Chapter 251: The Trap of Cognitive Consistency

Chu, as a member of the Shared Consciousness Cluster, has already lost its sense of self.

Before entering the Shared Consciousness Cluster, it still had brief management privileges to make some adjustments.

These adjustments included causing the Shared Consciousness Cluster to have a false perception of the Civilized Federation, misleading the new manager.

8672804, upon receiving this information, would definitely request support from other Star Cities, which was the core of Chu's plan.

The key to winning the interstellar war is obvious—it's about not relying too much on firepower and energy. If either is lacking, winning the interstellar war is almost impossible.

It's like in the jungle; if one side has ten snipers and the other has only one, without any communication or influence between the two sides, it's almost impossible for the single sniper to defeat the ten snipers.

So, how can the almost impossible be made possible?

By creating additional misdirection!

For example, through sound, language, movement, and so on.

However, in interstellar space, these misdirections become extremely difficult to execute.

For Chu to win, it needs to block the effects of interstellar space, which is what it is currently doing.

Everything is in preparation, waiting.

"How can this Star City have such little energy?" 8672804, after taking full control of the Star City, found that it was in worse condition than he had imagined.

The Shared Consciousness Cluster replied that the Civilized Federation had already begun preliminary colonization of the Star City, and a large amount of energy had been transported away from the Star City by the Federation.

"Such a civilization with strong invasive and colonizing tendencies must be eliminated."

"The entire Star City should be immediately disassembled into starships, send a message back to request that the supporting Star Cities bring more energy."

"Now, launch probes to detect the enemy's movements."

...

The Federation was unaware of Chu's decision. Federal officials and scholars like Finelli were still waiting for Chu's response, at least to open up the Star City.

But what they got instead was probes.

After the Star City's probes observed the Federation's probes, they began indiscriminate attacks.

"What's going on with Chu? Has it chosen to side with its own civilization again?"

Finelli was both surprised and furious.

He quickly retracted all the probes and headed back to the Border Port of the Cosmic Silk Road in his spaceship.

The Border Port was a trade station between the Federation and the Star City. It was new, and many facilities were not yet completed. The most important feature was the super-offset material transfer and super-offset energy device.

The entire star port looked like a crescent with a diameter of more than 500,000 kilometers. The crescent's core was the super-offset device group, the largest of which had a diameter of more than 20,000 kilometers and was modified from a planetary-class giant ship.

There were no visible weapons here.

As soon as Finelli and the other officials and scholars returned, they immediately sent out intelligent spaceships to test the Star City.

What kind of attitude does the Star City have towards them now?

"According to previous speculation, if the Olive Branch Civilization wants to regain control of the Star City, the new manager should have arrived by now, right?"

They did not observe 8672804's spaceship, most likely because of technological reasons, making 8672804's spaceship nearly invisible to their probes.

"What if the new manager brings new secrets to regain control of the Star City?"

Upon hearing this, all the officials and scholars fell silent.

Indeed, this was a possibility.

"So, we must now consider the Star City as our enemy and prepare both defensive and offensive weapons. Report back and request additional giant ship support."

"We must prepare to retreat and abandon the rear end of the Cosmic Silk Road."

Explorers and merchants had to be cleared out, as there were hardly any residents here, which would make the retreat faster.

After five years, a new round of conflict began.

Over a thousand spaceships sent by Finelli were destroyed, confirming that the Star City had turned hostile. The Federation once again entered a state of war readiness.

After waiting for another twenty years, the Cosmic Silk Road was once again peaceful, and the Federation was momentarily confused. What was going on?

In fact, they didn't know that the Star City was just testing them, as 8672804 didn't reveal as much about the Federation to Chu.

After the first round of testing, 8672804 discovered a problem. Through the Federation's spaceships, it didn't believe that the Federation had the capability to rival its own civilization.

This included the collection of the Federation's battleship wreckage.

However, the Shared Consciousness Cluster told it again, "This place is over 200 light-years away from the Civilized Federation, and the Federation's top weapons are not here."

This explained everything.

Although there were some minor issues, 8672804 didn't plan to investigate further, as this was not his job as a manager.

Many tens of thousands of years ago, when Yan Xia visited the Star City, he discovered a problem. The managers of the Olive Branch Civilization easily fell into the trap of cognitive consistency.

If a life first understands a piece of knowledge, it will use this knowledge as a benchmark to identify similar knowledge. If the received similar knowledge does not conform to its original knowledge, most lives will accept the new knowledge and seek consistency, then reject the new knowledge, even if their original knowledge is wrong and the new knowledge is correct.

This is still due to the chaos of life's nature.

This new knowledge superseding old knowledge is a very orderly behavior.

To put it simply, life often chooses a more effortless way to move, and this is not just about the whole life but also about every cell in a life.

Compared to maintaining old concepts from the old to the new, which can be somewhat energy-consuming, these concepts have not posed a fatal threat to this life.

Of course, this is not the only aspect that causes life to fall into the trap of cognitive consistency; there are other aspects. For example, if the old concept is one's own, and the new concept is foreign, life will resist foreign things, especially if there is already something in the original position.

And 8672804 easily fell into this trap.

At this moment, he firmly believes that the Civilized Federation is a powerful civilization, and even if another will tells him that the Civilized Federation is much weaker than the Olive Branch Civilization, he cannot change this view and may even suspect that the other party is a spy for the Civilized Federation, trying to make him lower his guard.

8672804 flew outside and saw the tallest building in the Star City, which had returned to its original dark rectangular structure.

"What is that for?"

8672804 left in disgust.

Like Chu, managers, as independent consciousnesses, hope that the Olive Branch Civilization has the restraint of the Glory of Gais, but at the same time, they do not want to enter the Glory of Gais themselves.

This is a serious case of double standards, but since the group of managers is not large, the entire active and backup managers of the Olive Branch Civilization are estimated to be no more than 200, so this double standard has not been amplified.

8672804 didn't know that he had fallen into the cognitive trap again, and he didn't doubt the Shared Consciousness Cluster.

However, if he had gone to check, he would have known that the "self" of all citizens of the Star City was stored there.