PurpleTentacle

The "I like to watch" for "3 body problem" is out and it's much better than the actual show:

Especially since their star system is only 4 light years away. Finding planets is not easy, but with their tech, they should have telescopes that can see earth directly, after they found it through indirect observation and you'd think they'd look at the nearest star system with a yellow dwarf first. Even for us the Alpha Centauri system was one of the first candidates, we just haven't found anything other than planets around Proxima Centauri yet, because double star systems are hard (technically a triple star system, but Proxima Centauri is so far away from the other two, it's like they are different systems for the purpose of planet detection). But the aliens would be looking at our single star system, with much more adancanced tech, so what is their excuse for not showing up here hundreds of thousands of years ago?

I guess I'd just like to think a best seller wasn't this dumb. It's not even a kids book like Harry Potter or softcore porn like twilight (both were actually smarter than this). This is supposedly hard, intellectually stimulating scifi aimed at adults. At least that is what all of reddit has been shouting at me for years. Then I watch it and it's the most inane drivel I've ever seen in a scifi work... and I've seen Star Trek Discovery!

That fight scene looked like it must have been a whole lot of fun to film. The reconsiliation was sweet. Of course Harry had to kill his kid first for it to happen. Par for the course I guess. It was surprisingly empathetic of him to let "Mrs. mayor snowflake" remember.

Yeah the plan isn't great. It kinda hinges on the dude getting a new body, being allowed to roam the ship, somehow figure out their FTL communication and then phone home.

g) unnecessary Just throw a big bomb on it, when it's in somewhat shallow waters, for god's sake. It's about as likely that you'll recover something usable from that wreck as from the sliced ship. Explained in later episodes, though not well. They probably wouldn't have the resources to do a lot of science on their ships. Though most stayed behind and it seems to be a stable era at the moment. So yeah, they should be able to keep up a lead. Unless their population is much smaller. That might slow progress if there isn't general AI that can do tasks for them.

Smoking is still pretty big in china, or at least was a few years ago. So I just assume in the books everybody smokes like a chimney.

Gregory: "What's your resting heart rate?" Janine: "Around 75." Melissa: "What are you, a hummingbird?" I don't get it. 75 is a perfectly normal resting heart rate. 60 to a 100 is normal. What do I not get about this joke? Can somebody explain?

Good to know somebody enjoys it. 😄 I was kinda afraid I'd just annoy everybody, but I just had to get the stuff off my chest. Interesting that it's all from the books. Oh I love Star Trek (at least classic Trek, new Trek is half good and half horrible). I think I was going into this with the wrong expectations. For years people have been shouting at me how this is "hard scifi" and how great of a "hard scifi" it was and then I watch it and it is about the softest scifi I've ever seen. Like I'm not joking, this is more Star Wars than Star Trek. At least Star Trek invents things to make their tech plausible, like Subspace, which makes FTL communication and flight a thing. This show just pretends actual science works like magic. Though thinking about it, even without the wrong expectations I probably would have had a problem with it: - Just straight up magic in a scifi mask (Star Wars): fine with me - Making up some plausible technobabble (Star Trek): totally fine with me - Completely misrepresenting actual science (3 body problem): ah hell nah! I think it's about staying consistent with the world you built. Star Trek does that (in its good shows). 3 body problem purports to be taking place in our universe with our universal laws, but can't stay consistent with them for 5 minutes... But the wrong expectations certainly didn't help. Thanks for the primer. It will help me keep my expectations in check and maybe that will make it a better experience. If the show really stuck close to the book in the major points (I know locations were obviously moved) it probably won't be for me, but at this point I feel like I ought to give it a try. I will report back either way... eventually. 😆

This board is called "the three body problem", but IMDB and Netflix list the show as "3 body problem". I guess the name changed during development. Maybe the board name should change accordingly?

WDR is rereleasing their audio play of all three books on 28.03. for free. It will be availible for a year. So if somebody here speaks german, that might be of interest: https://www1.wdr.de/radio/hoerspiel/cixin-liu-drei-sonnen-trisolaris-trilogie-100.html

