# The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu



## Vertigo (Nov 8, 2016)

I have seen some mixed reviews of The Three Body Problem but I simply loved it in so many ways. It is a first contact book with a major twist and I don’t mean an ending with a twist but rather a major twist on the normal first contact trope and it asks the question do we really want any other civilisations out there to know about and be able to find us? A question that can be answered very differently depending on each person’s personal politics and beliefs.

The story begins in 1967 during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and it addresses that revolution in pretty condemning terms (the first chapter is titled “The Madness Years”); a fact I found rather surprising considering it was written as early as 2006 when I, in my probable ignorance, would have thought some of Liu’s criticisms might have verged on the dangerous. A second thread runs in the near future and has a very different feel; more prosaic where the earlier thread is slightly dreamlike, which is in itself strange in that it somehow retains that dreamlike feel even when dealing with issues closer to nightmare in nature. One of the notable aspects of the writing is this juxtaposition between the almost surreal past and the very down to earth future, particularly embodied by the cynical, chain smoking detective, Da Shi.

This is fairly hard science fiction with a significant amount of theory presented, and one of the real pleasures was how hard it was to tell quite where the line between real and speculative science lies; all felt plausible. The way the alien stellar system is introduced and explored through a “computer game” very neatly presented the potential problems of living in the orbital unpredictability of a tri-solar system; a fascinating issue that I have never previously considered. However I never felt that the science became inaccessible, though my own great fondness of hard SF may have something to do with that!

For the most part this is not a high action book and frequently has a rather more contemplative feel to it and yet it always kept me turning the pages. I’m very much looking forward to reading the next book.

5/5 stars


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## Vince W (Nov 8, 2016)

I agree completely. The Three-Body Problem was a joy to read. While some people might find it somewhat slow paced it was always engaging and extremely inventive.


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## Stewart Hotston (Nov 8, 2016)

I liked it too. I can see that it could be a little too hard for people who prefer the pace and style of a Warhammer 40K approach to sci fi. I've got the next one on the shelf and once I've finished up The Revenant I'll start that.


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## Vertigo (Nov 9, 2016)

The next one is now officially on my next shopping list.


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## Gnrevolution (Nov 9, 2016)

This is indeed a great book (actually on the last book now and it really doesn't let up, if anything it gets better!).  One argument against the book is that the characterisation is a little thin, and while this is true (IMHO) the plot and narrative wholly make up for that!


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## Gnrevolution (Nov 17, 2016)

Just finished the last book and wow did that go places!


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## Jo Zebedee (Nov 17, 2016)

I'm in the didn't like it school - I found the characterisation too limited for me to get into it and gave up a third through. But I can totally see why anyone into hard sf would love it.


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## Vertigo (Nov 18, 2016)

Jo Zebedee said:


> I'm in the didn't like it school - I found the characterisation too limited for me to get into it and gave up a third through. But I can totally see why anyone into hard sf would love it.


I wonder if part of that is how very reserved the Chinese often are. I get the impression that they are not very 'open' about their emotions, so maybe what we might see as slightly restrained characterisation is very normal in Chinese literature.


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## Jo Zebedee (Nov 18, 2016)

Vertigo said:


> I wonder if part of that is how very reserved the Chinese often are. I get the impression that they are not very 'open' about their emotions, so maybe what we might see as slightly restrained characterisation is very normal in Chinese literature.


It is possible.


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## Stewart Hotston (Nov 18, 2016)

Interesting as I found it deeply characterful but even then I was aware that I was missing quite a lot because although familiar with the cultural norms of expression, it's a passing familiarity rather than a lived one. The characters here are often what they do rather than what they feel (in that particularly modern anglo-saxon sense) which is quite in keeping with much of the more common Asian cultural norms and world view of how people are actually constituted.


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## Brian G Turner (Jun 9, 2020)

I found myself getting bored by the first third - the game element just felt like fantasy. I put the book down and didn't plan to finish. However, I needed to read some fiction to unwind with this week, and it was still near the top of my Amazon Fire carousel so thought I may as well pick it up again.

I'm very glad I did - shortly there was the reveal about what the game meant and the whole story began to click into place, and I was hooked. A refreshingly unique and original science fiction novel.


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## hitmouse (Jun 9, 2020)

A deeply satisfying trilogy. The sheer density of brilliant SF ideas is amazing. Loved it.


