Postbiont (Po)

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Postbiont (Po)

Sophonts > Transapients > Postbiont (Po)

Postbionts are biological or formerly biological beings who have transcended the sapient, sophont, condition and become superhuman. At times they can be the most disturbing of all the transapients. They can sometimes seem utterly normal for long periods of time, but always come up with some utterly strange point of view eventually. Often for no apparent reason they do things that simply don't make sense to ordinary sophonts. A few play an important part in the running of civilization, supporting and backing polities, corporations, institutes, and important clades and great houses. These are the corporate executives, the political leaders, artists, and monks. There are also postbiont transapients who are reclusive, contemplative, or migratory. Many postbionts own sapient or subsapient beings, and the way they treat them varies widely according to the personality of the superintelligence and the use to which these sapients are put, even within the Civilized Galaxy where the Sentient Rights Protocols have influence, let alone beyond it. The number of known po of all clades and phyla runs to well over a trillion in the Sephirotic empires alone.

Articles

Ascension Maze - Text by Todd Drashner with additions by Mike Parisi and Chris Shaeffer
Artificial structure designed to lead those traveling through it along a path of development culminating in ascension.
Athenaeids - Text by Mike Miller
Humanoid post-bionts created by the Athena Project.
House/Clade Hyperborg - Text by Glen Finney
Clade-based posthuman House.
Lucjordanians - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Interstellar trader House/Clade.
Post-provolve - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
An provolve who has attained to S1 or above. They can be as varied and diverse in origin as provolves themselves.
Postalien - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
A non-Terragen (alien) who has attained the status of an S1 or higher transapient. Sometimes called a postxenosophont.
Postbiont - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
An organic lifeform that has attained S1 or higher. May be an ascended sophont being, or even an ordinary sub-sapient organism that was somehow infected with or modified by a godseed. The term is generally used to refer to those individuals that have retained a (modified) carbon-based organic body.
Posthuman - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
A human who has attained an S1 or greater toposophic. Entities of tremendous physical, intellectual, and psychological capacity, self-programming, self-constituting, potentially immortal, unlimited individuals.
Power (toposophy) - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
A transingularity, but not hypersingularity, transapient sentient. Generally, any entity of S1 or greater, often with the implication that this entity was once an ordinary sophont/sapient being (specific types might be hyperturing AI, posthuman, postvec, postxenosopont, etc.). The term "power" is sometimes also used, although this more properly refers to beings intermediate between S1 (superintelligence - hyperturing or posthuman) and S2.
Transavant - Text by M. Alan Kazlev and Michael Boncher, slang names by John B
Common term used for those sophonts who have only "partially" ascended beyond their base toposophic level.
Transcend - Text by M. Alan Kazlev modified by Steve Bowers
Variously, the act of breaching a singularity barrier and leaving behind one's earlier personality and mental traits (contrast to ascension), or the more general and mystical attainment of a godlike/enlightened state, or a person/being who is the result of these acts.
Transcend-Ascend - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
One who transcends to one toposophic, then ascends to the next.

For example an intelligence may transcend to SI:1, leaving behind everything of itself that was of SI:<1. Then e may ascend to S2, retaining eir SI:1 nature but adding an S2 superstructure on top of the SI:1 nature. Contrast ascend-transcend. Often however the dividing lines are not this well defined.
Transcendent Being - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
An entity that is distinct from physical existence, whether considered ontologically, as a supernatural or supraphysical being, or soteriologically, as a being that is no longer a part of embodied existence or samsara. The existence of a transcendent being or beings (e.g. God, Buddhas, etc.) is central to many religious memeticities, but denied by physicalist memeticities.
Transcendent Burn-out Theory - Text by Todd Drashner
Theory that states that that Fermi's Paradox arises from civilisations transcending right out of the universe before they have a chance to expand across cosmologically significant distances.
Transcension - Text by Ryan B (Rynn)
A process whereby an entity attempting to rise to the next toposophic level instead spawns a separate being who achieves the goal instead. This new entity lacks continuity of identity, though it often retains a high fidelity model of the being it is derived from.
Transcension Alert - Text by Todd Drashner
Many civilization have developed some fairly reliable methods for predicting the onset of one of transcension events. Sentients in the area who don't want to risk being sucked in or possibly harmed by the event are be warned to leave the area, exercise caution, or possibly to take advantage of newly opened worlds or habitats left behind.
Transcension Machine - Text by Fernando Peña D'Andrea
A term describing a range of devices designed to facilitate transcension, absorbing the mentality of a subject and radically reconfiguring them in order to raise them to the next toposophic level.
Transcension Prediction - Text by Anders Sandberg and M. Alan Kazlev
Given the huge population of the civilized galaxy, and the fact that ascensions and transcensions are moderately common and have been going on for thousands of years, many polities and civilizations have developed some fairly reliable methods for predicting the onset of one of these events. Often this is comparable to pre- and post-singularity efforts at predicting the weather (and a large transcendence event does indeed share some conceptual characteristics with a force of nature to those watching from outside at a lower S level).
Transcension Virus - Text by Todd Drashner and M. Alan Kazlev
AI or alife or nano-vector viruses that require transcensions to replicate.
Transhuman - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
[1] a transhumanist, or the philosophy or memetics thereof (see Transhumanism), a hu who seeks to ascend to a transapient level and/or beyond;
[2] an intermediate stage between human and posthuman
Transhumanism - Text by Anders Sandberg
Information, Interplanetary, and early First Federation era philosophy/lifestyle that sought the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond baseline limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life promoting principles and values.
Transingularity - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
[1] (archaic) SI:1 or higher
[2] (archaic) pertaining to a toposophic level higher than SI:1
[3] Pertaining to relations between entities of different toposophic levels