Somebody or something hacked into the computers of three cars to kill this guy. Let's put him into a plane! That seems like a great idea! Because planes don't have computers and can't be steered directly into the ground! 🤦‍♂️ - If 18 grams are such a problem, just include a few cells from each seed and/or plant. If the aliens can rebuild a body, they can grow a plant from its DNA and yes, dude might appreciate being able to eat real food instead of nutrient paste. You can easily get it down under a gram. - The wallfacer project doesn't make sense. You can't just come up with plans in your head. You need to do research, ask what resources are at your disposal, etc. A sufficiently advanced AI could easily extrapolate plans from that, even if you try to obfuscate. I mean the two super computers don't make any sense anyway. Even if they are near magic, how they are described, they still can't be in two places at once. Yes, if they can magically flick around at the speed of light, they can see a lot, but not surveil 8 billion people. If you build a few distracting things on the moon, it becomes even harder. Maybe build a Mars colony on top of that. Now you have three places that are a few light seconds to multiple light minutes apart. Good luck to 2 computers keeping all 3 places in check. - So the aliens understand now that somebody might lie about rejecting the position of a wallfacer? Man they got a concept completely foreign to them down fast. It's like a kindergartener understanding non-euclidean physics after a 5 second lecture... - Yeah, good luck getting any significant amount of water through a filter so fine it can filter viruses... - Pretty sure how it's shown here, the nuclear detonations wouldn't work for propulsion. They'd destroy the ship and the sail. But okay, chalk that up to the special effects department not knowing what they are doing. The principle behind it is sound. What isn't sound is putting the head of a dude into your first attempt of something that has never been done before. You are trying to prevent something 400 years in the future. I get that you are impatient, but there is no need to be in that much of a hurry. At least launch one prototype first. - So the aliens can easily hack planes. Since they clearly actually want Saul dead, why didn't they let his plane crash? - That bug metaphor has not aged well. Bugs are dying left and right. Their populations are getting dangerously low and it might lead to eco systems collapsing. --- General thoughts on the season: - Why did it take communication for the Santi to find our planet? Considering they are only 4 light years away and they have this super advanced technology, they should have spotted earth decades, if not centuries, ago. Could have even sent a near light speed probe to see if it's habitable. - There is no way a habitable planet could ever exist in such a chaotic star system as the Santi's is described as. - The "I'm a pacifist on this planet"- message makes no sense. Since at that point the santi didn't know we were liars and came to co-exist. At least that is what we are told and what the characters seem to actually believe. So I assume that message is taken from the book, but D&D changed the rest of the story, not noticing that it now doesn't fit anymore. That is kinda their MO. They did the same with GoT all the time, after G.R.R. Martin had "left" the writers room. - Why not point the Webb at the Santi's home system? See what you can see. Why not build a telescope with the sun as a lens? I mean you have magic nano wires. How is sending a head in a jar the best and only idea you can come up with? - They never explained how the aliens manipulated the sky. Judging from the penultimate scene of the episode in the plane, I gather that they mean, they just manipulated the humans perceptions. But how can that be? They only have two computers. Even at light speed they couldn't move nearly fast enough to manipulate the perception of all humans on earth at once. Also again, if they can do that, why don't they just fry all human brains and be done with it? What are they playing at here? - Overall: Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. This was exhausting. Pretty and very well acted, but so, so dumb. I can't believe that the books are this dumb. This has to have been the two chucklefucks fucking with the story, right? Guess I'll have to go read them now... I really never wanted to, considering how hard some people were trying to push it. But here we are. I just have to know.

What about sending a severed head, of somebody who was already dying and now has a chance to live, made Auggie decide that she could't work there anymore and never should have in the first place? I swear some people.... - Oh old chinese lady is clever. She is saying that the Santi don't understand jokes and metaphor, because they don't understand anything that isn't literal. That's how you can keep secrets from them. I mean that doesn't make sense, with the video game they developed, but then what does make sense in this show?

"Imagine a series of a 1000 nuclear devices [bombs], evenly spaced in distance, stretching form earth to the Santi fleet." Yeah, that's nice to imagine, but how would you get the nuclear devices there? Isn't your whole thing that you want to accelerate the probe to 0,01c so it can get there fast? That would mean you'd have to make the bombs even faster, then slow them down when they are in position. This is so duuuumb. I'm exhausted. Maybe it's just another case of dumb and dumber not adapting the source material correctly? Maybe what was actually meant was a series of nuclear bombs stretching from here, to say Jupiter, to get the probe up to the required speed. That would theoretically be possible. Of course then you still couldn't slow it down and it would be just a fly-by, being able to take a few pictures of the Santi fleet. Not sure what that would accomplish that pointing the Webb at it wouldn't accomplish. If you need higher resolution than even the Webb can provide, build a telescope using the sun as a lens. That's close to impossible with current technology, but still seems more feasable than sending a probe at 0,01c... - "They won't destroy the probe. They'll pick it up." And how will they do that? Considering their technology is still so limited that they can only travel at 0,01c how would they pick up a probe that is also going 0,01c in the opposite direction? How would they even know a human is on board? - Old lady "I haven't been charged with a crime" over here. I'm sure we can find a few anti terror laws we could charge you with and also just good old conspiracy to murder. So I chose to read it as the government thinking it's more valuable to surveil her on the outside, rather than that they really couldn't come up with anything.

