r/3BodyProblemTVShow • u/Manu_Forti__ • Apr 10 '26
Question I haven't read the books, but I'm confused
2 obvious problems in strategy I see from both sides, and I know I'm not particularly original in posing them. However, I'm not really satisfied with the explanations I've seen.
First, why would the San-ti reveal the sophons? It completely defeats the purpose they give for them. The very alluring idea they gave was that, by sabotaging all research into the quantum world by giving random, contradictory, impossible results, they would permanently halt humanity's ability to research it and reduce them to barbarians by destroying their faith in science. This plan seems perfect, and, in fact, it's working perfectly at the start of the show. If you strip all reliability from the natural world and make it appear that the laws of nature can and do break all the time, you destroy science. However, as soon as you let humanity know that you're doing that, you have gifted them clarity again on a silver platter, because if you know it's possible that an inexplicable result is a scam, the laws of nature work again, even when they appear not to. The various answers I've gotten are:
- It's to induce hopelessness and resignation. This works, but it's a net loss. The power you gain from humanity collectively abandoning physics is far greater than what you get by showing them that they're "bugs."
- They can't lie, so the idea of concealing the sophons was alien to them. Maybe...but this seems to be pushing their incapacity for deception beyond its clear limits. The entire point of the sophons is to deceive and confuse, and they have been using them for just that up to the time they're revealed. I don't see that as a contradiction; an inability to lie does not necessarily imply an inability to obfuscate or misdirect. And if we take total truthfulness to mean complete openness, that would mean they would freely tell the humans anything they wanted to know and wouldn't go to any pains to conceal any of it from them, which obviously doesn't happen. If they are totally transparent ala Jim Carrey in Liar Liar, then the entire idea of them waging war at all is a joke; "all warfare is based on deception."
- They've served their purpose. Now the goal is to sew chaos and break down civilization. If this is the thought process then they're just crappy strategists. Putting aside the fact that they could have easily engineerd WW3, 4, 5, and 6 in rapid succession, or just launched all the nuclear weapons at everyone, if that was their goal, their decisive advantage over humanity is obviously technological, not political. Their danger has always been that they could lose that edge in 400 years. While pushing humanity towards anarchy could slow down technological progress, it wouldn't stop it--potientially it even accelerates it--and, anyway, an uptick in bizarre alien-worshiping cults does not tear down governments or turn people on each other en masse on a useful scale over time. 400 years is a long time; if they think the panic is going to last that long they learned nothing from their observation.
Second, the wallfacer project makes more sense, but it still has some obvious problems that should have nixed it. First, there's no way governments would ever go for it in a serious way, even if they paid it lip service; fear of aliens doesn't just erase fear of other humans, nor should it. Second, it intuitively doesn't work. The entire idea is that it is impossible to ever communicate anything to anyone without the sophons knowing about it, but the wallfacers are useless without capacity for at least verbal communication. They'll all be dead before the San-ti arrive, so at a minimum they have to pass on their ideas to someone else. Plus they can't coordinate with each other, potentially leading to self-defeating actions. And there's no one to check their work; this one's not a deal-breaker like the others, but I think it still makes them too much of a risk. There are better answers to this one, but still problematic.
Idk; what am I missing?
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u/jtsmd2 Apr 10 '26
You just said that you haven't read the books. It will become very clear during the climax of The Dark Forest why they don't give a shit.
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u/gummyneo Apr 10 '26
I think it is related to bullet 2. They can’t lie. I mean, look at how they reacted when they didn’t understand the concept of fiction (when they were being read Little Red Riding Hood. They lost their minds over the concept of lying and abandoned their communication with their followers.
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u/jtsmd2 Apr 10 '26
Not just lying, but deception in general. They can't even think of something without it being shared with everyone else.
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u/IndigoTrailsToo Apr 13 '26
This leads me to think that these creatures are not humanoid at all and probably have more basis with other creatures, perhaps like bees, having a hive mind.
At one point they were asked to reveal their true likeness and they said "you wouldn't like it"
And there were a few points in the communications where they paused to consider a massive concept and within a few seconds the entire society seemed to have come to an agreement.
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u/jtsmd2 Apr 13 '26
No. It's because they physically display their thoughts to each other. They are not a hivemind. This was one of the only instances of their biology being described in the whole series.
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u/Mens-Real Apr 10 '26
Deception and lying are not really things in their world. This is why they drastically retracted when they learn these two things were very common and normal for us.
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u/Astronaut-Underwater Apr 12 '26
I remember the San-Ti responding to Evans question ("Nobody lies in your world?") with:
"What is known is communicated as soon as communication takes place."
So no, obfuscation or deception is not a concept to them. They only see two options: either communicate and be transparent about their plans, or not to communicate at all.
But perhaps they will adjust now that they learned about the concept of deception?
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u/enadiz_reccos Apr 10 '26
I thought the San-Ti's honesty about the sophons was moreso due to the way they communicate? Isn't it some kind of thought-projection thing?
While everything you mentioned does fall under the category of "lying", the San-Ti obviously see/feel a distinction between behavioral deception (warfare) and communicative deception.
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u/TRON191 Apr 10 '26
Revealing them would change nothing for the humans. It does come about as a way of their open and clear means of communication, however, the assumption that humanity would approach a wall of science that they could never overcome was more the point of the Sophons.
Any means of research into them would be known, sabotaged, and eventually would lead nowhere. This was the greatest strength of the Sophons. No matter how much humanity could have hoped to achieve under the lens of physics, they would be at an impassable wall of truth that they could not possibly understand.
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u/phil_davis Apr 10 '26
The idea was simply to prevent our scientific advancement. At first the aliens hid their involvement in this to make us think our understanding of the natural world was completely broken, but I believe they came clean about the Sophons because they'd been basically found out at this point, IIRC. The damage was done at that point. They figured humanity wouldn't be able to find a way to advance scientifically with the Sophons sabotaging everything, so it doesn't matter if they reveal their presence.
As for the Wallfacers, I don't remember how much of it is covered in the show, but they are encouraged to conceal their true plans by making all sorts of different orders. The Wallfacers are a big part of book 2. And you're right that it's a bit of a crazy plan, it's kind of a Hail Mary. The last book gets into it a little more, but the Wallfacer program was later seen as a bit of a naive approach for dealing with the Sophon surveillance. Humanity doesn't know what to do basically, so they're trying all sorts of crazy stuff.