5 ms·

"3 Body Problem" has so many problems! Wake me up when the next "Expanse"-level sci-fi lands.

amingilani 3y ago
To expand on this, it uses quantum entanglement for FTL communication over a distance of 4 light years. Still a great story, though.
- addaon 3y ago
  > To expand on this, it uses quantum entanglement for FTL communication over a distance of 4 light years. Still a great story, though. Although I read the book when it first came out, I have basically zero memory of it, so I don't recall if FTL communication is essential to the story. However, having just watched the first season of the Netflix season, I explicitly noticed that even though it mentions use of FTL communication, the story absolutely doesn't need it at any time. There's a local representative of the distant folk who is clearly trusted to make decisions, and could represent the distant folk for all communication purposes.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    FTL comms are absolutely essential to the story, and it is specifically accomplished using quantum entanglement. When Evans speaks with the San Ti/Trisolarians, he is talking to them via one of a pair of sophons - quantum entangled protons.
    - dpig_ 3y ago
      Also the "there are no secrets" angle is pretty dependent on the FTL too.
    - addaon 3y ago
      Understood that that's the conceit, but referring to purely the initial season on Netflix, it would be perfectly substitutable to have Evans speaking not /through/ a Sophon, but /to/ a Sophon -- a sufficiently-intelligent, sufficiently-aligned computer that can represent the San Ti interests fully, and react as a San Ti would. Nothing that has happened in the story /so far/ requires a real-time update on the status of the San Ti fleet, or otherwise an actual round-trip communication; it could all be incorporated into the San Ti model of a sufficiently advanced AI for the purpose of representation. (Even as an AI skeptic, I do think that such an AI is less of a technical reach than FTL communications.)
      - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        The San Ti need information from Earth as part of their plan to relocate there. At light speed, this would take 4.5 years to arrive. Without an FTL link to earth, they will be arriving "blind" (or with only the information that Ye and Evans might have passed along after 1967).
        addaon 3y ago
        Fair enough. I suspect that this becomes obvious slightly later in the story. The way that the first season is presented on Netflix, there's really a bicameral distribution of possibilities here -- either the Sophons successfully suppress human tech development and the San Ti have no issue doing whatever they want even without realtime information due to technical edge, or they fail and no matter how much information the San Ti have it won't overcome the tech deficit. I'm sure that for story purposes exploring that negligibly small middle part of the distribution where tech levels are comparable at meeting time is most interesting, but as presented it doesn't feel like the San Ti's probability of success changes enough with FTL communication to suggest that they would take different actions in a universe where everything is the same except FTL comms are prohibited.
        PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        They are in-flight towards Earth when they discover the humans have the capacity to lie (0). This forces an immediate reappraisal of their plans, which can only happen with FTL communication. Whether this changes their chance of success is certainly debatable, but it definitely changes their behavior. (0) note that AFAIR from reading book 1 just about a month ago, this is series-canon, not book-canon.
euroderf 3y ago
That precisely is so much of the appeal of The Expanse ! For getting around our solar system, take plausible, foreseeable tech and add just a bit of secret sauce (the Epstein drive). So,.. the evolutionary path of society as depicted in the series is plausible.
- snapcaster 3y ago
  I wanted to like it so badly but the show just didn't hook me. Need to give it another chance sometime
  - dbrueck 3y ago
    The books are pretty good IMO.
  - TheDudeMan 3y ago
    You gotta get through the political stuff in the first episode or so. Just push through. No need to follow it in detail.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      s/episode/season/
causi 3y ago
Yeah, the whole "planet's climate is stable enough for a sapient species to evolve and become hyper-advanced yet so unstable they're going to be wiped out" is so, so stupid.
- endisneigh 3y ago
  What’s stupid about it?
  - causi 3y ago
    It's dumb on two levels. Firstly, for a planet to evolve sapient life it must be inhabitable for, at minimum, millions of years if not billions, therefore if this orbital instability was going to wipe out the trisolarans it would've done it already. Secondly, the trisolarans are hyper-advanced. They turn individual protons into sapient robots and play with antimatter, therefore they can make a damn air conditioner. Manufacturing habitats to isolate them from the effects of their orbit would be easier than almost every single other thing they do in the entire series, including transporting their whole species across interstellar distances. Some of the things they do would be harder than keeping their planet in a stable orbit by force.
    - endisneigh 3y ago
      > Firstly, for a planet to evolve sapient life it must be inhabitable for, at minimum, millions of years if not billions, therefore if this orbital instability was going to wipe out the trisolarans it would've done it already. This is not a fact to begin with, and in the book their civilization was repeatedly wiped out. > Secondly, the trisolarans are hyper-advanced. They turn individual protons into sapient robots and play with antimatter, therefore they can make a damn air conditioner. Manufacturing habitats to isolate them from the effects of their orbit would be easier than almost every single other thing they do in the entire series, including transporting their whole species across interstellar distances. Some of the things they do would be harder than keeping their planet in a stable orbit by force. This is not the failure mode they’re concerned with. You also seem to drastically overestimate their capabilities.
snakeyjake 3y ago
"Civilizations smart and advanced enough to collapse entire dimensions but too dumb to move past the need to compete for planets by parking themselves off to the side of a black hole and harvesting energy from its relativistic jets" is so stupid. Every time a seemingly intelligent person takes the dark forest hypothesis seriously I am dismayed. The only answer to the dark forest is: FTL is impossible and we are presently incapable of detecting ourselves at a distance of 4 LY so there is a 0.0% chance of detecting anything beyond that.
- idontpost 3y ago
  [dead]
- rbanffy 3y ago
  > we are presently incapable of detecting ourselves at a distance of 4 LY You don't need to detect a civilisation. All you need to detect is a planet hospitable to whatever biology suits you. That said, our detection tech improves relatively quickly and we might be able to directly image rocky planets before this century is over. It's safe to assume that, if there is someone curious enough to look for planets with biosignatures or technosignatures that has been perfecting their craft for thousands, or millions of years, by now they must be very good at that.
rbanffy 3y ago
Yeah right... Epstein drive and wormholes, with some nasty ghosts unhappy about aliens using intelligent nano machines for building extra-dimensional highways through their neighbourhoods. It's fun, but it's not an accurate prediction of our technological abilities.
cthalupa 3y ago
I mean, a single sophon could have eliminated humanity by itself using a fraction of the power presented as being possible in the books, in hundreds of different ways. But I do think it's worth suspending disbelief a bit to try and enjoy the other ideas presented. It's fiction for entertainment, not a serious warning to stop broadcasting signals out into the universe.

