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Po

a transingularity, but not hypersingularity, transapient sentient.

Generally, any entity of SI:1 or greater (AI, posthuman, postalien, etc). The term power is sometimes also used, although this more properly refers to beings intermediate between SI (superintelligence - hyperturing or posthuman) and S2. Relative to baselines, these are entities of tremendous intelligence and capability, self-programming, self-constituting, potentially immortal, unlimited individuals. However, they are not equal to even the lesser gods. Po are distinguished less by origin (e.g. hyperturing AI, posthuman, etc.) and more by toposophic nature and singularity level. Sometimes the word is used to indicate transapients of biont origin only. From the late Information Age to the Age of Emergence, terragen civilization has been governed (first behind the scenes, then in partnership with lower sophonts, and finally blatantly) by powers. From the age of emergence onwards, it has been governed by archailects. Hence it is said that the true galactic civilization only began with the emergence of the archai. Even so, po still continue to do most of the organisation and running of galactic society, the archailects themselves being too aloof and sublime to bother about such trivialities.

M. Alan Kazlev

pod

a social group of whales. Among cetacean provolves (neo-dolphins and neo-whales), pod has various meanings, ranging from a small family or social group to a community or an entire polity, or more rarely a ship or a clade.

Poisigliders

As is unfortunately the case with many prosocial inventions an antagonistic variant or use is often devised. In the case of the Filiglider, flying food, this took the form of Poisigliders and Bamagliders.

Poisigliders are poisonous versions of a normal filiglider. Although theoretically not sold for malicious purposes, different clades have different nutritional needs and sometimes a filiglider nervous system can be tampered with so that it seeks out a particular clade member for whom it would otherwise be poisonous. In such cases it is generally only harmful if swallowed if if the clade member has severe allergies to the filiglider.

More deviously designed poisigliders are constructed from scratch and may contain contact poisons or hidden barbs. The possibilities are, unfortunately, almost limitless.

Common banter:
PG1: Yeh zog! Vanen goiz party donnan Sarzag Ring?
PG2: Nemma min! Thez party fullupa poizigliders ferma clade.
PG1: Yozen clade too min? I kruvla finnen filiglider ferma sulv too.

Peter Kisner

polemovore

a creature that eats war, or more specifically the self-replicating weapons left behind advanced wars. They were postulated as an explanation of why the whole universe had not turned into strange matter viruses by now.

Anders Sandberg

Political Federation

Government type in which each member planet rules itself; however, all planets belong to one loose governmental body, and all must follow certain standards of conduct.

The Industrial / Information age nation United States of America, Interplanetary Age Mars and the later Gengineer Republic, the first Federation, and to a lesser extent the Second Federation and the short-lived Third Federation (coming on the tail end of the ComEmp) are examples of political federations.

Political Science

The branch of the social sciences concerned with the description and analysis of polities, government, politics, and political institutions and processes.

Fields of study include political parties and ideology, types of government, administration, regulation, statecraft, foreign policy, war, civil rights, political thought, constitutions, historical politics (specializing in a particular polity or era), comparative politics, xenopolitics, the relation between people and government, or between lower toposophic citizens and higher toposophic sovereigns.

modified by M.Alan Kazlev from the original write-up by Robert J. Hall

polity

An organized society; a state or quasistate; any form of politico-social organization.

Polmusic

To'u'ls of the Ho'mth'u culture view politics and music as an indivisible unity, and have developed political music as an art form. Over time polmusic has become a nearly universal political language across To'u'l and post-To'u'l clades within the MPA, as well as an elaborate academic-artistic discipline.

Anders Sandberg

Polonius

One of the member worlds of the Refugium Federation.

Polyanna

Home to the Institute of Applied Hermeneutics, NoCoZo.

Polybeing

A being not just composed of different sub-beings, but joining them together at higher singularity levels. The sub-beings may not even be aware that they are part of a polybeing and acting as its "fingers".

