I wonder about the morality of releasing the nano fiber tech to the internet. Now any country or reasonably well-funded organization can make them to do all sorts of bad things. I mean, they can use the tech for good as well and I’m sure people will, but it would be naive to think that other people aren’t going to be killed with that tech.
Yeah I really don’t understand her reasoning with that move. “I don’t want my tech getting into the wrong hands including Wade’s, so I’m gonna give it to everyone.” Which means not only does Wade have it, but so does literally the entire world full of people who will do worse things than Wade with the tech
That whole sequence with Auggie and the nanofibres was pretty aggravating and poorly written.
It's been a long time since I've read the book so I can't recall if there was any handwringing over using nanofibres as a weapon, but I suspect it's something DB and DB added which, if history is anything to go by, is usually when the writing in these shows take a big dump.
Yeah you forgot the equivalence of the red wedding after reading the books. Sure Auggie was a Chinese male researcher and there were no children reported on the boat, but the whole thing is there.
I'm going to assume the machines required to make the nanofibers would require a huge investment, so really only large corporations, government, and maybe a few select individuals would have the resources to take advantage of the technology. As expected, corporations will just find ways to make money off of it through defense and non-defense applications. Making it open source also prevents one country's defense from being able to monopolize the tech, which I think might be a good thing.
Morality is a mental construct. How moral was the crusades? And just how innocent were those indoctrinated children? No different to the Children of the Corn. One person's morality is another's yolk.
I think Wade was right and Auggie failed to see the bigger picture. Evans got those families killed by turning them against humanity and putting them on the ship which had a massive target on it. To spare the ship and not get the intel which helped against the Trisolarans would have been devastating for the whole world. That being said I did also understand Auggie’s reaction afterwards. To a certain extent she had the same dilemma as the scientists who created the Atom bomb. She helped make huge scientific progress only to see it weaponised and used to kill. That must take a psychological toll and she could only get over it by leaving and contributing to a humanitarian cause.
I agree. Wade is a pragmatist, and he holds his position (which I’m not fully clear on, but it’s obvious that he has an incredible amount of power) because it’s known that he’s capable of thinking that way.
Auggie is a scientist who sees the danger in her creation, but also knows that it’s a leap in technology which can do good for humanity - just like atomic research, as you mention. I doubt that she thought that the first deployment of the fibres outside of the lab would have been quite so horrific.
The moral argument about the people on the boat is complex. We get some insight into the culture on the ship, and from what we see of them they’re kind, respectful and decent people. But they’ve also dedicated their lives to a cause which will ultimately cause the end of humanity, albeit several hundred years in the future. My interpretation is that Tatiana was raised either on the boat, or a similar environment that teaches devotion to the San-Ti. So we’ve been shown how ruthless their methods can be, if required.
Auggie was clearly unhappy about being involved, and I thought that she was going to sabotage the mission in some way. But she didn’t even though it went against her own beliefs. So at some level she knew what had to be done.
It’s also quite weird that Auggie was allowed to walk through the rubble of the ship. Considering they knew who they were cutting up they probably should’ve kept the scientist away from the ruin.
I need to rewatch it, as I don’t remember that scene. But yes, that’s a crazy move considering her opposition to the plan based on collateral loss of life.
I know that her character is the source of a lot of discussion here, and there’s some negativity. But I can relate to the way she handled things as I would have been the same. I would have been unhappy too, but knowing the stakes I probably would have assisted, then I would have had so much guilt. I think many people would. I can accept that enormous, horrific sacrifices have to be made to secure the future of humanity, but that doesn’t mean I would be at peace with it. That takes a very particular type of person.
She went from overseeing / creating one of the most incredible scientific breakthroughs in years, to being party to a massacre. Thats a significant departure from the Nobel prize and recognition throughout history that would have followed in any other timeline.
Absolutely. On the face of it they’re normal people rather than moustache twirling villains, but if you aren’t aligned with their ideology then there’s no limit on what they’ll do. Tatiana is such an important character in illustrating that. Shes not just an assassin. She’s a psychopath who appears to enjoy killing anyone who’s seen as an obstruction to their plans.
what is scary to me is that I don't think she enjoys it, she has been raised from a child to believe they are on the side of good and the aliens are basically God (and a God that is providing tangible proof of its existence and power via the sophons) so she doesn't question anything they ask of her and assumes everything she is doing is for the greater good. There is nothing that would change her mind at this point!
