On the Many, Many Incoherences of the Tiering System

[DontTalkDT]

To clarify the situation, let me spin up a scenario:

Suppose you have two realms. Realm A and Realm B. Realm A is a universe much like ours, while Realm B is a transcendental place that has pretty much all of the properties we'd expect of something that fits the bill for "qualitative superiority." That is to say: Realm A is described as infinitely less than Realm B. To Realm B and its inhabitants, Realm A is literally a fiction, an illusion, something completely impotent, and nothing happening in Realm A can ever be of any consequence to Realm B because of this.

However, there's a catch: For all their infinite superiority over Realm A, the beings of Realm B can't really interact with it in any way. They can interact with each other, but not with lower realms or beings.

To me, Realm B would be Tier 1, without question. To you, though, it seems like Realm B wouldn't be able to be compared to Realm A because of its lack of ability to interact with it. Ergo, it seems that "superiority" to you hinges on the amount of control that the higher thing is able to exert over the lower. While, in my eyes, that doesn't matter in the slightest.

So while I do have an answer to your above question that's independent of whatever you say, the point is that, in my view, it's not really relevant. Whether my answer is "Yes" or "No" doesn't affect this debate at all.

Actually, I think it affects the debate a lot?
Like, whether you say that we should per default assume that R>F characters (or others with qualitative superiority) can affect all higher dimensions or not is a big difference in how things would work in practical debates and in the degree of extrapolation you suggest. So a yes or no to my initial question would be nice.

Likewise, what superiority means could obviously impact on how we tier things. Like, there are two things to designing a tiering system. One is to have an idea of how power comparison should work and one how to present that comparison to the reader. So whether the tiers should be laid out like you suggest is, in part, dependent on what exactly you mean by superiority. It in particular needs to be clarified at some point so that people don't misunderstand what your tiers are supposed to mean, when you say Tier 1-A is superior to 1-B.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Actually, I think it affects the debate a lot?
Like, whether you say that we should per default assume that R>F characters (or others with qualitative superiority) can affect all higher dimensions or not is a big difference in how things would work in practical debates and in the degree of extrapolation you suggest. So a yes or no to my initial question would be nice.

Likewise, what superiority means could obviously impact on how we tier things. Like, there are two things to designing a tiering system. One is to have an idea of how power comparison should work and one how to present that comparison to the reader. So whether the tiers should be laid out like you suggest is, in part, dependends on what exactly you mean by superiority. It in particular needs to be clarified at some point so that people don't misunderstand what your tiers are supposed to mean.

By "practical debates," I assume you mean VS Threads and such? If so, those wouldn't be particularly impacted by any possible answer, no. If I said "No," you can still say "X is stronger than Y" even if X's inability to interact with Y results in any match between them being an inconclusive one, and as such comparision can still happen. If I said "yes," then the same thing would apply, except those matches could actually have victors now.

Of course, the fact you are asking this question at all indicates you suspect that your idea of "superiority" is, in some way, different from what I have in mind.

To settle that, you must answer a question: Do you agree with my assessment? That is, do you say Realm B can't be tiered in comparison to Realm A? Or do you say Realm B is indeed Tier 1, as I would? I don't want to accidentally strawman you, or anything, so I want to make sure, since it seems like you didn't explicitly disagree with what I said.

(From the fact I would rate Realm B at Tier 1 alone, you can already figure out what I mean by "superiority," also, but I'd rather you answer this, first, before I make it clear)

 

[DontTalkDT]

By "practical debates," I assume you mean VS Threads and such? If so, those wouldn't be particularly impacted by any possible answer, no. If I said "No," you can still say "X is stronger than Y" even if X's inability to interact with Y results in any match between them being an inconclusive one, and as such comparision can still happen. If I said "yes," then the same thing would apply, except those matches could actually have victors now.

I think the difference between "Inconclusive" and "Victory" is a notable impact? So I would really like an answer on that. And honestly, you're not a politician, you can afford to give a straight answer.

Of course, the fact you are asking this question at all indicates you suspect that your idea of "superiority" is, in some way, different from what I have in mind.

Obviously. Doesn't necessarily means that matters, while I think how we in practice judge how the character do or do not interact matters a lot.

To settle that, you must answer a question: Do you agree with my assessment? That is, do you say Realm B can't be tiered in comparison to Realm A? Or do you say Realm B is indeed Tier 1, as I would? I don't want to accidentally strawman you, or anything, so I want to make sure, since it seems like you didn't explicitly disagree with what I said.

Depends on the exact mechanism... and on what you wish to go for with Tier 1.
If they can't because the lesser realm is for them a book and they don't have the book available right now, then I would be fine with calling them infinitely more powerful regardless. If it is because they by nature are incapable of affecting anything, I would say that talking about a power comparison here might be difficult.
By the current system, I would question calling the latter Tier 1. Although I can compromise on that as long as the actual assumptions and interactions stay the same.
What matters to me is just whether you calling it "superior" or "Tier 1" carries any assumptions of practical relevance with it. Y'know, assumptions like "characters with some qualitative superiority can be assumed to manipulate higher-D space even without feats until contradicted".
Basically, if you say characters with different kinds of powerscales can't interact without explicit feats and that there are no other assumptions that come with calling it superiority (and are willing to put that in writing), then I would still call your system weird and not well suited for vs-debating, but not wrong. (Well, on this front. Still gotta talk about that omnipotence thing)
But if you say that your Tier 1-A characters will usually be able to affect spaces with aleph_100 dimensions, since no explicit mention of feats on that scale is required, then we have a bigger disagreement.

(From the fact I would rate Realm B at Tier 1 alone, you can already figure out what I mean by "superiority," also, but I'd rather you answer this, first, before I make it clear)

I honestly can't. I have no idea how you wish to generally define it without the matter of interaction with the lower tiers being relevant.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I think the difference between "Inconclusive" and "Victory" is a notable impact? So I would really like an answer on that. And honestly, you're not a politician, you can afford to give a straight answer.

Notable in what way? Because if both cases still tell you that one side of the VS Match is stronger, then no information is lost. It just sounds like you're treating VS Threads as far more important to indexing than they actually are.

I also gave you not only "a" answer, but two answers, as well as the consequences each have for this debate.

What matters to me is just whether you calling it "superior" or "Tier 1" carries any assumptions of practical relevance with it. Y'know, assumptions like "characters with some qualitative superiority can be assumed to manipulate higher-D space even without feats until contradicted".
Basically, if you say characters with different kinds of powerscales can't interact without explicit feats and that there are no other assumptions that come with calling it superiority (and are willing to put that in writing), then I would still call your system weird and not well suited for vs-debating, but not wrong.

Quite frankly, I think that bolded bit is just you having a fairly weird philosophy on what exactly our goal here is supposed to be.

Evidently, to you, our primary goal is having answers to the question of "If I put X and Y in a fight, who would win?". Meanwhile, to me, our primary goal is having an answer to the question of "Between X and Y, who is stronger/weaker?"

