Orion's Arm / The Orion's Arm Universe Project

Sounds like the Eldar during that Dark Age of Technology... before all that hedonism spawned Slaanesh.

:thinking:
One of the open questions in the setting is why there's lots of ruins of previous human-like civilizations that SHOULD be galaxy spanning ultrapowers... but outside of some very rare ruins, they're just not there.

One suggested solution is that eventually the AI capital-G-Gods reach a point where they just move out of our Universe -- too hot, not enough computronium, speed of light is too slow -- for a better or even custom built one. From anyone not a Tier 6 or a theoretical Tier 7 mind this would look like they just fucking vanished one day.
 
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One suggested solution is that eventually the AI capital-G-Gods reach a point where they just move out of our Universe
In that prologue to 3001, it was said that the Firstborn (the makers of those monoliths) became machine life, and then became "frozen lattices of light" in the structure of spacetime itself. I guess the Firstborn have access to some sort of simulated realm in that state. So maybe in that "Orion's Arm" setting, AI can accomplish a similar feat?

speed of light is too slow
Not if going to ludicrous speed plaid is figured out. :smug:
 
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ORION"S ARM
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I am fucking love this I am a sucker for lore and hard sci fi.

One of the open questions in the setting is why there's lots of ruins of previous human-like civilizations that SHOULD be galaxy spanning ultrapowers... but outside of some very rare ruins, they're just not there.

Yeah they find a few aliens but for the size of the setting there are very few other people. There is the conspiracy theory that someone/something is erasing previous civilizations with some proof but not much. Then there are the signs of other civilizations around that we know exist/existed but are too far away for communication but the mere signs of their works are awesome (in the biblical meaning here) to behold like the literal micromanaged galaxies optimized for long term energy efficiency or the Leo Hyperobject which is what looks to be a dyson sphere at first but is actually 1.2 light years across seems to weight double as much as the Milky Way and of course who can forget the time Terrans finally found someone apparently on our level of tech who was sending a "To whom it may concern" our way from 2.7 million light years away telling about their own people and culture and at the end there was a "Oh and btw there is a 10ly sized space ship coming our way and we have no idea what it is it will get here in 1 million years no idea tf it is".

2spoopy4me
 
It's less about efficiency and more about using technology to create new experiences. The citizens of the Sephirotic Empires live lives of luxury with all their needs being taken care of by advanced AIs.
Increasing the range and magnitude of possible experiences, on a metaphysical level, is kind of the whole point of this sort of extreme transhumanism to begin with.

Orion’s Arm takes the question, “What kind of culture would we have if we could see UV and/or infrared light?” and it runs with it until it ends up with things like minds so powerful they can simulate and analyze hundreds or even thousands of baseline minds internally. Somewhere in the setting, there no doubt exists a higher-singularity being who is running a mental sim of medieval England and all the people in it, in the back of their mind, as a screen saver. To the Archailects, baseline minds (or modosophonts) are basically beyond fucking retarded. The difference in intelligence between them and their mortal charges is not like the difference in intelligence between you and a downie. It’s many, many orders of magnitude of difference in intellect.

The higher-level AI gods in Orion’s arm may blast exabytes of data at each other in a split-second as a fucking greeting. The 39 bits per second of human speech doesn’t even register.

Think of the Ents from LOTR and how impatient people get with their rumbling, glacial pace of speech, and now, picture something orders of magnitude slower. Picture the reply being the entire Library of Congress in a millisecond. These AI have minds so far beyond comprehension, they would have to spin up a little tiny booger-mind, a virtual retard, just to talk to you.

One of the AI Gods is a dying mutilated cat that was ripped apart by a God Seed on accident as it was dying, turned into not just a baseline human's intellect but several orders of magnitude smarter -- I forget how high up but high enough that it's brain is the size of a planet and it has complete control of everything in it's solar system on an atomic scale, so probably a Tier 3 or 4 mind.
You forgot the part where an actual cult sprang up around it, which gathers up criminals and other assorted scum, tests how unrepentantly evil they are, and, if they fail, feeds them to that thing.

Whatever you do, don’t be a dick in this setting, or you might get kidnapped by a space kangaroo and thrown down the ouch hole.

I am fucking love this I am a sucker for lore and hard sci fi.

