metaphysics

I Swear They’re Not Puns In The Original Eldraeic¹

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brane washer: An universe-engineering tool devised at the Irreality Vault, the brane washer “flattens” cystal universes (or select volumes therein) by “ironing” the metaphysical substrate, blanking all ontic data therein and effectively reverting the target to its primordial (ekpyrotic) state. Effectively, all causal chains interacting with the target volume at any point in time, past or future, are caused to unhappen up to the point at which (if relevant) they intersect with the universe’s causal boundary. The brane washer has found applications in resetting experimental cystal universes for reuse, as a safety measure for phukalic volumes, and in the disposal of hazardous metaphysical waste.

No means has yet been devised to apply brane washing technology to the base universe, subject as it is to the Auto-Enclosure Paradox.

Compare eschatron.

eschatron: A universe-engineering tool and ontopathic weapon devised at the Irreality Vault, the eschatron destroys cystal universes via engineered global eschatonic collapse. In laysoph’s terms, by introducing an irresolvable contradiction into their mirithestel architecture, the self-computing pattern of information making up the universe is forced to “crash”, an error which propagates through the entire information pattern instantaneously (from the point of view of both internal and external observers), forcing its dissolution; i.e., complete reversal to cacoastrum.

No means has yet been devised to apply eschatronic technology to the base universe, subject as it is to the Auto-Enclosure Paradox; moreover, the energy requirements to force axiomantic change on such a scale are believed to be prohibitive.

– A Concordance of Ontotechnological Devices, online ed.,
Vector Instant Publications

  1. Well, not the same puns, anyway.

Sim-Descartes

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Well, last month was kind of crappy, productivity-wise, what with one damn thing after another going wrong in non-writing-friendly ways, even without the coronavirus.

Let’s hope this coming month works out better. In the meantime, I hope the lack of posting here has been in some way compensated for by my second venture into self-fanfic.

Proposition: A consequence of the theory of information physics (“it is bit”) is that it renders the simulation argument moot with regards to reality-as-it-is, inasmuch as ontogeny has no bearing on current status.

Defend or refute this proposition. If defending the proposition, explain how the presence or absence of a supervising entity or entities can be considered metaphysically irrelevant. If attacking the proposition, suggest an experiment capable of distinguishing a simulated universe from a self-computed universe.

[10%]

– Hexad Examination in Pure and Applied Metaphysics,
Imperial University of Calmiríë

Entirely the Wrong Level

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“Look, if your reaction to a sophont doing psychotically bad things is focused on the instrumentality they used, rather than why on you have a culture prone to psychopathogeny, you are wrong on a level that… well, starshit, you don’t need me to explain it; you need a metaphysicist.”

– Sen. Olynthé Amanyr, 1,688th century,
demonstrating the problem with Imperials
appearing on Meridianite chat shows

(Loosely inspired by this and that, et. al.)

Super[pos|st]ition

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Jinmi Quantakill (4972-5001): A massively-parallel killer native to the tholisarn homeworld, Dasarn (Secor Spire), in 5001 the sophont later known as Jinmi Quantakill took remote control of a drone ore freighter approaching Dasarn, overrode its navigational safeties, and commanded it to accelerate at full thrust into the surface of the planet – specifically, to his own location in the city of Askaran. The ore freighter struck the city with the force of a 31 megaton bomb, levelling the city and severely damaging its outlying suburbs, causing over seven million deaths and nearly three million other casualties.

Their real name is unknown (“Jinmi Quantakill” being a name attributed to them by the local press), many records and all chance of identifying them having been lost in the destruction of Askaran. Their motives, too, are unclear, being reconstructed from fragments recovered from surviving data storage near the fringe of the blast. While these fragments (diaries, literature consumption and other media, purchase records, and so forth) suggested a deep-seated fascination with death from an early age, and while some further derangement can be inferred from their final entry, “I will at last [feel like|become] a god”, little more is known.

What has survived, however, is a single extended, euphoric text on the subject of physics. While the scientific understanding of the tholisarn was at the time limited, their grasp of quantum mechanics was both sufficient to give rise to the many-worlds hypothesis, and yet insufficient to dismiss it; and while some have found the futility of choice implicit in the playing out of all outcomes a cause for despair, in Quantakill it became a source of delight, a freedom from all constraint. Why, they evidently reasoned, when all choices are made, should they not be the one to indulge their desires, and another suffer from their restraint? From the ecstasy of relief made evident in this raving, it was a short step from this realization to carrying forth his plan.

Historical effects of the strange case of Jinmi Quantakill include several modifications to common tachydidactic physics courses, the still-extant tholisarn law banning the operation of drone freighters without a sophont aboard capable of overriding the automated systems, the foundation of the “Lowbone” political faction favoring enforced public ignorance in the Tholisarn Domain, and a short-lived attempt to ban the amateur practice of metaphysics.

– Worlds of Infamy, Bad Stuff Press, 6005

Step Two

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impossipoint (n.): In studies of paracausality (q.v.), the exact when-where at which a miracle (q.v.) occurs. Named so in part because they are where the impossible happens; named so in part also because the frustratingly subtle nature of miracles makes it bloody impossible to detect one.

– Glossary of Applied Metaphysics,
Academician Éöl Liuvis

Beyond This Horizon

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The cacoastrum of the embedding empyrean, in information physics, can best be defined as the all-set. As the all-set it contains in potentia all entities, including all rules by which all entities behave, all forces which affect all entities, and all frameworks against which any of these all can be measured, in a continuously churning framework of all possible interactions.

(These interactions could be thought of as occurring over all time. This is inaccurate. The concept of time itself – indeed, many differing concepts of time – is a member of the all-set, which does not at any given not-time include time, or time in any particular relationship with any other all-set members.)

Some of these agglomerations of entities occasionally attain self-consistency and long-term stability.

These agglomerations are the ones we term “universes”.

 – Extrauniversal Metaphysics: A Hypothetical Exploration,
Academician Éöl Liuvis