So I'm looking at how to develop over at Orion's Arm, since the possibility of playing (or at least dealing with) higher level intelligences is a big deal.

Check the relevant article about higher level beings in the setting... So how does a player go about *ROLEPLAYING* a higher level being if, by definition, their thinking is beyond our understanding? How should a GM play out their interactions with these very real godlike entities that are similarly alien and unknowable?

Method 1: Analogize to how greek myth describes the relations between mortal men and the pantheon.

Method 2: Play it mostly humanlike, except GM'd beings are "aloof" and have a lot going on that they don't let on; while ascended PCs have major powers, and meanwhile should be more or less overwhelmed at their scoped.

Generally speaking, I'm not sure quite how to do it. Am I overdoing the alienness of unknowable beings? After all, we ascribe humanlike motivations/emotion to even inanimate objects. (Who hasn't cussed out their computer?)

A very interesting topic. I'm not sure if I buy into that model of consciousness, but it's still interesting.

As far as your question regarding the alienness of nonhuman beings, you may be overdoing it a bit, depending upon how you envision it. The model you give seems to do well with their rational cognitive abilities, but what about the other elements? What are the psychological natures of these beings? What are the humanlike qualities they can identify with? If these creatures interact and communicate with human beings at all, they must be able to relate to them on some level. What level is that? Basically, I think you have to figure out what makes these alien creatures so alien and then figure out how that would affect their actions and thoughts. Do they lack empathy? Are they primarily intuitive as opposed to rational? Are their physical forms assumed at will? In a roundabout way, I almost think you're going about it backwards. Going from the top-down approach, it may seem impossible to work with, but if you try the bottom-up method, you may get better results.

I'll give an example. Consider fey. In almost all roleplaying games that make them something other than a bunch of Tinkerbells, they are described as alien in their motives and thought processes and seemingly random in their actions. As I thought about it further, I wondered what it was that made them so alien, so "other." The conclusions I reached will color how I portray fey in my own games.

There's an easy, tho slow, way to be superhuman. Have more than one person involved in playing the character. That way you have multiples humans worth of effort being "cherry picked" into the character's actions.

I can't remember where I suggested this, but one way to enhance the apparent intelligence of such characters is to give them the chance to have anticipated a move by an ordinary character.

In one context, I've suggested that a walled castle might appear vulnerable to a tunneling effort; but the players don't know that there aren't underground defenses against tunneling, such as fragile waterpipes which if broken will pour water from the lake into the tunnels, or underground stone walls constructed below. As long as the players don't know that those things are not there, the referee can incorporate them at the moment they would matter.

Most of us think it's unfair for a character to suddenly be able to respond in a prepared fashion to something the player (or referee) did not expect or anticipate; but if the character is smarter than the player, such retroactively incorporated preparations are quite natural and acceptable. If there's fear of the referee overusing it (as in a gamist context) a roll against a probability that the action would have been anticipated makes it functional.

--M. J. Young

Mike: I think I'm totally on this wavelength. Given that there is a scale of logarithmic more awesome levels of intelligences, so too could I create powers that enact retroactive changes/"anticipations" in this way.

Consider fey.

Ergh, that 'doesn't register on my radar'...does that mesh with anyone? I mean humans lobby for animal rights. What up with these higher forms that they can't see some level of sentience in a creature that wears clothes, users tools and uses infrastructure. If they can't even treat such a creature as that creature treats animals, that isn't a lack of moral identifcation, that's just evil. It all sounds like the 'a wizard did it' cliche to explain any non sensical magical event, except in this case its a 'a higher intelligence did it...and its beyond critique'.

Sorry, I'm just trying to say its too easy to use 'higher intelligence' to prop up any sort of behaviour.

On the retroactive effects side, I'd suggest a sort of mechanic. Each time the intelligence employs this ability and its had its effect, declare openly that one point of intelligence effect or whatever name has been used. The intelligence, based on its int can only do a certain amount per week. This way the players feel the bad guy has used up a resource rather than just being able to kill all their plans whenever it wants and make their coming to the table to play, irrelevant. For gamist games, this one.

