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Sophstem
Sophont Systems |
 Image from John B |
Any large, complex system that has gained both sentience and sapience as an emergent property, to the degree that it may be considered to be a sophont being.
This term is often used for systems that do not normally evolve sentience, much less sapience or sophonce: ecosystems, economical systems and electronic databases are examples. To qualify as a sophstem, the system as a whole must show sapience, not merely contain sapient beings, and must have gone beyond merely becoming a sensestem. Sophstems have evolved spontaneously when a system has gained a certain complexity through some combination of growth and natural selection. Some sophstems are created by high transapient entities.
Sophstems can be very hard for ordinary sophonts to spot. Every action that happens within a sophstem is completely logical, and there seems to be no overriding intelligence, but if it is seen from without it is quite apparent that the system works in an intelligent fashion.
An envome, natural or provolved, is a good example of a sophstem. While the Invisible Hand is sometimes cited as an example, many of the best sophontologists in Terragen space have denied that such a sophstem actually exists.
Sophont Societies are another example of sophstem broadly similar to the Business Minds of the NoCoZo, but far more diverse. Sophont Societies are one of the few society types that the Kalevalists don't mind persisting, and those responsible for designing them are highly respected among them.
Related Articles
- Sensestem
- Sentience Algorithms - Text by John B and Pran Mukherjee
The flow of steps which, when followed, allow an organized system to develop and maintain a degree of sentience. The underpinning of ai design. Required massive (at the time) neural nets or even more massive emulations thereof on hardware, state vector machines, and other information age new technology, being massively parallel (capable of running many many tasks simultaneously, or at least appearing to be able to do so to an outside observer.) - Sentient - Text by Stephen Inniss
As an adjective, having the characteristics of sentience. As a noun, particularly in the plural, any being that is deemed to have sentience, as in "The Universal Bill of Sentient Rights". - Sophonce
- Sophont - Text by Stephen Inniss
A person. A being that has the quality of sophonce. Such beings are sometimes called 'sapients'. For historical reasons, sophont-grade ais, may be called 'turingrade ais', even though because of philosophical and practical difficulties with the Turing Test the term 'sophont ai' would be clearer. - Sophtware
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Development Notes
Text by Thorbørn Steen
Initially published on 01 June 2005.
Initially published on 01 June 2005.
