but do not want alert the ants into frantic mode leading to total destruction of the island.
How are you going to program this robot?
I wohld make them think they smell land and food out in the ocean and smell predators/ocean everywhere on land. Maybe others have a better answer?
Well, if some of the ants offer help to me, I would accept the help
Im going to start by not telling the ants I'm here and consider them insects. Even if I dont know how to lie, I know what happens when others dont have the same information i do. Which is by the way, the basis of lying.
Simply because its just the first season.
In the 2nd and 3rd books, there you will find out how small fry the Trisolarians are, there are civilazations many times over more powerful than they are that a destruction of a small quadrant of a galaxy is just a mere nuisance, a chore that is insignificant and yet one may need to accomplish. For Earth which is just a bug for them, the most cost effective measure of solution may suffice, with as minimal disruption as possible to their day to day lives. A mundane occurence for a Type 3 civilization.
0:50 that is absurd. If the sophons are as powerful as portrayed in the Netflix series, they could stop humans by simply killing them all or simply by destroying our tech (which in the series they show they are capable of that). There is just no possible retaliation.
They can't kill everyone instantly. It would take them a long time to do so, long enough for government to take drastic measures. In the show all we see is that they can cause one by one person to commit suicide. They didn't directly kill anyone.
@@BlizzPort They can make humans see whatever the hell they want (which implies that they can make them blind also) and they can even control our technology. They would not need to even kill us, just mess up our tech and make us all blind.
Like I said, the powerfulness of the sophons in the Netflix series makes the plot of the series completely absurd. Proof of that is that in the book they are nothing like it.
They suicides are not even explained as to how they happen but if the sophons are responsible, that could also work to destroy humanity.
@@BlizzPort in the Netflix series they clearly show that they are capable of imprinting your retina with whatever they want (so potentially they can make you blind) and also mess up our technology. That kind of power makes a huge plot hole that cannot be justify by the series standards.
They can apparently even make people commit suicide, something that is not even explained in the series.
@@BlizzPort I've responded several times to your message but I'm being shadowbanned.
Kinda silly that the Tri-Solarians can open up a proton to the size of a planet, build super computers within that structure, wrap it up and then shoot it to earth at near the speed of light... Why didn't they wrap up their entire fleet into a sophon and then unwrap it in orbit? to build the super computer inside the proton means they can introduce 3 dimensional objects into N dimensional space so they've effectively already discovered a way to travel at 99% of the speed of light.
In the first book, if I remember well, they say exactly that: that they can't build circuits inside the opened proton. Instead they manipulate the strong nuclear force in the now 2d membrane of the proton to create the circuits. And that took a LOT of time for them.
Haven't read the books, but it makes sense the Trisolarians wouldn't do something drastic like wipe out humanity. Humans are developing faster than Trisolarans, so humanity might survive and come looking for revenge with superior technology. Also under the Dark Forest paradigm, you don't want to make a big display of your presence or technology, because there is always something out there bigger and scarier than you. You don't want to draw attention to yourself.
I agree. I've just made a new video that covers exactly this. The biggest reason imo why every civilization is a natural threat is because even type 1 civilization can develop weapons that are almost impossible to counter. Take relativistic weapons that travel as fast as the signal they're emitting/reflecting. The moment you detect one at the edge of your solar system it's already nanoseconds away from the impact.
@@BlizzPortCould you elaborate on this "relativistic weapon", I don't really understand what you mean by it?
@@otmanh Next video will be on this. In a nutshell, they travel at 99% of the speed of light, though speed alone is not the main advantage. At those speeds relativistic effects kick in. Will let you know when I upload the video in few days.
This makes very little sense. How is conquering another civilization's homeworld not already drawing attention to yourself?!
@@antred11 That's a very hard point to argue with. Also weren't the Trisolarians the ones sending signals to earth? How are they not endangering themselves by doing that?
Great Video!!!