Noon,
No, it doesn't mesh with me, but it might well be realistic. After all, ants use tools and infrastructure and so do termites. Look where it got them in us recognizing ant/termite rights...

Of course I want to argue that there's a huge gap between an ant and a human and that I don't want to recognize this argument as valid, but I never can quite shake the feeling that somewhere, somethings that are as far beyond us mentally as we are beyond termites are having the exact same discussion, using us as the example.

M.J.,
I did the super intelligence = ret con trick in my Six Powers campaign. It worked fine, even though several of the players were on to what I was doing. One thing that helped against any feelings of unfairness was that the six powers were, in effect, balancing each other out very cleverly, leaving the PCs more or less free to act.

SR
--

Ok, there are a few different topic under discussion here.

Modeling Uber-Inteligence Abilities

This question answers itself. I don't have to be a genius level mathematician to be able to play one. All I need is a character with a super-high Mathematics skill. Superhero RPGs might be a good place to look for ideas on this since I imagine they have to handle this sort of thing all the time. Since INT and skills are just game mechanical abilities, it's fairly easy to model them in a game.

Uber-Inteligence Morality

There's no obvious reason to suppose that superhuman inteligence is likely to make someone any more or less moral than normal people. Certainly inteligence (however you measure it) in humans doesn't seem to correlate very well, or at all, with moral values. Even very dumb animals can exhibit altruistic behaviour (given suitable evolutionary incentives for doing so).

A science fiction author Larry Niven has written several stories featuring Pak Protectors, a hyper-inteligent race who's behaviour is completely dominated by their instincts. His point is that inteligence itself doesn't give to any goals or moral direction. Inteligence is simply an evolutionary feature or tool such as hair, claws or colour vision. Even if you disavow the scientific view, in religion the fallen angels are a morality tale that teach us that even the greatest of beings can fall from grace.


To in conclusion I don't think there are any insurmountable problems in playing such beings, or representing them in RPGs so long as the game system scales to the required level.


Simon Hibbs

Ergh, that 'doesn't register on my radar'...does that mesh with anyone?

I think playing someone with superhuman intelligence or other mental capacities beyond mortal reasoning is actually a lot easier than many people realize. Just fake it, and do whatever. If people question your motives, remind them that there is no way their feeble brain could possibly understand their true intentions, and they should not question things beyond their ability to understand. To explain your line of reasoning to a mere human would be like explaining calculus to a lemur. That excuse can work for anything. It's all in the presentation. Mad geniuses are my favorite characters for that reason.

I don't think we can really play anything too remote from our own experience; we lose the capacity to identify with the character IMO.

Our experience of such entities is/would be akin to a completely alien unfathomable external Threat (as I believe similar entities were called in Vernor Vinge's 'A Fire On The Deep', but I may be misremembering the source).

IOW, such characters should really be represented by some sort of random system, IMO.

contracycle wrote: I don't think we can really play anything too remote from our own experience; we lose the capacity to identify with the character IMO.

simon_hibbs wrote: The problem I have with so-called 'transcended' beings is that I've yet to actualy hear a usable description of what 'transcended' actualy means. It seems to me that it's a self fulfilling prophecy. In fact as humans we have very little dificulty understanding many things are are completely different from us - machines, plants, insects, etc, etc. We can even construct theoretical models for completely alien beings, many SF writers have done so. The only cases in SF where I've come across 'uninteligible' beings is cases where the author simply decided to write about beings that are uninteligible. That hardly constitutes proof that we will actualy be unable to understand any beings we do encounter.

simon_hibbs wrote:
The problem I have with so-called 'transcended' beings is that I've yet to actualy hear a usable description of what 'transcended' actualy means. It seems to me that it's a self fulfilling prophecy. In fact as humans we have very little dificulty understanding many things are are completely different from us - machines, plants, insects, etc, etc. We can even construct theoretical models for completely alien beings, many SF writers have done so. The only cases in SF where I've come across 'uninteligible' beings is cases where the author simply decided to write about beings that are uninteligible. That hardly constitutes proof that we will actualy be unable to understand any beings we do encounter.

simon-hibbs-
What you suggest forgets the fact that we can only understand things from our point of view and frame of reference. As human beings we are constrained by our intellect, our emotions and our needs. Superior beings, even with needs and emotions may have an underlying set of behavior that we can't comprehend.

