04-29-2021, 10:56 PM
The comparison of humans with animals and transaps with modos is a common one in the setting/project and in some circumstances it is a reasonably useful analogy.
Where things break down however, is that it tends to ignore just how much more physically capable a transapient can be if it wishes. Humans are more or less stuck in the bodies we have in RL. For a transapient, the body(ies) they have at any given time can largely be based on need or desire.
Or to put it another way - what would the woman/bear/selfie situation have looked like if the woman was a vec body with diamondoid or Ultimate Muscle muscles that would let it bend steel and shot putt at least small cars and basically shrug off all the biting and clawing the bear could do? And that body was one of 50 bodies in the area, encompassing a variety of body plans from aircraft to light armored vehicles such that if she wanted to she could rip the bear limb from limb before reducing the entire zoo to a smoking crater in the ground? And all those bodies were just a fraction of what she was as she had thousands of bodies scattered around the entire planet and in orbit and her actual 'mind' was running across multiple server farms in multiple locations? And all that had backups?
And that's just a rough approximation of an S1 probably not going out of its way to be heavily armed or anything. Amp things up to S2, S3, or higher and how quickly do you reach a point where the humans are gnats trying to hurt an elephant by kicking it in the shins?
Basically, things get very hard to quantify when you have entities that have no set form or number of bodies and what they do have is either more or less disposable or already built so tough just by dint of being technology (they are more or less living technology) that a lot of threats that 'the animals' can produce simply aren't going to be a credible threat at all.
Things get 'tricky' when dealing with transaps - let alone archai.
Todd
Where things break down however, is that it tends to ignore just how much more physically capable a transapient can be if it wishes. Humans are more or less stuck in the bodies we have in RL. For a transapient, the body(ies) they have at any given time can largely be based on need or desire.
Or to put it another way - what would the woman/bear/selfie situation have looked like if the woman was a vec body with diamondoid or Ultimate Muscle muscles that would let it bend steel and shot putt at least small cars and basically shrug off all the biting and clawing the bear could do? And that body was one of 50 bodies in the area, encompassing a variety of body plans from aircraft to light armored vehicles such that if she wanted to she could rip the bear limb from limb before reducing the entire zoo to a smoking crater in the ground? And all those bodies were just a fraction of what she was as she had thousands of bodies scattered around the entire planet and in orbit and her actual 'mind' was running across multiple server farms in multiple locations? And all that had backups?
And that's just a rough approximation of an S1 probably not going out of its way to be heavily armed or anything. Amp things up to S2, S3, or higher and how quickly do you reach a point where the humans are gnats trying to hurt an elephant by kicking it in the shins?
Basically, things get very hard to quantify when you have entities that have no set form or number of bodies and what they do have is either more or less disposable or already built so tough just by dint of being technology (they are more or less living technology) that a lot of threats that 'the animals' can produce simply aren't going to be a credible threat at all.
Things get 'tricky' when dealing with transaps - let alone archai.
Todd