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I thought the biggest flaw in 3BP was that none of the characters and none of the unknown assailants seemed to do any temporal discounting. A species that might

I thought the biggest flaw in 3BP was that none of the characters and none of the unknown assailants seemed to do any temporal discounting. A species that might be a threat in a billion years is not worth worrying about now. Resources should be used for immediate survival, not for eventually-it-might-be-nice extermination. It made the story seem more like a fantasy of contending royals than speculative fiction of scientists and soldiers. Of course, it probably seems natural to those who have different priors than I have. It's funny to see it cited in this context; I'm sure everyone on Ethereum knows about temporal discounting.

rsync 6y ago
"A species that might be a threat in a billion years is not worth worrying about now. Resources should be used for immediate survival, not for eventually-it-might-be-nice extermination." In the third book we are treated to some pseudo-dialog between an attacker and their supervisor(s) deciding whether to preemptively attack an area of space (trying not to spoil here) and the options on the table - a tiny kinetic strike at near light speed vs. the "flattening" that they eventually decide upon are both presented as nearly zero-cost...
- jessaustin 6y ago
  We know from discussion elsewhere in the story that "photoids" are considered to use at least a solar system's worth of energy. In the passage you cite we learn the "two-vector foil" uses even more (which makes sense given the fantastical nature of this attack). ISTM the party who has "easy" access to an armory of these doomsday devices will have to wait a really long time for a good reason to fear the party who is still stuck in orbit around a single star. Liu does lampshade the idea that performing such high-energy attacks should itself be a giant "here is a dangerous enemy" signal, but does so just to write it off as something that never happens. At the very least, frugal genocidal galactic civilizations should probably leave it to other genocidal galactic civilizations to actually do the tremendously expensive genociding. Given the eagerness we see in this passage, it can't be uncommon for multiple attacks to be launched by different parties simultaneously! It's a great trilogy, and I'm glad Netflix are going to do something with it. (I really hope they don't whitewash the casting like many other productions. The fact that most characters are Chinese is important to the story.) This particular aspect just stood out to me.

rsync 6y ago

"A species that might be a threat in a billion years is not worth worrying about now. Resources should be used for immediate survival, not for eventually-it-might-be-nice extermination." In the third book we are treated to some pseudo-dialog between an attacker and their supervisor(s) deciding whether to preemptively attack an area of space (trying not to spoil here) and the options on the table - a tiny kinetic strike at near light speed vs. the "flattening" that they eventually decide upon are both presented as nearly zero-cost...

jessaustin 6y ago
We know from discussion elsewhere in the story that "photoids" are considered to use at least a solar system's worth of energy. In the passage you cite we learn the "two-vector foil" uses even more (which makes sense given the fantastical nature of this attack). ISTM the party who has "easy" access to an armory of these doomsday devices will have to wait a really long time for a good reason to fear the party who is still stuck in orbit around a single star. Liu does lampshade the idea that performing such high-energy attacks should itself be a giant "here is a dangerous enemy" signal, but does so just to write it off as something that never happens. At the very least, frugal genocidal galactic civilizations should probably leave it to other genocidal galactic civilizations to actually do the tremendously expensive genociding. Given the eagerness we see in this passage, it can't be uncommon for multiple attacks to be launched by different parties simultaneously! It's a great trilogy, and I'm glad Netflix are going to do something with it. (I really hope they don't whitewash the casting like many other productions. The fact that most characters are Chinese is important to the story.) This particular aspect just stood out to me.