Take for example differences between cultures and their own views of what constitutes 'reality'. For the western mind, we have been brought up to believe in empiricism and objectiveness. Even the notion "Cogito Ergo Sum" points to the belief that our 'self' is our mind. But this does not refelct for example how easterners feel. To the eastern mindset, thought is more than intellect or reasoning ability, it is also the ability to directly experience or intuit something. The 'self' is an illusion created by the ego because it is full of doubt and has forgotten its true nature. Even concepts like Yin and Yang are misconstrued by many westerners (they are not complementary opposites, but rather polar extremes of one thing..the ebb and flow of oneness). Even our language constrains how we think because within our language lies the framework of our understanding (at least to the western mind). This is why many eastern cultures believe that truth can not be explained but can only pointed at and experienced. As an old Chinese saying goes, "Doing is understanding".

If there can be such wide discrepancies even between humans (and the difficulties of one culture trying to understand the other), how would we be able to fathom the mind of something that can think in multiple dimensions, that sees time in a different fashion than we do, that does not have language to communicate, has no desire for pro-creation or self-preservation, or does not have any dualistic notions? At best we can only guess.

Our point of view restricts what we can possibly imagine and know. For example, while Heisenberg proved that it's impossible for us to know both the position and velocity of an atomic particle, is it impossible for all sentient creatures? If it is not, then what? We can not even begin to imagine what the thought processes of a being like this would be. It would be nothing more than guesswork...guesswork which falls within the domain of our own understanding and imagination.

I agree with contra_cycle. I think that playing super-intelligences as players is probably not a good idea simply because it's beyond our understanding and more importantly it's harder for the player to relate to. While you can always fake it, I think that one of the major benefits of roleplaying is to allow the player to connect with and learn from their character. How do you relate to something that is very likely extremely alien to our own thought processes and emotions? Even aliens themselves (who are not super-intelligent or transcendent beings) can be difficult to play for this reason. I generally see non-human races as foils for the human race in general. They help illumine our own society in some way, even if by being portrayed as the exact opposite.

wicked_knight wrote:
I think your looking at this from the wrong point of view. Being the human, yes we can understand the concepts behind machines, plants and animals. However, I for one could not go walking up to a monkey and expect to hold a meaningful dialogue. I may understand that the monkey is intelligent, I may understand that it has some form of rudimentary language. But it really won't help me that much.

And if it is anything like humans and how we interact with animals it may get frustrated when trying to communicate ideas - ...

Dauntless wrote: simon-hibbs-
What you suggest forgets the fact that we can only understand things from our point of view and frame of reference. As human beings we are constrained by our intellect, our emotions and our needs. Superior beings, even with needs and emotions may have an underlying set of behavior that we can't comprehend.

Take for example differences between cultures and their own views of what constitutes 'reality'.

This is jus playing into my hands. Yes, human beings are capable of a huge variety of world views and conceptual gymnastics. How exactly is this evidence that we will be unable to understand alien inteligences? Surely it's evidence of the opposite.

If there can be such wide discrepancies even between humans (and the difficulties of one culture trying to understand the other), how would we be able to fathom the mind of something that can think in multiple dimensions, that sees time in a different fashion than we do, that does not have language to communicate, has no desire for pro-creation or self-preservation, or does not have any dualistic notions? At best we can only guess.

As a matter of act it's quite possible, indeed a common occurance, for humans from one culture to become thoroughly familiar with another. Having a Chinese wife, this is a subject close to my heart. Also we are perfectly capable of imagining and workig in multiple dimensions, conceptualising events that occure in infinitesimal fractions of a second or billions of years, of handling non-linguistic communication modes, etc, etc. The last few objections are trivial. e have non-dualistic philosophies, not all of us are driven to procreate and last time I checked were perfectly capable of placing other priorities as higher than our own survival.