In my eyes, that just means you see VS Threads and their results as vastly more important than they actually are. "Who is stronger between X and Y?" is not a question whose answer is determined by the result of a VS Debate (Because X can be stronger than Y and still have an inconclusive match against them, as said above). And, let's be real: Who, precisely, cares about vs threads involving 1-A characters? Since you seem interested in the practical side of things.

(Well, on this front. Still gotta talk about that omnipotence thing)

Hahah. Yeah... I recognize I may have left a bad first impression with that pitch.

But if you say that your Tier 1-A characters will usually be able to affect spaces with aleph_100 dimensions, since no explicit mention of feats on that scale is required, then we have a bigger disagreement.

Depends on what you mean by "affect." If by that, you mean "A character who is superior to dimensionality and can destroy the entirety of a realm who also is superior to dimensionality has the firepower to destroy a universe with aleph-100 dimensions," then I would have no problem with saying this is the case.

If by "affect," you mean "This author character can write spaces of aleph-100 dimensions into existence with their Plot Manipulation," then I don't mind not assuming that, yeah. As long as the sense of "X is stronger than Y" is preserved here.

Of course, I don't mind assuming it, either, in such cases, and would like to discuss it with you. But quite frankly I feel like that'd lead to those really long debates that nobody reads, so... Yeaaaaah... Might not be the best idea, practically speaking. I suppose we can potentially reach a compromise here?

I honestly can't. I have no idea how you wish to generally define it without the matter of interaction with the lower tiers being relevant.

Well: By "superiority," I mean anything that is or can be analogized to size, in some fashion or other, and thus to "X is stronger than Y." And there's honestly droves and droves of examples of verses with size-like relations between things that don't actually have size in a physical sense.

Spoiler

For example, in Marvel, you have the Beyonders, who are on a level where there is no spatial existence whatsoever. So, obviously, "size" in a physical sense doesn't really apply to them. Nevertheless, there is indeed some sense in which they are "larger" than spatial things, because the omniverse and its narrative (And thus all spatial things in them) are stated to be "finite" with respect to them, who are "infinite." Thus, there is a sense of "bigness" by which they're compared to lesser things, even if this is not to say that this sense is a physical one.

In the Cthulhu Mythos, you have the Outer Extension, which is a part of "the outer side," a sphere of existence beyond space, time and dimensions in general, and as such physical size doesn't apply to it, either. Yet it is "a small wholeness" in the Ultimate Void, which is the highest level of all that encompasses all others. Hypnos also talks about "perceptions of infinity" greater than the local one, which you see when you reach realms beyond all space and time. So, that's another example of a verse with a non-spatial analog of "size," as well as levels of infinity existing by that analog.

In The Elder Scrolls, you have realms that are explicitly completely beyond space and time, to the point they exist in "untime" and "unspace" with no dimension whateoever. Yet these realms are still described as a nest of greater and lesser infinities containing each other.

In the Dark Tower, the... Dark Tower verbatim encompass all space, all size and dimension, and yet IT's true form sees it all as a "puny egg." And IT is itself described as "no more than the smallest mote of dust" in Gan's mind. Yet again another example of a sense of "size" being present even to non-spatial beings.

I could certainly make a larger list, but those should suffice as proof of concept.

 

[DontTalkDT]

Notable in what way? Because if both cases still tell you that one side of the VS Match is stronge, then no information is lost. It just sounds like you're treating VS Threads as far more important to indexing than they actually are.

Quite frankly, I think that bolded bit is just you having a fairly weird philosophy on what exactly our goal here is supposed to be.

Evidently, to you, our primary goal is having answers to the question of "If I put X and Y in a fight, who would win?". Meanwhile, to me, our primary goal is having an answer to the question of "Between X and Y, who is stronger/weaker?"

In my eyes, that just means you see VS Threads and their results as vastly more important than they actually are. "Who is stronger between X and Y?" is not a question whose answer is determined by the result of a VS Debate (Because you can X can be stronger than Y and still have an inconclusive match against them, as said above). And, let's be real: Who, precisely, cares about vs threads involving 1-A characters? Since you seem interested in the practical side of things.

What I'm doing is trying to separate the facts from the semantics. If "superior" or "stronger" has no consequences then I don't care for who is called it.
If you say Tier 1-A and Tier 1-B don't interact without feats then you are in my eyes, for all practical purposes, creating a non-linear scale of power whether you call 1-A superior or not. So whether you are doing so or not was the important point.

I also gave you not only "a" answer, but two answers, as well as the consequences each have for this debate.

Yeah... but my question was what your stance was.

Depends on what you mean by "affect." If by that, you mean "A character who is superior to dimensionality and can destroy the entirety of a realm who also is superior to dimensionality has the firepower to destroy a universe with aleph-100 dimensions," then I would have no problem with saying this is the case.

And your qualifier for "beyond dimensionality" here does really not require feats of higher D stuff but just qualitative superiority, yes? So, in practice, any above baseline R>F character is assumed to be able to destroy aleph-100 dimensions even if they have no explicit feats of being able to interact with a world like that in any way?
Well, then we're back to square one, I suppose. The compromise I had in mind doesn't work, because I am not ok with that. I should probably go reply to all those prior points we skipped until now at some time relatively soon.

If by "affect," you mean "This author character can write spaces of aleph-100 dimensions into existence with their Plot Manipulation," then I don't mind not assuming that, yeah. As long as the sense of "X is stronger than Y" is preserved here.

Of course, I don't mind assuming it, either, in such cases, and would like to discuss it with you. But quite frankly I feel like that'd lead to those really long debates that nobody reads, so... Yeaaaaah... Might not be the best idea, practically speaking. I suppose we can potentially reach a compromise here?

Isn't it kinda weird to assume R>F characters plot manip (as that's the way they can interact with the lower worlds) can not create a aleph-100 dimensional realm but can destroy one?

Well: By "superiority," I mean anything that is or can be analogized to size, in some fashion or other, and thus to "X is stronger than Y." And there's honestly droves and droves of examples of verses with size-like relations between things that don't actually have size in a physical sense.

Spoiler

For example, in Marvel, you have the Beyonders, who are on a level where there is no spatial existence whatsoever. So, obviously, "size" in a physical sense doesn't really apply to them. Nevertheless, there is indeed some sense in which they are "larger" than spatial things, because the omniverse and its narrative (And thus all spatial things in them) are stated to be "finite" with respect to them, who are "infinite." Thus, there is a sense of "bigness" by which they're compared to lesser things, even if this is not to say that this sense is a physical one.

In the Cthulhu Mythos, you have the Outer Extension, which is a part of "the outer side," a sphere of existence beyond space, time and dimensions in general, and as such physical size doesn't apply to it, either. Yet it is "a small wholeness" in the Ultimate Void, which is the highest level of all that encompasses all others. Hypnos also talks about "perceptions of infinity" greater than the local one, which you see when you reach realms beyond all space and time. So, that's another example of a verse with a non-spatial analog of "size," as well as levels of infinity existing by that analog.

In The Elder Scrolls, you have realms that are explicitly completely beyond space and time, to the point they exist in "untime" and "unspace" with no dimension whateoever. Yet these realms are still described as a nest of greater and lesser infinities containing each other.

