Singularity levels and their limitations

[selden]

Is A Transapient's Lie about a message being relayed between two higher S levels and that message on its own has sentience?

That's certainly one way to interpret it. I think the ambiguities are intentionally part of the story.

It's alway cool seeing parallel ideas. Me suggesting the exact concept of orion's arm in a fb forum send me here. As I was contemplating how Singularities would converse I had the idea that they'd share minds instead of words. I didn't stop to ponder that this conversation would create sentience along the way.

One of the problems of that type of conversation is the question of whether or not it is self-conscious. In the OA environment there can be entities which can simulate all the actions of a conscious being but are not themselves self-conscious. This is a way to get around some of the ethical problems of slavery.