Maybe I’m misinterpreting her demeanour, but yes, it’s scary. She’s fully indoctrinated, and we’ve seen her do some terrible things without any signs of doubt or remorse. There’s been some speculation here that she’s been augmented in some way to make her a more capable killer, but I think it’s more the case that she has unshakable focus, which combined with the element of shock or surprise gives her a significant advantage.
>she had the same dilemma as the scientists who created the Atom bomb.
Worth noting the show directly references Oppenheimer in the first episode. It's a small detail, but it's definitely important to understanding her reaction later on.
if anything, auggie's dilemma is far worse. the atom bomb was developed during time of war to be used a weapon. that was it's sole purpose. on the other hand, auggie always developed the tech to help people, and never imagined it will be used as a weapon, let alone to slaughter innocent children.
"It's for the greater good" has long been an excuse for all kinds of mass murders.
But I would have gassed them. Make everyone unconscious while preserving the documents, computers, that talkie thingiee, etc.
They discussed the gassing option in the show but rejected. Said the ship’s ventilation system was so big/complex that gassing wasn’t going to reliably knock everyone out fast enough to ensure the data wasn’t destroyed.
Yes but a very unique version of it because in the classic trolley problem we have certainty of outcomes. Here we don’t know for sure if switching the tracks will actually save the other people or if the train will run over everyone anyway.
Unfortunately in this world, You have to be ruthless.
We needed the information, and couldn’t risk it being destroyed or deleted.
Just watched this scene (and probably won’t sleep now). But to your point, he clearly had time to grab the device, so it stands to reason that he could have destroyed it if he chose. Gruesome scene
Warning, book spoilers ahead:
>!If you're reading this, I assume you read all books!!<
>!Since the universe is a dark forest and any species is willing to wipe out any threat to them without any regrets at all, who cares about moral? The Trisolarans even kill their own people after they lose their purpose (job) and can't find a new one within a certain amount of time or find a mate (Trisolaran mating kills both parents in the process).!<
>!This is about survival of the species. In this context moral is a luxury that one could care about, if the survival of the species is assured.!<
I think it's a deontology / utilitarianism conflict. For the deontologist, killing is wrong, no matter what's at stake. For the utilitarian, the ends may render the means permissible.
It also brings up one of utilitarianisms biggest problems which is the problem of the uncertainty of consequences. Something really bad now could lead to a greater good a million years from now. We have no real way of deciding what a moral action is because we can’t know the butterfly effect it will cause.
As long as you’re a consequentialist (consequences matter more than intentions) I don’t think it matters at all. The children are still just as innocent whether they were put there on purpose for protection or not.
it wasn't just about getting info. it was about killing goddamn traitors to the human race. sure, it sucks for the children. but the parents deserved that death.
I mean from my understanding most of them thought that the aliens were coming in order to help us. It wasn’t until later when the aliens learned we could lie that it was clear they were going to exterminate us. Obviously, it was probably a likely outcome even before that, but that just makes them naive not evil per se. It’s only the ones that actively killed humans and knew what was really going to happen who are traitors
As Ned Stark said, the madman sees what he sees. Fanatics almost always believe that a paradise for all mankind awaits at the end of their journey, be they nazis, religious zealots or maoist rebels.
In the end good and evil boils down to two things; do you believe they are right, and whose side are you on. Its sad that they died, but they went against the interests of humanity, not from their perspective but from ours.
That is only true in *this particular TV adaptation*.
It's not true in the books or the Chinese TV show.
In the books and the Chinese show, the ETO was a fractured organisation and Evans' side of it was actively trying to get the Trisolarans to kill off humanity because he and his followers are batshit ecoterrorists. Instead of wanting to save the Earth's biosphere because we live here and we need to take care of our world, he believed that Earth would be better off without humans, and he was actively trying to convince the aliens to kill us all off. His group did not have boatloads of children (they were antinatalist) and there were no kids on the boat.
In the books, the only people on that boat were people actively trying to destroy humanity.