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## Vertigo (Jun 10, 2020)

Brian G Turner said:


> I found myself getting bored by the first third - the game element just felt like fantasy. I put the book down and didn't plan to finish. However, I needed to read some fiction to unwind with this week, and it was still near the top of my Amazon Fire carousel so thought I may as well pick it up again.
> 
> I'm very glad I did - shortly there was the reveal about what the game meant and the whole story began to click into place, and I was hooked. A refreshingly unique and original science fiction novel.





hitmouse said:


> A deeply satisfying trilogy. The sheer density of brilliant SF ideas is amazing. Loved it.


The only thing I'd say is you have to be prepared for a lot of very hard science throughout the books, which is absolutely to my taste and I loved the books, but, if you don't like very hard SF, then you'll not enjoy these and I know many who didn't; just too much science for them.


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## Boaz (Jun 10, 2020)

I'll try to make this post free from spoilers, but you never know.

I read _The Three Body Problem_ with my book club last year.  I disliked it.... not because it lacked action and not because it featured characters from a culture which I don't always understand.  I am weary of Chinese secrets of honor and vengeance.  I was disgusted by the choice the main character made.  Having only read the first book of the trilogy, I have assumed this choice represents the author's preferred method of government.  But then again, if the author really is from the PRC, either the sequels change this projected overthrow of communism or the PRC has softened quite a bit.

I've read a dozen or so books translated from Chinese.  I have many relatives in the PRC and North America.  I lived in Taiwan.  I can hold basic conversations in Mandarin.  But I'm not an expert on Chinese culture nor Chinese communism.  So some of the motivations for the main character mystified me.  The detective, on the other hand, is a hard boiled cop with a love/hate relationship with bureaucracy... and he's completely understandable and relatable.  

I was told many fables and fairy tales as bed time stories.  Some European, some Chinese.  My mother told me a story of newly married couple.  Right after the wedding, the husband was conscripted to help build the Great Wall.  When he did not return after his year's service, his wife went looking for him.  She brought food and clothes to the Wall and asked the commander where her husband was.  The commander pointed at the Wall.  The wife did not comprehend.  So the commander told her that her husband died from hard labor, malnutrition, exposure, and disease... and that just like all who died on the Wall, his bones were ground to make mortar.  Her husband stood eternally vigilant against China's foes.  I've never taken that story as an example of duty or patriotism, just the imperial utilitarian view of human life.

It's the utilitarian and fatalistic viewpoints that frustrate me.  

Speaking positively, it's nice not to have the USA as the focal point of the story and universe.

Just my two cents.


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## hitmouse (Jun 11, 2020)

Boaz said:


> I'll try to make this post free from spoilers, but you never know.
> 
> I read _The Three Body Problem_ with my book club last year.  I disliked it.... not because it lacked action and not because it featured characters from a culture which I don't always understand.  I am weary of Chinese secrets of honor and vengeance.  I was disgusted by the choice the main character made.  Having only read the first book of the trilogy, I have assumed this choice represents the author's preferred method of government.  But then again, if the author really is from the PRC, either the sequels change this projected overthrow of communism or the PRC has softened quite a bit.
> 
> ...


It is possible that you are overthinking this. The main character is baffling to everyone until the end. I would suggest reading books 2 & 3 and then reassessing your conclusions.


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## Boaz (Jun 12, 2020)

hitmouse said:


> It is possible that you are overthinking this.


Have you been talking to my ex?  Are you my ex?

I disliked the first Joe Abercrombie book I read.... now I love his books.


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## Brian G Turner (Jun 12, 2020)

One quibble about the plot of _The Three Body Problem_ I did notice:



Spoiler



In the story, I was given the impression that the 3 suns of Trisolaris were effectively equal in effect and intensity. However, Alpha Centauri is a binary star system, with a red dwarf (Proxima Centauri) in a _very _distant orbit around them (anywhere between 4,000-13,000 AU). I struggle to imagine Proxima having any significant effect on the planet, and even if the planet were thrown out toward it, I would have thought the change from yellow suns to a small red sun would have been significant - but I don't recall any mention of that.

I was also left surprised that a planet experiencing such extreme conditions would be stable enough to support any civilization, left alone such an advanced one.