Thank you for a great, succinct explanation of a few questions I had. And although I really enjoyed the show, these are all things that made me think they could defeat us and put us back into the stone age before even arriving. And all it would have taken is a few minutes in the show, like literally the length of your video or less. Which you also made to get right to the point. Well done.
Thank you. Much appreciated!
Mutual assured destruction is Cold Warr nuclear weapon doctrine.
Yep, it's also called a nuclear deterrent.
It works in space too, and is one reason why Dark Forrest failed to hold up in the long run.
@@spamfilter32 Dark Forrest is a failed concept because of immensity of the universe and short time period of ”civilisation” until selfdestruction.
@@spamfilter32
No, it isn’t, because you won’t know if the other side has pressed the button until it’s too late and it’s almost impossible to intercept a light speed object.
@@requiemlul3140 MAD isn't about being able to intercept the RKV's sent towards you. It is about being able to send your own back in retaliation. If they can retaliate, you never strike first. MAD works, or humans would already be extinct.
That is actually how they repel the invasion at the end, with the MAD communication
"Do not push the pink-skins to the thin ice." Star Trek: Anaxar
But what still has not been addressed is that if they have that much power,
then they should have the ability to throw their threatening sun's out of their system.
I loved your elaborations. Thank you.
Could you explain the Einstein joke and why it led to the attack on Saulz? What was the hidden message ?
In the books, the attacks are made because the San Ti didn't want the Dark Forest secret uncovered, and the initial axioms of Dark Forest theory was passed by Ye Wenjie to Luo Ji (Saul), so this was probably the hidden message.
Just the fact that she met with him at all marks him as dangerous to them
The hidden message was that Einstein should have stayed quiet, he should not have attracted gods attention, he was not on the same level. This led to the attack on Einstein from God in the same way as transmitting Earths location deep into space attracted the attention of the Sen Ti (This links to the book on the Fermi Paradox, where is everyone? they are being quiet as a mouse to survive, that's where they are!). She wrapped the message around the joke assuming the Sen Ti cannot understand humour. I took it as Ye Wenjie finally faced her daughters loss due to her own hubris so she gave Saul and humanity a steer on survival, The Sun Ti saw this and unsure of her influence had her killed.
This show makes me hope that either life is really, really f'ing rare or we are actually the first to gain sentience.
The one thing I don’t totally grasp is how the siphons could be used to effect the speaker, to have conversations on my the ship.
Can a something proton sized modulate sound, magnetic or electronic waves in that speaker
It's similar to how Marvel and DC attaches the words "quantum" and "nanotechnology" to sell any BS and for plot conveniences.
thats really easy since the Siphon is an unfolded proton with a + charge it would interfere with the electrical signal to the speaker in a specific frequency that would produce the sound that it wanted or encoded within the original electrical signal. Effectively it would be a controlled version of a "bit flip".
The sound is from amplying radio signals through the sun. Not sophon.
I'm subscribing to look forward to your 3 body problem videos! Or any sci-fi contents
Good point. Kinda like in Matrix they burned the sky in desperation.
If Earth ecosystem gets destroyed, the entire Trisolaran voyage would be for nothing.
... and ... it may be a one-way trip...
It would recover better than living in a 3 star system.
They still have mars, no?
Isn't that sophon also responsible for unfolding and becoming the eye (not done in book so was confused)?
SPOILER: Juts to add something most people don't know if they didn''t read the 4th book. The tri-solaris are ant size compared to humans. Have fun. :)
That's not cannon
I'm not sure if the sophon was actually being used and programmed with the purpose of interfering with the collider results. My impression was that there was a fundamental property of the sophon that humans were not aware of and it disrupted the results simply by its presence, not by executing some sort of function. This is why they cannot permanently alter the results.
I believe the sophons could indeed destroy all humanity. However, their intensions are key. Perhaps they are trying to make humanity care about its own species a bit more, condition them so that when they arrive, a proper peace treaty could be established. If humanity does not value its own life, how can they be trusted to value the Trisolarons?