Our point of view restricts what we can possibly imagine and know. For example, while Heisenberg proved that it's impossible for us to know both the position and velocity of an atomic particle, is it impossible for all sentient creatures?

Yes, because it's a fundamental principle about information in our universe, not about us in particular. If these inteligences inhabit our universe, theh the Heisenberg Principle applies to them.

I agree with contra_cycle. I think that playing super-intelligences as players is probably not a good idea simply because it's beyond our understanding and more importantly it's harder for the player to relate to. While you can always fake it, I think that one of the major benefits of roleplaying is to allow the player to connect with and learn from their character.

Beings being alien from us and beings having super-inteligence seems to me to be two completely different things. There's nothing obvious about increased intelectual capability that necessitates that the being must have a different world view to ours. If you look at human scientific and mathematical progress, there's no evidence that any of the problems or questions facing us are intractable. We're making huge progress on ultiple fronts with no brick walls so far. Higher inteligences might be able to think faster and deeper than we can individualy, but we've yet to reach an intelectual limit of any kind.


Simon Hibbs

simon_hibbs wrote:
Beings being alien from us and beings having super-inteligence seems to me to be two completely different things. There's nothing obvious about increased intelectual capability that necessitates that the being must have a different world view to ours.

A note on transcendence: In phenomenology (Husserl), as I remember it, the Transcendent self is that part of the subject capable of percieving itself. The transcendent self is capable of (with training) recognising its own biases and subconcious interpretations of phenomena, thus being able to investigate those phenomena (any- and everything really, as it appears to our conciousness) from an (near) objective perspective. Of course, there are other views on transcendence, many of them metaphysical, but I find this one of particular interest in this question. Perhaps a superhuman being has no other self than the transcendent one, being free of instincts, subconcious desires and fears and indeed subjectivity. This shouldn't be too difficult to play. After all, it could also be a description of a players relation to a character. The difficult part is to figure out what motivates such a being. No act is rational in an absolute sense, only relative to achieving some desired goal.

Erling

Perhaps a superhuman being has no other self than the transcendent one, being free of instincts, subconcious desires and fears and indeed subjectivity. This shouldn't be too difficult to play.

Random thought here:

Why would it be impossible to roleplay a higher intelligence? We play characters that are stronger and smarter than ourselves sometimes. We play characters that are nonhuman (elves, orcs, aliens, etc.). Heck, I've played characters who were insane. But I've never heard anyone claim that it is impossible to accurately roleplay such characters. Why would "higher" humans be any more problematical? Am I missing something here?

Andrew Morris wrote: Why would it be impossible to roleplay a higher intelligence? We play characters that are stronger and smarter than ourselves sometimes. We play characters that are nonhuman (elves, orcs, aliens, etc.). Heck, I've played characters who were insane. But I've never heard anyone claim that it is impossible to accurately roleplay such characters. Why would "higher" humans be any more problematical? Am I missing something here?

xiombarg wrote: It's because unlike say, being faster, being intelligent has a distinct affect on the decision-making process -- which is something controlled by the player and generally not covered by stats.

Simon Hibbs -


Allow me to paraphrase the discussion.

Although the original question was to whether a person could successfully roleplay a transcendant individual. Your argument is that the concept of a trascendant being is initself a fallacy.

The points are - Mine:

1) A transcendant being is one that is spiritually or intellectually advanced beyond the scope of humans that there is no longer a common frame of reference for exchange of ideas.
2) That a limited form of communication could occur by specifically limiting the transcendant beings vocabulary and/or method of communication.
3) That because of this limitation, the ideas and thoughts of the transcendant being will often appear to be confused, jumbled, and that the logical leaps between events and conclusions could appear incomprehensible.

Your argument to that (paraphrased) is:

1) I, being a human, can understand a whole lot.
2) If it's incomprehensible to me then it's not valid, and is in fact tantamount to magic.


Well yeah... it would be. It's common to accept that when one technologically advanced race encounters another then the technology of the advanced race appears to be like magic. This isn't something that someone thought up on a lazy afternoon. This is because this has happend several times throughout human history.

