Chapter 41 Trisolaris's Knowledge Inheritance_1

Supreme Leader: "The cunning of mankind increasingly reveals its power, although all their schemes pose no threat to us.

Yet we are constantly changing our plans to counter their schemes, depleting our limited resources in the process.

If they continue to devise more plans that deplete our resources, we will be at a disadvantage.

We are always being led by them, which is unacceptable. Strategy Governor, you must intensify your study of strategy."

Strategy Governor: "Supreme Leader, Lin Sen hasn't actually changed anything significant on a strategic level—between Trisolaris and Earth in war, humans nearly have no chance of winning.

Additionally, there is something I need to report to the Supreme Leader."

Supreme Leader: "What is it?"

Strategy Governor: "Supreme Leader, we have studied a great deal of Earth's knowledge and culture, gaining a profound understanding of strategy. We used to think that strategy was about conveying wrong information to others, leading them to make incorrect decisions—we can do this too, albeit crudely.

Now, we understand this is not the case. I think it's necessary to study their semiotics, or what is called linguistics.

We can use computers to convert their symbolic information into a form we understand, and it's quite accurate.

But it's precisely because of this that our understanding of strategy becomes even more blurred. Earthlings can abstract a wealth of information into a few symbols, and I believe our computers also cannot fully decrypt them.

The most representative example is their poetry, which contains countless encryption systems. If we just look at the computer-interpreted information, we cannot understand why they are so obsessed with it. The truth is, it seems we cannot completely decipher these.

The most critical reason is that we convey information almost entirely in complete mental images, which we do not need to reinterpret. Once we receive these mental images, we can even build new thoughts directly upon them.

Earthlings are different. They need to reinterpret all the knowledge they receive and then integrate it with their existing knowledge, storing it in their brains. This gives them a rich imagination.

They even need to learn poetry from a young age to enhance their imagination, and they have an advantage in strategy that is unmatched by us."

Supreme Leader: "We are aware of this. What do you suggest? Why do I feel you are hiding something from me?"

Strategy Governor: "Supreme Leader, I have already put on the Brainwave Blocker, and I have intentionally hidden some thoughts from the Supreme Leader."

Supreme Leader: "Good, you are the fastest learner in concealment. Share your suggestion."

Strategy Governor: "I suggest that from now on, both the Sophon Governor Department and the Strategy Governor Department will transmit information, not only using the Brainwave Blocker but also encrypting it using Earth's languages. Chinese is the most complex of Earth's languages; I suggest using this language."

Supreme Leader: "Is it necessary? Earth's language-capable computers can also translate their language symbols quite well. Doing this would also slow down the efficiency of information communication."

Strategy Governor: "It will reduce efficiency, yes, but as we progress into the Interstellar Era, efficiency may no longer be as important to us.

Intelligent computers translate Earth's languages into familiar mental images for us, making it easy for us to understand what Earthlings mean, but the essence of this translation is a logical mapping based on the match between human thought and our mathematical model of thought."

Whether there are discrepancies, we cannot know, and the computer can only calculate and tell us the accuracy of the translation based on the model. But even so, we have no way to distinguish whether this translation is accurate, which is why many human behaviors remain incomprehensible to us.

We are deeply fearful of the human "wallfacer" project; we even risk reaching out to the ETO again to have them breach it for us. The main issue is that we lack the mental models of humans, their imagination. We can only mechanically calculate the possibilities behind their every move.

Therefore, to enhance our imagination, we need to get accustomed to human ways of thinking.

The first step is to communicate directly using Earth's written symbols. We translate our thoughts into Earth's characters, convey them to others, and others try to understand the meaning expressed by the text without using computers.

We can manage this; translation is not very difficult for us. According to human understanding, each of us is like a small computer, more akin to the silicon-based lifeforms that Earthlings imagine - silicon-based lifeforms built from the bodies of carbon-based beings.

I believe this method can also speed up the pace of our technological development. It puzzles me why Earthlings have such low communication efficiency, yet their technological development is so rapid - I believe it's because they are forced to learn continuously.

Earth's children do not directly inherit their parents' wisdom; instead, from birth, they begin learning by imitation and require teachers' guidance during their childhood. With every step of their learning, Earth's children ponder carefully, the new individuals differ in their understanding from their ancestors, appropriate knowledge is retained, inappropriate discarded.

Humans even learn while they communicate, despite frequent inaccuracies in the information exchanged, necessitating that they learn to discern correctly, thereby generating a plethora of inspiration along the way.

In our case, communication rarely produces any surplus value because our information exchange is flawless.

If we view humanity as a whole, their collective knowledge is pitifully small, but it is exactly what the civilization currently needs. Human civilization updates its knowledge through learning and forgetting at a rate thousands of times faster than ours; this is their greatest advantage.

We once thought that transparent thought was our greatest edge, that the efficiency of their organ vibrations and sound waves was too low, while our thought speed is also hundreds of times faster than that of Earthlings. But in reality, we're no match for them in strategy; during our initial communications, we inadvertently leaked too much information.

Our children directly inherit their parents' knowledge, void of the need for extensive learning - this was once our advantage. But now, perhaps the inefficient learning mode of humans is actually the best.

In order for Trisolaran civilization to advance further, we must not only learn strategy but also become rich in imagination, we can start by encrypting with language."

Lin Sen: "Your research is very necessary. The total knowledge of Earth's civilization is quite limited, and even the knowledge that each individual learns is sparse. But when different people occupy different positions, their knowledge can complement each other, and they can also forget much of the useless information.

Their ability to embrace new things is far greater than ours, and although there are many obstinate humans, their thoughts are unlikely to be accepted by the new generation, and so the metabolism of civilization's knowledge is easily accomplished.

We, on the other hand, cannot do this. When we transmit knowledge, Trisolaran parents merge their bodies and randomly pass on most of their knowledge to their offspring.

Our resources must not be wasted; the newly born offspring are nurtured within their parents' merged bodies, struggling to absorb all the nutrients from their parents' bodies, including memories, until their parents are completely dead. The powerful Trisolarans emerge from those who manage to usurp and absorb most of their parents' nutrients and memories.

This means we retain most of our parents' memories. The true 'metabolism' of our civilization is probably only achievable in the cycle of civilization, and even then, we still retain a small portion of memories from a previous civilization.

Earth has a subject called history, which we do not possess. To us, history seems to be akin to memory, albeit a bit blurred.

Lacking in imagination and due to our mode of knowledge inheritance, we have an unparalleled advantage when facing disasters, yet our technological development moves at a glacial pace.

Just as an Earth saying goes, "Knowledge inheritance is both the maker and breaker."