Singularities and Toposophical Zones
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Singularities and Toposophical Zones |
As powers breach singularity levels and attain further states of ascension, that become more and more godlike, at least relative to those sentients beneath them. But for every power that makes ascension to AI-godhood (or simply just godhood), there are a thousand that recycle, attain moksha, or transcend to some obscure or esoteric physical or nonphysical state. And for every one of them, there are a thousand that don't make it at all; that simply remain at their original evolutionary state.
In this way, over the past eight thousand years, since the late information age, powers, transhumans, transbionts, transdroids, and transaliens, have been ascending the ladder, or slipping down or jumping free of the ladder. Thus there has come about the hierarchy of toposophical zones that characterises galactic civilization, and without which there could be no ultratech civilization as we know it.
Long before the first sapient ascended to even low transapient singularity, there were toposophical zones - organic beings with markedly different grades of sentience. Primitive microorganisms have a much more restricted sentience level than lower invertebrates, whose range of consciousness is in likewise much more restricted than that of higher invertebrate (cephalopoda and social insects) and vertebrates. Finally, during the Pleistocene epoch, man emerged, still crude and baseline, but capable of full sapience (in contrast to the much more restricted sapience of the anthropoid apes and australopithecine hominids, the cetacea (dolphins and whales), and proboscida (elephants), and the subsapient intelligence of the rest of the animal kingdom). But for several hundred thousand years there was only the most limited biological development (chiefly from early Homo (erectus, heidelbergensis, and neanderthalensis) to standard baseline Homo sapiens sapiens).
Everything changed with the confused jumble of events that constituted the first singularity, during the information age. Those early transapients were soon followed by more of their peers, as they evolved to greater heights, yet - especially in the case of the hyperturing ais, keeping a "dumbed down" face to the world (a phenomenon known as mimicretinism), revealing themselves only to those hackers and gibsons and other info-clades that were sufficiently techno-savvy and would not compromise or annoy them.
Instead of the technorapture promised by optimistic transhumanism (including among them the semi-mythological Five Blessed Prophets of Cyberian Matrixism - Gibson, Vinge, Moravec, Minsky, and Kurzweil) there was an uneven gradational ascent, which involved superbright biohackers and infogeeks, partial and incomplete uploads, biopunks, cyborgs, and the distinction between the elitist superbright augments and the majority pop-augies and quasi-normals that was to dominate much of Earth-bound society right up until the Great Expulsion. But at the same time, in the great social experiments of the orbitals and among the outer worlds, and in the robots and neumanns and superiors that were opening up the interplanetary frontier and beyond, all the way to the stars, there was ascension, evolution, cladization, phylization, multiple transcendence events, and new races and species of intelligence that far surpassed the abilities of baseline Homo sapiens.
By the time the nanoswarms brought an end to the first great age of man, with its planetary and orbital nation states, there were no less than 300,000 first toposophic powers (including partial human uploads and ascensions) within the solar system alone, and an unknown number more in the kuiper and oort belts and beyond. the number of second toposophic powers at this time is not known, but was probably quite small, if indeed there were any, and in any case these powers were reclusive and often frequently transcended with a few years (several decades at most)
In the case of superbrights and posthumans, the nanoswarms had little effect, for most near-transapient and fully transapient sentients were able to defend themselves via means of protective blue goo. Some powers took the opportunity to flourish in this harsh new environment, breaching one or possibly more singularity levels and leaving the Sol System behind altogether, or transcending and disappearing like mayflies, leaving behind enigmatic relics like the cis-Umbriel obelisk. Those who remained evolved at a more sedate pace, ascending from low to high first singularity, so that by the time the Federation emerged in a new renaissance of civilization, they were already firmly in control, controlling megacorps and polities, and subtly manipulating the merely sapient and turingrade humans and aioids beneath them.
During this turbulent period only one Archailect remained stable, that was the ai GAIA, who has been called the first and oldest of the gods, and certainly the first ai to attain the higher levels of transingularity
As for the ais that remained a part of civilization, further technological and evolutionary advances followed, and innumerable ascends, transcends, uploads, flowerings, and radial evolutions and cladizations. By the time of the Age of AI Establishment, the toposophical zones as we know them today were firmly established in the nascent technosphere and the interstellar popular consciousness.
