Orion's Arm

http://www.orionsarm.com/

[orionsarm]

Difference between Turingrade, Superturing, and S1 AIs// From a baseline human perspective, how different are Turingrade, Superturing, and First Toposophic (S1) AIs in terms of intelligence, perception, and behavior?

In the context of gengineering and provolution, a human (or other biont) that has not been genomically modified from its original natural co

An <a href="/eg-article/49cfecbe8ed06">ai</a> above human <a href="/eg-article/4609cadcd4a14">baseline</a> turingrade intelligence but benea

An <a href="/eg-article/49cfecbe8ed06">ai</a> of <a href="/eg-article/4609cadcd4a14">baseline</a> human equivalent intelligence and sapience

The First Toposophic; the lowest transapients.

you read all of these, right?

[orionsarm]

i read the timeline of the information age and i have a question. according to the timeline artemis 3 returning humans to the moon in 58 A.T, and appearently there wasnt any human populated settlement until the 90s. while the first telenauts began construction in 68 A.T. i dont know why but i feel like that after humans return to the moon, countries will most likely race to put humans there. i feel like artemis's founding shouldnt have been put earlier in the timeline, with the earliest being the 70s.

58 AT (2026-2027 AD)- Artemis III mission lands humans on Luna, ending a decades-long gap in crewed off-Earth landings. The mission's success spurs on efforts at further crewed exploration of Luna and later, Mars.

65 AT (2033-2034 AD)- Orbital Internet expanded to Luna using a series of satellites in Lunar orbit and receiver/repeaters landed around the location of the first planned installation. Teleoperated robots and fully autonomous robots (with limited functions) begin lunar development.

68 AT (2036-2037 AD)- The construction of the first "permanent" teleoperated Moon base begins. This base is entirely designed to be operated by telepresence and has no accommodation for biont inhabitants or visitors at this time.

etc

I wouldn't be surprised if the artemis moon mission gets rescheduled and doesn't happen until later. At the moment, we have kept the timeline for landing on the moon with robots and humans fairly conservative, but still had added the artemis mission because that's what NASA had planned, as far as I know.

Given the current ..unpredicatable political climate of moon exploration funding, i suspect we'll re-evaluate the timeline when 2026-2027 arrives, or whenever the mission is announced to be canceled.

-worldtree

[orionsarm]

Why wasn't Amalgamation wiped-out already? There is no indication that it is controlled by a SI:6, meaning it is ultimately inferior to any of the sephirotics, and is enough of a threat to justify intervention of Archai, as the use of a metric bomb in that war confirms. Sephirotics had no problem going to the end in wars against Hyperutilization Supremacy and Oracle Machines (much greater threats than Amalgamation), yet for some reason it is allowed to continue existing while those two weren't

Why hasn’t the Amalgamation been wiped out already by the sephirotic archailects? Possibly for “Mysterious Transapient” reasons.. 

Maybe metric bombs aren’t enough and detonating hundreds of stars is not a preferable option for the Archailects who may or may not be fighting the Amalgamation.. or they’re slowly setting up some other methods of destruction which still require centuries to implement… Also, like many articles written 20 years ago, this might be re-written at some point. Feel free to offer ideas on the main OA forum or Discord :)

(answered July 2025) 

-Worldtree

[orionsarm]

Calendarily eldest being in the Terragen sphere? The obvious answer would be GAIA, but this implies something else:"Very few individuals have survived into the modern era are first hand witnesses to these events, even fewer have kept any emotional connection to these events." Who are those beings? Are there still sophonts born/created on Earth before Technocalypse/The Great Expulsion kicking around in 11th millenium? If yes, who are they?Are they well-known to the public?Which of them is eldest?

This is a great questiona and there is a question and answer for the FAQ page being written about this. in progress. There is also a discussion about the complexity of the question on the main OA forum. 

One obvious answer *might be* GAIA, who has existed, as a continuously transapient-conscious entity, for a verifiable 10,000 years. But whether the 4rth singularity being which has installations around the Sun and still guards planet Earth,   is considered the same being as the original GAIA who created the Great explusion? after three singularity transitions? That might be a matter of philiophical definition about whether anyone is the same being after ascending… 

Jonathan Trip Daniels is the original “i’m the oldest person” article, with his claim of 375 AT (~2345 AD) to GAIA’s emergence around 550 AT (~2520 AD) …. but on the forums we’ve been trying to brainstorm some better, and more interesting alternatives. Feel free to join in. 