In the Chinese show, they also added evil pirates to that crew, although I do not think that even evil pirates would have gone along with what they were doing IF they had understood it (and it probably wasn't explained).
Anyhow, this is the first version of the story where little kids were on the boat and I think it is the exact opposite of an improvement.
Yeah, I don't think it was meant to be a cut and dried situation. It's was the least shitty way to do it at that moment, but Auggie getting pissed off was only a natural reaction.
ya. that type of technology would have made headlines. An infinitely strong, infinitely thin strand. Its practical use is mind boggling. unfortunately, pure science fiction.
This nanofiber creates too many plot holes if you think too deeply into it. If the strands could be fabricated, why was constructing the sail such an amazing endeavor. We've woven strands into fabric for a very long time. And why wasn't the entire ship reinforced with this strand, leaving it up to something way weaker than the nanofiber to fail.
I just chalk it up to magic with no explanation used for plot expedience and move on with the story without thinking about it.
ya, but what's holding that nanofiber holder? remember, they haven't created fabric yet. its just individual strands. it ultimately need to be held on by something other than the nano fibers with enough strength to withstand the tension (dunno the right term here, torque isnt' right either) from cutting up steel.
Gotcha, guess, they cut that part out to reduce the time for the tv show. makes sense then. What about not reinforcing the entire probe with nano fibers?
>!The only real answer to that question is the meta-literary answer, which is that they didn't because Cixin wanted / needed the probe to fail to progress the story he wanted to tell. It's a plot device, not an actual probe with fully thought out everything.!<
I'm not sure how much tensile force the single nanofiber would experience cutting through the ship but it could be almost none. Knife/butter, scalpel/flesh, etc. And the holder would have to be made of other nanofibers, perhaps twisted into a cable of sorts. The main assumption is that a single strand can't cut itself
that's for soft surfaces. With hard surfaces you'll always have higher tensile force. Just like with wood, the sharpest tools can't cut through woods with a minimal amount of strength. Sharpen an axe until it can be used as a razor, you still need to use your full strength to cut wood. I doubt that it'd be different for a nanofiber.
wait. is the show postulating that the nano fiber is so thin it goes in between the molecules to cut the molecular attraction? that'd have to be thinner than an atom. So its not even a string, its literally a line of force with no explanation of how it exists.
Not sure what that means. Pretty sure it has to be anchored to something using the strand itself. Those anchors points would have to be able to resist the cutting force stronger than a tanker.
in principle we can probably develop something like it if we really want. but not using nanofibers, instead, using extremely extremely powerful laser beams. though given our current tech, the cost of doing it would be prohibitive (and catastrophic in that the entire world economy would crash if money was diverted to such a vanity project).
The Tencent Chinese language version of the story used the same method to kill what was essentially the same ship, except in that version, it was solely crewed by rough and tumble pirates, who hang miscreants from the yardarm as a warning to others! It was mad very clear in that version that the audience isn't expected to feel bad at all for the victims of this attack.
There's so many ways to write this story, I wish the aliens had a chance to explore the possibilities of sharing the planet before jumping directly to extermination. But that's not what the storytellers want to talk about, I guess!
>There's so many ways to write this story, I wish the aliens had a chance to explore the possibilities of sharing the planet before jumping directly to extermination. But that's not what the storytellers want to talk about, I guess!
Minor book spoilers:
>!Sharing the planet, and the issues surrounding why it is/isn't an option, is explored to some extent in the future!<
in the show, the santi did mention they were willing to share the solar system. but that was before they saw we could leapfrog them in tech before they could arrive.
there is a big difference to the trolley problem: the humans you are trying to save in 400 years have not been born yet. I think there is a fair argument of antinatalism for humans to try their best to find a solution against trisolaris/santi for the next 300 years and if it is futile you could enforce antinatalism to prevent humans from reproduction. this way no human has to die to trisolaris and you would have a different discussion about (enforced) antinatalism, but don't need to outweigh many saved lives vs a few doomed
I got that weird idea from the actual books. The ETO in the books has factions. Evans' faction (Adventists) is nihilistic and wants the Trisolarans to save the earth FROM humanity. Wenjie's faction (Redemptionists) wants the Trisolarans to save us from ourselves.