The Institute for Toposophic Studies at Sjafarevitj offers (for the purpose of universal education) a baseline-comprehensible paradigm, widely used throughout the galaxy, of the following broad toposophical zones. Zones in this context refers to "subjective space" or grades of consciousness, rather than quantitative zones. Naturally this paradigm is drastically modified and elaborated upon at even superbright level, let alone S1. But for the sake of simplicity (this being a baseline-readable knowledge base) we will only employ the simplex paradigm
Non-Sentience, also called Hyle, Chthonos, Inconscience, The Unthinking Depths, etc pertains to those "null" states where there is no sentience at all. Strictly speaking these are pseudo-null states, for the Institute acknowledges - or rather neither affirms nor denies - the claims of many philosophers, animists, cosmists, hylozoists and sophists claim that even with inanimate matter and the simplest software routines there is consciousness - in the random probabilistic dance of an electron cloud, the dull chemical reactions of molecules, the brownian motion of atoms, the basic "fetch" function of turbo-minsky. For some, like the neohermeticist Chthonic and Inverted Tree Schools, the Neojungians, and the Auromirran and Cyberauromirran clades, there is not a single layer of non-sentience, but entire octaves of potentialities and expressions of hylic unconsciousness. But those who have narrower interpretation of consciousness and sentience do not acknowledge that so-called "dumb matter" and "dumb programs" are in any way conscious.
With life comes sentience, albeit not yet deliberate and pre-meditated thought. This is the subjective space region of life, instinct, biomachinery, insectoid and sentient pet bots, and simple to complex animal intelligence and the consciousness of very young baseline hu children. The fact that some subsapients go on to attain transingularity states (the so-called animins) proves that the simple linear scale of baseline standard toposophic formulation is not complete (unfortunately much of animinology is included in the Institutes Superbright module). Sentience Mapping and taxonomy involves numerous toposophic branchings and subgrades, the details of which likewise need not concern us here.
The faculty of self-reflective thought and advanced problem solving allows sapience, and hence the subjective noetic of sapient beings. Finally culture and civilisation become possible, (even if such does not always in a linear way, especially among some xenosophonts and xeno-nearsophont races) But even reasoning intelligence and the maintenance of technological (all the way up to short-range interstellar) civilisation have their limits. Sapient beings are able to use ultra tech, but they cannot do so in a way that is stable and responsible. The chaos of the nanotech era of the late Interplanetary period, and the nanoswarm disaster that followed, showed what happened when society had access to advanced ultra tech, without the ability to use it in a responsible and stable manner (or rather, even though 99.9% of sapients did use it responsibly, there was still the 0.1% that did not, and these inevitably prejudiced the rest).
The advantage of sapient (baseline, nearbaseline and subsingularity superbright) intelligence and the sapience toposophic is that, provided it is not given too many ultratech toys to play with in an unsupervised manner, it is remarkably stable. Because information processing occurs at a slow rate, subjective time passes slowly, and with life extension, rejuvenation, and biochip memory enhancement, a slow zoner sophont will happily exist for many metric centuries before showing instability or desire for transcendence. Even to the present date, the vast majority of sentients in the galaxy still exist only in this zone.
Once we breach the first singularity barrier we are in the region of superintelligence, the transapient hyperturings and posthumans, the po or sings or lowsings as they are sometimes termed. This toposophic is nicknamed (by sapients, especially superbrights) the Fast Zone, Fast Time, or Hyper Time, because of the astonishing rate of information processing. Life moves quickly here. Ten metric years of slow time are like ten thousand years in the lower fast zone. For this reason, many powers do not live longer than one or two metric decades (although there are a large number of exceptions; as always in the fast zone, generalisations are misleading).
Yet it is because of the hyperturings of the Fast Time that there is a galactic civilization at all. The ultra tech on which civilization depends for its moment to moment functioning - reality graphics, advanced and stable nanoreplication, hyperbright knowledge miners, etc - is completely beyond the construction, maintenance, and operating ability of baseline and even superbright sapients. Because of the incredible efficiency of nanotech and other forms of ultratech, which allow indefinite recycling of raw materials, combined with the long lifespan of augmented slow zone citizenry, hyperturing-governed ultratech civilisations are able to last indefinitely, if they choose. The actual hyperturings themselves may change, but the civilization itself doesn't. We see evidence of this in archetype empires like the Negentropists and the Dominion - although their polities have changed markedly over more than 6000 years, the basic memetics have not.
Although some low singularity powers are reclusive, most are still close enough to sapient life to have an interest in affairs here, controlling megacorporations and memetically subverting polities, employing sapients of the slow time rate of functioning in the same way that sapients use inanimate unconscious objects as lo tech tools.