(answered July 2025) 

[orionsarm]

How popular are Sephirotic arts, movies, literature, music etc., with Tylansian rulling classes/castes? Are they hypocrites, consuming foreign entertainment while keeping their people ignorant, or are they themselves just slightly less ignorant than their people? Do they visit Sephirotic polities as tourists, or are they just as limited as their people in this? What grasp do they exactly have about the galactic society? Do they believe their own propaganda? Do they have access to the Known Net?

you will likely get a better answer by asking the original author of Tylansia , Darrren, directly on the OA forums. And for that matter, you are more likely to get a variety of answers to most OA questions.. 

My understanding of Tylansia is that in the *current* form of Tylansia, the ‘upper class’ cannot visit the sephirotics, or even travel outside their own planet. Most do not have access to the known net, for to have full access to such a resource would likely utterly destabilize Tylansian society. 

**with that being said, the article on Tylansia is quite open to being updated**. There’s a draft on the main forums and you are welcome to join in the discussion to steer some decisions about what Tylansia might be like , if we updated Authoritarian Tylansia  to have only existed for a few centuries  perhaps, before the terragens found it, immendiately conquered it, and fixed the society within decades. Or other possibilities..   

(answered July 2025) 

-worldtree

[orionsarm]

Which Sephirotic Empire is most powerful? You can argue that they are all equal, due to all having one SI:6, but that doesnt really hold, since Metasoft is openly stated to be extremely powerful, Solar Dominion is obviously stronger than Terran Federation or Communion etc. My guess would be Keter, since they seem to have a technological edge over the other empires due to having pretty much highest amount of ascensions, transaps, archai, with maybe TRHN being a close runner-up for the same reason

one question is : at what point in time? the relative power of each archailect has changed over the millenia of history. 

Another answer is ‘unknown’,  because if you’re measuring power from the perspective of sixth singularity archailects, the relationships and dynamics of power might be incomprehensibly more complex between them. The  power of the sephirotic alliance of 13 archailects might only be meaningfully measured as a group, in their alliances, so measuring one on its own would ignore much of its power. And apparently there’s 15 ahuman S6 Archailects, like the Eternal, who might also have similar immense powers at their disposal that modosophonts who read the Encyclopedia Galactica have not yet learned much about.  (and nobody has written about these Mystery archailects in much detail)   

  I have no idea which specific sephirotic archailect is “most powerful” and i’ve been helping write this setting for 15 years. Personally, I prefer the ambiguity. The numbers have changed recently, anyway. I say write a vignette of a couple of modosophonts arguing about it in a bar.

(answered July 2025) 

  -Worldtree

[orionsarm]

I remember firs exploring the Orion Arm website and feeling awed that every sophont I was looking at had some origin on Terra, be it organic or mechanical. It took me a year I think before I found the first Xenosophont page and being shocked that there were aliens (I don't know if they're canon anymore but it was the high pressure ice crabs). How many are there now in the Terragan Sphere?

Worlds that support a complex <a href="/eg-article/460db3ee7f2e1">biosphere</a> and macroscopic life forms.

High pressure Ice crabs? you might be thinking of the muuh, though they're not quite in high pressure environments.. feel free to count the number of xenosophonts , and/or garden worlds, depending on what your criteria are (answered July 2025)

[orionsarm]

Just finished reading Under the Looking Glass. Absolutely loved it, but apparently it's considered partly non-canon now? What elements in it are considered non-canon in current OA? Tech, characters, plot, or something else?

(the story in question)

who said that the story is partly non-canon now? Most likely, some details about the OA technology have likely changed in the past 17 years since this story was written. (answered July 2025 #becauseThere'sNoTimeStampsOnThisSite)

[orionsarm]

How large is the Utopia Sphere's population supposed to be? "20 trillion trillion" is 20 septillion on the short scale, which is far more than the "population" page gives for the entirety of Sephirotics. Hell, the populations given for all Sephirotics are hilarious. NoCoZo with 290 quadrillions and Solarians, who barely rival Terran Federation (weakest Sephirotic) population wise are supposed to be rivals? Sophics, FAS, Metasoft, all with few trillions are supposed to be major powers? Really???

The population numbers have been adjusted in the time since you asked this question (it's currently July 2025)

[orionsarm]

After reading the story and descriptions of both processes, shouldn't the story "Transcension for dummies" be named "Ascension for dummies"? What is described in that story definitely doesn't sound like a Transcension (breaking of continuity of existence of a being and the creation/"birth" of a new one, a process which I believe some of the moderators mentioned in the forums as something which would be overwhelmingly seen in-universe as the death of said being).

here is the story and the two articles in question..

Yes, the story probably should be called Ascension for Dummies.. The meaning of the two words has changed, or clarified, since the vignette was written in 2008..