Yeah. On the other hand, if they were good at lying and subterfuge, this whole story would make even less sense. On the other other hand it doesn't make any sense anyway. I wonder if the source material makes just as little sense or if this is yet another case of D&D not understanding the source material and changing things that are important to the story. I might actually have to pick up the books after I'm done with this season. Hopefully they'll make me rage less.

But they have the ability to manipulate our scienctific machinery, making all our experiments useless. And through human agents, they even have the ability to kill inconvenient scientists. It would have been better for them to just stay in the shadows and continue what they were doing, with humans wondering for 400 years what the hell was going on. Instead they made an elaborate video game (which btw. does seem like it involved story telling, or lying, something they supposedly didn't understand), to tell us all about their plans. That's just dumb.

Okay, new day. I'm going to try to be more positive. - Those nano fibers are ridiculous... hard scifi... - Why would the aliens divolge the plan? Are they stupid? Even if they are incapable of lying (which I doubt), they could just shut up. Quantum entanglement does not circumvent the speed limit of the universe. Even information between two quantum entangled particles only propagates at the speed of light. Meaning these computers would work with 4 years of lag for every operation... hard... scifi... Putting that aside, yeah it's not hard to accelerate a proton close to the speed of light. But how do you slow it down? How does it even move? How does it influence anything? It's a damn proton, it has no arms or legs. It's nice that it's in extra dimensions, but that wouldn't help it influence our dimensions. - Okay, let's put aside that quantum entanglement doesn't allow for FTL communication and that these computers couldn't move or do anything and thus this is all bullshit. How do these two computers supposedly change the sky? Previously it was said that technology like hubble didn't actually record a change. So I guess they are manipulating human perception, but how can two computers supposedly change the perception of all humans on earth? Also if they can do that, couldn't they just kill all humans? Wouldn't that be easier? - Maybe I just need to get over everybody calling this hard scifi and just accept that it's about as realistic as Star Wars. Guess I failed with the whole being more positive thing... I will say, this is still super pretty, well shot and amazingly acted. That is keeping me watching. It's just also sooooo stupid.

I already think those are kinda lame, but yes, guns that permanently take away powers are much worse.

So the Santi have FTL communication and can somehow surveil the earth in real time even though they are light years away? "hard scifi" -.- Unless this is an elaborate lie and they are already here, I'm going to be very annoyed. But that supposedly smart people don't see anything wrong with that is annoying either way... - I figured chinese mom would be the leader, a bit before she appeared on stage. Does that mean she had her daughter killed? - "And when they [the Santi] arrive. You'll be so greatfull." I thought they'd take 400 years. So he won't be gratefull, he'll be dead. Unless this is another elaborate lie. Related: Did the Santi lie about not knowing what lies are? Or is all of this just complete nonsense and I'm making a fool out of myself trying to make sense of it?

Yeah, I figured out that there are multiple suns before the reveal. But how it is explained here makes no sense. If you had such an unstable system, the planet would be yeeted out of the system into deep space, sooner rather than later (much sooner than complex life could develop). I guess this is the titular three body problem. I hope this is confined to the video game and not supposed to represent reality, because man that would be some bullshit. Also, considering a planet and three suns are involved, this would be a 4 body problem, not a 3 body problem. Did they really get the thing that the title describes wrong? Is that also wrong in the books? - There is no general closed-form solution to the three-body problem. But that doesn't mean that there aren't solutions for individual cases. Considering the game is supposed to represent a real system, no general solution is required, just a solution for this specific case. So not sure what the show is on about. If this is going where I think it's going and especially since the inventor of the game seems to have highly advanced technology, you could just throw a few super computers at it and get good enough results. But I guess the inventor of the game would have to have a solution, to accurately simulate the problem in the first place? So maybe this isn't quite going where I think it's going. This better make sense in the end or I'm going to be mad... - The three sun eclipse: Well that's not how gravity works... I hope that's not meant to be literal, but just a weird representation of the game. But "the planet is under the gravitational force of all three suns" as an explaination didn't sound like it... - So if no computer can predict the three body problem, which is actually a 4 body problem, this simulation has been pretty much bullshit the entire time. K... Also as I said above, that planet would never have enough time to even develope a civilisation in such a chaotic system. Such a small body would be slingshot into outer space pretty much immediatly. Even if it were to take a billion years (which it wouldn't), that would still not be enough time for a civilisation to develope. So I hope this is just the aliens lying to garner sympathy? But I think the scientists should really see right through it, right away. There is no "unstable 3 body star system 4 light years away". So are we in the realm of complete fantasy now? Again, this was sold to me as hard scifi. Of course there is a 3 star system, roughly 4 light years away. But orbits in the habitbale zones around all three stars would be stable. - Good for John Bradley-West. He finally escaped one of D&D's shows before it completely fell off a cliff, although only barely from what I can see so far.