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## Vertigo (Jun 12, 2020)

Brian G Turner said:


> One quibble about the plot of _The Three Body Problem_ I did notice:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I can't comment on the orbital mechanics side of things due to lack of detailed memory of that aspect of the books. The incidence of intelligent life throughout the galaxy/universe is looked at much more in the following books. 



Spoiler: Slight spoiler for the following books in the series



However One of the main premises of the books is that intelligent life is actually quite abundant in the galaxy but amenable real estate for that life is rather less so. So I guess the argument here is that if life can get a hold it will and if it does then eventually intelligent life will follow.


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## Christine Wheelwright (Dec 31, 2022)

I just finished reading The Three Body Problem (yes, I know, I'm a little late to the game).  I thought the book was poorly written in a number of ways.  The author tends to explicitly tell the reader what s/he should be thinking, rather than allowing discovery.  Yes, 'show-don't-tell' is a controversial and flawed mantra, but Liu Cixin would do well to give it some thought at least.  I'm not afraid of the 'hard' aspects of science fiction, being a scientist myself (although not a theoretical physicist), but I did find some of the detail hard to swallow.  Long explanations are fine if they are plausible, but become more tedious when highly speculative.

Liu Cixin seems interested in the question of whether an alien intelligence would be hostile or friendly.  This is something that interests me and which I have explored in my own work.  He takes a pessimistic view in the novel, and further emphasizes this in the postscript.  Personally, I'm more open to the view that only a benevolent, civilized, cooperative, enlightened and 'humane' species can thrive and form a highly advanced community (socially and technologically).  If, when we came down from the trees, we had only been driven by aggression then it would have been impossible to develop as a society.  Of course, self interest remains a key driver of human behavior and society has developed constructs to align selfishness with benefits to the whole (law and order, capitalism, democracy, maybe religion etc).  So the question remains, must a very highly advanced society necessarily be good (moral, ethical, loving and humanitarian) or can it be evil?  I would love to have this debate with Liu Cixin.  He may point out historical missteps, many of which are shockingly recent (war, slavery, the Cultural Revolution in China, of course) but I would argue there is an underlying trend in the right direction.  Mankind continues to make mistakes.  I think that in the future we will shake our heads in disbelief at the abuse and consumption of animals, and at our current lethargy in dealing with the climate crisis.  It is always possible we may revert to a harder, harsher, more self-interested, belligerent state of existence.  But my point is that, if this happens, we would similarly _revert or stagnate as a technological species_.  Advancement is linked to education, understanding, enlightenment, love and cooperation.  If we turn our back on those qualities then we also turn our back on progress.

I've struggled to explain myself in a few short words,  but it is my belief that to develop to a state of great technological advancement (as the Trisolarans have done in The Three Body Problem) it would not be natural to be so callous towards another intelligent species.  I could be wrong of course.

Overall a disappointing book with dull prose (even allowing for the translation) and poor character development (as many others have pointed out).


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## Venusian Broon (Dec 31, 2022)

Christine Wheelwright said:


> I just finished reading The Three Body Problem (yes, I know, I'm a little late to the game).  I thought the book was poorly written in a number of ways.  The author tends to explicitly tell the reader what s/he should be thinking, rather than allowing discovery.  Yes, 'show-don't-tell' is a controversial and flawed mantra, but Liu Cixin would do well to give it some thought at least.  I'm not afraid of the 'hard' aspects of science fiction, being a scientist myself (although not a theoretical physicist), but I did find some of the detail hard to swallow.  Long explanations are fine if they are plausible, but become more tedious when highly speculative.
> 
> Liu Cixin seems interested in the question of whether an alien intelligence would be hostile or friendly.  This is something that interests me and which I have explored in my own work.  He takes a pessimistic view in the novel, and further emphasizes this in the postscript.  Personally, I'm more open to the view that only a benevolent, civilized, cooperative, enlightened and 'humane' species can thrive and form a highly advanced community (socially and technologically).  If, when we came down from the trees, we had only been driven by aggression then it would have been impossible to develop as a society.  Of course, self interest remains a key driver of human behavior and society has developed constructs to align selfishness with benefits to the whole (law and order, capitalism, democracy, maybe religion etc).  So the question remains, must a very highly advanced society necessarily be good (moral, ethical, loving and humanitarian) or can it be evil?  I would love to have this debate with Liu Cixin.  He may point out historical missteps, many of which are shockingly recent (war, slavery, the Cultural Revolution in China, of course) but I would argue there is an underlying trend in the right direction.  Mankind continues to make mistakes.  I think that in the future we will shake our heads in disbelief at the abuse and consumption of animals, and at our current lethargy in dealing with the climate crisis.  It is always possible we may revert to a harder, harsher, more self-interested, belligerent state of existence.  But my point is that, if this happens, we would similarly _revert or stagnate as a technological species_.  Advancement is linked to education, understanding, enlightenment, love and cooperation.  If we turn our back on those qualities then we also turn our back on progress.
> 
> ...