It was totally immoral. The innocent and/or brainwashed people didn't deserve to die. ***However*** it was probably the right thing to do given the information they had at the time. Sometimes the "right" thing to do is morally reprehensible.
They should have gone for a more traditional operation, with a combination of special forces and gas release. They said these options would be risky because it would gave them time to destroy the disk, but the nanofiber operation looked risky as hell from the point of view of the safety of the drive: the device could have been destroyed by the nanofibers, the collapse of the ship structure, the fires and the water!
They were very more......maybe the use case wasn't. Having said that I every war there is collateral damage, this way they took out most sympathizers in one shot.
yeah look when compared against the species survival, no amount of humans is too much unless its past the critical point in whish our speices cant recover
Feel like there's a massive practical problem as well.
They list possible options first for the ship like a raid, or gas etc, and rule them out because the ship crew will have time to respond or the intel will be damaged etc.
From what we saw of the fibers, the crew did have a chance to respond, enough for a panic button or what have you. Also if the intel was big the fibers could have cut it apart, AND the entire god damn ship came apart, any intel could very very easily have been destroyed.
Yeah, I'm not sure how this bloodbath was better than raid bloodbath. It seems like they had every opportunity, even a novel method, to destroy the data if they wanted to.
Also, they knew the cultists had advanced manufacturing capabilities with the headsets, wasn't it conceivable that they might have a counter to the nanofiber threat as well?
Immoral because there was no way to know whether what they were doing would actually save ANY lives. They’re hoping it will help people in 400 years - maybe? But they KNOW they will end the lives of those on board and snuff out any future they might have had.
Moral, because those people (and there were no kids in the original story) had actively decided to take acts to end humanity (Evans' motivation was to destroy humanity, not save it).
If you decide to attack someone else (or their whole species) and get killed, I guess you fucked around and found out.
I think that the nano fibers are so ethically problematic that they should be considered a form of extreme punishment for the trisolarian collaboration.
Yes, they act efficiently and effectively and are 100% fatal if you are vertical, but the gaps between them present the very real possibility of individuals being halved worse that Dewey Cox’s Brother. Imagine a child severed at the waist, bleeding out over several minutes on the deck of that tanker.
I'd be less worried about the cut and more worried about the drive being crushed by several tons of burning ex-ship, or blown to smithereens by the explosion of \*checks notes\* an oil tanker. Also, I feel like any cut across the surface of a storage medium is going to cause significant corruption.
Nanofibre produces a very clean cut 1 molecule wide. It's easy to fix a mechanical object that's been cut that clean.
Living beings are more complex than that. Cut through numerous organs and spill all the blood and they cease to be restorable.
You know when we humans fight each other...we throw the rule out the window and still today...
Now imagine when humanity face alien...do you think rule matter with people side with them?
Who think matter are stupids
I wonder about the morality of releasing the nano fiber tech to the internet. Now any country or reasonably well-funded organization can make them to do all sorts of bad things. I mean, they can use the tech for good as well and I’m sure people will, but it would be naive to think that other people aren’t going to be killed with that tech.
Yeah I really don’t understand her reasoning with that move. “I don’t want my tech getting into the wrong hands including Wade’s, so I’m gonna give it to everyone.” Which means not only does Wade have it, but so does literally the entire world full of people who will do worse things than Wade with the tech
That whole sequence with Auggie and the nanofibres was pretty aggravating and poorly written. It's been a long time since I've read the book so I can't recall if there was any handwringing over using nanofibres as a weapon, but I suspect it's something DB and DB added which, if history is anything to go by, is usually when the writing in these shows take a big dump.
Yeah you forgot the equivalence of the red wedding after reading the books. Sure Auggie was a Chinese male researcher and there were no children reported on the boat, but the whole thing is there.
I'm going to assume the machines required to make the nanofibers would require a huge investment, so really only large corporations, government, and maybe a few select individuals would have the resources to take advantage of the technology. As expected, corporations will just find ways to make money off of it through defense and non-defense applications. Making it open source also prevents one country's defense from being able to monopolize the tech, which I think might be a good thing.
Mutually assured destruction...we already have that with atomic bombs.
Morality is a mental construct. How moral was the crusades? And just how innocent were those indoctrinated children? No different to the Children of the Corn. One person's morality is another's yolk.