The point of the argument is that by definition (mine at least *grin*) a transcended being will appear to be incomprehensible at times, because if they weren't, and they always made sense. Then they wouldn't be transcended would they?
Now to illustrate the point I mentioned the relationship between humans and the other animals that are on the planet.

simon_hibbs wrote:

wicked_knight wrote:
I think your looking at this from the wrong point of view. Being the human, yes we can understand the concepts behind machines, plants and animals. However, I for one could not go walking up to a monkey and expect to hold a meaningful dialogue. I may understand that the monkey is intelligent, I may understand that it has some form of rudimentary language. But it really won't help me that much.

I don't see why not. We've developed quite a good understanding of the psychology of many animals. It's at least as good and probably better than our understanding of our own psychology, on the basis that theirs is simpler and therefore easier to model.

simon_hibbs wrote: ... actualy points to how flexible our intelect realy is. 'Transcended' beings (whatever that means) still live in the same universe as us, experience the same physical and mathematical principles or laws. All the examples I've seen are tantamount to magic. 'Wearing blue' indeed. It's another case of a self fulfilling prophesy. If you start from the assumtion they're going to be incomprehensible, then of course all your arguments will lead to that conclusion.

wicked_knight wrote: The point of the argument is that by definition (mine at least *grin*) a transcended being will appear to be incomprehensible at times, because if they weren't, and they always made sense. Then they wouldn't be transcended would they?

Andrew Morris wrote: I don't know that they will appear incomprehensible at times, but I've got no argument that they may seem incomprehensible at times. And let's take a moment to look at defininitions -- are we referring to "transcendent" beings, or beings who have "transcended" human limitations? It's a subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless.

Andrew Morris wrote: A genetically engineered human with superhuman strength and speed and the ability to see all electromagnetic frequencies would be an example of a being who transcended human limitations. We can still understand this creature.

I've been following this thread with some interest; as I'm involved in a game build that has players taking non-human and (in some cases) hyper-capable beings as characters. (Not my place to go into details; it's someone else's baby.)

The points about transcended humans or the incomprehensibilty of higher order beings make me think of Dorsai! by Gorden Dickson. He does an admirable job of portraying a character that is transcending over the course of the book. Donal Graeme's motives and methods are baffling and even infuriating to the characters around him, but they are transparantly obvious to him.

James

wicked_knight wrote: Even though we understand that the character can see frequencies that we can't. We can't really appreciate what he's seeing.

wicked_knight wrote: But I would say that there is a good chance (especially in time critical situations) where the transcended individual would make sense only in retrospect after you've had a chance to quiz him as to what the hell he was talking about.

Simon_hibbs
Let me try to tackle this from a different direction. If we can comprehend Transcendant beings, would this not mean that we ourselves are transcendant beings? There are only two explanations of why we could understand such beings
1) The behavior the transcendant being displays still exists on a lower level. In a similar way we can understand 2d objects because we live in a 3d world.

However, the transcendant being could operate and think at levels beyond our own understanding. When I mean understanding, I don't mean our knowledge or theory...I mean our capability to analyze and deduce. So we may think we understand their thought processes, but it would be in our frame of reference

2) We ourselves are transcendant beings and operate at all levels of awareness and cognitive capabilities as a transcendant being. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. there are levels of consciousness that are still being researched. Perhaps "enlightened" people have become transcended by opening up new capabilities of the mind.

Let me give an example. Take the concept of the computer you have sitting in front of you against a Quantum computer. A Quantum computer can emulate a traditional computer, but a traditional simply can not do some tasks that a Quantum computer can (no matter how much time and processing power you give it). Fundamentally a traditional computer is a binary device that must be in one of two states. A Quantum computer however can operate on Qubits or something that can be on, off, both, neither or all. In a sense, it can calculate everything at once. Because of these properties, it has been mathematically proven (to our knowledge) that they can create uncrackable encryption schemes due to the nature of how they operate.

What I posit is the analogy that our minds are like traditional computers. We can do a lot with traditional computers, perhaps even create artificial intelligences with them, but they have built in limits that they can not surpass unless you change the way they function. Transcendant beings are akin to the Quantum computer. They operate in a different manner though outwardly, it too manipulates data.