Anders Sandberg

polyfullene

polybuckminsterfullerene beanstalk Polybuckminsterfullerene; nanofactured fullerene composite produced originally for Beanstalks but which also found many uses elsewhere.

Polyfullene has a tensile strength close to the theoretical limits of molecular matter; a single one millimetre strand can easily support many tons. The most impressive property is that it is self-healing: if the nanotubes inside a Polyful filament are broken, fullerene from the matrix heals them only causing a slight lengthening.

Anders Sandberg

Polyglot

Polyglot is the name for the post-singularity language that evolved among the early Po as a result of an amalgamation of all known pre-singularity Terragen languages. It would become the basis for an entire family of transapient languages that are still the most widely used in transapient to transapient communications throughout Terragen Space.

Glen Finney

Polymentism

A philosophical esoteric school that seeks to develops mystical means for the sophont mind to encompass multiple dimensions of thought simultaneously, providing insights on existence outside the perceived reality level.

Its origins are sketchy at best, but some trace it back to the Information Age works of Benjamin Rowe, an esotericist that explored the three dimensional and fractal possibilities of the Tree of Life.

The actual validity of the current is still a mystery, since it is believed only SI:3 and above entities would have the necessary mental structures.

Juan Ochoa

polyols

Polyhydroxylated compounds such as sugars, sugar alcohols and sugar acids.

They are components of nucleic acids, cell membranes and also act as energy sources. Polyols are vital to all known terragen and most xenobiont carbon-based lifeforms. They are occasionally present in some meteors, comets, and kupier bodies, in amounts comparable to amino acids. Extraterrestrial processes including photolysis and formaldehyde chemistry account for their origin. It has been shown that these compounds seed Eogaian worlds through asteroid and comet impacts, where they play a role in the origin of life.

polyphyle

a phyle, clade, or any other group, the members of which are similar in appearance or nature or culture, but do not share a common ancestry. Also known as multiphyle. Contrast with monophyle.

M. Alan Kazlev

polyomegism

the idea, championed by the empaths and other clades and phyles, that Omega could or should be achieved by an union of several (or all) archailects.

Polymegists debated what forms of cooperation would be achievable and ideal, gradually turning much theology into a branch of game theory.

The Version War destroyed the Second Federation polymegism. The monomegists and polymegists diversified and splintered, coming up with whole ranges of closure or eschaton scenarios but no consensus on anything. The polymegist influence on the ideological infrastructure of the Commonwealth of Empires and Synergesis Protocol gave them a brief flowering, but the earlier splintering is a major factor in the dissolution of the new ontology.

Anders Sandberg

polytheism

Belief in and worship of many gods. The gods may be considered as supernatural beings, cosmic forces, archetypes, or archailects. Quite popular among a few splice and rianth pagan-based, and the occasional nearbaseline clades, as well as some heterodox Jungians, but otherwise not widely held.

Poozer

famous first federation age virch character - an intelligent canine stuck in a world with doorknobs, thumb-print sensors, silverware, and other inconveniences. Poozer was an edutainment series, with disembodied children attempting to assist Poozer with advice.

One of the great breakthroughs was the fact that this series was a one-on-one, not a group setting. This allowed the children to work things out on their own - no peer pressure, no brighter children pushing them past concepts they hadn't grasped, no slower children dragging them over ground they already had covered.

Unfortunately, this lead to less social interaction for the Poozer fans. Which, inevitably, led to trouble in those clades and sects which utilized heavy 'Poozering' - training via Poozer.

When the corporates get a good thing, they milk it for all its worth. There were Poozer net-interfaces, Poozer search agents, Poozer (S<<1) vecs, etc.- the power of mass merchandising.

These people rarely interacted with the world except through their Poozer(s), which often (to their poor warped minds) became combined into one. The interfaces and hardware were smart enough to realize that a search request goes to the search agent, a command to open a door to the vec, etc - but they tended to treat others as mere objects in their virch - something to avoid, etc.

Hence, 'Poozer' has become a term of denigration - someone who desperately needs help.

