3 Body Problem - Sophons Explained 

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 RU-vid 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

@@alienlyra 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......😊

😂

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

🤡

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.

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.

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.

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.

@@ThomasMeli81 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 ?

@@ThomasMeli81 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.

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 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.

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

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.

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 . . .

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

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!

In the book, the sophons was running at the speed of light, displaying information on the human retina.

Tx, much appreciated!

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.

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

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.

Thank you. Much appreciated!

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Definitely. A type 2 civilization should have basic mastery over their own star system. Which they clearly did not.

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.

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.

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.

I think that they did not want to kill any humans directly... Because that could make humans make a lot...a lot of efforts to have leaders and scientists under huge security...maybe all best minds to live underground for decades...

They didn't bugged the plane, they made the Director has a illusion. They can't kill direct people that's why they need other humans traitors

True. They were all over the place with sophons.

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.

Haha, yeah it did so with many XDD

In canon they probably are similar to humans in terms of internal biology and size. They want to preserve the Planet and think it is a paradise because of its stable orbit and good ecosystem. In non canon, they are very small.

@@gioilcreatore3547wow thanks! I just got the other two books. Time to read!

Thank you. Will do. I can see people love these. Already writing the next video on dark forest hypothesis. Will be up tomorrow or on Friday.

@@BlizzPort awesome I’m looking forward to that !

What's your source for the background music?

New video is up. Thought you'd wanna know :)

Oh, that's from the show. Just type in search 3 body problem ost.

I doubt they consume the entire output of a star, so I guess they're close to Type 2, but not quite. Type 2 should indeed be able to move a star. But enough to escape the gravity of other two stars? I'm not sure. They'd probably have to move all 3 stars in opposite directions for a very long time...

The gravitational pull of the stars would be far greater than any thruster, and the thrusters would probably fall into another star eventually too just like the other planets.

It should only be necessary to move 1 of the stars, but if not, then you would only need to move 2. Put your star thrusters on 1 star to move it into a closer orbit to the other, and the other thrusters on your current star to move it farther out. Turn the aystem into essentially a double binary, were 2 stars are close that they orbit eachother as a binary system, and the 3rd star is far enough away that it orbits the other 2 as if they are 1 star. Similar to how Apha Centauri actually works. Remember that gravity Is a weak force. Would the mirrors need constant monitoring and adjustments to keep them in thebproper locations? Sure, but thst would be true even for moving a solitary star.

@@spamfilter32 How would you get the mirrors there in the first place? They’d be thrown out of their orbits before it was completed. And where would they get the mass? Trisolaris doesn’t have any other planets because they were all consumed by the stars or thrown into space like Trisolaris will be.

@saucevc8353 you get them there the same way you keep them in place. With propulsion systems. It's not rocket science. Oh wait.

Why kill them? Only one man for now can cause them problems, the others are all checked by Sophons. There's no reason to take drastic measures now, they have the clear upper hand and humans know that they are nearly hopeless.

The game wasn't about predicting stable eras. But to answer your questions the San-ti home star system is actually based of alpha centauri the closest solar system to our own which also has three stars like the san-ti home world, it's based of a n-body problem equation that basically states that for three bodies moving in space it would be impossible to calculate their movement (I'm paraphrasing here) because of how many variables there are so yeah the three body problem is impossible to solve with modern technology and the San-ti knew that.

No, it isn't. Jin showed how their computer model failed by speeding up time and showing a Chaotic era happening before predicted. While you could build a cpu with humans as depicted, it would be slow as F compared to even archaic computers from the 1940's.

IRL, it's stupid to build a "human" computer. it won't works, or just stupid method. We use transistor to build computer b'cos electricity is fast and rarely get error. If you have large amount of calculation to do, abacus is the real human computer.

It isn't stupid actually, the trisolarans of that era could communicate at the speed of light using their bodies, this was explained somewhere, I think it was explained in the chinese version of in one of Quinn's Ideas youtube video.

I know.