I also posit that the Heisenberg Principle is true only in sofar as our comprehension of the Universe goes. It's quite possible that everything we understand about nature (and science) is wrong. If there is one thing Science teaches us, it's that Science doesn't prove anything. In fact, one of the jobs of scientists is to further our understanding by discovering something that doesn't fit our current model. When it doesn't fit, the model has to be changed. In essence, scientists try to find things that break the model we have...they try to disprove the current model, and create a new one that fits all of the old data plus the new data.

Not only are our empirical senses limits to our cognitive abilities, so is language. Our thoughts are constrained by the words we have. We are in many ways biological machines akin to robots. We take in data according to our senses and act on this data in our minds. Now, according to some mystic and philosophical beliefs, the world we see is an illusion (sophists and buddhists for example). This also leads to the possibility that we are indeed transcendant beings ourselves, but have forgotten our true nature (this is the angle taken by Buddhism and Shintoism for example).

About cultural differences, I meant that how we think is shaped by language and culture. I am of mixed race myself (my mom's Filipino/Indonesian) and am acutely aware of cultural shaping on one's cognitive world view. While we can get along with other cultures and learn other languages to a degree, it does show how world views can seem alien. Although you are right, there's a huge difference between something that is alien and yet comprehensible (a foreign culture) and something that is alien and incomprehensible (say for example a non-organic lifeform).

Pro-creation is also a hallmark of all organic life. Perhaps pro-creation is a bad word because it implies creation of new life at the individual level. Perhaps a better word is Species Survival. But if a transcendant being is effectively immortal, how can we understand this? We can try to imagine, but it is simply guess work.

Finally, I leave this with a quote from a neuro-scientist:
"If the mind were so simple that we could possibly understand it, we wouldn't possibly be able to understand it"

Finally, I leave this with a quote from a neuro-scientist:
"If the mind were so simple that we could possibly understand it, we wouldn't possibly be able to understand it"

I think we may be so far from the original topic that Dev isn't getting anything else of use from this; Dev, do you want to end the thread, or refocus us, or is this useful?

Regarding Heisenberg, a physicist recently told me that it might be possible to get around the limitation using a technique called quantum non-locality. In essence, there's a way for a particle to exist in two places at once, and if we could induce that, we could measure where it is in one place and what its energy level is in the other, and so know both. He suggested that this might be a first step toward real teleporters.

That means maybe some more intelligent being knows how to do that already.

Dauntless has brought an interesting notion to my mind. It may be that superior intelligence is less about what one can understand when it is explained and more about what one can understand without explanation. Einstein was a genius who devised a very complex theory of reality, but now that it's been devised many physicists understand most of it. Newton was a genius who determined an entire system of the laws of gravity and motion that held for a couple hundred years, but we teach it to school children now, and they get it.

The thing about Sherlock Holmes was always that once he explained what it was he saw and what he concluded from it, it seemed so simple, but it was his genius to see it and draw the conclusions, which even Watson never mastered.

So it might not be whether we could understand the thinking of such a more intelligent being, but whether we could think of it ourselves.

--M. J. Young

Many posts here, too many to respond to individualy but think this one is generaly representative.

wicked_knight wrote: 1) A transcendant being is one that is spiritually or intellectually advanced beyond the scope of humans that there is no longer a common frame of reference for exchange of ideas.

Actually no, we haven't developed anything close to a good psychology of animals. Sure we can map behaviours but that not the same thing. The problem of course is that we can't exchange ideas.

I agree with you that we amazingly flexible beings with regards to our thinking... at times. The thing to remember is that there is a good chance that most of our understanding of physics, chemistry, etc, is incorrect.

I've sorta dropped of, but please do continue this thread!

I let this thread sit on "to read!" because I'm trying really, really hard to graduate. Ugh.

I'll chime in soon, or if it's too late, I'll start a new thread again. But I'm definitely like this. (And there are, certainly, cool Play + Design considerations to come from this...)

