/lit/ - Literature

Just finished the 3body problem and started the dark forest .

Why did the author retcon that the aliens weren’t able to and had no concept of lying or deceiving adversaries? The whole premise of the sophon plan from the first book was to deceive Earth’s scientists, so their civilisation must have developed the concept of deception . The aliens didn’t plan to use the sophons to say “we have contaminated all results your experiments will ever produce so you will never find out deeper understanding of science “ on the retinas of every scientist on earth. No, instead they deliberately gave them false information about their results to make them think that the laws of physics were themselves erratic and a kind of turkey problem , that all consistency in nature observed thus far was a coincidence, as well as showing scientists spooky countdowns on their retinas . Intentionally giving people false information in order to alter their behaviour is the definition of lying and deception . So why contradict the whole plot of the 3 body problem at the beginning of the dark forest?

Also, it’s just bad writing anyway. Lying would almost certainly evolve in any intelligent social creature just because it is incentivised so strongly by differing interests . Even if a species developed brains that broadcast all their thoughts , the first thing they’d do is think of ways to send information further than the range of their brain waves . It’s just like if there was a human who had a problem where he automatically shouted every thought that came into his head , if he wanted to achieve something but deduced he would be unable to achieve it because others would know his intentions after he shouted them, he’d just use problem solving intelligence to work out that he has to go a a far distance and communicate by text message, or surround his head with a sound-proof helmet. There’s no believable reason that the intelligent alien civilisation would not develop these workarounds.

I’m really disappointed that the author would include such an inconsistent and implausible retcon. It really reduces my enthusiasm for reading the rest of the book.
Before my enthusiasm was maybe 8/10 now it’s only 6/10.