In the Dark Tower, the... Dark Tower verbatim encompass all space, all size and dimension, and yet IT's true form sees it all as a "puny egg." And IT is itself described as "no more than the smallest mote of dust" in Gan's mind. Yet again another example of a sense of "size" being present even to non-spatial beings.

I could certainly make a larger list, but those should suffice as proof of concept.

The idea works fine if the characters can actually destroy things, but if they are basically ghosts incapable of destruction of the tiny stuff...

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Honestly, I'm remaking this post because I think this, here, is important to highlight.

Depends on the exact mechanism... and on what you wish to go for with Tier 1.
If they can't because the lesser realm is for them a book and they don't have the book available right now, then I would be fine with calling them infinitely more powerful regardless. If it is because they by nature are incapable of affecting anything, I would say that talking about a power comparison here might be difficult.
By the current system, I would question calling the latter Tier 1.

The idea works fine if the characters can actually destroy things, but if they are basically ghosts incapable of destruction of the tiny stuff...

What I'm doing is trying to separate the facts from the semantics. If "superior" or "stronger" has no consequences then I don't care for who is called it.
If you say Tier 1-A and Tier 1-B don't interact without feats then you are in my eyes, for all practical purposes, creating a non-linear scale of power whether you call 1-A superior or not.

And your qualifier for "beyond dimensionality" here does really not require feats of higher D stuff but just qualitative superiority, yes? So, in practice, any above baseline R>F character is assumed to be able to destroy aleph-100 dimensions even if they have no explicit feats of being able to interact with a world like that in any way?
Well, then we're back to square one, I suppose. The compromise I had in mind doesn't work, because I am not ok with that. I should probably go reply to all those prior points we skipped until now at some time relatively soon.

So, let me get this straight:

In your mind, a realm can fulfill all our requirements for qualitative superiority (Such as in this hypothetical), and you can have characters who scale to the same state of existence as it. But: If said characters are unable to interact with the lower worlds they transcend, the whole thing actually doesn't count as "superiority"?

Yeah, so, to make it short: No. That's not how the Tiering System works at all. In fact, to quote our page on Reality-Fiction Transcendence:

The concept is most commonly used to apply to author avatars and other beings in the 'real world'. However, it can also be applied to any character who authors a lower world of existence or even a 'player' who simply consumes the media rather than authors it.

There is absolutely no mention of needing to be capable of interacting with the lower world, in that entire page. Not only that, but it also explicitly says that being a creator of media isn't the only type of Reality-Fiction Transcendence there is: You can also be a consumer of media. So, not an author, but a reader, or a player (As such having no power to alter the fiction you consume). In fact, there is a list of factors that disqualify you from having a R>F Transcendence:

• The realities are portrayed like parallel universes or otherwise as having just a finite difference in scale or having a similar nature.
• The characters from both realities are generally being portrayed as comparable in power
• The author character completely live in the fictional medium themselves. For example the author character might have a book that contains the world, but the author themselves are also a character in it and don't exist outside it any more than other characters of that world.
• The fictional characters being able to attack the real ones without being shown to somehow have transcended their fictional world or having special abilities that allow it. Such instances often have to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis to judge how they are best rated.

...And "The characters from the higher realities being unable to interact with the lower world" is not in there. The main qualifying factor, then is:

In order to qualify they must view the world as a some actual form of 'fiction', i.e. to them what happens in the fiction is not real and of no physical consequence to their being and also otherwise is of no greater consequence to their being than an actual fictional character could reasonably be to a real life human. However, the medium in which they view the world as fiction generally does not matter, as it being fiction is enough for a Reality-Fiction Transcendence to be considered.
(...)
In edge cases, where it is unclear whether a depiction qualifies as truly viewing a world as fiction, the most important deciding factor is whether the depiction justifies an assumption of qualitative superiority for the same reasons as the above mentioned general cases. I.e. one should ask oneself: Is it by nature of the depiction likely that nothing that happens in the 'fictional world', no matter how powerful, could affect the 'real world' due to the fictional nature of the former?

So the real basis of Reality-Fiction Transcendence isn't what you can do to lesser realities, but what they can't do to you.

And this is all but natural: If Character X has a Reality-Fiction Transcendence over a Low 2-C reality, as well as complete control over it, they are rated at Low 1-C based on the transcendence, their state of existence, which is independent of their ability to control the lower world. If you completely remove said control from them, their state of existence will remain unchanged. Yet, by your logic, if the control was removed, they would apparently no longer be Low 1-C or have any superiority over it? That's absurd.

In fact, if we tiered R>F Transcendence based on the power these characters could exert over lower realities, then seeing a Low 2-C universe as fiction wouldn't be any tier. It would only be at most Low 2-C if they displayed utter command over it. And yet this is obviously not what is done, currently.

And this doesn't go only for Reality-Fiction Transcendences, but qualitative superiorities in general. The FAQ makes no mention of needing capability to interact with a lower world to qualify for it. And though every high tier is described as "Characters or objects that can universally affect, create and/or destroy..." in the Tiering System page, that's in reference to being able to affect/create/destroy things on that same level (So Low 1-C is the ability to significantly affect/create/destroy Low 1-C things). Being able to interact with lesser things isn't included in that either.

Moreover, you also rejected even an hypothetical character who is beyond dimensionality and can destroys spaces that are also beyond dimensionality, using the exact logic outlined above, which is even weirder: If the realm a character destroys is already above X, Y and Z, then why does it matter that they never got shown destroying X, Y and Z? Your answer, it seems, would be that it matters because interactivity with lower realms is what determines whether you are "superior" to them or not, but I've already shown that this simply isn't true.

So, to summarize it: Don't use this argument. It's really not compatible with the very Tiering System whose usage you are defending, and using said Tiering System doesn't actually validate it. Not in the slightest. And the fact you use it as a point at all tells me you have very unorthodox ideas that are not actually endorsed in any of our explanation pages, from what I see.

If it forms only a part of your overall point, that's obviously fine, and you can just use the other arguments instead. If it forms the basis of all your points (As I suspect it to, given you pulled me aside to discuss it specifically), then I don't know what else to say here. It's simply not a valid point. And, by extension, whatever points are built ontop of it aren't valid, either.

 

[DarkGrath]

I have been asked to provide input here. Full disclosure - it was Ultima who asked me for input - so there is a potential source of bias in any analysis I provide on this discussion. That being said, I do not believe it substantially affected my view on the discussion.

Earlier in this thread, I expressed my agreement with Ultima's proposals. As I mentioned in my former post, I had already considered many lines of thought similar to what Ultima had expressed in the OP - regarding the oddities of the equivalences between qualitative superiority and dimensional tiering - and his counterarguments addressed the rationalisations I had previously used for the state of the current system. As such, I was convinced that this proposal would lead to a more coherent and logically sound tiering system, a goal I believe we had ought to pursue.

