Planetary Museum

"Game meeting?" After listening to the meaning conveyed by the search and rescue team, Wu Xiaoqing almost thought that there was something wrong with his ears, "Like a video game?"

"Almost, I have had contact with the negotiating officials of the other party. Their game is more of a complete simulation... a technology based on brain-computer integration."

"That should only target their brains, right?" Wu Xiaoqing obviously doesn't trust the technology of these dwarves, "And, why do we have to meet in a virtual environment?"

"Because in reality the people on Earth are bigger than them," the search and rescue team analyzed one by one, "first, you may not be able to adapt to the life style of their planet, and they have not prepared for it for a while; Second, it is not ruled out that you will be assassinated."

"You know, they are at war right now. It's hard to say whether Civilization C has power within Civilization B; third, I actually think this is the most important thing... The size gap between you is likely to bring a lot of trouble to the other side. Some unnecessary fear."

Wu Xiaoqing had already thought of the first point, but the second and third... They really didn't have similar considerations.

The third point seems to be the most untenable, but it is actually the most important of the three. Dealing with two civilizations is the same as meeting two people for the first time. The promotion may have the effect of getting twice the result with half the effort.On Earth, if a giant over seven or eight meters tall came to "interview" with humans, I am afraid that the first reaction of humans would be to mount various machine guns and weapons and be on standby at any time...

What they are facing is a civilization far beyond the earth, and their bodies are nothing more than ordinary protein, which does not have the defense of those monsters in Ultraman, which can resist missiles.

From the weapon information provided by Changbai and Changxing, Wu Xiaoqing already knew that as long as there are weapons on the earth, this dwarf civilization has mastered almost all of them, and it may be more "crazy" than the earth people in using them.

At their level of civilization, the short stature is largely a great advantage - a dwarf, on the ground, just needs to hold a gun and shoot Wu Xiaoqing casually, which can guarantee Wu Xiaoqing's death immediately.Although the opponent's gun is only about the size of a pencil...

"But their technology should only be suitable for their brains?" Wu Xiaoqing is worried about this. "They should have no research basis for the research on the brains of people on earth..."

"You don't have to worry about that," said the search and rescue team. "There is a ready-made consciousness simulation system on the search and rescue ship...in fact, it does not allow you to enter their game, but connects you to the search and rescue ship, and then the search and rescue ship generates a data connection with the opponent's game. ... There will be absolutely no problem with security. Now, the biggest problem is that we must ensure that our negotiations with Civilization B will not be misunderstood by Civilization C as some kind of alliance, and we will not even be included in other civilizations. object of war."

"That intelligent body...hasn't responded yet?" It's only been half a day since entering here, but Wu Xiaoqing feels that the rhythm is already more tense than any previous mission.He felt as if he was an acrobat stepping on a tightrope, and he was in danger of falling if he was not careful.

"I'm still waiting... If possible, I hope that when I contact Civilization B, Civilization C can also be present... The three of us will meet in the virtual world."

Wu Xiaoqing smiled: "It must be very lively then."

……

There have been variables in the war, and the intelligent body is aware of this.

The originally clear probability of winning is now becoming blurred due to the emergence of variables.

The civilization called the Search and Rescue Team has stayed on the outer edge of the orbit for more than 18 hours.

It saved two Union soldiers.

It's hard to say whether this kind of behavior is a form of participating in the war, and the intelligence body needs more observation data before it can draw a conclusion.

He got in touch with the Federation, and the communication with each other was through radio clear codes.The meaning is clear - they want to touch.

There is a fact that is very worthy of vigilance for intelligent bodies-they are all carbon-based, evolved from nature, composed of cells, and organic life forms.This commonality of life forms means that they have a high basis for union.

Maybe we can strike first?

No, it is not necessary.The search and rescue team also contacted him.

Whether to participate in this exchange... the intelligence body is still hesitating.It is difficult for him to calculate which has a better result based on this choice.This usually means that neither option is a good one.

……

The intelligence asked for 72 hours of thinking time, and the search and rescue team agreed.

Both Wu Xiaoqing and Shen Changwen believe that this is likely to be a delaying tactic, because they both know the concept of intelligence-the entire intelligence is like the sum of countless supercomputers added together.

Based on the war data provided by Changbai, the search and rescue team roughly calculated the energy consumption level of the intelligent body-just the computing resources used to maintain his "thinking" are enough to consume the entire energy consumption of more than a dozen earths.It is said that among the five planets occupied by the intelligence body, three of them have been hollowed out, and the materials inside are used to strengthen the main star where the intelligence body is located—that is, all the mass is used to make computers.

What kind of problem would require such brain calculations for more than 72 hours?

Not to mention intelligence, even in the state when the search and rescue team first came to Earth, maybe it was just hidden in a mobile phone with only a dozen g, and it would take no more than a few seconds to think about decision-making issues.