This is the best answer i have found on live to how to reach others civilizations on anywhere...make them to care about own life and start to all the individuals work together to create science and think about interspecies living together
Spoilers from the second book and third book:
They never wanted peace. They were deceiving humanity with seemingly good intentions to make them feel safe which leads to them acting arrogant and careless. As soon as they got their chance, they tried to wipe out humanity without hesitation.
I think Cixin made a mistake with allowing Sophons to do instantaneous quantum communication with the host planet. Because causality and general relativity is something he explores a lot in the subsequent novels, and this really puts a bad plot hole in it. The Sophons can achieve everything else by unfolding in parts. It spies by unfolding to few micro meters and vibrating with the air (sound) or receiving photons (video). It moves by unfolding a little and letting a stray air molecule hit it, and refolding immediately so it doesnt get hit again by something else. It moves through solids by folding itself more to 2D or going 4D and just teleporting. It can't unfold in solids or liquids because it has no space to unfold to, that's why it can't give everyone cancer.
Oversimplified the science in the show does hurt the logic.
Yeah, they've spent too much time on developing side characters instead on focusing at the core themes.
Biggest flaw: if wallfacers are having an advantage not being read their thoughts and so on…why? Trisolarans could literally refine the issue, via connecting their sophon with trisolaran csndidate and refining the process and later in real time, share the update to sophon on Earth snd voila, sophons can read minds, thoughts and connect tohuman mind, and wallfacers are done, humanity is done. If not possible, this possibilty should be explored and explained why not. Otherwise, it is s huge plot hole.
It's far from being a large plothole (the amount of "plothole" messages in threads like this one is insane. Is there a nitpicking award that you all fight over? ;-) ).
The answer is that for all their internal n-dimensional supercomputer complexity, they are just 2 single Protons. Their physical effect in our 4D daily experience is miniscule, literally sub-atomic.
The Sophons can "do" almost nothing. Messing up scatter diagrams and exciting photo-sensitive cells in the eye is about all they can do - apart from communicating.
And even communicating is hard. You need more than a single proton to build a wifi hotspot.
They would need a special adapter and a lot of effort to manipulate that single loudspeaker Evans uses to communicate. Somehow amplifying proton motions to signal. And using some miniscule effect to communicate back.
It can't be a direct wifi/mobile connection because that single proton doesn't have the energy or 4D spacetime presence to establish a wifi protocol.
@@oerthling agreed. The Trisolarians used up all their resource to built those 4 sophons. They are on a one-way trip almost to earth. They couldn't and cannot afford to "experiment" and invest more resource into that. If someone would find out that their thoughts would be read, they might as well cause a global scaled panic where we all self-destruct. We are already butthurt and cannot ineract with each other on earth with our resource disputes. We are all fighting over it because of the mere concept of money.
Knowing mankind's history and potential tendencies, they have to be extremely cautious with their actions, especially since they cannot read our minds.
The trilogy has been awarded for reasons, the author studied physics, he's not a stupid person. On the internet, everyone can critique but refrain from jumping to conclusions too fast. Any critique is welcome though, but don't label it as a prophet's ultimate statement.
The fact that later in book. The peace era is brought upon by a deadman switch which assure mutual destruction by revealing both of their location is proof of that theory.
I never read the book, only heard about it. I loved the show! Can’t wait for season 2.
The critique of the unexplained limitation of the sophon is correct, very well explained as I had forgotten from when I had read the book. But not about the limitations of trisolarans as an alien species in the dark forest context. That also in the TBP book was unexplained, only comes in the Dark forest, so we have to wait for that. It is an extremely hard narrative to put on tv or film so I understand they might fail in some parts
In the books the reason they dont use the sophons for more than observation and sabotaging physics experiment results is because they arent capable of more than that, they may be complex computers but they are only the size of a subatomic particle and there are very few of them. The strategy the whole time was to keep humanity at a low level of tech until they arrived by hindering scientific progress, thats it, that was all they needed to do. And it worked, the only reason humanity prevailed was because of the mutually assured destruction plan using the dark forest theory which didnt require advancing science or tech further than humanity already had.