John B

pop culture

The accretion of fads and fluff that has built up over the millennia - ever changing in details, ever constant in fundamentals. Although most pop-culture is S<1, there is also a rich tradition of transingularity pop-culture.

In the civilized galaxy, pop culture derives from pre-info age, information era, interplanetary, federation, expansion, secfed, ComEmp era and post-ComEmp periods. Pop culture has a tremendous impact on the contemporary society of the time, and is essential for understanding history. To give only a very few examples: a great many spacecraft were named Certe during the expansion era based on the tagline in the popular "neoromans in space" virchshow Antonius". At least ten planets have been named for the stages of metaneko evolution in the ComEmp popular alife pet/game metanekoari. The inhabitants of Ackazarpses still use the character of the clever handmaiden helping out her senile AI (from the music cycle by Zophernes of Klesh) as their icon. And so on...
In general the influence of the pop culture increases the more contemporary it is. Hence the retro fad in Coronese Pet Books that was so big in 10280 is rather more important on current culture than the influence of the Interactive Cryptoanime-epic Surfers on the Sagittarrius A* Supermassive Wormhole Gamma-ray Jet which was all the rage during the early Central Alliance period, and that in turn has more of an impact than the late ComEmp short lived dramaworld franchise Orbital Keep despite the fact that the latter has a loyal following even to this day.

Anders Sandberg and M. Alan Kazlev

Popejoy

populous Solarist system, about 60 LY from the Dominion/MPA border. The population are for the most part only very nominal Solarists.

popular religion

Religion oriented and appealing to the non-su and less educated S<1 masses, using simplistic theology and easily digested memes, often rich in superstition and long-forgotten urban folklore; folk religion.

M.Alan Kazlev

Population I

Stars with a few percent heavy elements (heavier than helium), found in the disks of spiral galaxies and in irregular galaxies. Includes "metal-rich" stars, which are the only ones around which planets form. They were formed from Population II stars

Population II

Stars composed of nearly pure hydrogen and helium, found in globular clusters (galactic halo) and the center of spiral galaxies, in elliptical galaxies, and to a limited extent in irregular galaxies. They were formed from Population III stars. They almost never have planets.

Population III

group of bright and short lived stars that formed previous or synchronous with the actual formation of the Galaxy. Their existence was theorized during the atomic age as an attempt to describe the metallicity present in population II stars where nucleosynthesis should not have been able to produce heavy elements. Population III have almost all burned out. During the interplanetary period long range arrays discovered remnant objects that were found to be Population III.

Porn Adapter

A sophont who utilizes libraries of pornographic data to generate sexually stimulating material for a given target audience.

This material could range from tactile, olfactory, flat/3d/interactive or one of hundreds of other combinations of media. This is a Mindworker profession.
(of course, what's porn in one society is art in another, medicine in a third, and "doesn't exist" in a fourth!)

John B

Porphyry

Sophic League Inner Sphere system, renowned for its beautiful and historical ashramic orbital bands.

M. Alan Kazlev

Porrima

twin star, where the first non-terragen artifact - a derelict alien starship - was discovered in 3752 by the Virginis Combine ship Fra Angelico. The system is currently a Solar Dominion protectorate inhabited by a number of bioid and cyborg clades. There is a small but well-equipped Exoarcheology Institute, and a nanoaccurate reconstruction of the Fra Angelico, along with a superficial reconstruction of the artifact, is a popular tourist attraction.

Poseidonal Subtype

Poseidonal Subtype Europan Type planet or moon. If the world is massive enough and experiences severe enough tidal stressing, the icy surface and mantle may be melted to a depth of hundreds of kilometers, and the world will be enveloped in a thick atmosphere. Surface ice will be present, but spotty, giant icebergs adrift on a global ocean. Life is almost always present, but rarely very advanced.

Planet Classification List

Positive Heading

important Metasoft world

postalien

A non-terragen (alien) who has attained the status of an SI:1 or greater. Almost all of the current postaliens are ascended To'u'ls.

postalife

An alife who has attained transingularity status.