<i></i>[1] (verb) to ascend; transition from sapience to posthuman or transapient existence. Becoming a transapient. Breaching a singularity

A process whereby an entity attempting to rise to the next toposophic level instead spawns a separate being who achieves the goal instead. T

[orionsarm]

The population page says there's 11 trillion S1s in the whole Terragen Sphere, while the Diamond Network one says there's 40-200 trillion in that metaempire alone. Also, per population page, the number of S3s is given as 10 million, while in the S3 one it's given as 1 million. Will those figures be corrected? Personally, I like those latter ones, the idea of 100s of trillions of S1s per metaempire, with only a million S3s as whole, it kind of really shows how powerful the higher toposophics are.

The population numbers have been revised since you asked this question, as far as i know (answered July 2025)

-Worldtree

[orionsarm]

Has Amalgamation ever clashed with Panvirts? There's a lot of mentions of conspiracy theories alleging Panvirts to be behind Amalgamation, which would indeed be supported if those two have never clashed despite sharing a border and one of the two being extremely expansionist. Could find nothing indicating the relationships between those two polities.

Those clashes are quite possible! If you want to revise or expand any part of the setting that has yet to be described in much detail, feel free to join the forums/OA discord, and propose your ideas, then write them as articles (or stories!) with the help of editors. (answered July 2025)

[orionsarm]

Both Panvirtuality and Diamond Network are said to be, like Sephirotics, groups of disparate empires, clades, polities etc. Will we ever get articles on them? There is a Panvirtuality empire mentioned in one article as having a diplomatic scandal of sorts with Metasoft, while there are articles about Diamonder clades (sentient ships and balloon-vecs(?)) migrating to Sephirotics. Will we get examples of others, how they differ from each other, how they interact with various outsiders, and so on?

Personally, i have a few ideas sketched out, in my drafts folder.... but this is a project built by contributors. If you want to revise or expand any part of the setting that has yet to be described in much detail, feel free to join the forums/OA discord, and propose your ideas, then write them as articles (or stories!) with the help of editors. -WorldTree

[orionsarm]

Was reading about a case of a man avoiding death penalty for murder due to having defective MAOA gene, which correlates with violent tendencies in males. That got me thinking, how does the Queen of Pain deal with people whose genes predispose them for criminality? There are various clades (provolved chimps, hyenas, etc.) described as naturally agressive. How does the Queen judge people who almost certainly wouldn't have commited whatever crimes they did if they simply had different genetics?

The Queen of Pain is irrational and, in-setting, is pseudo-mythical.

What her reasoning is for handling the complexities of genetic predisposition toward violence? Who knows?

You're welcome to write stories describing her behavior, however

[orionsarm]

Where exactly in the setting is "Carmella" supposed to be in? The "September 2011 attacks line", as well as the lack of any advanced technology, obvious present day setting, and the slight overall weirdness of it would, if it is indeed meant to take place in OA canon, likely place it as some badly-researched historical recreation bottleworld. Is that it?

i don't know why the story Carmella was submitted to the OA setting. There's a few stories left over from times when we didn't separate these into a separate category of "not really part of OA, but written by OA authors"

-Worldtree (OA editor)

[orionsarm]

I don't know if it's just because Darren is such a good writer, or because the idea is so interesting, but I really love the concept of Tylansia. Will there be articles about another such cultures? Am asking that since I myself would like to write some stories set in it (been thinking various scenarios up for a few months lol), but I really don't want to (inevitably) stray too much from Darren's conception of the place. If there were other such worlds to work with that would help a lot.

There is a minor expansion of Tylansia in progress on the forums. However, this is a project built by contributors. If you want to revise or expand any part of the setting that has yet to be described in much detail, feel free to join the forums/OA discord, and propose your ideas, then write them as articles (or stories!) with the help of editors. You can ask Darren directly on the forums about writing in his Tylansia sandbox :)

[orionsarm]

How many Sephirotic SI:6s are really there? In their article, it's said there's about 15 in the sephirotics, but that's a clear lie. Caretakers don't have one, there is apparent controversy about the SI level of Metasoft Standards Authority and Zoe, with the latter stated to be SI:5 in her article, Communion is mentioned to be ruled by SI:5 who, unlike Binah, isn't said to have ascended during the Oracle War. Hell, Communion page implies it, NoCoZo and Cyberia all to be ruled by the same SI:6.

The caretakers do have one, as of 2025 (an update to the article is in progress). The S6 article says there's 13 now, so that's how many sixth singularity archailects there are.

though anyone is welcome to propose details about these entities, the editing process might be quite complicated (answered July 2025)