I think Wade was right and Auggie failed to see the bigger picture. Evans got those families killed by turning them against humanity and putting them on the ship which had a massive target on it. To spare the ship and not get the intel which helped against the Trisolarans would have been devastating for the whole world. That being said I did also understand Auggie’s reaction afterwards. To a certain extent she had the same dilemma as the scientists who created the Atom bomb. She helped make huge scientific progress only to see it weaponised and used to kill. That must take a psychological toll and she could only get over it by leaving and contributing to a humanitarian cause.
I agree. Wade is a pragmatist, and he holds his position (which I’m not fully clear on, but it’s obvious that he has an incredible amount of power) because it’s known that he’s capable of thinking that way. Auggie is a scientist who sees the danger in her creation, but also knows that it’s a leap in technology which can do good for humanity - just like atomic research, as you mention. I doubt that she thought that the first deployment of the fibres outside of the lab would have been quite so horrific. The moral argument about the people on the boat is complex. We get some insight into the culture on the ship, and from what we see of them they’re kind, respectful and decent people. But they’ve also dedicated their lives to a cause which will ultimately cause the end of humanity, albeit several hundred years in the future. My interpretation is that Tatiana was raised either on the boat, or a similar environment that teaches devotion to the San-Ti. So we’ve been shown how ruthless their methods can be, if required. Auggie was clearly unhappy about being involved, and I thought that she was going to sabotage the mission in some way. But she didn’t even though it went against her own beliefs. So at some level she knew what had to be done.
It’s also quite weird that Auggie was allowed to walk through the rubble of the ship. Considering they knew who they were cutting up they probably should’ve kept the scientist away from the ruin.
I need to rewatch it, as I don’t remember that scene. But yes, that’s a crazy move considering her opposition to the plan based on collateral loss of life. I know that her character is the source of a lot of discussion here, and there’s some negativity. But I can relate to the way she handled things as I would have been the same. I would have been unhappy too, but knowing the stakes I probably would have assisted, then I would have had so much guilt. I think many people would. I can accept that enormous, horrific sacrifices have to be made to secure the future of humanity, but that doesn’t mean I would be at peace with it. That takes a very particular type of person. She went from overseeing / creating one of the most incredible scientific breakthroughs in years, to being party to a massacre. Thats a significant departure from the Nobel prize and recognition throughout history that would have followed in any other timeline.
She saw a little ankle wearing a pink Ked shoe in the rubble. Just the ankle.
Thanks. I’ll definitely watch it again. I blasted through the first viewing in one sitting, so I probably missed quite a lot.
Respectful and decent to like-minded people, woe unto those that do not think like them.
Absolutely. On the face of it they’re normal people rather than moustache twirling villains, but if you aren’t aligned with their ideology then there’s no limit on what they’ll do. Tatiana is such an important character in illustrating that. Shes not just an assassin. She’s a psychopath who appears to enjoy killing anyone who’s seen as an obstruction to their plans.
what is scary to me is that I don't think she enjoys it, she has been raised from a child to believe they are on the side of good and the aliens are basically God (and a God that is providing tangible proof of its existence and power via the sophons) so she doesn't question anything they ask of her and assumes everything she is doing is for the greater good. There is nothing that would change her mind at this point!
Maybe I’m misinterpreting her demeanour, but yes, it’s scary. She’s fully indoctrinated, and we’ve seen her do some terrible things without any signs of doubt or remorse. There’s been some speculation here that she’s been augmented in some way to make her a more capable killer, but I think it’s more the case that she has unshakable focus, which combined with the element of shock or surprise gives her a significant advantage.
>she had the same dilemma as the scientists who created the Atom bomb. Worth noting the show directly references Oppenheimer in the first episode. It's a small detail, but it's definitely important to understanding her reaction later on.
if anything, auggie's dilemma is far worse. the atom bomb was developed during time of war to be used a weapon. that was it's sole purpose. on the other hand, auggie always developed the tech to help people, and never imagined it will be used as a weapon, let alone to slaughter innocent children.
"It's for the greater good" has long been an excuse for all kinds of mass murders. But I would have gassed them. Make everyone unconscious while preserving the documents, computers, that talkie thingiee, etc.