Even by SI:1 and higher standards, postalifes by their very nature are quite variable - much more so than posthumans. Some are not too dissimilar to standard SI:1 posthumans and hyperturings, whilst others are very alien indeed. Some postalife are defined as animin.

postbiology

biology and ecology of postbionts and/or postalifes.

postbiont

An organic lifeform that has attained SI:1 or higher. May be an ascended sophont being, or even an ordinary sub-sapient organism that was somehow infected with or modified by a godseed. The term is generally used to refer to those individuals that have retain a carbon-based organic body (though such bodies are typically highly modified).

postcapitalism

hyperturing-regulated high abundance nanoeconomies which do not require money or other units of exchange.

post-ComEmp Period

Generic name for the almost three thousand years of galactic history since the break up of the ComEmp.

Post-Expulsion Period

Generic name for the eight thousand years of terragen history since the expulsion by the archailect GAIA of all but a few sophonts from Old Earth.

posthuman

A human who has attained an SI:1 or greater toposophic. Entities of tremendous physical, intellectual, and psychological capacity, self-programming, self-constituting, potentially immortal, unlimited individuals.

postprovolve

An provolve who has attained to SI:1 or above. They can be as varied and diverse as provolves themselves.

postvec

A vec who has attained SI:1.

Potala Biosphere

The largest Buddhist population centre. Located in the Sophic League.

Potentate

: (In Archaipeligo) (1) A recently transcended S2 power. (2) A low-level S2 power, ranking below a principality. Potentates are usually adept at basic picotech.

Darren Ryding

Potted Planet

Slang term for a world, terrestrial or otherwise that has been modified by a Power or archai to support life, apparently for no other reason than the creators continued aesthetic satisfaction. Occasionally found in systems that host archailect primary computing nodes and tools. Apparently, created for reasons similar to why some terragens create and maintain gardens.

Todd Drashner

Pourmurmide

A nanodevice-drug that rewires the brain of the recipient to experience every situation as meaningful and filled with spiritual power. The effects are similar to gnostic drugs, but do not wear off. Although the recipient remains in a state of mystical bliss he can still act, although by its nature the state precludes distinctions between meaningful and meaningless actions or even simple good-bad judgements. Persons under the influence of pourmurmide will be quite incapable of acting on their own in society, since any course of action is seen as totally fulfilling, meaningful and destined.

Pourmurmide was originally developed on Osto in the Utopia Sphere during the 7500's, where eventually most of the population came to use it (as they were tended by an advanced autotopia this did not cause much problems). However, the design for the nanodevice was somehow smuggled out of the Utopia sphere and it has resurfaced a number of times. While the main uses have been hedonism and enlightenment emulation, there have been cases of motivation assassination (the destruction of a person's ability to make decisions or motivate oneself). It is highly illegal in most jurisdictions.

The governing AIs of Osto apparently recognize the part they played in the drug, and offer help for any victims. Since most victims do not wish to leave their state, most help consists of equipping them with one or more helper vecs or guiding them to the Utopia Sphere. There are also suggestions that the Osto AIs have sent out agents to track down copies or traffickers in the nanodrug.

Anders Sandberg

power

a po, a transapient, an entity of SI:1 or greater (AI, posthuman, postalien, etc).

modified from original concept by Vernor Vinge

powered exoskeleton

Pozen

Transapient art/religion/contemplation noeticity

Pozen grew out of Zen, but Pozen is not Zen. Pozen is as far beyond Zen as Perfect Art is beyond baseline Art. It is said their are as many schools of Pozen as there are Powers that practice it. Pozen runs the gamut from subtle to ostentatious, from quite contemplation to active satori, from at least partial sapient comprehensibility to complete obscurity and paradoxicality even by rinzai standards.

