Greetings, but I think you are trying to do the impossible

[Cronos17]

It all comes down to the fundamental premise of OA. Telling stories about a world run by superintelligent beings. This is very problematic because you have characters with a nominal intelligence rating substantially higher than the authors that both made the characters and decides what they will do.

Consequently, I rarely see superintelligence done well. Let's go through some of the failure modes:

Super Toys- the tendency to compensate with a litany of high tech devices. It is a fail case because the prerequisite techs are usually missing and the toys can usually be used by an ordinary person with training. Batman is one example.

Hidden Variables- deliberately concealing key details from the reader. Not really superintelligence they just know something you don't. Sherlock Holmes is my favorite example.

Random Mysteriousness- the idea that superintelligence looks like randomness to everyone else. This is the driving force behind a lot of theology. And can lead you to try to justify actual stupidity.

World Ownership- I once put a character as smart as me into one of my stories. Anything I could think up he could think up and consequently he was always one step ahead of the entire universe. I never made that mistake again, the world always needs to be the smartest character or else there is no story.

Avoidance- The smart thing to do is to avoid superintelligence if at all possible. From what I can tell that is what a lot of OA stories try to do, but superintelligent beings make up too much of OA to be effectively cropped out. As a result the stories seem shallow.

[ATMLVE]

I would love to address your statements one by one, but I quite honestly don't have a clue what any of your sentences are trying to say. I am however getting a basic vibe from what I think you're trying to say, and I'll do my best to defend against it.

Orion's Arm is a project, to which people who enjoy the concept of future technology and science fiction devote a lot of their time to, at no financial benefit. It is meant to be a realistic representation of the future, and indeed, from our standpoint, it is. Genetic engineering, very intelligent robots, societies run by artificial intelligences... Looking at the last 30 years of technological advancement, this does seem to be a path that humanity is taking. The setting is intended to be as realistic as possible.

And, that's the setting. We aren't predicting the future. And lots of us aren't authors, I know I've tried to write normal stories, such as with dialogue; and failed miserably. We here all just enjoy science fiction, and the concept of the setting. Of course we can't accurately predict how a super intelligent artificial intelligence would handle the ongoings of a society of billions. But we aren't going to not do it just because we can't.

The people here who contribute to Orion's Arm like science fiction, and they like to use their imagination to think up new ideas that fit into this unique science fiction setting. We have a setting; as realistic a portrayal of the future as currently humanly possible. The rest is all up to imagination. That is the one and only point.

[Drashner1]

Hi, Welcome to OA!!

OA seeks to do lots of things, one of them being producing stories set in the universe we've created. While superintelligence does play an important role in the setting, there are also major areas (speaking in terms of both points in time and points in space) where it does not (or at least just runs in the background). In those areas there is lots of room for stories involving characters of human or near-human level intelligence. And maybe some characters of rather inhuman intelligence if someone wanted to play with that.

As to whether or not it is possible to depict superhuman intelligence in a story set in the OA universe - only time will tell. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't - but we plan to have fun with it along the way. I would point to both Banks' Culture universe and Ascher's Polity universe as examples of enjoyable, well done, and successful SF series that include super-intelligent AIs. If we can do as well as either of those settings, I think we will be very happy.

Regarding your specific 'failure modes' below:

Super Toys- the tendency to compensate with a litany of high tech devices. It is a fail case because the prerequisite techs are usually missing and the toys can usually be used by an ordinary person with training. Batman is one example.

OA addresses this with two elements of its Canon:

By definition it is impossible to in any way comprehend or reverse engineer technology of more than one toposophic level above oneself. These technologies do not exist at the lower toposophic levels because they require the cognitive abilities of the higher toposophic level in question to create or understand them.

It is generally impossible to correctly operate technology - especially weapons - designed for sophonts of at least one toposophic level above oneself. This is really an extension of the point above. You might be able to operate an S4 paperweight, but not an S4 weylforge.

While it is possible, in principle, for human level minds to employ transapient tech devices, this is only when the devices in question have been specifically built by the transapients to be operable by human level minds. Stories set in OA would be expected to follow Canon on this matter.

Hidden Variables- deliberately concealing key details from the reader. Not really superintelligence they just know something you don't. Sherlock Holmes is my favorite example.

I don't recall any OA stories ever attempting to do this so far, but if they did I don't think we'd consider it super-intelligence per se. More likely the result of augmentation, which human level minds can also do. An exception would be the transapient ability to directly perceive (and manipulate) a vast number of variables (measured in thousands to trillions of different elements) simultaneously. That sort of ability goes rather beyond Sherlock Holmes, and if done well would be fine within the setting. It might be rather difficult to depict, however.