My whole question watching the show was = what is telling scientists that anything that any research that they will conduct from now on will give real and correct results ? If the aliens manipulated reality ? Which led me to : why did they think that sending will in the space would work ? Or on the contrary, how can they be sure that it didn’t work ? But apparently all those answers are in the other books and will be solved in the next seasons so i can’t wait
Video was great - One question I would love to hear your thoughts on is can you do a video on how whats going on with the actual alien phenomena that is being revealed through declassified dod footage might relate to this awesome series
To be a little fair to the show, I think a lot of what you're saying they didn't do a good job of explaining will be elaborated on later.
Why didn't the San-Ti use the sophon technology to create a form of warp technology for travel? Then they could settle anywhere they can travel, as long as conditions and existing life forms permitted their settlement. Of course, they may have actually used the same tech to stabilize their planet by making shrinking the two smaller stars and using them for fuel in either spaceship (which would have a rudimentary Alcubierre drive or star drive, or even for their energy sources!
The most confusing to me is why did the San Ti let Auggie continue her work when they were so determined to stop it in the beggining?
@blizzport can you talk more about the wallfacer and what they might up to and what’s there intended purpose?
well the fact that the trialarians or however you spell them, only a small fish in a big pond is not meant to be known yet in the series and will only be discovered in later seasons. like how the book did.
Theoretically though, sophons could manipulate electrons and thus alter electronics and potentially affect macroscopic objects
Context and decent writing goes out the door very quickly in a David Benioff and D. B. Weiss production.
I think it will go more into the trisolarans place in the galaxy when the concept of "the dark forest" is explored in later series.
Thanks a lot for the clear and precise explanation!
If the sophons can affect nuclear processes as depicted, they're already are moving faster than light. Also, if they can somehow block out all the stars for everyone at the same time, they're certainly affecting macroscopic objects.
1. didn’t get why they travel at 1% of light sped for being so advanced as to create a sophon.
2. Also found the Oxford 5 characters motivation all over the place in the show- salacar is traumatic from using nanotechnology in Panama but doesn’t see the wider impact of aliens coming over, instead of helping further ; wade may be a terrible boss / person - if she could do better, she should step up and help solve the problem
3. Couldn’t santi find another place in the universe to live?
4. Didn’t get the ending with the rocket launch with one of the Oxford 5 on it failing and wade whispering something into the physicists ear?
5. If a person whispered something into someone’s ears and covered with the palms - could sophons still know what it was?
The Chinese version of the series, perhaps, offers a greater level of detail with regard to this type of thing, althout it probably can miss on other points. It's available with English subtitles as well. 30 great episodes, of amazing quality and great acting and slightly different cultural feeling. There are little differences in explaining the timeline of events and other points like the video game and more and it's a great production as well. No idea why Netflix had to compress it all in 10 eps. Anyway, I didn't read the book but I can tell that watching both versions was definitely no waste of time. The book must be amazing.
And it's dreadfully boring and weirdly shot and acted.
I understand your point, it's clearly a different cultural setting so it might seem weird for many of us who do not live in China. But acting is actually great. It's all subjective anyway. :-D
THE STABLE ERA OF 3 BODY CONTENT CONTINUES
Humans: "Oh look, a highly advance gigantic spaceship ! They must be here to save us from the Trisolarians !"
Spacecraft: "We are the Borgs ! You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile !"
In the book the sophon technology is explained that it is a modified Meson particle device in 2 dimensions which made it impossible to be detected. By human standards. The Meson communicated the information via Quantum Entanglement. All though the purpose of the Sophons is the same it wasn't exaggeratedly OP and illustrated like in the show. The point of the sophons is to scout and sabotage the humans as much as possible to deter any form of retaliation of their invasion. It's as if the producers of the show are not down to earth with the book and want to put their own spin on the story which can potentially be disrespectful to the main source material.
