When the members of the Frontiers of Science discussed physics, they often used the abbreviation “SF.” They didn’t mean “science fiction,” but the two words “shooter” and “farmer.” This was a reference to two hypotheses, both involving the fundamental nature of the laws of the universe.
In the shooter hypothesis, a good marksman shoots at a target, creating a hole every ten centimeters. Now suppose the surface of the target is inhabited by intelligent, two-dimensional creatures. Their scientists, after observing the universe, discover a great law: “There exists a hole in the universe every ten centimeters.” They have mistaken the result of the marksman’s momentary whim for an unalterable law of the universe.
The farmer hypothesis, on the other hand, has the flavor of a horror story: Every morning on a turkey farm, the farmer comes to feed the turkeys. A scientist turkey, having observed this pattern to hold without change for almost a year, makes the following discovery: “Every morning at eleven, food arrives.” On the morning of Thanksgiving, the scientist announces this law to the other turkeys. But that morning at eleven, food doesn’t arrive; instead, the farmer comes and kills the entire flock.
Liu, Cixin | The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past)
I enjoyed this book quite a bit, but this was by far the most interesting proposition to me.
What do we really know? What can we really know?
Peter Butler 
I agree. Great book. Amazing observation.
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If the farmer kills all of them except the scientist, would it – horror-stricken – conclude that it was his telling them of his observations & theory that brought the catastrophe down upon them..& committed autoturkeycide, leaving behind a note (in Turkeyish..) that it has no choice..because it cannot continue living in a world where scientific investigation results in loss of life…?
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He would wait until the next day and observe the food arriving that morning and, after a short time, other turkeys arriving again to populate the universe. After another year or so of observation his conclusion would be that the universe is cyclic. Physicists are stubborn creatures.
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The farmer hypotheses doesn’t make sense. In the hypotheses on thanksgiving day the farmer comes in exactly at 11 o’clock ( it didn’t say whether it was am or pm but for argument’s sake we’ll assume it’s 11 am)to kill a barn full of turkeys to cook and eat that day. The problem is for anyone who’s cooked a turkey, (and these were clearly well fed turkeys so they weren’t small), the length of time it takes to cook ONE turkey by the time he got up he couldn’t hope for anything but a late dinner. And since he had to kill ALL of the turkeys before he cooked even one turkey it was going to be a VERY late dinner. Now let’s say he was super fast and killed ALL of the turkeys within two hours time now it’s 1 pm. He has to get all of those turkeys to some sort of refrigeration before they spoil. Then one by one clean all of these turkeys and then dress and season them and find enough pots for each and that’s going under the assumption that since he’s killed them all he also has enough ovens for them all. Because if he only has one or two ovens he’s really not going to get to eat until REALLY late.
Now here we have this farmer with all of these dead turkeys, how in the world is he going to eat them all?! A cooked turkey lasts up to a week at most. And that’s stretching it. I guess if he cooked one and smoked the rest. But again that would take a long time to clean the turkeys and season them to get them ready to be smoked even if he just planned to cook one and smoke the rest. This farmer isn’t going to get to eat that turkey very soon. But I stand by what I said, this hypothesis makes no sense. That farmer really didn’t plan things well concerning the turkeys.
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What do we really know…now? What can we really know…now? It’s definitely not what we will know tomorrow
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Kind of like the idiom “Man supposes but God disposes,” And, hey, Liu Cixin, himself, invokes that theory. N’est-ce pas ?
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I kind of find it funny that while the “God/the gods are assholes” theory has been around forever (looking at you Zeus) everyone acts like it is new when you just add a sci-fi veneer to it.
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in the shooter theory, who is the shooter?? Intelligent beings more intelligent than those living on the targets?
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This is an interesting theory. I am currently reading that book and I have now spent more time thinking about SF than I have in reading the book.
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