Random Mysteriousness- the idea that superintelligence looks like randomness to everyone else. This is the driving force behind a lot of theology. And can lead you to try to justify actual stupidity.

The archai do work in mysterious ways, but I don't think we take the position that they work in random ones. If you look like you're winning against one however, it either means that it's manipulating you - or that you are getting help from another transapient of equal or greater intelligence.

World Ownership- I once put a character as smart as me into one of my stories. Anything I could think up he could think up and consequently he was always one step ahead of the entire universe. I never made that mistake again, the world always needs to be the smartest character or else there is no story.

Transapients, and especially archai, often are the world, literally. So no danger of any other character being smarter. Although they also tend to have other uses for their time and either leave human level minds to take care of themselves or send them out to take care of stuff while the transapients get on with their own business.

Avoidance- The smart thing to do is to avoid superintelligence if at all possible. From what I can tell that is what a lot of OA stories try to do, but superintelligent beings make up too much of OA to be effectively cropped out. As a result the stories seem shallow.

I would agree that this element gets used in OA stories a good bit. But I would disagree that superintelligent beings make up too much of OA to be cropped out or put in the background within the context of a story. What tends to happen instead is that people on the forums or in new EG articles tend to focus a lot of their attention on the doings of the transapients and less so on the huge blocks of the setting where they aren't.

As to whether or not the stories are shallow - none of us are professional authors, and most of the stories are on the short side. That's something we'd be happy to change, given the chance, but it is what it is. Not to mention being a matter of opinion. Just because you don't like a particular story, doesn't mean someone else might not love it.

Coming at this from another direction, you imply that you write SF stories of some kind. Why not take a shot at writing something set in the OA universe, then?

Hope this helps and once again - Welcome to OA

Todd

[stevebowers]

Quite a few godtech toys are optimised so that humans and other modosophonts can use them; they have to be specially designed for this purpose. Of course these tools would be fitted with back-door tech so they can't be used against the entity that created them, but in some cases they can be used against other high toposophic entities (usually when thay have been specifically intended for this purpose).

[Rynn]

It all comes down to the fundamental premise of OA. Telling stories about a world run by superintelligent beings. This is very problematic because you have characters with a nominal intelligence rating substantially higher than the authors that both made the characters and decides what they will do.

Welcome to OA! I don't mean to sound rude but how familiar would you say you are with the project? I ask because arguably we don't focus on the superintelligences of the setting. They're there and their vital but their societies, inner thoughts etc are a mystery and for the most part they're treated far more as forces of nature than anything else.

Super Toys- the tendency to compensate with a litany of high tech devices. It is a fail case because the prerequisite techs are usually missing and the toys can usually be used by an ordinary person with training. Batman is one example.

The high-technology and science that transapients/archai develop in OA is drawn from reasonable speculation from scientific literature. And for the most part it is not available for use by modosophonts. In fact we subdivide this sort of technology into three categories:

• Low ground: Available to be reverse engineered by modosophonts
  
• Middle ground: Available to be used (or at least have it's use understood) but not reverse engineered
  
• High ground: Neither it's use nor how to make it can be deduced
  

You can read more about this here: http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/557846d4b952f

Hidden Variables- deliberately concealing key details from the reader. Not really superintelligence they just know something you don't. Sherlock Holmes is my favorite example.

I can't think of any time we've done this off the top of my head. We're far more focused on worldbuilding than story writing anyway which makes it less applicable.

Random Mysteriousness- the idea that superintelligence looks like randomness to everyone else. This is the driving force behind a lot of theology. And can lead you to try to justify actual stupidity.

I'm not quite sure what you mean, in a lot of fiction I've read featuring superintelligence (either SF or Fantasy in the form of Gods) I've not seen much "randomness". We do play with the idea that the reasons behind transap/archai actions are often opaque. I think that's a reasonable way to go and it can be done quite well if you write it correctly.

World Ownership- I once put a character as smart as me into one of my stories. Anything I could think up he could think up and consequently he was always one step ahead of the entire universe. I never made that mistake again, the world always needs to be the smartest character or else there is no story.

Again I'm not quite sure of any time we've done this in OA.

Avoidance- The smart thing to do is to avoid superintelligence if at all possible. From what I can tell that is what a lot of OA stories try to do, but superintelligent beings make up too much of OA to be effectively cropped out. As a result the stories seem shallow.

Plenty of the fiction we've written doesn't focus on transaps/archai because that's not the story being told. As I said they are far more a force of nature in the background.

To echo Todd's challenge you've joined our site and have done some writing so why not attempt to write something about an OA transap