If the sophons are as advanced in the show were they could manipulate spacetime in multiple dimensions then the point of the main premise will be contrived. The point of the Trsolarians sending the sophons is to give time since they cannot travel more than the speed of light given their current warp technology but since they can do this "space techy dimensional thingy" would you not think they can warp space to a greater degree and just teleport an entire planet destroying armada and invade Earth? Story over.
First, congratulations for the initiative on explain the sófons powers and limits.
About the atempt of the terrorist to kill the person who would be an wallface, I have a question which I coud not respond reading the book many times: how coud the terrorists or the Trisolarians possibly know that guy would be a problem for them in a future? Or did the trisolarians tried to kill all the others wallfacers, feeling to be important to neutralize all of them? This part of the book/series did not make sense to me.
So, please, if someone can clarify this point I will apreciate. Please forgive my poor english.
Very negative opinion of the series here. But it’s very good and captivating.
I haven't read the books yet but will wait. One problem with the series is the ability of the sophons to see virtually everything which would give the aliens and their supporters almost absolute power to stop human resistance. Another problem was the use of nano fibers to slice up the ship this would have put the hard drive at extreme risk of being destroyed although the information they found did not seem much use?
Yes, though only potentially. They can't spy on, lets say, 30 conversations at the same time, and most of their energy is used on interfering with particle collisions. That's their main purpose, to prevent particle physics from developing.
Even so, agencies have to assume they're spied on at all times because you never know. This is why PIA proposed building a particle accelerator on the Moon to further limit Sophon recon abilities. Essentially forcing one Sophon to be 24/7 stranded on the Moon.
The risk of nano fibers is addressed in the books somewhat vaguely. In a nutshell, by having nano fibers 50cm apart, the chance of slicing a hard drive was roughly 4% (50cm / 1-2cm thickness of the hard drive), which they found preferable to every other alternative.
Now in the show the ship pretty much melts, but in the books the main ship structure remains, the steel welds back as soon as the nano fiber passes through.
Ive read book one after really enjoying the show. You are right that science is much better done in the book, but the show focuses more on interesting characters which I prefer. The book characters feel shallow with the exception of Ye Wenjie. Also I prefer the show's decision of not giving us a trisolarian's perspective.
Actually I think the restraint was bc of guardian civilizations that cloak themselves in such superior advancement that they can see or use more dimensions and unthinkable abilities. So I'm thinking they don't need to provoke those guardians who look out for intelligent lifeforms building their advancement slowly and not destroying others. Like Singers civilization.
So far, the series does a great job at portraying the trisolarins. As far as humanity knows well into the second book, I do believe. The Trisolarins are the most powerful species in the universe. It's not until that other star is destroyed that we realize just how hopeless it is.
Hello there. Thanks for the video. One finger typing this on my phone :) I like the brainwork in this story. I have not read the books (yet). I try to understand the sophon CGI in the show. Sophon being basically a proton is supposed to be a spyware for Santi. Meaning their purposes isn't to interract with matter is it? If so, how can it temper with the collider. Back to the visuals... so they expanded the proton by unlocking N dimension. They installed a computer on it and then they folded the dimensions back? What is the mirror sky curtain supposed to be? Sorry, for my bad English.
It would be a lot easier for them if we'd just got rid of ourselves...
"To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."
My problem with the sophons is that, while they make the plot move along, they also undermine one of the main pillars of the Dark Forest theory. FTL communication really lessens the chain of suspicion.
Also trisolarans could solve all their own problems by unfolding sophons to control the amount of starlight getting to their own planet. They can block signals leaving earths sun. Ect
After the Trisolar Syzygy ripped the planet in half, the Trisolarins realized that getting scorched was the least of their problems. The planet ultimately falling into one of the Suns or careening into deep space, I believe, were the ultimate concerns.
Anyway, why do you say FTL communication undermines the COS? I don’t quite understand.