Since that post, there has been an extensive debate between Ultima and DT, which I have taken the time to read through and contemplate each point of. I believe this debate was exactly what a topic of this sort needed - a thorough and extensive case being provided both for and against the proposal to ensure no stone was left unturned - and I don't want the natural frustrations both parties have likely encountered in such a thorough debate to detract from the value of it. However, after everything, I can't say my opinion on this topic has meaningfully changed as much as it has been simply fleshed out. Looking at the forest in lieu of the trees, I don't find any of DT's counterpoints to these changes to be compelling. All of these individual rebuttals added up, with Ultima's contentions considered, do not amount to a cohesive case that would suggest the proposals are unsound or that our current system is superior. At most, I would say these points have led to clarifications of the questions one might naturally have of the application of these proposals, clarifications which ultimately further establish the coherency of the proposals.

As has been shown, our current tiering system is based on equivalences between qualitative superiority and dimensional tiering which do not hold up to scrutiny. What has been suggested in its place is a practical system that would allow the use of quantitative and qualitative superiority within a tiering system to be reconciled in a way that is both logically sound and can be fitted into the constraints of fictional hierarchies. Whatever semantics or small concerns need to be clarified had ought to be clarified, of course, but I believe it has been firmly established that this system would be a marked improvement over what we have now.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I have been asked to provide input here. Full disclosure - it was Ultima who asked me for input - so there is a potential source of bias in any analysis I provide on this discussion. That being said, I do not believe it substantially affected my view on the discussion.

Earlier in this thread, I expressed my agreement with Ultima's proposals. As I mentioned in my former post, I had already considered many lines of thought similar to what Ultima had expressed in the OP - regarding the oddities of the equivalences between qualitative superiority and dimensional tiering - and his counterarguments addressed the rationalisations I had previously used for the state of the current system. As such, I was convinced that this proposal would lead to a more coherent and logically sound tiering system, a goal I believe we had ought to pursue.

Since that post, there has been an extensive debate between Ultima and DT, which I have taken the time to read through and contemplate each point of. I believe this debate was exactly what a topic of this sort needed - a thorough and extensive case being provided both for and against the proposal to ensure no stone was left unturned - and I don't want the natural frustrations both parties have likely encountered in such a thorough debate to detract from the value of it. However, after everything, I can't say my opinion on this topic has meaningfully changed as much as it has been simply fleshed out. Looking at the forest in lieu of the trees, I don't find any of DT's counterpoints to these changes to be compelling. All of these individual rebuttals added up, with Ultima's contentions considered, do not amount to a cohesive case that would suggest the proposals are unsound or that our current system is superior. At most, I would say these points have led to clarifications of the questions one might naturally have of the application of these proposals, clarifications which ultimately further establish the coherency of the proposals.

As has been shown, our current tiering system is based on equivalences between qualitative superiority and dimensional tiering which do not hold up to scrutiny. What has been suggested in its place is a practical system that would allow the use of quantitative and qualitative superiority within a tiering system to be reconciled in a way that is both logically sound and can be fitted into the constraints of fictional hierarchies. Whatever semantics or small concerns need to be clarified had ought to be clarified, of course, but I believe it has been firmly established that this system would be a marked improvement over what we have now.

Thank you for the input. Having a mediator to pitch in (what amounts to) an outsider's opinion on the matter is good in extensive discussions like this.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

This has gone on for a bit, so, for recapitulation's sake...

The points DontTalk has made throughout this thread can be summarized in three parts, which I'll list paired up with a response explaining why each of them fails in some way:

1. In reality, Reality-Fiction Transcendences can't be compared to dimensional jumps at all. If we pitch a 100-D being against a character who sees a 3-D world as fiction, we can't tell who is stronger, because the 100-D being can't hit something more real than it, and the character with R>F has no feats of their Plot Manipulation extending to 100-dimensional space. The only way to compare them, strength-wise, is to equate the two types of transcendence

Spoiler: Response

This whole point relies on the assumption that a character from a higher reality needs to be able to interact with the lower reality to qualify for "qualitative superiority" (Or indeed any superiority at all). But as I've shown, that's not how the current Tiering System works at all. So this argument is just objectively useless as a defense of it.

Adding to that, it's also worth to point out that, here, DontTalk explicitly acknowledges that even this hypothetical character who only displays R>F Transcendence over 3-D space would in truth still be "more real" than a 100-dimensional character, and that, as such, the latter wouldn't be able to affect them.

As I've already shown, the primary and only requirement to qualify for a genuine Reality-Fiction Transcendence is "The lower reality isn't real to you and nothing in it can affect you." So, applying DontTalk's logic to the official explanation pages, this means that a character who's only shown seeing a 3-D space as fiction is also "more real" than a 100-D space, and thus, qualitatively superior to it.

What DontTalk tries to do, however, is insert an additional requirement that mandates a character with Reality-Fiction Transcendence also be able to freely interact with the things they see as fiction to be described as truly "superior" to them. In principle: This means a R>F character sees both 3-D space and 100-D space as fiction, but if they're only able to interact with 3-D space, they're tiered as if they only scale to it, and not to the 100-D space.

That, in-and-of-itself, is nonsensical for obvious reasons. To hammer the point home again, though: This requirement doesn't exist, and its alleged existence is contradicted by our own official explanation pages. So, with this dismissed, what we're left with is basically an admission that a character with a Reality-Fiction Transcendence would in fact be above all dimensional jumps.

This argument still doesn't work even if you interpret it as some sort of proof by contradiction (i.e. Presenting a scenario where a Reality-Fiction Transcendence is treated realistically and then demonstrating that this scenario leads to an absurdity), also, since that would still hinge on the premise that the aforementioned "requirement" is necessary to establish power comparisions between the two types of character. However I've extensívely show that such a requirement doesn't exist and is incompatible even with how the current Tiering System does things.

So it effectively boils down to saying "The current Tiering System is superior to your proposals because of this thing that it doesn't even use." (And which doesn't make much sense in general)

2. Beyond-Dimensional Existence doesn't require being above all possible dimensional spaces. A counterexample to this notion is the Magic Gods from To Aru, who are aspatial in nature because their power is too much for spacetime to handle, and so they can only exist somewhere else. Obviously, this is only a matter of the verse's spacetime being too small a container for their power. Their power wouldn't destroy a larger container, but the presence of a larger container wouldn't rid them of their aspatial nature either

Spoiler: Response

This point seems to be based on misunderstanding of what Beyond-Dimensional Existence is. Firstly: "My power is too much for this timeline to handle, and so I can only hang out outside of it" is not even Beyond-Dimensional Existence. Existing in an aspatial place doesn't make you aspatial.

Secondly: At the very best, this would be Type 1 Beyond-Dimensional Existence, which is defined as:

Characters whose nature is defined by lacking spatiotemporal features without necessarily being superior to any of them

I, meanwhile, am talking about Type 2 Beyond-Dimensional Existence, which is defined as:

Characters whose nature is defined by lacking spatiotemporal features and being superior to them in nature.