Yeah they find a few aliens but for the size of the setting there are very few other people. There is the conspiracy theory that someone/something is erasing previous civilizations with some proof but not much. Then there are the signs of other civilizations around that we know exist/existed but are too far away for communication but the mere signs of their works are awesome (in the biblical meaning here) to behold like the literal micromanaged galaxies optimized for long term energy efficiency or the Leo Hyperobject which is what looks to be a dyson sphere at first but is actually 1.2 light years across seems to weight double as much as the Milky Way and of course who can forget the time Terrans finally found someone apparently on our level of tech who was sending a "To whom it may concern" our way from 2.7 million light years away telling about their own people and culture and at the end there was a "Oh and btw there is a 10ly sized space ship coming our way and we have no idea what it is it will get here in 1 million years no idea tf it is".

2spoopy4me

The more you understand about transapients and blights or perversities, the more you wonder, what if the Hiders are right to hide?
 
The more you understand about transapients and blights or perversities, the more you wonder, what if the Hiders are right to hide?
Oh god the blights and perversities
One I like is the group of AI God Scientists that are running simulations on their own history, just to see how badly things could have gone wrong instead. They've ran this simulation so many times they have it down to 4 different versions of the timeline:
  • Type 1 timelines have the Singularity beings be created but NOT take over all of civilization, which is the "real" timeline, or at least the same broad type of timeline. (Still allows for shit like GAIA and the Techpocalypse, tho.)
  • Type 2 timelines have the Singularity being takes over, usually by using weaponized memes to brainwash the baseline humans into thinking they'd be a good ruler.
  • Type 3 timelines have the Singularity being take over... and they don't give a shit about the baselines. This can go from them putting the baselines basically in a Wildlife preserve (i.e., Earth) while they fuck off into the cosmos or them fucking up society somehow on accident or even sterilizing everyone to let "old humans" die out.
  • Type 4 timelines are when something happens and whoops, no Singularity. Nuclear war, asteroid impact, et cetera.
One of the noteworthy ones is an Corporate HR Planning AI that took over Earth, tried to maximize society's output ("We don't NEED you in California this week we're moving you to India to help clean streets, then next week we'll be moving you to Australia to clear underbrush.") generally fucked up everyone's lives until it hit the second Singularity a few centuries later, decided that having to take care of a civilization was a total drag and decided to just kill everyone and run math problems in it's head for 10,000 years. Another has an AI having taken over human society that has realized it's in a simulation and is trying it's damnedest to confirm this or break out or preferably both, with the AI running the simulation desperately trying to stop it cause if he crashes the simulation it's probably going to do uncomfortable things to the simulation's power source -- i.e., the nearby star.
 
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Anders Sandberg, who is an IRL transhumanist, was a lore contributor to Orion's Arm. He writes stuff like essays about how morphological freedom should be a right. He's the type of transhumanist who sees nothing wrong at all with human beings fracturing into millions of distinct, unique species, and would find himself right at home in the setting.

If I lived in this setting, I'd be like Space Ted Kaczynski and my "cabin" would be the center of an asteroid at the edge of the Milky Way in the middle of absolutely-fuck-off-nowhere. Every now and then, I'd have a loyal follower deliver me some highlight reels from the Sephirotic Empires for me to guffaw at while sitting on a paisley couch eating nachos and bean dip.
 
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One of the setting's little things that I do like are their take on kobolds/goblins/whatever

The Packrats, or _____ spores

They're a bunch of small robots that decided to "live forever or die trying" by sending out copies of themselves from Earth right as all hell broke loose at the start of the setting. They're either an AI created around our era, or a recreation of one, or a prank from an AI God creating one that appears to be one from our era (it would literally be impossible for normal human observers to know).

They then, once things calmed down, realized how precarious shit was (all these people turning themselves into AI Gods is risky as fuck) and that this "singularity" shit was real (and neato) so they decided to just make sure there's a plan B for civilization by being every single possible Plan B at the same time.

So the typical _____ will land on a random planet then sleep for a few centuries to a few millennia (randomly chosen) then create a computer for their brain, set up infrastructure using whatever tech they have available, and send copies of themselves out into the galaxy before immediately attempting to turn themselves into AI Gods. They hide themselves everywhere -- on moons, on comets, in shipping containers, as ballast for spaceships, in interstellar space waiting for solar systems to find them 10-20 millennia from now, what have you. They've even sent some outside of the galaxy to come back in a few million years just in case civilization needs rebooting then.
 
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