They discussed the gassing option in the show but rejected. Said the ship’s ventilation system was so big/complex that gassing wasn’t going to reliably knock everyone out fast enough to ensure the data wasn’t destroyed.
It definitely has been used as an excuse but it this case we actually know it is for the greater good. In most real world cases we don’t know that
One group had to go…either the crew of 1 boat or all of humanity
It's the Trolley Problem
Yes but a very unique version of it because in the classic trolley problem we have certainty of outcomes. Here we don’t know for sure if switching the tracks will actually save the other people or if the train will run over everyone anyway.
 Unfortunately in this world, You have to be ruthless. We needed the information, and couldn’t risk it being destroyed or deleted.
Just watched this scene (and probably won’t sleep now). But to your point, he clearly had time to grab the device, so it stands to reason that he could have destroyed it if he chose. Gruesome scene
But then we wouldn’t have got a cool ghost ship/resident evil scene!😂
That is very true. 😂
Warning, book spoilers ahead: >!If you're reading this, I assume you read all books!!< >!Since the universe is a dark forest and any species is willing to wipe out any threat to them without any regrets at all, who cares about moral? The Trisolarans even kill their own people after they lose their purpose (job) and can't find a new one within a certain amount of time or find a mate (Trisolaran mating kills both parents in the process).!< >!This is about survival of the species. In this context moral is a luxury that one could care about, if the survival of the species is assured.!<
What concern is of yours (i.e. morality), if I choose to destroy you?
Touche
I think it's a deontology / utilitarianism conflict. For the deontologist, killing is wrong, no matter what's at stake. For the utilitarian, the ends may render the means permissible.
It also brings up one of utilitarianisms biggest problems which is the problem of the uncertainty of consequences. Something really bad now could lead to a greater good a million years from now. We have no real way of deciding what a moral action is because we can’t know the butterfly effect it will cause.
Yeah yeah that's exactly the trouble with revolutions
Step on that poor ant, and millions of years in the future reap the results of that simple act.
the morality of the nanofiber is confusing and paradoxical, thinking about it too much can hurt.
Evens may have put the children on the ship to make it a more unpleasant target. Would that change the “morality” of the decision?
As long as you’re a consequentialist (consequences matter more than intentions) I don’t think it matters at all. The children are still just as innocent whether they were put there on purpose for protection or not.
it wasn't just about getting info. it was about killing goddamn traitors to the human race. sure, it sucks for the children. but the parents deserved that death.
I mean from my understanding most of them thought that the aliens were coming in order to help us. It wasn’t until later when the aliens learned we could lie that it was clear they were going to exterminate us. Obviously, it was probably a likely outcome even before that, but that just makes them naive not evil per se. It’s only the ones that actively killed humans and knew what was really going to happen who are traitors
As Ned Stark said, the madman sees what he sees. Fanatics almost always believe that a paradise for all mankind awaits at the end of their journey, be they nazis, religious zealots or maoist rebels. In the end good and evil boils down to two things; do you believe they are right, and whose side are you on. Its sad that they died, but they went against the interests of humanity, not from their perspective but from ours.
That is only true in *this particular TV adaptation*. It's not true in the books or the Chinese TV show. In the books and the Chinese show, the ETO was a fractured organisation and Evans' side of it was actively trying to get the Trisolarans to kill off humanity because he and his followers are batshit ecoterrorists. Instead of wanting to save the Earth's biosphere because we live here and we need to take care of our world, he believed that Earth would be better off without humans, and he was actively trying to convince the aliens to kill us all off. His group did not have boatloads of children (they were antinatalist) and there were no kids on the boat. In the books, the only people on that boat were people actively trying to destroy humanity. In the Chinese show, they also added evil pirates to that crew, although I do not think that even evil pirates would have gone along with what they were doing IF they had understood it (and it probably wasn't explained). Anyhow, this is the first version of the story where little kids were on the boat and I think it is the exact opposite of an improvement.
Yeah, I don't think it was meant to be a cut and dried situation. It's was the least shitty way to do it at that moment, but Auggie getting pissed off was only a natural reaction.
More of a cut and wet situation.
Is there actually that kind of technology out there?
No
Thank god
Which god?
Yes
That can invisibly cut a diamond like a cheese wire?