To expand on this, it uses quantum entanglement for FTL communication over a distance of 4 light years. Still a great story, though.

addaon 3y ago
> To expand on this, it uses quantum entanglement for FTL communication over a distance of 4 light years. Still a great story, though. Although I read the book when it first came out, I have basically zero memory of it, so I don't recall if FTL communication is essential to the story. However, having just watched the first season of the Netflix season, I explicitly noticed that even though it mentions use of FTL communication, the story absolutely doesn't need it at any time. There's a local representative of the distant folk who is clearly trusted to make decisions, and could represent the distant folk for all communication purposes.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  FTL comms are absolutely essential to the story, and it is specifically accomplished using quantum entanglement. When Evans speaks with the San Ti/Trisolarians, he is talking to them via one of a pair of sophons - quantum entangled protons.
  - dpig_ 3y ago
    Also the "there are no secrets" angle is pretty dependent on the FTL too.
  - addaon 3y ago
    Understood that that's the conceit, but referring to purely the initial season on Netflix, it would be perfectly substitutable to have Evans speaking not /through/ a Sophon, but /to/ a Sophon -- a sufficiently-intelligent, sufficiently-aligned computer that can represent the San Ti interests fully, and react as a San Ti would. Nothing that has happened in the story /so far/ requires a real-time update on the status of the San Ti fleet, or otherwise an actual round-trip communication; it could all be incorporated into the San Ti model of a sufficiently advanced AI for the purpose of representation. (Even as an AI skeptic, I do think that such an AI is less of a technical reach than FTL communications.)
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      The San Ti need information from Earth as part of their plan to relocate there. At light speed, this would take 4.5 years to arrive. Without an FTL link to earth, they will be arriving "blind" (or with only the information that Ye and Evans might have passed along after 1967).
      - addaon 3y ago
        Fair enough. I suspect that this becomes obvious slightly later in the story. The way that the first season is presented on Netflix, there's really a bicameral distribution of possibilities here -- either the Sophons successfully suppress human tech development and the San Ti have no issue doing whatever they want even without realtime information due to technical edge, or they fail and no matter how much information the San Ti have it won't overcome the tech deficit. I'm sure that for story purposes exploring that negligibly small middle part of the distribution where tech levels are comparable at meeting time is most interesting, but as presented it doesn't feel like the San Ti's probability of success changes enough with FTL communication to suggest that they would take different actions in a universe where everything is the same except FTL comms are prohibited.
        PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        They are in-flight towards Earth when they discover the humans have the capacity to lie (0). This forces an immediate reappraisal of their plans, which can only happen with FTL communication. Whether this changes their chance of success is certainly debatable, but it definitely changes their behavior. (0) note that AFAIR from reading book 1 just about a month ago, this is series-canon, not book-canon.