Well that was an incomplete summary of the Fermi Paradox. Part of the fermi paradox is that even at sub light speeds, given a few million years, a species should be able to colonise the whole galaxy. That is an important part, because a species just sitting on one rock in one solar system, you'd never find. - "Our signal is too weak." What? How is that your conclusion? You've only been transmitting for "a few years". The closest star system to us is 4,34 light years away, meaning a radio signal would need 4,34 years to reach it. So that's basically the only system it could have reached so far. So you conclude "well either the galaxy is empty or our signal is too weak, because there is nobody in that one star system!"?! WTF?! Also emplifying the signal through the sun would change nothing about the time it takes. Yes if that worked (can't speak to that) it would be more likely for somebody to pick it up, but that could still take tens of thousands of years. - Well @Helena Dax here are the titties (and dicks and ass) you thought were coming in the first episode. Dumb and Dumber never disappoint (in this regard). - Yeah 1977 would be way too early for an answer to the radio signal chinese mom sent (I'm not good with names). Because of the reason I described above. - "repent!" "repent?"" repent!" "no repent!" - Well I can see where she was coming from, sending that message, but it can always be worse. What if conquering means not just wiping out humanity, but also all life on earth? I don't think that's what the american, you have a crush on, would want.

Well the physics professor at the beginning kinda did it to himself. "Are you suggesting god exists?" "Science has given no evidence either way." How about you tell the actual scientific truth, if you love science so much that you'd die for it: "Science has given no evidence for the existence of god, therefore I must conclude that he doesn't exist." Because scientifically god doesn't exist. If you think god exists, that's faith, not science. - "According to our experiments, all of our theories are wrong. All of them. All of the physics of the past 60 years is wrong. Science is broken." Ugh, what a load of horseshit. If all of the physics of the past 60 years was wrong, I couldn't type this because we wouldn't have computers. The Wendelstein 7-X wouldn't exist, because we wouldn't understand Plasmaphysics. Etc. There currently is a crisis in cosmoology. Meaning we don't really understand how the universe works and why it is how it is. But that doesn't mean that our theories about physics in general are wrong. Even if particle accelerators would output completely unexpected results, that wouldn't change anything about our understanding of at least most of physics. I can't express how annoyed I am with this kind of bullshit. I thought this was trying to sell itself as hard scifi? So far it has been the softest of soft scifi. - "A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so." What dumbass would believe that? He is supposed to be a smart scientist? He should know that when variables change outcomes change. Science isn't the same as it was when Einstein said that. Today you are pretty much over 30 once you finish your education in any scientific field. - Filming location: A mono culture tree plantation with trees that are clearly less than a 100 years old. Dialouge: "Yeah this tree was totes between three and four hundred years old! Also look at all this destruction [of this totes naturally grown primeval forest]!" - SSRIs, Benzos and Amphetamins. Somebody has half a pharmacy in their medicine cabinet. - So was the sky really blinking or was that just whoever (probably aliens) messing with the minds of people, like they put the countdowns in scientists heads? Because the first would most certainly mean the universe is a simulation. But the second one would mean they did that for all of humanity for no reason? Why? At least this is intriguing. - I'm certainly interested how this will turn out. It was very well shot and acted. But everything reddit bros, who fawn over this, like it's the second coming, told me about it, made me roll my eyes. Not direct spoiler, but I guess you could infer something from it: But maybe I'm wrong and they are right. Maybe this is amazing. So I'll try to keep an open mind, even though so far it's not easy... So far this whole thing seems like the epitome of "I think I am very smart (while I'm really not) and super smug about it!". No wonder dumb and dumber were drawn to it...

Okay I'm not going to use spoiler tags. With these all-in-one-threads it's always the case that after the episodes have aired, you come here at your own peril. Somebody could make individual episodes threads, if they really want to, though. If you have a strong connection to these characters, that might have been an emotional moment. But I don't really know her. As a kid I watched an episode here and there. The show ran on RTL, which we didn't get a clear picture of and it had such low ratings that RTL only dubed and aired two seasons before they cancelled it. Yeah, comics have a lot of dumb, silly plots. This is one of them. A gun that takes away powers is just... I can't come up with a better word than "cringe".

Whoops, never mind. Asked a dumb question because I wasn't watching in a crucial moment. A rewatch cleared it up.

I didn't think it was very emotional and was prepared enough. Only thing is that I am slightly annoyed that they now have a gun that can take mutant powers away. Seems cheap. But overall I really liked this. I'm in. Wondering who the second Jean is.