Just a side note then: Why is it believed that 'higher beings' could avoid gross physical reactions or such. For instance, if they touch a hot surface they reflex back, or if you throw a punch at them when they have a impenitrable glass barrier so they can't get hit and know it, they still flinch. In other words, still wrapped in the reflexes of an animal? It's just as likely a higher being couldn't stand chinese water torture, its the creature their tied too.

Sure, such a race could edit such things genetically (big job) so they don't occur. But then again, the philosophy/politics of such would be generated by themselves before the change. It still has the weaknesses of the past creature embedded in the new, because it relied on the past to create the new.

Is there such a thing as higher intelligence, or merely specialisation in thinking? Doing what you've already done, but more so?

When I was about twelve or thirteen years old, a friend of mine and I practiced falling on our faces on a bed without raising our arms to catch ourselves. We also practiced not blinking when something is coming out our faces.

I've worn glasses with plastic lenses since I was in fourth grade, and I have been poked in the eye by twigs and such that get around the lenses, because I have to a degree been trained by the glasses to expect such things to be blocked. I'm not saying I never blink, but I don't blink as often as most people in such situations, and I can to a significant degree supress the reflex.

I'm not arguing that creatures of higher whatever will of necessity have supressed the reflex; but I think it's not unreasonable to suggest that such creatures are less dependent upon reflex.

To a large degree, reflexes in creatures are physical responses which our body does automatically because we couldn't think to do them ourselves quickly enough. Your leg shifts when the tendon in your knee is struck because this reduces the impact to your knee; if you had to think to move your leg, you couldn't do it quickly enough to matter. But if you could think faster, you would not necessarily need the reflex.

It seems to me relevant here that the brontosaurus and similar large dinosaurs are believed to have had a secondary brain in their hips. The belief is that the creature was so large it could not have kept its balance by mental commands from the brain--nerve impulses could not have reached the brain informing it of the rear end tipping and had a correction fed back to the legs and tail before the creature fell over. Thus the second brain kept the creature balanced by issuing instructions to the hindquarters to maintain stability. Our reflexes are similar to that in some ways--actions that our nervous system imposes on us without reaching our conscious mind.

Would a higher being--

• Have no such reflexes, but be able to think fast enough to do consciously what lower creatures such as ourselves do unconsciously?• Have more reflexes, enabling them to do without thought many of the things which for us require thought?• Have programmable reflexes, such that by conscious thought the being could determine what he will do unconsciously or automatically in any defined situation?

I think all of those are possibilities, and might be worth exploring.

--M. J. Young

I think that the first possibility you listed is implausible if this higher being came from earth. The reason is that on earth, higher intelligences have more instincts and more reflexes than lower creatures. The more we progress the more things being automatic. It's kinda like programming languages. No-one codes in machine anymore, but more and more languages are being made which are just another abstraction layer on top of other languages. So a higher being from earth would be doing things that we require conscious effort to do completely automatically. Like calculus. They wouldn't have to consciously think about that, it would be like consciously thinking of what words to use and how they fit together for us.

Programmable reflexes are certainly something which we already do. Think about driving a car. If you are about to crash, you most likely step on the brake and maybe turn the wheel. But that was a programmed response which you no longer need to think about. I think higher beings would be no different here, only much faster and possibly more accurate in their responses. For example, maybe instead of slamming on the brakes and turning the wheel drastically, their reflexes are more fine-tuned and they only apply the brakes enough to slow the car without skidding and turn the wheel enough to get out of the way without spinning.

But having no reflexes? I think that would be a significant step backwards for any creature from earth. It would be like programming in machine just because you can. Perhaps the ability to override their plethora of reflexes, but not the absence of any reflexes.

-Ben

Reflexes are micromanagement. Its a delegation of power thats part of the body your in. It doesn't matter if your mind can handle info quick enough to handle all reflexes, if you don't have an overide to those reflexes you don't get a say. And 'work arounds' aren't the same as getting control of these reflexes directly.

An analogy is that it doesn't matter how powerful a computer gets if it has a simple on/off switch. Being powerful doesn't overcome that it can be switched off as simply as a basic comp. An upgrade in information handling doesn't mean basic hardware configurations/limmitations are bypassed.