I've already said that the Magic Gods having BDE is dubious at best, and likewise they aren't even listed as having that power on their profiles, but putting that aside: It seems they are rated at High 1-C, the 11-D end of it, specifically, via scaling to a 11-dimensional universe. So even if we humor the claim that they have BDE at all, it's evidently not Type 2, since even in the current Tiering System, that'd make them 1-B, not High 1-C. To quote the FAQ:

for example, a character stated to exist above physical dimensions in relation to a 4-dimensional cosmology would be Low 1-C with no further context.

So, clearly, at best what they'd have is just Type 1 Beyond-Dimensional Existence + AP. The AP in question not really deriving from their beyond-dimensional status but being an independent attribute from it. And so it's pretty obvious that this isn't what I am talking about, nor what the FAQ is talking about. So it's not a valid counterexample whatsoever.

This, I believe, calls into question what exactly DontTalk thinks "superiority over dimensionality" even means. Since, by his logic here, a character with Type 1 Beyond-Dimensional Existence + Low 2-C AP would be "above dimensions" if they were in a verse with only 4 dimensions. But that blatantly doesn't fit the requirement of Type 2 BDE, which is what we refer to when we say something is "superior to dimensionality." The ability requires you to be "superior to spatiotemporal features in nature," and having the firepower to destroy all of spacetime isn't that.

Here, he also seems to show confusion over the concept itself, which is nothing short of puzzling to me. "Power that derives from the nature of your existence" is the very concept of qualitative superiority. And this is expressed well enough when we say the superiority that Reality-Fiction Transcendences give you is "strictly one of quality, not quantity."

3. If you want to separate quantitative superiorities from qualitative superiorities, then you will also have to separate several types of transcendence that you place under the label of "qualitative superiority." Equating BDE, R>F and Transduality, for example, is also a false equivalence

Spoiler: Response

Equating Beyond-Dimensional Existence and Reality-Fiction Transcendences is not at all a false equivalence, no. Firstly because a character who sees a set of dimensions as fiction transcends the dimensions themselves (Unlike a higher-dimensional being, who still sees the dimensions of lower spaces as very real. We're larger than 2-D objects but Length and Width is still something we have, for example). Therefore, it's not at all inaccurate to say that all characters with a genuine R>F Transcendence also have Beyond-Dimensional Existence.

Characters with Type 2 Beyond-Dimensional Existence also have a superiority over lower spaces that's, by necessity, purely existential/ontological in nature, as I explained here. So making a correspondence between them and characters with R>F Transcendence is not at all inappropriate, in my eyes.

As for Transduality: That's true. A genuinely transdual character would, indeed, be unable to be equated to what I call "qualitative superiorities." In fact, it wouldn't even be able to be classified as having a "meta"-qualitative superiority, which is what I defined High 1-A as, in the OP. Why? Because it would be above qualities entirely. So, equating it to a "qualitative superiority" is as incorrect as equating a qualitative superiority to a quantitative one.

Practically speaking, what this means is that I have no issue with saying a perfect depiction of Transduality is Tier 0, for the same reason I say BDE and R>F Transcendences are inherently above any dimensional jumps. However, characters like that are rare. Type in "Transduality" in the wiki's search bar and you'll find droves and droves of characters who supposedly have the ability and yet have a bunch of things that disqualify them from being genuinely transdual (The largest one being the fact they're depicted as able to be surpassed).

So, I'd consider those to be "fake" transduals, all-in-all. Depictions of the concept that water it down so much it's ultimately reduced to an average qualitative superiority. Of course, the fact that I'd tier "genuine transduals" at Tier 0 seems to have unsettled DontTalk a bit, seeing as he got the impression that I, by extension, would let anyone with a statement of omnipotence or similar qualify for the tier. Let it be known that I have no intention of doing that, though.

Though, dialogue about further issues overall potentially relies on me detailing what exactly I have in mind for Tier 0. But I want to, at the very least, first settle the matter of whether or not my proposals for 1-A stand up to scrutiny, given the factors above.

 

[Sir_Ovens]

I'm in agreement with Ultima here.

 

[Deagonx]

Ultima had asked me to hold off on commenting further so as to not disrupt or complicate his discussion with DontTalk, but since there appears to be a bit of a lull in that discussion and other mods have now provided their input, I wanted to provide mine.

Personally, I do not agree. I don't believe this is the best way for us to handle R>F layers. I've expressed some of my thoughts earlier in the thread, and others elsewhere, but I'll try to summarize them now without this turning into its own back and forth.

In discussions with Ultima on discord about R>F layers, we talked about the concept of "reality equalization" as the basis for not tiering "fictional" characters as 11-C, and the reasoning for not applying this same concept to the purportedly 1-A characters was about the "baseline" level of reality. Essentially, wherever the story or setting appears to be primarily focused is the baseline through which a higher layer would be 1-A and a lower layer would be 11-C. I don't really agree with this. I also think that under the proposed approach, the idea of stacking R>F layers is it's own incoherence. If we are to believe that lower layers are akin to an "empty set" or non-existence relative to the higher layer, I can't really agree with the additions of even more "nothing" below the first layer of nothing makes the higher layer even more powerful.

The first examples I would point to are settings in which this approach is difficult to neatly apply, compared to a setting like DC where there can be no doubt what the baseline reality is. For instance, Sword Art Online predominantly takes place in a video game, so much so that I would consider it the primary setting for the first leg of the story. But we run into issues no matter which reality we consider the baseline. It makes little sense to tier the real-world programmer of SAO as 1-A, and it similarly makes little sense to decide that we cannot tier any of the characters inside any of the games anything other than 11-C. It's contrary to the purpose of making a profile to fixate so heavily on whether or not fiction exists relative to a character, or if they are fictional to someone else.

Similarly, if we had a story that was predominantly focused on a comic book writer, but which occasionally showed the stories he made, which had tierable feats, I would see no reason for us not to treat the writer's characters as though they were real even if they are not the "baseline reality" of the setting.

One of the things lambasted by the OP is the notion of us accepting an inaccurate tiering system out of convenience or "just how we want to do things" but I think this just trades one incoherence for another. I think it is something of an intellectual dead-end to so heavily emphasize fictional stratification, so I disagree with this (although I suppose I don't actually have a vote here). I agree that a character should be superior to fictional spatial dimensions, I just don't think it's an appropriate assumption that a character who sees anything as fictional should be treated as seeing any potential opponent as fictional, unless they too have something fictional beneath them.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Ultima had asked me to hold off on commenting further so as to not disrupt or complicate his discussion with DontTalk, but since there appears to be a bit of a lull in that discussion and other mods have now provided their input, I wanted to provide mine.

Personally, I do not agree. I don't believe this is the best way for us to handle R>F layers. I've expressed some of my thoughts earlier in the thread, and others elsewhere, but I'll try to summarize them now without this turning into its own back and forth.

In discussions with Ultima on discord about R>F layers, we talked about the concept of "reality equalization" as the basis for not tiering "fictional" characters as 11-C, and the reasoning for not applying this same concept to the purportedly 1-A characters was about the "baseline" level of reality. Essentially, wherever the story or setting appears to be primarily focused is the baseline through which a higher layer would be 1-A and a lower layer would be 11-C. I don't really agree with this. I also think that under the proposed approach, the idea of stacking R>F layers is it's own incoherence. If we are to believe that lower layers are akin to an "empty set" or non-existence relative to the higher layer, I can't really agree with the additions of even more "nothing" below the first layer of nothing makes the higher layer even more powerful.

