Chapter 370: Local Optimality and Global Optimality
Jason thought even deeper on the matter.
We’ve grown so comfortable. Too incredibly comfortable.
The immediate reaction of almost the entire command staff was to run away.
Since the destruction of Earth, humanity had been forced into a desperate, dangerous existence in the cosmos. Fleeing to the Moon, surviving on Mars, encountering the Nyx, almost every single step of their history had been an incredible, high-stakes adventure.
If this situation had occurred a century ago, encountering such a monumental opportunity and terrifying risk would have certainly sparked debate... but the adventurers would have undeniably won out! Back then, humanity was desperate to survive. They needed to become stronger. They needed industry. They needed technology.
But now, having successfully ascended to the level of an interstellar civilization, a pervasive mindset called "complacency" had slowly taken root in the Federation. It wasn’t just the enlisted soldiers who lacked ruthlessness; the Department Heads and the highest echelons of the government had lost their spirit of adventure.
Yes, even the highest echelons of command!
The leadership had become terrified of taking risks. They didn’t want to take risks. They just wanted to live their lives peacefully and steadily on their massive ark.
Perhaps this was predetermined by humanity’s inherently flawed biological philosophy. At the genetic level, humanity was no nobler than any other Tier-K civilization that destroyed itself.
Humanity only united and survived because of incredible luck, serendipitous encounters, making the right choices at the absolute perfect moment... and inheriting the legacy of the Precursors.
That was the only reason they barely managed to scrape past the Great Filter.
This nascent interstellar civilization was still fundamentally weak.
Modern humanity had indeed become more civilized, achieving the utopian society envisioned by early sociologists.
However, imperceptibly, primal biological philosophies, like the obsessive drive for baseline "survival" and "reproduction", combined with the sociological theory of "civilizational entropy," were slowly pulling the Federation toward stagnation.
Our lives are already good enough, so why not maintain the status quo? Why take risks?
This was the inherent, rotting mindset of their current civilization!
However, the theory of entropy dictates that nothing in the universe remains static forever. For a civilization, if it is not constantly moving forward, it means its entropy has maximized. Stagnation is merely the beginning of decay; from there, it can only regress.
Jason, a former Special Forces operative, used to possess an incredibly sharp instinct for danger. But now... he hadn’t had to rely on that primal survival instinct in over a century. His perception of danger had grown dull.
That is human nature. Tools that aren’t used gradually rust and deteriorate. Even with physical enhancements, he was no exception. And the same principle applied to the macro-civilization composed of individual humans!
He silently focused on the crisis burning in his chest, savoring a feeling he hadn’t experienced in over a hundred years.
Danger... danger... deeply uncomfortable... incredibly uneasy.
But for humanity, this unease—this existential crisis was the ultimate driving force for progress! Could an interstellar civilization truly advance indefinitely in absolute safety?
Of course not!
Why were all the Annihilator civilizations so terrifyingly powerful? Perhaps their foundational biological philosophies were equally flawed... but they constantly forged themselves into stronger weapons through repeated crises and relentless wars!
Jason felt a profound clarity wash over him. The Federation was a very young interstellar power, yet it was already showing signs of fatal stagnation...
He carefully examined the unease in his heart.
Danger. Extreme, hellish danger...
But the sensation also felt somewhat distant... it didn’t have the immediate, suffocating intensity of a blade pressed directly to his throat.
Could this threat still be managed...?
Looking at the arguing Department Heads, Jason suddenly made his decision.
He raised his hand. The room immediately fell dead silent. Jason spoke, his voice earnest and heavy. "Do you know... I am terrified. I am terrified that taking this risk will plunge our entire civilization into the abyss of extinction."
"But I am equally afraid that if we take the seemingly ’correct’ choice and simply run away, our civilization will become permanently cowardly. We will permanently lose the will to take risks in our future development."
"The decision we make today will be a definitive turning point in the psychological evolution of our species."
"This cultural stagnation... it is like a snowball rolling down a mountain. Once it gains enough momentum, we won’t be able to stop it, even if we want to. It will become an avalanche that buries everything in its path."
"This is the physical manifestation of civilizational entropy, isn’t it?"
The evolution of a civilization is a continuous, incredibly complex, and chaotic algorithm. The impact of a single decision extends not just to the present, but ripples thousands of years into the future.
Why did the seeds of capitalism sprout in the West rather than the East on ancient Earth? The subtle, divergent signs were planted thousands of years prior.
