What you've written doesn't change anything to the fact that there's a contradiction in the author's writing. And as ithkuil said in another comment[1] it's not

What you've written doesn't change anything to the fact that there's a contradiction in the author's writing. And as ithkuil said in another comment[1] it's not surprising at all that such a contradiction would occur in a work of fiction written by a human, because we are first an foremost emotional beings and we cannot really imagine how would a society of purely rational beings would be. I don't really understand why you want to pretend that there's no inconsistency in a piece of fiction, by invoking pseudo-technical arguments that are entirely foreign to the said piece of fiction. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43992932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43992932