The first examples I would point to are settings in which this approach is difficult to neatly apply, compared to a setting like DC where there can be no doubt what the baseline reality is. For instance, Sword Art Online predominantly takes place in a video game, so much so that I would consider it the primary setting for the first leg of the story. But we run into issues no matter which reality we consider the baseline. It makes little sense to tier the real-world programmer of SAO as 1-A, and it similarly makes little sense to decide that we cannot tier any of the characters inside any of the games anything other than 11-C. It's contrary to the purpose of making a profile to fixate so heavily on whether or not fiction exists relative to a character, or if they are fictional to someone else.

Similarly, if we had a story that was predominantly focused on a comic book writer, but which occasionally showed the stories he made, which had tierable feats, I would see no reason for us not to treat the writer's characters as though they were real even if they are not the "baseline reality" of the setting.

One of the things lambasted by the OP is the notion of us accepting an inaccurate tiering system out of convenience or "just how we want to do things" but I think this just trades one incoherence for another. I think it is something of an intellectual dead-end to so heavily emphasize fictional stratification, so I disagree with this (although I suppose I don't actually have a vote here). I agree that a character should be superior to fictional spatial dimensions, I just don't think it's an appropriate assumption that a character who sees anything as fictional should be treated as seeing any potential opponent as fictional, unless they too have something fictional beneath them.

I've thought about these objections for a bit since you've posed them to me. And frankly to them I'd apply the same criticism that I applied to DontTalk's own points. Namely that I find them to be, at the end of the day, incompatible with the very Tiering System which they are meant to be defending (Or maybe not? I assume that's why you said you don't actually have a vote here?).

To be precise, the current Tiering System doesn't actually... solve the issue that you are presenting, which is "Where exactly is the preferred baseline?". That conundrum remains regardless of whether we treat R>F Transcendences as equivalent to a dimensional jump or as 1-A.

In fact, something I'd point out is that the point itself doesn't really dispel the problem of "How great is the gap between reality and fiction?". Regardless of what we decide the gap to be, it will be the same going both downwards and upwards. So I deem the issue of the inherent arbitrariness of the choice of a baseline reality to be separate from the issue of deciding how big of a superiority R>F Transcendences actually are.

(Personally I also think people are kinda overfocusing on R>F Transcendences. Why that's being done is obviously understandable, but they are, in fact, just one third of the thread)

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

In discussions with Ultima on discord about R>F layers, we talked about the concept of "reality equalization" as the basis for not tiering "fictional" characters as 11-C, and the reasoning for not applying this same concept to the purportedly 1-A characters was about the "baseline" level of reality. Essentially, wherever the story or setting appears to be primarily focused is the baseline through which a higher layer would be 1-A and a lower layer would be 11-C. I don't really agree with this.

As opposed to what? I've already spent more time than I'm comfortable giving r/CharacterRant for how arrogant and self-righteous they seem to be refuting them on trying to nuke reality equalization. If we were to remove this concept, we would either be forced to say that anything with metafictional layers above them is 11-C, anything with metafictional layers below them is 1-A, or R>f layers don't matter power-wise at all, and, given how grossly inaccurately they'd empower or depower any metafictional verse, I hope nobody wants to say that any of the alternative approaches are tenable.

I also think that under the proposed approach, the idea of stacking R>F layers it's on incoherence. If we are to believe that lower layers are akin to an "empty set" or non-existence relative to the higher layer, it is hard to see why the additions of even more nothing below the first layer makes the higher one even more powerful.

Because a higher layer that can trivialize lower layers to be as good as nothing qualifies for qualitative superiority, and being able to trivialise vaster structures logically qualifies you for greater qualitative superiorities.

Firstly I would point to settings in which this approach is difficult to neatly apply, compared to a setting like DC where there can be no doubt what the baseline reality is. For instance, Sword Art Online predominantly takes place in a video game, so much so that I would consider it the primary setting for the first leg of the story. But we run into issues no matter which reality we consider the baseline. It makes little sense to tier the real-world programmer of SAO as 1-A, and it similarly makes little sense to decide that we cannot tier any of the characters inside any of the games anything other than 11-C. It's contrary to the purpose of making a profile to fixate so heavily on whether or not fiction exists relative to a character, or if they are fictional to someone else.

SAO doesn't even qualify for RFT, which requires metafictional transcendence, not merely virtual reality, so this is utterly irrelevant.

Similarly, if we had a story that was predominantly focused on a comic book writer, but which occasionally showed the stories he made, which had tierable feats, I would see no reason for us not to treat the writer's characters as though they were real even if they are not the "baseline reality" of the setting.

Then add another key if we really must.

 

[Deagonx]

Namely that I find them to be, at the end of the day, incompatible with the very Tiering System which they are meant to be defending (Or maybe not? I assume that's why you said you don't actually have a vote here?).

I'm not defending the current system per se, rather I just don't think this would be a better replacement. I said I don't have a vote because only Admins can vote on policy changes.

If we were to remove this concept, we would either be forced to say that anything with metafictional layers above them is 11-C, anything with metafictional layers below them is 1-A, or R>f layers don't matter power-wise at all, and, given how grossly inaccurately they'd empower or depower any metafictional verse, I hope nobody wants to say that any of the alternative approaches are tenable.

I am more on the latter side. I think R>F layers not mattering power-wise at all would be more logical.

SAO doesn't even qualify for RFT, which requires metafictional transcendence, not merely virtual reality, so this is utterly irrelevant.

And yet we tier virtual SAO characters as though they were "real" and not just a collection of data. Why? Perhaps there's some justification for this in SAO I'm not familiar with, but the specific example is not terribly relevant. We consistently treat verses and characters as though they are real, and when we place two characters in a match up we assume they are the same level of real, because if we don't there can't even be a match up.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I'm not defending the current system per se, rather I just don't think this would be a better replacement. I said I don't have a vote because only Admins can vote on policy changes.

And I understand your reasons for that, yes. Largely, I just think those reasons aren't of much pertinence here. If you reject the concept of R>F scaling as a whole, then it's obvious that no Tiering System which adopts it could possibly be a better replacement in that regard.

 

[Deagonx]

Sure, I understand your view on it. Just wanted to make mine known while there was a decent opportunity to do so.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

I can understand some of DT's concerns and while I don't quite think every single R>F visual in all of fiction would default to 1-A. (Which based on what I read + some other people like Matt tried to clarify misunderstandings, that's not quite what is being proposed but more so it is focused specifically on examples of verses where a R>F view point is a qualitively superior plane of existence).

But I do lean towards Ultima's intended proposal where in a general case, a single R>F transcendence is infinitely superior to any number of Spacio-Temporal dimensional transcendences. And this is still face value since anyone can program like a 100-D digital lifeform or make a fanmade game where being able to travel forward/backward in time at will as a core mechanical ability. But those character(s) and verse(s) are still infinitely inferior to the programmers/hackers realistically speaking.

