Singularity levels and their limitations

[Matterplay1]

Bear in mind that most of modosophont civilization in the setting may qualify as the 'pet' of the ruling archailect. Or maybe something closer to a tended garden of plants. The relationship also need not be anything like what we think of when we think 'pet and owner'.

As far as the issue of 'freedom' - Modosophonts in the sephirotics have vast amounts of freedom to do all kinds of things - but they also live in a world where transapients or archailects rule absolutely and can remake or destroy them at will and with no hope of resistance (although they rarely do so). Some people interpret that to mean that 'freedom' is impossible under transapient rule (or in proximity to them). Others disagree. Freedom may be a somewhat flexible concept all around. Or be a somewhat different thing from what we are used to in RL as well.

In these discussions we often tend to gravitate towards categorizing humans and other modosophonts as 'pets', but as Todd mentions there are a whole range of other kinds of ways that transapients and archailects might 'relate' to humans and other modosphonts, even in the cases where, as in the Sephirotics, the archailects and transapients seem to encourage the modosophonts to flourish. Many of those ways are a lot less 'personal' than 'pet' or even 'livestock'. Todd's mentioned that 'plant in the garden' is one analogue. Others are even more distant. There's a real possibility that the civilizations of the Sephirotic are analogous to orchards or grainfields. Or even if they serve some 'useful' purpose to the higher toposophics the relationship might be much more distant: analogous to the 'wild' biota that make a planet like Earth pleasant and habitable to humans. Some of those more distant relationships allow a lot more 'freedom', and the overwhelming relative power of the transapients and archailects in such cases might be very real but not very important. Some microplanktonic organism out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is never going to be able to overpower me or even sway me, and even a lone human could in principle change or destroy or enhance the lives of millions or billions of such organisms, but none of that is very relevant to how they live their lives or how I live mine. And of course in the OA setting the 'real' relationships between modosophonts and members of the higher toposophics are likely quite a bit more varied and a lot stranger than any kind of relationship between humans and 'lower' organisms.

Returning to the topic that started this thread, about limitations on what archailects and transapients can do in the OA setting, I think this page:

may be useful to those who want to know more about what the higher toposophic beings in the setting can not do:
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/47fae575daf11
They may be incomparably more capable than humans and the like, but that does not mean they can do absolutely anything.