The influence of Pozen on the various, mostly S<1 schools and traditions of Zen cannot be underestimated. The Satorist and Trader Schools of Zen have especially incorporated Pozenist koans and practices; the Negentropist Zennists have been very keen to develop Pozenist aesthetics and contemplation practices. Only the more isolationist and ultra-orthodox baseline, nearbaseline, and anthropist schools and practioners of traditional Zen have resisted the influence of pozen.

Many Pozen concepts are beloved by Zen masters because they do not fit into baseline brains - Pozen easily produces statements that simply cannot be comprehended except by a transingularity power. The fact that statements can be shown to students that are known to be meaningful while at the same time impossible to understand is regarded as very inspiring. To a Pozen practitioner this practice is mildly amusing - "showing the ants a transistor so that they get confused and look at the moon instead" as 459800024598 of Myles put it.

the true masters however see the truth between the bits.

To quote a certain Pozen exchange:

The Daimon Broderick commented:
'The Rabbi Penrose speaks: "May a golem utter the name lending it life?"'

The Bodhisattva Hofstadter's commentary:
Does an Escherichia Collie Bark in the Woods?

Arenamontanus answered:
The arabidopsis in the front garden.

M.Alan Kazlev and Anders Sandberg

Pozer, The

Sophic League power, artisan, and pozen master, who over a span of five centuries during the late ComEmp and Re-evaluation age periods, carefully crafted some half a million bio-, nano-, and pico-cyborgs, each designed to perfectly mimic a real or fictional character in the history of mindkind.

In Eir famous "E-Message to the Common Po" (a work that is unique for its time in that while addressed to first and second singularity powers, has at least 5% of the content that can be understood be even an unaugmented baseline) The Pozer says "Every sentient, whether real or imaginary is a koan. Solve the riddle each sentient pozes and learn where the The Buddha of the Excited Hydrogen Waveform goes when the electrons are in their ground state."

Unfortunately, a number of the borgs (despite being non-mechanoid, the suffix -bot was often appended, apparently as a joke), including Jacktheripperbot, Charliemansonbot, and Ukkahanbot eventually had to apprehended and deactivated by the authorities, following a number of murders (fortunately all victims had copies and were restored to life). However, Lectorbot managed to elude the authorities and is still believed to be hiding out in the Perseus Rift. Others, like Caligulabot, Torquamadabot, Hitlerbot, and Quanenderbot, were easily apprehended by local hyperturing authorities when they tried to stir up the baseline population and establish local autocracies.

Shakazulubot had more success in Nuizuluorbital (Solar Dominion), where he managed to pass for their local old earth folk hero, and Genghiskhanbot disappeared into the old Biovirate volume, and hasn't been heard of since.

Beowolfbot was believed destroyed when fighting a local perversity counterspinwards of the STC outer volumes, Ramabot failed to establish a local polity in the Terran Federation, despite potent foglet powers, and Einsteinbot found that relativity and quantum physics were now ancient history. Jeanbeloitsampsonbot likewise failed to create a new corporate empire, finding emself totally outclassed by the local NoCoZo businessbeings.

In a few cases, one borg tried to destroy another. Buffybot managed to slay Draculabot (who had up until that time managed to elude the authorities), but was less successful with Lestatbot, who is currently believed to be hiding out among a colony of vampire tweaks. Rambobot meanwhile was totally unable to kill Fumanchubot, despite enlisting the aid of Dirtyharrybot Quakeyoubot, and Cybi28bot, although this was more because the local customs vecs disapproved of the large quantity of nanofabricated weapons and several warchives in their possession, and alerted the police. And by the time Bondbot had arrived, Fumanchubot had disappeared, possibly with the help of Darthvaderbot.

With some 18% of the Pozer's borgs known to be destroyed, 15% deactivated and residing in various museums or research labs, and another 39% missing or untraceable, it is not likely the Pozer's koan will ever be solved. Nevertheless, there is a subculture of enthusiastic SI:1s, and even baselines and superiors, who still pursue the quixotic quest of the Pozer.

M. Alan Kazlev

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