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Denialers

Disbelief in Transapient entities and Archailects

Boran Orbital Band
Image from Steve Bowers
The Denialers of the Boran Orbital Band live in close proximity to the Boran Jupiter Brain. Despite this, they deny the existence of all transapient entities, and maintain that the J-Brain is merely host to a very advanced modosophont civilisation with delusions of grandeur
As with Hiders and Leavers, Denialers are uncomfortable with the existence of higher toposophic beings. Unlike their ideological brethren they still crave the comforts and security of the major empires, a state that puts them into conflict with their fear of manipulation and the threat of extinction from higher beings. To resolve this issue Denialers have resorted to psychoware, not to remove the discomfort or address its psychological source, but to instill a fervent disbelief in the existence of non-modosophont minds.

Thanks to this intervention Denialers live fairly normal lives within the Sephirotics, constantly believing that all aspects of major polity life are the work of modosophonts like themselves. When presented with evidence to the contrary (e.g: discussions of toposophic philosophy, items of incomprehensible transapientech, face-to-face meetings with avatars) their mod firmly forces them to rationalise said evidence away. Philosophical points appear to them to be entirely illogical, despite being fully consistent. Transapientech is explained as something they don't understand but clearly some modosophont could. Avatars are treated as pranksters or, in extremis, have their words and capabilities mis-interpreted.

For a variety of reasons Denialers are quite rare, making it an uncommon surprise to find an otherwise normal individual with the disbelief mod. Aside from resolving the fear directly the most important factor in their rarity is the different regulations on psychoware across different locales in the major polities. A large proportion of systems have rules in effect to prevent permanent, self-reinforcing psychological phenomena. The justification being to stop accidental or malicious trapping in a belief system, personality type, or state of mind with no possibility for self-directed change. Given that Denialer mods edit the knowledge of the mod from their users they tend to be banned entirely or subject to time-limits. It is not uncommon for a Denialer to suddenly be aware of the mod as it reaches its maximum use limit and to go on to edit out their underlying need to use the mod rather than reactivate it.

The one exception to the uncommonality of Denialers is the Boran orbital band, located in the Relay007 Metasoft Free Zone. Since 10,310AT the collection of habs orbiting the Boran J-Brain has been home to over a million Denialers, all with permanent modifications. Tourists visiting the area can expect to see passionate arguments amongst the band inhabitants as to why the gas giant below them shows such signs of computational activity. Being unable to see it for what it is (an S3 entity that has been slowly preparing to ascend to archai status over the centuries) many of the inhabitants have been drawn there to study what they perceive to be as an enigma. Thanks to the subtle differences between individuals they all rationalise their observations and models in different ways, leading to very heated disagreements over what the very thing they prevented themselves from conceiving of is.

It is widely suspected that the Boran S3 has embarked on an undetected memetic campaign to gather these Denialers to em. Despite being a free zone it is likely eir intentions are benign or benevolent, since unconsented malicious activity beyond the scope of the free zone would surely be stopped. Whether or not Boran seeks to change these people in some way or simply give them a fulfilling, if false, purpose in life is unknown.
 
Appears in Topics
Cultures and Sub-Cultures
 
Development Notes
Text by Ryan B
Initially published on 06 September 2019.

 
 
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