For an exceptional leader, the goal is always to find the globally optimal solution to a complex problem.
However, due to the limitations of human intellect and fear, people often default to finding locally optimal solutions. In computer science, this is called a "greedy algorithm."
In layman’s terms, it means taking things one step at a time, and always choosing the easiest, safest option at every step.
However, such a simplistic, brute-force algorithm rarely finds the true globally optimal solution for a highly complex problem. More often than not, it leads directly into a dead end.
"Right now, even though we believe the tactical odds might be in our favor, we are terrified of taking the gamble. We have a perfectly logical excuse... Yes, running away ensures immediate survival. It seems like the ’right’ thing to do."
"But it establishes a cowardly foundation. This kind of cultural cowardice isn’t formed in a day or two. It is a momentum built up over a year, two years, a century..."
"This creeping stagnation is affecting you, affecting me, affecting everyone. In reality... it is simply us defaulting to the local optimum."
Seeing that Austin still wanted to argue, Jason looked directly at him and held up a single finger. "Of course, taking a calculated risk is not the same as committing suicide... and finding our courage doesn’t mean we stay here indefinitely."
"One month. We will hold our position here for exactly one more month! Thirty days is a minimal operational window. If we haven’t secured the asset by then, we evacuate immediately!"
"That is my final decision!"
With that, Jason firmly committed to securing the Gaia entity. The conference room fell completely silent as everyone absorbed the weight of his words. If the Federation fled now, it might seem tactically reasonable today. But perhaps, centuries from now, their descendants would look back on this moment with endless, bitter regret.
The regret of knowing that when faced with the universe’s greatest prize, humanity cowardly ran away!
Austin opened his mouth to argue further, but then he suddenly stopped, shook his head, and let out a long sigh.
Greed is an original sin, and even an interstellar civilization could not fully escape its pull. But complacency is an equally deadly original sin, leading a species to drown itself in shallow material comforts.
A civilization that systematically breeds out its courage will never survive the dark forest of the stars.
"In that case, we must drastically accelerate the entity’s educational programming!" Arthur suddenly declared.
"We must capture the Gaia organism as quickly as possible, utilizing every method at our disposal! If we can secure it and jump to warp before the alien fleet drops into realspace, we win everything!"
The meeting immediately shifted gears, intensely discussing the operational details. They debated how quickly they could fully cloak the Deep Space, and whether they could deploy massive stealth-shrouding materials over the mothership’s hull to reduce its visual and thermal signature to absolute zero.
The massive Titan warships were immediately recalled to high orbit to be cloaked.
The human ground teams on the surface were deemed too small to be a significant detection risk; the chances of an incoming fleet immediately spotting a few tiny outposts were statistically negligible.
In short, every Federation asset was to be completely blacked out to drastically reduce the probability of observation.
When the meeting adjourned, the command staff dispersed rapidly, filled with immense anxiety and a massive workload. According to the new directives, every single trace of the Federation’s presence had to be hidden immediately.
Jason prepared to take a shuttle back down to the surface to oversee the ground operations personally.
Although remaining aboard the cloaked Deep Space in high orbit was technically safer, with so many of his people risking their lives on the ground, Jason refused to lead from the rear. He would stand on the front lines and share the risk.
Just as he reached the hangar bay, Alex, a junior analyst from the strategic think tank, hurried to catch up with him. "Commander, I’ve just thought of another variable..."
"What is it?" Jason asked, opening the shuttle’s hatch and turning back to the young man. He felt a heavy burden on his shoulders, but at least the decision to hold the line was his own.
Alex spoke rapidly, "I believe our chances of winning this gamble aren’t entirely negligible, but they aren’t overwhelming either. It’s essentially a coin toss... The ultimate outcome is entirely in the enemy’s hands!"
"We have absolutely no idea what kind of exotic sensor technologies a highly advanced interstellar civilization might possess. We only know what Cole has told us... but Cole was just one alien; he couldn’t possibly know every technological secret in the galaxy..."
Jason sighed. He looked directly at the young analyst and spoke frankly. "That is true. Therefore, no strategy is absolutely safe. If we wanted absolute safety, our only option was to flee this system an hour ago."
"But risk and reward are always proportional! You heard my speech. The reward isn’t just the Gaia entity; it is the ideological survival of our entire civilization. We have grown too comfortable. Without taking this risk, we will simply rot in our own decadence..."