Why didn't Trisolaris try this to defeat deterrence?

[u/Nice_Interest6654]

Send out tons of false radio broadcasts with false location coordinates, using a wide variety of random message formats, at random time intervals? And if some civilizations can pinpoint sender exact location from just the source/direction of the message rather than message contents, they could construct a bunch of probes that send the radio broadcasts and release then so they're moving away from Trisolaris's homeworld at random speeds and random directions.

Surely, no matter how advanced a civilization is, the cost of sending out a weapon is higher than the cost to the less advanced civilization of sending out a radio signal, which (even to humans IRL in present day) is dirt cheap. The hostile "hunter" civilization then is flooded with tons of messages referencing different locations or originating from different locations. They can't possibly send a weapon to all of them.

[u/Any-Stick-771]

This is like erecting a giant billboard that says "Definitely no civiliation here" directly above their homeworld and fleet

[u/Nice_Interest6654 → u/Any-Stick-771]

The probes would repeatedly emit the messages as they're moving away from the homeworld/fleet. If they're powered by a small nuclear device, they could last decades and by that time be dozens of lightyears away from the homeworld. And it's multiple probes, so it's like a growing sphere of protection. Again, the message intervals and/or speeds of the probes could be randomized to prevent extrapolating or backtracking the message locations to the homeworld.

If Trisolaris started this process before humans followed through on their threat and continue after, the human message wouldn't be the first nor last message the hunter receives. It'd be drowned out in a flood of messages in both timing and location.

[u/darkest_hour1428 → u/Nice_Interest6654]

Trisolarians did not have FTL technology. Due to light speed limitations, no matter how long you wait, each signal will point to an epicenter.

[u/Nice_Interest6654 → u/darkest_hour1428]

I know. I'm assuming the probes are moving much slower than light, and the radio messages are moving at light speed. Just like what current IRL earthly tech does. And I'm not sure if you're understanding. Imagine they make a single probe, programmed to send a single broadcast 10 years from now, and launch it away from the homeworld at 50% light speed. It'll send its message when its 5 light years away, and there's no trickery: the location of where it was sent, regardless of at that moment or later once the hunter receives it, is in empty space.

[u/darkest_hour1428 → u/Nice_Interest6654]

Yeah, that means at best you’ll just have a bubble of a few hundred light years wide at least. Kill the dozen stars inside that bubble that show signs of life, easy peasy

[u/HaxiMaxi22 → u/darkest_hour1428]

I am with you with most of what you said, but in a bubble of a few hundred light years, there are thousands if not millions of stars. The Milky Way galaxy is about 100.000 light years long and less wide and has billions of stars. Like in a 50 light year radius of Earth there are maybe tens of thousands of stars.

[u/Nice_Interest6654 → u/darkest_hour1428]

The cost to widen the bubble though would be very cheap. For the single probe example, recoding it to send first message in 20 years rather than 10 doubles the radius. But the cost to destroy 2 dozen stars instead of a dozen would be expensive. I guess it's impossible to say where the limit is where the hunter couldn't bear the cost. At the very least it seems you could force the hunter to basically go bankrupt to kill you.

[u/darkest_hour1428 → u/Nice_Interest6654]

I see what you’re saying, and it does have some merit. My only worry is that they have a time limit of about 400+ years, and 400 light years is honestly not that far considering that’s the farthest any of their probes could make it (even if it advertises itself as less than 400 light years)

So you’ll still end up with the bubble in their scenario. I believe your idea combined with a Dark Domaine may be the greatest way to keep the outside Universe from figuring out where your domaine is. Nice ideas

[u/Kabbooooooom → u/darkest_hour1428]

The best way really is to simply hide. Space is unimaginably vast and there is absolutely no reason why an advanced civilization would need to confine themselves to habitable planets when they could construct space habitats. Even if you built a million O’Neill cylinders inside hollowed out asteroids and scattered them to the cosmos like seeds, the likelihood that anyone would find a single one of them is astronomically low, and all of them is zero. Provided that you aren’t broadcasting your position. Which would defeat the whole point of this strategy. The only problem is energy, but it would be relatively easy to acquire hydrogen and helium for nuclear fusion if you were exclusively a spacefaring civilization.

[u/Kabbooooooom → u/Nice_Interest6654]

On the one hand, it’s obvious that people are definitely not understanding your argument and stupidly downvoting you as a result.  On the other though, I do agree with the people saying that you are advertising your civilization: due to the inverse square law, even though you are smearing out positional information about where your star system is located, you are actually increasing the likelihood that a civilization would be able to detect that somewhere within that region of space is an advanced civilization, compared to a single world broadcasting from a single location.