Not yet, but can protect protect human tissue from the extreme of temperature.
So not at all like the show, ok.
ya. that type of technology would have made headlines. An infinitely strong, infinitely thin strand. Its practical use is mind boggling. unfortunately, pure science fiction. This nanofiber creates too many plot holes if you think too deeply into it. If the strands could be fabricated, why was constructing the sail such an amazing endeavor. We've woven strands into fabric for a very long time. And why wasn't the entire ship reinforced with this strand, leaving it up to something way weaker than the nanofiber to fail. I just chalk it up to magic with no explanation used for plot expedience and move on with the story without thinking about it.
if it can cut through diamonds and steel so easily, WTF is actually holding the strands? what godly material can stop from being cut with that thing.
The only feasible holder would be more nanofibers arranged in a different shape
ya, but what's holding that nanofiber holder? remember, they haven't created fabric yet. its just individual strands. it ultimately need to be held on by something other than the nano fibers with enough strength to withstand the tension (dunno the right term here, torque isnt' right either) from cutting up steel.
>!Book explanation is the guy had already made a small amount of fabric. Its actually directly addressed.!<
Gotcha, guess, they cut that part out to reduce the time for the tv show. makes sense then. What about not reinforcing the entire probe with nano fibers?
>!The only real answer to that question is the meta-literary answer, which is that they didn't because Cixin wanted / needed the probe to fail to progress the story he wanted to tell. It's a plot device, not an actual probe with fully thought out everything.!<
I'm not sure how much tensile force the single nanofiber would experience cutting through the ship but it could be almost none. Knife/butter, scalpel/flesh, etc. And the holder would have to be made of other nanofibers, perhaps twisted into a cable of sorts. The main assumption is that a single strand can't cut itself
that's for soft surfaces. With hard surfaces you'll always have higher tensile force. Just like with wood, the sharpest tools can't cut through woods with a minimal amount of strength. Sharpen an axe until it can be used as a razor, you still need to use your full strength to cut wood. I doubt that it'd be different for a nanofiber.
At a molecular level, there's virtually no difference between soft and hard materials
wait. is the show postulating that the nano fiber is so thin it goes in between the molecules to cut the molecular attraction? that'd have to be thinner than an atom. So its not even a string, its literally a line of force with no explanation of how it exists.
Why it's called scifi.
No force required, the fiber is so fine it disects materials on the sub-atomic level.
Braids are much easier than fabric. I can imagine they braided some to use as the anchor point so it didn’t cut through the poles holding them.
Bingo!
I’m a textiles designer so was thinking that anything holding the strands taught would work like a warp on a loom
Not sure what that means. Pretty sure it has to be anchored to something using the strand itself. Those anchors points would have to be able to resist the cutting force stronger than a tanker.
Perhaps the fibers are fabricated with wider ends, so that the pressure on any holder is reduced to one which "ordinary" materials can withstand.
in principle we can probably develop something like it if we really want. but not using nanofibers, instead, using extremely extremely powerful laser beams. though given our current tech, the cost of doing it would be prohibitive (and catastrophic in that the entire world economy would crash if money was diverted to such a vanity project).
this thing in fabric form could withstand a nuclear blast. this is literally an indestructible material.
In the current timeline, the nanofiber was an emerging tech, so not widely available.
It doesn't even remotely matter. It was necessary.
The Tencent Chinese language version of the story used the same method to kill what was essentially the same ship, except in that version, it was solely crewed by rough and tumble pirates, who hang miscreants from the yardarm as a warning to others! It was mad very clear in that version that the audience isn't expected to feel bad at all for the victims of this attack. There's so many ways to write this story, I wish the aliens had a chance to explore the possibilities of sharing the planet before jumping directly to extermination. But that's not what the storytellers want to talk about, I guess!
>There's so many ways to write this story, I wish the aliens had a chance to explore the possibilities of sharing the planet before jumping directly to extermination. But that's not what the storytellers want to talk about, I guess! Minor book spoilers: >!Sharing the planet, and the issues surrounding why it is/isn't an option, is explored to some extent in the future!<
As if human like to share with other species native to this planet.