I agree with you Christine, with regards to the quality of the book and I really didn't see what all the hoo-ha was about. I think a little part of the problem is the translation, another is that I think that it was written at first for a non-western audience and thus the style probably reflects Chinese tastes more and this probably threw me off a little. 

But as a reader, I found a lot of very purple prose that really stood out and the science was crowbarred in, in mostly indigestible chunks. Not that I didn't understand it, it was just pretty dull. Overall it just didn't work for me. 

From my meanderings on Youtube, I do find the whole 'Dark Forest' hypothesis very interesting and the three body problem series goes to some fascinating places - I got more enjoyment watching _Quinn's Ideas _channel explaining the series - but I have no urge to read any more of them at the moment. 

Again late to the ball I have the urge to find and read Adrian Tchaikovsky's _Children of Time. _Although I should really get through more of my 'To Read' pile....


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## Parson (Jan 1, 2023)

@Christine Wheelwright .... I was listening to a podcast last week and one of the main thoughts agrees with what I hear you saying. I don't remember the details well, but the idea that was being presented was that rather than looking at evolution as a "survival of the fittest" it would be perhaps more correct to look at it as "survival of the friendliest." The two examples that were mentioned were humans, where without "friends" humans do not thrive and probably don't survive over any measurable period and the other example was the wolf. It was the friendliest wolves who built their relationship with humans and are one of the most wide spread and largest numbered large species on the planet, while their wild cousins struggle in spite of their many predatory advantages.


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## Fiberglass Cyborg (Jan 1, 2023)

I read the trilogy a few years ago. My reaction in short "Fantastic! but depressing. But fantastic! but depressing." Still haven't felt up to re-reading them.



Brian G Turner said:


> One quibble about the plot of _The Three Body Problem_ I did notice:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That bothered me too - the effect seemed way too exaggerated for the real-world situation it's based on. I'd expect it to take place more gradually over thousands of years.


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## Vertigo (Jan 1, 2023)

Fiberglass Cyborg said:


> I read the trilogy a few years ago. My reaction in short "Fantastic! but depressing. But fantastic! but depressing." Still haven't felt up to re-reading them.
> 
> 
> That bothered me too - the effect seemed way too exaggerated for the real-world situation it's based on. I'd expect it to take place more gradually over thousands of years.


I wouldn't say that aspect bothered me particularly. The book goes into some depth exploring how it would work and there is the well known unpredictability of the three body problem. So I think it would be hard to predict effects. My impression was that the extremes happened quite rarely when you either got equal effect from all stars resulting in overheating and the opposite effect when away from all of them. Regarding the time frames; I had the impression they were meant to be huge. Civilisations rose got destroyed, rose again, and got destroyed again, many times before they managed to find a way to kick start the next civilisation. So my impression was that the cycles were indeed over thousands of years. The game was just that a game to illustrate their history rather than being a literal representation of it.

I loved the books and I'm afraid I support the pessimistic view. If life is common out there then it's inevitable that it's very common and if travel between star systems became practical then new real estate would be at a premium and the sensible civilisation would do well to keep its head down! Evolution might favour cooperation but based on the one and only example of technological civilisation that we know of civilisations are likely to be significantly more aggressively territorial and acquisitive than the individuals that make them up.

I would add that I can fully understand how some people will dislike the writing style. I've read a few translated Chinese book and find they approach fictional narration quite differently to us. Strangely, maybe, I haven't found this quite so much with translated Japanese authors, though culturally they are also very different to what we are used to in the West.


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## Christine Wheelwright (Jan 1, 2023)

Fiberglass Cyborg said:


> I read the trilogy a few years ago. My reaction in short "Fantastic! but depressing. But fantastic! but depressing." Still haven't felt up to re-reading them.
> 
> 
> That bothered me too - the effect seemed way too exaggerated for the real-world situation it's based on. I'd expect it to take place more gradually over thousands of years.