There are also some verse examples I can think of that have enough spacio-temporal dimensions to be like High 1-C to 1-B, and also has just a single R>F realm that basically transcends all of the above; with the gap from highest spacio-temporal dimension and the R>F being bigger than all the Spactio-Temporal dimensions transcendences put together. Or even just a R>F realm simply being called a 5th dimension is still oddly portrayed as being qualitively superior to what's actually 12-D or 13-D on a spacio-temporal dimension level. Which is consistent with my real worlder programming a game comparison. And I also vaguely heard of verse that have several hundred physical dimensions but uncountable infinity imaginary/mental dimensions which a single R>F over even just the first 3 or 4 dimensions is considered qualitively superior to all of the above. Which that's another thing, some verses are made in ways in which even Mental/Imaginary dimensions are part of the cosmology, not just physical dimensions. Which add context to BDE for those verses.

Edit: I think the examples of Digital Worlds not being seen as infinitely inferior to physical/real worlds are a different topic unrelated to what Ultima is proposing. Such as the SAO that Deagon brought up. There's a digital cosmology yes, but that verse doesn't portray real world in the same R>F that is commonly seen that we are talking about in this thread.

In other words, I think Ultima is the one making more sense here overall.

 

[DontTalkDT]

This has gone on for a bit, so, for recapitulation's sake...

The points DontTalk has made throughout this thread can be summarized in three parts, which I'll list paired up with a response explaining why each of them fails in some way:

Honestly, a bit early to start with summaries and stuff as I, at your request, have yet to actually address all your points. Kinda early to ask people for input due to that.
(There were also more points than that and you didn't present my arguments well)

So, let me get this straight:

In your mind, a realm can fulfill all our requirements for qualitative superiority (Such as in this hypothetical), and you can have characters who scale to the same state of existence as it. But: If said characters are unable to interact with the lower worlds they transcend, the whole thing actually doesn't count as "superiority"?

Yeah, so, to make it short: No. That's not how the Tiering System works at all. In fact, to quote our page on Reality-Fiction Transcendence:



There is absolutely no mention of needing to be capable of interacting with the lower world, in that entire page. Not only that, but it also explicitly says that being a creator of media isn't the only type of Reality-Fiction Transcendence there is: You can also be a consumer of media. So, not an author, but a reader, or a player (As such having no power to alter the fiction you consume). In fact, there is a list of factors that disqualify you from having a R>F Transcendence:



...And "The characters from the higher realities being unable to interact with the lower world" is not in there. The main qualifying factor, then is:



So the real basis of Reality-Fiction Transcendence isn't what you can do to lesser realities, but what they can't do to you.

And this is all but natural: If Character X has a Reality-Fiction Transcendence over a Low 2-C reality, as well as complete control over it, they are rated at Low 1-C based on the transcendence, their state of existence, which is independent of their ability to control the lower world. If you completely remove said control from them, their state of existence will remain unchanged. Yet, by your logic, if the control was removed, they would apparently no longer be Low 1-C or have any superiority over it? That's absurd.

In fact, if we tiered R>F Transcendence based on the power these characters could exert over lower realities, then seeing a Low 2-C universe as fiction wouldn't be any tier. It would only be at most Low 2-C if they displayed utter command over it. And yet this is obviously not what is done, currently.

I said quite clearly that it is so if it's by nature rather than by convenience.
If you have a R>F thing but the lower reality is immune to powers that should theoretically effect them, then that's an anti-feat and one has to reconsider whether the reality-fiction relationship is one of superiority or not. Not all necessarily are.

If you want to get back to your prior example, the explicit infinite size difference would probably still allow the scaling.

Moreover, you also rejected even an hypothetical character who is beyond dimensionality and can destroys spaces that are also beyond dimensionality, using the exact logic outlined above, which is even weirder: If the realm a character destroys is already above X, Y and Z, then why does it matter that they never got shown destroying X, Y and Z? Your answer, it seems, would be that it matters because interactivity with lower realms is what determines whether you are "superior" to them or not, but I've already shown that this simply isn't true.

Well, that's a completely different situation, as in the context we were talking there the realm has not been demonstrated to be greater.
As I said, I do not consider R>F layers to be greater than all dimensions in a "size"-manner. You can not reach R>F by stacking dimensions because they are different in nature, not because they are different in size. Similarly, I don't think any R>F proves superiority above any quantitative size, including those the verse does not have.
As such, I see no reason that someone that can punch a character that has R>F over 3D space can also destroy a 100D space.



And with that I get back to working on the replies I skipped.

But anyway, if people are already here, may as well ask them for something as well.
So @DarkGrath @DarkDragonMedeus @IdiosyncraticLawyer @Sir_Ovens
What's your stance on Ultima's proposal (that comes with the logic he uses for this revision) that characters stated to be omnipotent (in the "can do anything even if it break logic" sense), transdual characters and other such "theoretically should have no limits by nature"-characters should just get Tier 0 without any feats, unless their state is contradicted?

 

[DontTalkDT]

"Stated to be logically omnipotent"? Well, the definitions provided to Google by the Oxford Dictionary say "omnipotence" is:

"the quality of having unlimited or very great power."

Language, obviously, is descriptive, not prescriptive. Which is to say "Words mean whatever they're used as. There aren't hard rules dictating the meaning of words that we are obliged to follow." So, this being part of the definition of "Omnipotence," I don't think all characters stated to be omnipotent or similar would qualify for the above, no.

Secondly: I am positive that, when you say "Omnipotence," you think of a different thing from what I do. Specify what you have in mind when you use the word, so I can fully answer the question.

Otherwise: Feats do indeed hold relevance. As do showings, as I've explained above. As for how VS Threads between such characters would go: Yeah, they would in fact serve not much purpose, since all characters with the properties I outlined above would be perfectly equal.

In fact, if I put undifferentiated oneness vs undifferentiated oneness, then, per verse equalization, it would seem the VS Match would treat them as if they're the same being. I see no problem with that. I mean, who cares about Tier 0 vs matches, anyway? Certainly not me. And neither should anyone.

Well, I already said which kind of omnipotence I mean specifically.

I never really said anything about control, firstly, but about sheer superiority. Furthermore: I knew you were saying something along those lines, yeah. What I asked was: How exactly do those examples work? Your wording was a bit unclear to me.

The problem is that your sheer superiority isn't based on anything if you take away the control. You don't have an actual size comparision and just alieness is left.

Not sure what you mean by "How exactly do those examples work?" Reality is acknowledged as fiction but either there are restrictions on the scale said fiction can be manipulated or R>F layers are not independent of physical size.

It means "Their superiority over dimensions derives directly from their undimensioned nature." In other words, their alienness and their superiority are in reality the same attribute, following that logical relation.

Think back to the hypothetical of the tiny planet-destroying character: Is its power "superior to a planet"? For sure. Is its ontological nature superior to a planet's nature? Eh, nah. They exist as much as the planet do. And in fact they're lesser than it in some aspects (Their size). I mean, this is just Qualitative Superiority 101, so the fact you're confused about the concept is weird to me.