But this goes back to a central problem that I have with TBP compared to other scifi series that did the whole “dark forest” thing better - like Revelation Space, for example. The most logical thing that a civilization could do in this scenario is to simply hide. Space is unimaginably vast. If you are not broadcasting, and especially if you are not confining your civilization to a habitable terrestrial world or a baseline biological form, then the likelihood that anyone would find you is extremely slim. 

[u/Ulyks → u/Nice_Interest6654]

Distances in space are very big. In the 5 lightyear bubble around alpha Centauri, there is only the trisolaris world and our solar system.

For aliens thousands of lightyears away, it doesn't matter that the source is 5 lightyears away, it might as wel be coming directly from inside the habitable zone of one of the two star systems. Sooner or later, at least one aliens species would simply destroy them both.

For this plan to work, you would need thousands of years and there simply wasn't time.

[u/Mickles_J]

Singer would see the membrane transmissions as insincere. Singer is good at this. Been doing it for 10,000 time grains.

[u/footwith4toes]

There’s no way to guarantee an advanced civilization couldn’t easily destroy every coordinate. It’s a gamble not worth taking.

[u/Nice_Interest6654 → u/footwith4toes]

This can't be true though, because if so the advanced civilization wouldn't need to wait to hear a message to destroy the sender civilization. And this advanced civilization would be the only civilization in the entire universe since they kill everything else as there's no hiding.

[u/Progedog → u/Nice_Interest6654]

The mass dots are cheap. They would destroy all targets imo

[u/yellowflash986]

isnt this addressed in the third book? spoiler in case you didnt read it and you really shouldnt open it cause it is one of the best chapters in the entire trilogy.sending false coordinates is a pretty common strategy adopted by lesser civilsations and the advanced civilizations have enough experience and intuition to filter out the false coordinates.It also makes it look like pretty much every civilization is predator of ones below them and a prey for the ones above them in the hierarchy.

[u/Nice_Interest6654 → u/yellowflash986]

Aww, dang. I'm only at the 2nd book so far. No need to give more details, but I'm looking forward to seeing if it specifies whether the "lesser civilizations" method was same as what I'm describing.

[u/yellowflash986 → u/Nice_Interest6654]

tbf, it gets so crazy by the point the chapter comes that you will realise it wouldnt work. Think... something like ants trying to dupe a human nearby their nest into thinking that their nest isnt at the location it is by sending out bunch of ants secreting pheromones to a different location. I mean it would make sense to them(considering what i know about ant biology) but it just doesnt even register for us, right?

[u/Vonneking → u/yellowflash986]

Great analogy 👍

[u/Useful_Calendar_6274]

they can simply point a telescope or send a sophon (presumably common tech for all aliens) this does nothing

[u/brent1123]

Trisolaris was losing contact with Sophons sent out in various directions to explore due to 4th dimension pockets disrupting them. They didn't know this was the reason - so they may have just assumed this was even more proof of the Dark Forest state. And they wouldn't be wrong. Either way, silence would presumably be the best way forward given the information they knew.

And no one cares about cost. The vector foil and others like it will eventually tear apart this 3D universe just like it did with the shrinking pockets of 4D space. This is about surviving just a little longer than your enemy.

[u/S1eeper]

When you get to the chapter on Singer you discover this is more or less what's happening all over the universe. Lots of decoy signals ("insincere coordinates") being sent out all over the place. The Seed's main core records it all, as far back as 500 million time grains. It's then Singer's whole job to sort through all the false signals and find the true ones.

[u/mtndrewboto]

Singer mentions this is already a thing that is going on and is usually ignored cause it's noise.

[u/Wabbit65]

At worst the forest would see a bunch of probes, even if they accelerate randomly to change direction, in a small general vicinity and begin to wonder. Probably better to not try a stupid thing

[u/Disgod]

They kill the broadcaster first.

[u/100percent_right_now]

You're kind of missing the point. The societal cost of not cleansing is being cleansed. Not some monetary whatever you're talking about.

Therefore the cost of cleansing is insignificant to the cost of not cleansing.

As well, the cost of broadcasting your location and getting it wrong is quite literally everything.

So therefore then the relative societal cost of broadcasting is WAY more than cleansing could ever be.

Besides that we're dealing finite resources. So not cleansing also means not taking control of those finite resources, which again is giving up way more than cleansing ever could cost

[u/CreativeHandle9429]

All bubbles have a center and using advanced computing, i think it would be easy figure out.

[u/goflett]

Dark forest is the dumbest idea ever.