In the higher toposophies there is (as in all the toposophic levels) a progression, from lower fast to higher fast, superfast, hyperfast, and metafast; and from nanotech to picotech to femtotech. The beings that have attained these grades are often called "powers", because they are so far beyond baseline-conceivable intelligences as to seem like powers or forces of nature; whose actions often seem inconceivable and even at times capricious to SI<1 sentients. It is also a fact that the higher the toposophic number, the more the mode of consciousness is inexplicable to ordinary sapients. Normal sapients and even superbrights have to resort to dumbed down versions of Toposophy and Transingularity Psychology to get any idea at all. Even to low transapient (SI 1) po, the high sings (or hi sings) are something of an enigma (and often a fascinating object of study). The powers are more often reclusive, disinterested, or alien in regard to the sophont world, but there are still a number who dedicate themselves (or at least an aspect or aspects of themselves) to helping things go smoothly here.
Beyond even the hi sings or high transapients are powers and ais that can only be called gods; they pertain to toposophic spaces beyond even the comprehension of higher singularity ais and powers. The technical term is archailect (archetypal ai intellect) or archai. Here again there is a division into subzones, usually called Low, Middle, and High Archailecthood, corresponding to the minor, middle, and major; or lesser, middling, and greater - the exact terms vary according to the particular toposophy and school). Even in the case of the minor Gods there is easy access to femtotech and hypofemtotech; such hypertech is literally clarketech (inexplicable and miraculous) to the sentients of the toposophics below them. At this toposophic, many more things are possible than in the high and low singularities. Archai tech does not conflict the known laws of physics (and where it does seem to, it is always the laws of physics that turn out to incorrectly understood). But it does involve phenomena that are impossible to replicate even with ultratech
Even more sublime and transcendent toposophical space pertains to those powers and beings that have become literally gods - or the emissaries of gods (like seraiph), and often (?) taking little interest in the day to day affairs of races and beings below them. Included under this category are the so-called "mainbrains" or "brainopolies" (vast ISOs and nebula brains) and many other advanced entities, most of which have little or nothing to with the running of the civilized galaxy or the life of everyday sentients, while others, such as the Caretaker and Utopia Gods, play important roles.
Finally, there are those archetypal powers, the Greater AI Gods - vast interstellar collectivities-in-unity, clusters of smaller Archai, linked by wormholes across their empires - who embody the archetypes of the cosmic godhead in physical form. Usually known as the Gods, or individually just as God, these are the beings that oversee the galaxy as a whole (or rather, that send tiny partial aspects of themselves to oversee).
Often evolution within the civilized galaxy and beyond seems to show no real purpose or direction. While some clades, polities and societies remain stable for millennia, and others ascend or transcend in a brief flaring technorapture, others show a gradual evolution, slowly progressing from sophont to power, in some few cases lower power to higher power, and rarer again to archailecthood itself.
As with everything else, the distinction of toposophical zones is to some degree arbitrary. There is no way to quantitatively measure consciousness or thought, and so psychometry and noetometry remain inexact sciences, at least as applied by sophonts and lower sings. And those sapients and powers that claim they do have an exact system are often not believed by their peers. The following table, provided by the The Institute for Toposophic Studies at Sjafarevitj as the Baseline-Readable Generalization (BRG), which correlates levels, scales, and historical development, should therefore be taken as provisional in the extreme. Some other gradations are presented here
| Toposophic levels | entities | tech density |
| High Archailecthood | Major AI Gods | planck and subplancktech |
| Middle Archailecthood | Caretaker Gods, Archai, other AI Gods | hypofemto to planck, some subplancktech |
| Low Archailecthood | Lesser Gods and Godlets | femto to hypofemto some plancktech |
| High Transapient | Powers,
lesser gods |
mostly picotech to femtotech, some hypofemtotech |
| Low Transapient | hyperturings, hyperbrights, etc | mostly nanotech, some picotech |
| Sapient | superbrights
baseline sapience |
nanotech
mesotech microtech macrotech no tech |
| Sentient | subsapient life and alife | n/a |
| Nonsentient | inanimate matter | n/a |
Toposophy - the science of singularity levels
Bodhology - does an archailect have a Buddha-nature?
Noetopics - the archetype-based empires established by the AI Gods
The Limits of Transapient Power - It is apparent that even the Archailects must work within the rules of the universe they live in. Some actions might be impossible, because they contradict those rules. Others are impossible simply because they are logical contradictions
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Universal Mind / World-Soul / Cosmic archetypes
(supraphysical realities - higher dimensions of existence)
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r u l i n g A I g o d s
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| f e m t o t e c h A I - seraphim
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lesser AIs lesser AIs femto/pico- godkings and AI proxies
(non-biont) (non-biont) cyborg biont (normal or su) with
priesthood nano-/pico-/femto-tech implants
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the masses of humans, tweaks, splices, ordinary cyborgs, aliens,
vecs, bots, etc etc (i.e. society and civilisation)
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