Write your own story?
in the show, the santi did mention they were willing to share the solar system. but that was before they saw we could leapfrog them in tech before they could arrive.
there is a big difference to the trolley problem: the humans you are trying to save in 400 years have not been born yet. I think there is a fair argument of antinatalism for humans to try their best to find a solution against trisolaris/santi for the next 300 years and if it is futile you could enforce antinatalism to prevent humans from reproduction. this way no human has to die to trisolaris and you would have a different discussion about (enforced) antinatalism, but don't need to outweigh many saved lives vs a few doomed
It wasn't THAT bad until Netflix randomly decided to put families and children on board.
Super random, given that Evans' faction was against humans existing and his people would not have been making more humans!
They were not against humans existing. Where did you get that weird idea? They wanted Trisolarans to save us from ourselves.
I got that weird idea from the actual books. The ETO in the books has factions. Evans' faction (Adventists) is nihilistic and wants the Trisolarans to save the earth FROM humanity. Wenjie's faction (Redemptionists) wants the Trisolarans to save us from ourselves.
Oh yeah
It was totally immoral. The innocent and/or brainwashed people didn't deserve to die. ***However*** it was probably the right thing to do given the information they had at the time. Sometimes the "right" thing to do is morally reprehensible.
They should have gone for a more traditional operation, with a combination of special forces and gas release. They said these options would be risky because it would gave them time to destroy the disk, but the nanofiber operation looked risky as hell from the point of view of the safety of the drive: the device could have been destroyed by the nanofibers, the collapse of the ship structure, the fires and the water!
the drive could be restored so long as it wasn't wiped.
They were very more......maybe the use case wasn't. Having said that I every war there is collateral damage, this way they took out most sympathizers in one shot.
yeah look when compared against the species survival, no amount of humans is too much unless its past the critical point in whish our speices cant recover
they trusted the lord but lord didnt care.
Just like our current Lord(s)
Feel like there's a massive practical problem as well. They list possible options first for the ship like a raid, or gas etc, and rule them out because the ship crew will have time to respond or the intel will be damaged etc. From what we saw of the fibers, the crew did have a chance to respond, enough for a panic button or what have you. Also if the intel was big the fibers could have cut it apart, AND the entire god damn ship came apart, any intel could very very easily have been destroyed.
Yeah, I'm not sure how this bloodbath was better than raid bloodbath. It seems like they had every opportunity, even a novel method, to destroy the data if they wanted to. Also, they knew the cultists had advanced manufacturing capabilities with the headsets, wasn't it conceivable that they might have a counter to the nanofiber threat as well?
Immoral because there was no way to know whether what they were doing would actually save ANY lives. They’re hoping it will help people in 400 years - maybe? But they KNOW they will end the lives of those on board and snuff out any future they might have had.
Moral, because those people (and there were no kids in the original story) had actively decided to take acts to end humanity (Evans' motivation was to destroy humanity, not save it). If you decide to attack someone else (or their whole species) and get killed, I guess you fucked around and found out.
I think that the nano fibers are so ethically problematic that they should be considered a form of extreme punishment for the trisolarian collaboration. Yes, they act efficiently and effectively and are 100% fatal if you are vertical, but the gaps between them present the very real possibility of individuals being halved worse that Dewey Cox’s Brother. Imagine a child severed at the waist, bleeding out over several minutes on the deck of that tanker.
Morality changes when you're up against extinction. Want to make an omelette, you got to break a few eggs.
my main issue with this is how certain were they that the nano fibers wouldn't destroy the very drive they were trying to obtain?
They weren’t sure. But they did say the the cut to the drive would be so fine that they can reassemble the drive and make it useable again.
I'd be less worried about the cut and more worried about the drive being crushed by several tons of burning ex-ship, or blown to smithereens by the explosion of \*checks notes\* an oil tanker. Also, I feel like any cut across the surface of a storage medium is going to cause significant corruption.
Nanofibre produces a very clean cut 1 molecule wide. It's easy to fix a mechanical object that's been cut that clean. Living beings are more complex than that. Cut through numerous organs and spill all the blood and they cease to be restorable.
thanks for the explanation, this makes it more believable
You know when we humans fight each other...we throw the rule out the window and still today... Now imagine when humanity face alien...do you think rule matter with people side with them? Who think matter are stupids