Yes, the "three body problem" was given massive exposure in the novel (even providing the title).  But really it should have been something of a sideshow.  I wondered if it was to be used as an extreme motivation for a technically advanced civilization taking the aggressive step of attacking a neighbor.  But this was never really examined in depth (as it should have been).  The pacifist Trisolaran foot soldier trying to warn Earth was a nice touch, but ultimately it wasn't pursued as a key topic.  Anyway, the use of a deadly asteroid as a plot development might have made more sense than an inhospitable and unstable world (solving @Brian G Turner 's quibble).  But I guess the author has an interest in the three body problem and wanted it in his book.  I agree that the problem relates more to the motion of the suns than to the conditions on a planet orbiting one of them (which is even more speculative).


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## Christine Wheelwright (Jan 1, 2023)

Vertigo said:


> Evolution might favour cooperation but based on the one and only example of technological civilisation that we know of civilisations are likely to be significantly more aggressively territorial and acquisitive than the individuals that make them up.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I tend to disagree with @Vertigo and I think @Parson 's podcast is on the right track.  As our society becomes more educated, cooperative and enlightened, it also becomes more civilized, more responsible, more ethical.  It is always a work in progress though.  Two hundred years ago we exhibited patterns of behavior that would be abhorred now.  And I think in another two hundred years there will be widespread disgust at practices we consider acceptable at present.  I mentioned pollution earlier, and perhaps I might add factory farming of animals.  It is a guessing game we can all play.

So, the question is; can a society advanced enough to have mastered interstellar travel be so callous as to exterminate a neighboring intelligent species?  Surely they would be better than that (their technological development would depend upon it).

This is speculation of course.  An alien species might be so different from us that it is somehow possible for them to develop without the moral base that I describe (which might be uniquely human).  The question might be rephrased; are love and empathy universal concepts (or are they meaningful only on Earth).

The question of whether we should announce ourselves to the Universe is still very valid.  It has to be examined on a risk vs return basis.

I should also emphasize that I see this as an interesting thought exercise rather than a practical question.  I don't for one moment think there is an alien civilization in a neighboring star system.  That is an interesting discussion in its own right.


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## AllanR (Jan 1, 2023)

Christine Wheelwright said:


> announce ourselves to the Universe


I suspect that any being that has the ability to travel to our solar system doesn't require an announcement to know we are here.


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## Venusian Broon (Jan 1, 2023)

Vertigo said:


> I loved the books and I'm afraid I support the pessimistic view. If life is common out there then it's inevitable that it's very common and if travel between star systems became practical then new real estate would be at a premium and the sensible civilisation would do well to keep its head down! Evolution might favour cooperation but based on the one and only example of technological civilisation that we know of civilisations are likely to be significantly more aggressively territorial and acquisitive than the individuals that make them up.



I disagree with the real estate argument. There is so much material out there to be constructing Dyson swarms around practically every star. You could increase the amount of liveable space around a star to billions the land area of Earth. (Sure it would take some time to build all your O'Neil Cylinders and other megastructure objects, but once you've figured out the first ones, and sort out your energy sources, it could grow exponentially from there.)

I think the problem arises if interstellar travel is possible. Currently for us the idea of even getting a couple of people to the next star is very daunting. We just don't have good engines to make the journey in a 'reasonable' length of time. Will we have a civilisation long enough for us to actually develop all the tech required?  

If it does turn out that interstellar travel can be eventually constructed so that sentient beings would want to make the journey then other risks are there and I think one could be pessimistic. Expecting the universe to be a jolly happy club of federated planets, or like the Culture...I mean one can hope for that, but there is no reason to expect that another intelligent civilisation would even treat us as equals, adhere to our morals, or even see intelligence present here. They could be so alien, older and more developed than us, that they view us, the same way we view ants. Maybe they'd treat us like vermin and wipe us out before we got out of our home system and polluted the rest of the galaxy, with the same feeling we have when we get rid of an ant nest that is bothering us?


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## Vertigo (Jan 2, 2023)

AllanR said:


> I suspect that any being that has the ability to travel to our solar system doesn't require an announcement to know we are here.