The resoning about the sophons is bonkers. If the cancer rate simply increased no one ever would have recognised it as a 2D whatever alien invasion... Humans would have simply struggled to stop it and died out, without erradicating anything.
Although I understand the sophons are an apparatus to advance the plot, they fundamentally could not work. Even if these world sized supercomputer were collapsed back to proton size, the very fact that they're so miniscule would severely limit their ability to do or observe anything.
Every single information carrying particle they interacted with would either smash them into a decay chain, or bump them wildly off course with no predictable outcome of the route.
Also, protons are quantum objects, so either the sophons can know exactly where they are, but not where they're going, or where they're going, not where they are, making any kind of pre-determined travel impossible.
Sophons are a neat idea, but much too OP. I would've preferred the idea that the Trisolarians, knowing that they'd have to evacuate their planet at some point, sent out small but efficient probes to sit and monitor potential systems the Trisolarians might consider moving to, hanging out at the far reaches of the Solar System waiting for activation from deep sleep.
Oh, and no, quantum entanglement still does not allow information to be conveyed between two physical states at a speed greater than C. It's the old Chinese Room problem; Communication is meaningless if both entities transmit the proposition 'True/False' to each other at the same time, which entangled particles do when their wave function collapses.
What I don't get is how the Sophons can make people hallucinate or how they even interact wit the world at all... Like, how did they make the whole universe blink to humans, or what can they do exactly, how can they change the results of physics experiments. I think the show may have introduced problems, IDK, they don't explain anything... Didn't read the books.
Edit: I did understand that most of the work was done by humans, but still, how can 2 sentient AI the size of a protons make people hallucinate all those things? How does it talk to people or make countdowns appear before their eyes?
As I understood it, Sophons can take their primal form, which is a membrane roughly the size of Earth on which Trisolarans at the beginning etched digital circuits, before collapsing it down to subatomic scale. But while in this form, it can't do much, other than project images like black sky (essentially hiding the stars behind it). This is a hard sci-fi element, if based on science, it's very loosely based.
I think that with so much effort the Trisolarans put in these sophons they could have built a space station as large as a planet (like the sophons in the other dimensions) and could happily line on that station on a stable orbit around their suns (bigger radius).
@@somaf74 we wouldn't have a story
@@somaf74they already have things like that, and they are excellent at surviving, but they dream of a paradise planet. They don’t want to simply keep existing
@BlizzPort yes, once I learned about the Sophons, my assumption was that they either unfolded and refolded in quick succession, or unfolded and then transitioned from transparent to opaque the way we can do with fancy windows by running electric current through them.
Either way, this would explain why none of the space telescopes picked up the flickering night sky, because they would be all on the other sudee of the unfolded sophon.
I understand why they changed it from the CMB to the night sky in the show. People with little scientific literacy would not know what the cmb is, so the show would have to spend time on exposition talking about it and that would drag the show for most of the audience.
I think the You are bugs hack being attributable to the sophons is a huge corner painting for the show. If the sophons can do that. They can completely shut down all technology on earth.
Cool video, your voice/narration has a sort of creepy vibe to it!! In a good way!
If they’re so technically advanced, why don’t they just find a planet that’s closer to them also, they could survive almost anything supposedly the planet they lived on, blew up and fire whatever so they can survive all kinds of things, so why don’t they find a plan closer
The Sol system is THE closest system. It’s Alpha/Proxima Centuri that is their home system, so there is no closer system with a planet for them.
Really funy, how FTL is considered as soft sci-fi, although there are plenty theoretical concepts, which allow it even inside ill conceived Einstein equations, yet proton-size computers are considered as hard sic-fi, although there is not even single theory, how that thing could work not only in our universe, but in any dimension or universe.
I'm curious what your opinion is on the Chinese tencent version of Three Body. I just finished it myself and found myself preferring the tencent version.
It's ok, though a bit exaggerated for my taste. What I expect to be a masterpiece though is the upcoming 3BP movie from Zhang Yimou.
get evaluated for schizophrenia.