euroderf 3y ago

That precisely is so much of the appeal of The Expanse ! For getting around our solar system, take plausible, foreseeable tech and add just a bit of secret sauce (the Epstein drive). So,.. the evolutionary path of society as depicted in the series is plausible.

snapcaster 3y ago
I wanted to like it so badly but the show just didn't hook me. Need to give it another chance sometime
- dbrueck 3y ago
  The books are pretty good IMO.
- TheDudeMan 3y ago
  You gotta get through the political stuff in the first episode or so. Just push through. No need to follow it in detail.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    s/episode/season/

causi 3y ago

Yeah, the whole "planet's climate is stable enough for a sapient species to evolve and become hyper-advanced yet so unstable they're going to be wiped out" is so, so stupid.

endisneigh 3y ago
What’s stupid about it?
- causi 3y ago
  It's dumb on two levels. Firstly, for a planet to evolve sapient life it must be inhabitable for, at minimum, millions of years if not billions, therefore if this orbital instability was going to wipe out the trisolarans it would've done it already. Secondly, the trisolarans are hyper-advanced. They turn individual protons into sapient robots and play with antimatter, therefore they can make a damn air conditioner. Manufacturing habitats to isolate them from the effects of their orbit would be easier than almost every single other thing they do in the entire series, including transporting their whole species across interstellar distances. Some of the things they do would be harder than keeping their planet in a stable orbit by force.
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    > Firstly, for a planet to evolve sapient life it must be inhabitable for, at minimum, millions of years if not billions, therefore if this orbital instability was going to wipe out the trisolarans it would've done it already. This is not a fact to begin with, and in the book their civilization was repeatedly wiped out. > Secondly, the trisolarans are hyper-advanced. They turn individual protons into sapient robots and play with antimatter, therefore they can make a damn air conditioner. Manufacturing habitats to isolate them from the effects of their orbit would be easier than almost every single other thing they do in the entire series, including transporting their whole species across interstellar distances. Some of the things they do would be harder than keeping their planet in a stable orbit by force. This is not the failure mode they’re concerned with. You also seem to drastically overestimate their capabilities.

snakeyjake 3y ago

"Civilizations smart and advanced enough to collapse entire dimensions but too dumb to move past the need to compete for planets by parking themselves off to the side of a black hole and harvesting energy from its relativistic jets" is so stupid. Every time a seemingly intelligent person takes the dark forest hypothesis seriously I am dismayed. The only answer to the dark forest is: FTL is impossible and we are presently incapable of detecting ourselves at a distance of 4 LY so there is a 0.0% chance of detecting anything beyond that.

idontpost 3y ago
[dead]
rbanffy 3y ago
> we are presently incapable of detecting ourselves at a distance of 4 LY You don't need to detect a civilisation. All you need to detect is a planet hospitable to whatever biology suits you. That said, our detection tech improves relatively quickly and we might be able to directly image rocky planets before this century is over. It's safe to assume that, if there is someone curious enough to look for planets with biosignatures or technosignatures that has been perfecting their craft for thousands, or millions of years, by now they must be very good at that.

rbanffy 3y ago

Yeah right... Epstein drive and wormholes, with some nasty ghosts unhappy about aliens using intelligent nano machines for building extra-dimensional highways through their neighbourhoods. It's fun, but it's not an accurate prediction of our technological abilities.

cthalupa 3y ago

I mean, a single sophon could have eliminated humanity by itself using a fraction of the power presented as being possible in the books, in hundreds of different ways. But I do think it's worth suspending disbelief a bit to try and enjoy the other ideas presented. It's fiction for entertainment, not a serious warning to stop broadcasting signals out into the universe.