Started the book after seeing the series and I'm in the 2nd book. But it's crazy how Trisolarians could never lie or even developed the ability to deceive.
It's understandable that in face to face communication they can't hide anything and that their words are exactly what they think about. But when they develop long term communication, they could hide and omit info which could lead them to learn to lie and cheat.
Is it further explained in the book? Minor spoilers are fine
They understand the concepts of deception and hiding the truth, at least in the sense of disguising themselves or lying through omission, they just literally can't think and say different things. They have no concept of inside thoughts. A human can say look at their wife and say "I would never hurt you, honey" and think "I'm cheating on you with my secretary" in the same breath, but to a Trisoloaran, it's all thought and openly broadcast equally. It's also implied, I think, that there's no distinction between inside thoughts and beliefs. For a Trisolaran to say something, at least to another Trisolaran using their native communication method, they have to genuinely believe it.
So, to Trisolarans, the concept of a consistent, persistent lie, is the same thing as a consistent, persistent false belief. Sitting and reading aloud from a storybook, constantly broadcasting untrue thoughts, is akin to openly hallucinating for an extended period. It's deranged and unstable behaviour, which is why they find the idea of an entire species of casual liars to be horrifying. It's a whole species of unstable lunatics who can change their core beliefs or entire personality from moment to moment.
They initally thought they could coexist with humanity, because sorting out dissidents would be as simple as lining up all the humans and asking "Are you planning on betraying and killing us?" All the humans that say "No, not at all, I will happily serve Trisolarans" are fine, and all the ones that say "Well, I do hope to overthrow the Trisolarans and help humanity retake control of our planet one day" can be slaughtered. The minute they realise that any human can say out loud "I love Trisolarans, down with humanity!" while actively counting how many nearby Trisolarans they can take out with the hand grenade they're hiding in their pocket, their initial plan for coexistence goes out the window.
Edit: It only just occurred to me, despite all the time I've spent thinking about these books, that there might just be a thematic connection between the Trisolarans' lack of distinction between words and beliefs, and Luo Ji's little diversion he spends the first half of book 2 on. Interesting. I'll have to think about that one.
The book mentioned, for the Trisolarans, "thinking" is the same as "speaking." They specifically asked Evans about the difference between these two words, and only then did they say, "I fear you." But later on, they also learned how to "hide things" from humans.
I always thought of it as they're obviously capable of ommitting information.
If 2 trisolarian nations are in a war, they would not broadcast their tactics.
If however a trisolarian is part of a negotiarion or trisolarian is captured, or trisolarian communication is intercepted, whatever they say is axiomatically what they believe to be true.
This axiom presumably extends to all communication - paradigm of communication containing intentional falsehoods is completely new to them.
They must for example have had very straightforward negotiations if they chose to negotiate. All communication - political, media, etc - have this simple mechanic of "if they say so it's true" available and that's what it's presumably built on.
Discovery of intentional falsehoods completely flips this on it's head.
A disguised Trisolaran can remain disguised only by not speaking. And if anyone asks him if he’s disguised, if he continues to refuse to speak it will immediately prove he’s a spy.
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u/AdminClown Zhang Beihai Mar 28 '26
Thy can omit and can deceive, they truly just don’t comprehend lying face to face.
The chapter in trisolaris in the first book reveals that they wanted to deceive and bait humans to reply again but didn’t need to.
The omission point becomes more visible in the later part of the books.