"This is your inference based on my experience," the search and rescue team and Yevgeny didn't think so. "It seems normal to me to ask for 72 hours."

"normal?"

"Yes," the search and rescue team said, "I have come into contact with some secondary computer civilizations...similar to artificial intelligence civilizations, developed on the basis of original civilizations, we all call them secondary civilizations. Thinking about secondary civilizations The biggest difference between the problem and the original civilization is that when many secondary civilizations face problems, the natural solution is to seek the most optimal solution.”

"Aren't people the same?"

"The definition of optimization is different. What people usually call optimization is actually prioritizing problems according to their importance, and then determining a main strategy based on the highest priority... The decision-making of native civilization pays more attention to the priority, Because the original civilizations all evolved from the natural environment, they all face complex and chaotic problems. But the secondary civilizations are different. Imagine the social state when their civilizations appeared-they are naturally used to deal with all aspects , multi-level details, to a large extent, these details can also form some kind of social puzzle. Imagine that the smart city you define now, traffic is commanded by computers, power generation is also commanded by computers, and in the future industrial production, logistics and transportation ...If it is handed over to the computer in the end, the problems he faces every day are often countless problems-but these problems are often related to each other. Sub-civilizations are more concerned about finding this connection, as if putting All the problems are strung together into a necklace, and then along a line, they are solved all at once. Simply put, primary civilizations deal with problems from coarse to fine, while secondary civilizations are the opposite, from fine to coarse. Therefore, it is easy for us to decide a Whether the problem is solved right away, but they ... are actually thinking about whether the problem is solved, they have considered all the elements related to the problem."

"Then there's no need to think about three full days."

"The intelligent body controls all the details of his civilization...every process in the manufacturing factory, every weapon launch decision on the battleship...you can imagine that every part of the civilization is a pawn in his decision... …three days is really fast enough for such a massive structure."

"Then we... just wait for three days?"

"Yes," said the search and rescue team, "wait three days."

For Wu Xiaoqing and the others, three days is actually very fast.In fact, during the waiting period, each of them was busier than when they officially performed the task.

With more and more clear code exchanges with the dwarven civilization, the appearance of this civilization began to appear more and more clearly in front of everyone.

The official record of dwarf civilization is about 14000 years old. If calculated according to the technical level, it reached the current level of the earth in about 12000 years.In other words, from the perspective of civilization b, they are 2000 years more advanced than the earth.

This seems to be a very remarkable number, but based on what Wu Xiaoqing learned, it seems that the gap is not as large as imagined....

First of all, the dwarf civilization is essentially a civilization based on planets, just like the earth. Of course, their ability to transform planets and navigate within the solar system is still far superior to that of the earth, but the way of life of the two , and there is no essential difference.The same has currency, the same government, citizens, and parliament... It's just that their supreme commander is not called the president, but the consul.

AI technology first appeared 1500 years ago, and in just a few hundred years, it has completely changed the entire civilization and galaxy.Then, according to the official records of Civilization B, it was AI who took the initiative to set off a rebellion, starting from the industrial planets at the outermost edge of the galaxy—they first controlled the factories that could manufacture various AIs, and then continued to expand their production capacity... AI began to change More and more, but later, less and less.It was not until more than 200 years ago that the people of the Federation noticed that there could only be a process of fusion between AIs—the physiological structure is very different from that of humans, so that all AIs can easily share their thinking organs—calculators, and memory storage Officer - memory.When these two things can be shared, it actually means that the intelligence of AI is naturally composable.

At the beginning of the war, human beings had the upper hand, and at one point even AI was completely defeated.But when the AIs began to understand, and then voluntarily abandoned themselves, and began to assemble a super AI—that is, the brain, the situation began to deteriorate rapidly.

The entire process before and after the war can be divided into dozens of chapters and hundreds of years, but it has finally reached the current state-the military class of the dwarf civilization, that is, Changbai and Changxing, are already firm. Think the battle is lost.This failure rhetoric can also be heard in federal public opinion.But federal officials, especially the parliament and the ruling government, still believe that the risk of war is still within the control of the federation.

As far as the purpose of this mission is concerned, these news are obviously not good news-the possibility of reconciliation in a close war is obviously much greater than a one-sided war.

If this kind of opinion represents the reality to some extent, then the process of dealing with the intelligence body is the most critical point of the whole task—because the intelligence body seems to be in charge of the direction of this war.The most important thing is that the search and rescue team is very familiar with the thinking logic of the sub-civilization of the intelligent body - since they have launched a war, it means that they have enough confidence to win, and it can even be said that they have already calculated that they will get the win.And this means that getting them to accept the proposal to stop the war and return to peace will be more difficult than imagined.