So a higher processor is still going to be constrained by the hardware it exists in, miraculous trancendance doesn't get you past that. Best you can do is use 'work around' thoughts and training, and it seems rediculous that once you gain more processing power, you sink it into fighting your own bodies micromanagement

Which makes predicting the behaviour of a high processor much easier and less 'oh, no one knows so any portrayal is beyond critique'

(And on the flip side, if you did have a modified body where you can use an override on reflexes, why do that and waste all that run time on stuff that was delegated before? It seems a bit of male fantasy of perfect self control for no practical reason except to show off how in control one is).

Noon wrote: Just a side note then: Why is it believed that 'higher beings' could avoid gross physical reactions or such. For instance, if they touch a hot surface they reflex back...

It still has the weaknesses of the past creature embedded in the new, because it relied on the past to create the new.

And I return to post. Huzzah.

contracycle wrote: I don't think we can really play anything too remote from our own experience; we lose the capacity to identify with the
character IMO.

neelk wrote: One fun way to play this is to start with a basically human chaacter, and then add, one by one, capabilities that touch on the core issues of self and identity until you're playing a character who isn't very human at all.

ascend - the act of ascension, from a lower to a higher toposophic, while still retaining one's earlier characteristics - e.g. man is an ascended animal - e has all the animal instincts but e also possesses ratiocintation.
transcend - to become vastly superhuman or superbaseline and incomprehensible to unaugmented (or even lower hyperturing) beings. To breach a singularity barrier

Singularity Levels Excerpt wrote: SI:1 - the classic "First Singularity" or basic transapient state. At this level intelligence, cognative and problem-solving abilities and information processing work thousands of times faster than in the case of standard sapients. An entity of this nature is usually able to coordinate a nanocyborg or a living metal body, as well as solve problems of physics, mathematics, economics, programming, etc that no nearbaseline could solve
SI:2 - the second singularity, which stands in the same relation to SI:1 and SI:1 does to ordinary sapient cognition. Also enables existence as a basic pico-tech cyborg.
SI:3 - confers an even higher grade of toposophical intelligence; pretty much incomprehensible and indescribable to anything below this level. For this reason this is called the Beyond (although the term is also used by baselines and other SI:<1 sophonts to refer to any SI: level of 1 or higher). Enables existence as a basic Femtotech and advanced Picotech. Even a basic seraiph is generally of this grade or higher.

M. J. Young wrote: When I was about twelve or thirteen years old, a friend of mine and I practiced falling on our faces on a bed without raising our arms to catch ourselves. We also practiced not blinking when something is coming out our faces.

Actually Simon, babies are born with instincts and reflexes, but they aren't activated until they would be useful in the childs life (human development is absolutely fascinating). For example, babies have absolutely no fear of heights until they are able to walk (sometimes crawl), and then suddenly, without prior exposure to heights, they become fearful of them. Things like stairs are actually pretty dangerous because from a baby's perspective, the next step isn't that far down, so babies aren't afraid of them, because they don't take in the overall height of all the stairs.

I'd be willing to bet that as soon as your kid starts to walk, that "catching yourself" reflex will just appear out of nowhere the first time the baby falls forward (which is rare cos they are usually bum-heavy).

But in short, my point is that your baby has all the right reflexes ready to go, but they won't become active until they are needed ("needed" as defined in evolutionary terms).

-Ben

P.S., the reason your baby has "no sense of personal presevation" is because it still doesn't have a sense of self. As hard as it is to comprehend, your baby is it's mum and in the baby's mind it's mum is the baby. I can't wrap my mind around not having a sense of self but there it is.

Ravien wrote: Actually Simon, babies are born with instincts and reflexes, but they aren't activated until they would be useful in the childs life (human development is absolutely fascinating). For example, babies have absolutely no fear of heights until they are able to walk (sometimes crawl), and then suddenly, without prior exposure to heights, they become fearful of them.

P.S., the reason your baby has "no sense of personal presevation" is because it still doesn't have a sense of self. As hard as it is to comprehend, your baby is it's mum and in the baby's mind it's mum is the baby. I can't wrap my mind around not having a sense of self but there it is.