Long Time Outsider Pondering Possibility of Becoming A Zar

[Solon]

Greetings, all! I am Solon, a long time lurker who is dipping his toes into the OA forums because he's getting more excited about transhumanism day by day and sees OA as a great place to read and think about new ideas.

I was attracted to OA for three primary elements, from least to greatest:

1. NoLWoCS
   
2. Megastructures (Yay Culture! Yay Halo! Yay Ringworld! Yay Star Wa--wait, is that kosher?)
   
3. Sophontology
   

I particularly find the Sophontology section to be the most interesting. There are so many ideas there that just never occurred to me, so many future paths I think humanity has a decent shot of traveling down or at least opening up that my brain never even contemplated. I'm particularly fascinated by the idea of the sybont -- probably because I see that as the real life destiny of mankind -- as well as bionoids and softbots. They're like robots, but biological! Could a bionoid, if using the human phenotype, actually be a human? (And while we're on that topic, what are the difference between them? Is it solely that bionoids use more "traditional" mind architectures while softbots just use alife models? If I actually knew anything behind the topics behind these EG articles, I'd try to fill them out, but unfortunately, I don't.)

You may notice that my join date is listed as being in 2013; it's true I signed up way back then, but I was just trying to find any articles about sybonts and synano since I found the EG articles to be limited -- not complaining mind you, I understand that that's something nobody really knows about yet at this stage.

I guess to fill out this into, I'll mention my now-favorite EG article. I didn't actually have one until I read this gem a week or so ago. It's the article on marijuana, and this is the line that got me:

There are even rumours of Marijuana provolution experiments in some areas of the Periphery.

The image of a civilization of sapient marijuana plants is just sublime.

[QueElEs]

Well, nice to have you on board Solon! Glad to see you're fascinated by this stuff, it could certainly use fleshing out. We could use deeper descriptions of the different non-biont and bionoid clades.

And thanks for your appreciation of the Marijuana article - my first EG submission so many years ago! To be honest, I tend to think now Cannabis provolves would have emerged already several times by the Current Era.

Feel free to write up a cannabis provolve clade

[Rynn]

Welcome to the forums! in terms of whether or not a biological robot could be human I'd say it depends on its fundamental biology. If it's using a human phenotype then it's arguably not a robot, if it's using biotech to look like a human then it isn't one. But it might still be classed as a human-derived clade.

[Drashner1]

Hi - Welcome to OA!!

As far as fleshing stuff out - 9/10ths of that is often having a member who's willing to initiate and drive a discussion about a given topic and then do the legwork to write up the results. All of which usually involves input and assistance from other members. So, if you'd like to take a shot at expanding these areas or anything else that interests you, please feel free.

That said, please don't feel that you aren't allowed to post or take part in any discussions outside of those areas or that you must work to expand these things. You're welcome to initiate or in join in on any OA relevant topics you feel like.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to post those as well.

Have fun

Todd

[Solon]

Thanks, all! I might, I need to think about it. Regarding bionoids and softbots, I think the place to start is on neural architecture -- bionoids are more traditional, softbots are alife based, and although the names are a bit of misnomer, that's what happens in history. I'll have to come up with some examples too, to highlight the differences. I'll have to crack open the Encyclopedia again. (Oh, who am I kidding, I never closed it in the first place.)

On the cannabis provolves, I guess there could be coca, opium, and shroom provolves too -- not that we want to make OA a druggie place, but now I have the idea of some or all of these using their natural qualities to warp biont minds and create populations of drugged out serviles. (That might qualify as a blight.)

[Rynn]

Could be, there's plenty of doubled up terms in the setting (we are a 15 year old project after all ).

A sophont designed to release aerosolised drugs as a defence is certainly something that could be done in the setting. Would be a bit of a weak weapon however. Aside from many sophonts being naturally immune (like vecs, neogens or heavy tweak clades) bionts in the setting are typically augmented with personal medical systems. Implants in their respiratory, circulatory and cerebral systems could filter out any harmful or unwanted intoxicants before they had an effect.

Tangentally when sophonts want to get high in OA they could consume drugs and set their medisystem to allow intoxication or they could run drugs programs through their DNIs and feel whatever they want whenever they want, at a touch of a neural button!

I have an article on my list to add to the site that features this.