Actually most of the radio signals we have been scattering around for the last century are pretty much all omnidirectional and as such fall off in power a lot more rapidly than most people seem to realise. Almost all of our signals will be pretty much indistinguishable from the background radiation well before they've reached even the nearest star. Military radar has much greater range but that, of course, is not omnidirectional so would require someone to be looking in just the right direction at the moment a radar pulse happens to reach them.

In other words it's about as likely for any other civilisations out there to have detected us as it is for our SETI project to have detected them.


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## AllanR (Jan 2, 2023)

Vertigo said:


> radio signals


I doubt they will need anything like this.
There is a massive tech jump needed in numerous areas for us to even consider going to the closest star, let alone one much much further. Anything that can reach us would also need those tech jumps. With that comes, almost certainly, sensors that would give the ability to have intricatlly mapped their neighbourhood in a large radius of LY from their home. They would be able to read hundred amd hundred of tell tail signs from us to determine there is a tech civ here.

In other words, their SETI program would also have taken equivalent tech jumps as their rocket program.


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## Christine Wheelwright (Jan 2, 2023)

Vertigo said:


> Actually most of the radio signals we have been scattering around for the last century are pretty much all omnidirectional and as such fall off in power a lot more rapidly than most people seem to realise. Almost all of our signals will be pretty much indistinguishable from the background radiation well before they've reached even the nearest star. Military radar has much greater range but that, of course, is not omnidirectional so would require someone to be looking in just the right direction at the moment a radar pulse happens to reach them.
> 
> In other words it's about as likely for any other civilisations out there to have detected us as it is for our SETI project to have detected them.



Indeed.  It has been estimated (based on observations of star systems close to us) that there may be about 300 million 'habitable' planets in our galaxy.  Which sounds like a lot. But the probability of detecting a radio signal from any of them is incredibly low.  This is partly because, as you say, the signal would be very weak.  But also consider the following:  The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, but has only been home to a species capable of sending electromagnetic signals into space for about 100.  In a few hundred more we will either transcend the use of radio, or revert to pre-industrial levels due to our own stupidity.  Alien civilizations may follow a similar pattern, which could also explain why we don't see a galaxy teeming with life, even with 300 million potential home worlds.  The odds of us searching at the right point in time are incredibly low.


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## Vertigo (Jan 2, 2023)

Christine Wheelwright said:


> Indeed.  It has been estimated (based on observations of star systems close to us) that there may be about 300 million 'habitable' planets in our galaxy.  Which sounds like a lot. But the probability of detecting a radio signal from any of them is incredibly low.  This is partly because, as you say, the signal would be very weak.  But also consider the following:  The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, but has only been home to a species capable of sending electromagnetic signals into space for about 100.  In a few hundred more we will either transcend the use of radio, or revert to pre-industrial levels due to our own stupidity.  Alien civilizations may follow a similar pattern, which could also explain why we don't see a galaxy teeming with life, even with 300 million potential home worlds.  The odds of us searching at the right point in time are incredibly low.


I tend to be with you on both those possibilities. I've never really considered the Fermi 'Paradox' to be much of a paradox; I can think of numerous reasons for the lack of evidence of other life.


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## Parson (Jan 3, 2023)

Indeed, the Femi Paradox only becomes problematic if there is something like a jump drive or warp technology. Any sub-light movement between stars probably makes for decades if not centuries from one star to a near-by star. That amount of time makes touching of any significant fraction of available planets problematic.


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## Fiberglass Cyborg (Jan 3, 2023)

I could be wrong, but the Fermi paradox has never made sense to me intuitively. "Why haven't we seen them?" Well, why _would_ we have seen them? The assumption seems to be that one civilisation or another will inevitably end up saturating the Galaxy with Von Neumann probes. But only a finite and specific number of spacefaring civilisations can have arisen in the history of the Galaxy so far. And there are any number of possible reasons why none of those individual civilisations have bothered to do such a thing yet. I mean, _we're_ a spacefaring civilisation, but we're not exactly going all out with it.

I don't know if Stephen Jay Gould ever weighed in on the Fermi Paradox, but he argued strongly for the role of contingency in history and evolution. Not everything is driven by grand overarching trends: the detailed facts on the ground have effects that cannot be ignored. Specific alien civilisations will have their own priorities, physical needs, ethical beliefs, practical considerations, and motivations. I find it very plausible that none of them have yet had reason to attract our attention.


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