10-18-2016, 12:26 AM
Hi! Welcome to OA!
It's not really true that modosophonts can't use technology created by transapients and archai; there is a whole class of transapientech that is specially designed to be used by modosophonts, even though they can't understand it. See the article on clarketech.
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4b0d5fc969b5f
Some kinds of transapientech can be recreated by modosophonts; this is called Ultratech, and the assumption here is that the modos would probably have invented this themselves, but the transapients got there first.
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/4b0d54e136586
As far as the largest and fastest superturing possible, the sky is the limit; an archai could make a planet-sized brain full of plasma processors, but they could place restrictions on the toposophic level of the mind within that computronium. The mind could be prevented from even thinking about transcending, or mentally incapable of doing so; it might even be rigged so it would shut down or explode.
What would a modosophont moon-brain be like? Well, one definition of a transapient is that it can think consciously about all its data, inputs and memories, as a single consciousness or as an arbitrary number of subordinate consciousnesses. A modosophont moonbrain could not do that. I would imagine a very large modosophont to be less than the sum of its parts, always cross-checking between different segments of its mind and getting confused or conflicted. In short, it would be like a civilisation, or perhaps several, always arguing with itself.
A modosophont superturing could be much smaller and still be prone to this sort of self-division and paralysis; we call this the Bloatware syndrome, or King Gnuff's Curse.
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/460e7c6d840e5
It's not really true that modosophonts can't use technology created by transapients and archai; there is a whole class of transapientech that is specially designed to be used by modosophonts, even though they can't understand it. See the article on clarketech.
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4b0d5fc969b5f
Some kinds of transapientech can be recreated by modosophonts; this is called Ultratech, and the assumption here is that the modos would probably have invented this themselves, but the transapients got there first.
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/4b0d54e136586
As far as the largest and fastest superturing possible, the sky is the limit; an archai could make a planet-sized brain full of plasma processors, but they could place restrictions on the toposophic level of the mind within that computronium. The mind could be prevented from even thinking about transcending, or mentally incapable of doing so; it might even be rigged so it would shut down or explode.
What would a modosophont moon-brain be like? Well, one definition of a transapient is that it can think consciously about all its data, inputs and memories, as a single consciousness or as an arbitrary number of subordinate consciousnesses. A modosophont moonbrain could not do that. I would imagine a very large modosophont to be less than the sum of its parts, always cross-checking between different segments of its mind and getting confused or conflicted. In short, it would be like a civilisation, or perhaps several, always arguing with itself.
A modosophont superturing could be much smaller and still be prone to this sort of self-division and paralysis; we call this the Bloatware syndrome, or King Gnuff's Curse.
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/460e7c6d840e5