At best, the example you gave seems like the reverse: "They're so powerful this timeline can't handle them, so they have to exist somewhere else." Which, mind you: Doesn't even sound like Beyond-Dimensional Existence of any kind to begin with.

The superiority is still part of their nature and they definitely are nondimensional due to it (straight up said to be beyond the concept of distance and time).
Your problem is that what you really want to say is not that they are just superior due to their non-dimensional nature, but that they are superior in a fashion that is independent of the size of the thing they compare to.
Which you would need extra evidence for. Still waiting for an example on that.

The problem here is simple: You're talking about Type 1 Beyond-Dimensional Existence + AP (At best. At worst, you're talking about something that isn't even BDE). I'm talking about Type 2 Beyond-Dimensional Existence, where the AP and the beyond-dimensional status of the character are one and the same, as explained above.

And so I'm not dodging anything, no. I already explained how what I'm talking about is already clearly mentioned in our official explanation pages (Such as the FAQ). So, let me ask you something: Do you think what you're talking about is what the FAQ is talking about when it says "Above dimensions"? If you do, then, with all due respect: You're either out of touch with these things, or you have some weird ideas about what BDE is.

In a feat based system what I'm talking about is one and the same.
Anyway, where is your example? Your continued refusal to give one gives me the impression that you have trouble actually formulating one without flaws.

Elaborate.

What's there to elaborate? The objects have next to nothing in common. The things you wish to do with the empty set can be done with fiction in the same way.

That whole point doesn't really mean much, to be honest, because an Universal could be glued to what exists in the material world. There's a whole school of thought regarding that, in fact. This isn't something we arbitrarily place lower from where it should be. It simply isn't necessarily that high even from a purely logical viewpoint.

And If Universals only encompass what exists physically, then if you transcend all Universals, you only get to transcend pretty mundane stuff: Time, Space, and etc. All of which you're already expected to be above by the time you hit 1-A under my proposals.

Of course, you could say "There are different views about R>F and BDE, too." Yeah, well, I am contesting the validity of these views. Will you contest the validity of the above schools of thought?

The school of thought you mentioned together with the idea that concepts can govern fiction would already indicate that R>F is limited. So you in principle brought up a school of thought that easily can be viewed.
Also, I see that it's high time to address your counterpoints. Like, you say there are school of thoughts were you are wrong, but you just say they are invalid and shouldn't be used because you think they make no sense? Wow.
I think it might be best if I get to those next.

I also have no idea of what you mean by "A concept related to logic" or "logic applies to any level." Specify?

Well, a concept that governs logic. The concept which causes logic to exist. Or maybe a concept that allows paradoxes to exist.
Since characters of any tier can be bound by logic, in your reasoning where feats don't matter someone that could for instance destroy the concept of logic could harm all of them. Can't even say that your above school of thought contradicts that, since logic isn't a material thing, proving that one to be inapplicable.

Yeah, I am well aware that's what you had in mind. Put it simply: That's not really a logical consequence of my arguments, no. For example, swap "An author writing a story from a higher world" with a Plato's Cave scenario ("The world is illusory and the true reality is the world of abstract objects beyond it"), and it becomes far less obvious that this kind of transcendence implies a transcendence over all kinds of layers.

So, in short, you're not inferring that from "Sees lower worlds as fiction/unreality," but from "Is an author." Thus that's a thing you have to debate separately. You know how you often say we work with the minimum required things? I don't hold antipathy for that sentiment at all.

Honestly, for a start, shifting to another scenario doesn't resolve things. At best, you have shown that Plato's cave and R>F in book form are two different scenarios, in which case the latter would then still need to be ranked above all layers by your logic.
Furthermore, it's a fairly arbitrary equivalence you bring up and I may as easily argue that R>F is like Type 2 Concepts: Abstract things in an abstract world tied to physical reality.

 

[Antvasima]

What's your stance on Ultima's proposal (that comes with the logic he uses for this revision) that characters stated to be omnipotent (in the "can do anything even if it break logic"), transdual characters and other such "theoretically should have no limits by nature"-characters should just get Tier 0 without any feats, unless their state is contradicted?

Hmm. I agree about that it seems very unreliable if it is accurate.

 

[DontTalkDT]

Hmm. I agree about that it seems very unreliable if it is accurate.

To reference the parts I'm refering to:

If taken at their absolute maximal interpretations, all those three things you just asked me about are the same thing. If something truly is above all concepts, it can't be surpassed. If something is truly transdual, it likewise can't be surpassed. So, technically, you really just asked me about omnipotence three times in a row. They would all, logically speaking, of course be in the highest tier of a Tiering System, no matter what that may be.

Now, as said: These are the maximal interpretations. For example, you can transcend all Aristotelian Universals (Type 2 Concepts, in wiki jargon), and since those are, by definition, bound to what exists in the material world, doing that is the exact same thing as transcending the physical cosmology of your verse, in which case it'd be just 1-A at most under my proposals. And then there's, of course, the pesky "Logically can't be surpassed" deal that plagues the maximal interpretation.

Likewise with Transduality. A very common concept is that there is a foundation to reality that is this non-dual, completely undifferentiated oneness with no parts or division whatsoever, be those spatial, temporal or metaphysical. Clearly, there logically can be nothing surpassing this, or else it isn't truly undifferentiated in all ways. Yet quite a few verses introduce something that is supposed to be such a oneness... And then have it be surpassed anyway. This is obviously some Lionel Suggs-type shit which ultimately just invalidates itself. The concept might as well be dust after that. Maximal interpretation gets discarded here, too.

And yet these "fake oneness"-type of characters usually do have traits assigned to them that aren't ever contradicted in the same way. In my experience they'll often be described as above spatial concepts like "Up/Down," "Left/Right" and etc, which indicates they must at least be beyond spatio-temporal dimensionality. In which case, they're 1-A under my proposals, too. You starting to notice a pattern here?

So, TL;DR the vast majority of would-be examples of these concepts in fiction either are not necessarily as high as their face-value interpretations to begin with, and/or have some flaw in their portrayal that prevents them from being so, in which case they either totally invalidate themselves or end up falling back to the bare minimum of the proposed 1-A rating.

You misunderstand me quite a bit here. I fully agree that the perfect extent of certain abilities, like Transduality for example, are completely different from even what I refer to as a qualitative superiority. Indeed, a truly transdual character can't really be said to have a "qualitative superiority" (Or even a "meta-qualitative" superiority, which is what I defined High 1-A as), because it would be above qualities to begin with. By that token, equating it to a qualitative superiority is as much of a category error as equating a qualitative superiority to a quantitative superiority.

So, if you get me a character that's essentially a perfect portrayal of Transduality, for example (Which is to say, most robust description possible with no contradictions to that status whatsoever), I'll have no issue with saying that character is Tier 0, for the same reasons I say R>F and BDE are inherently above dimensional jumps.

Largely, I just don't really think such characters are very numerous. It will happen, certainly, but not very often. So, no, I don't care much for probabilities.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

What's your stance on Ultima's proposal (that comes with the logic he uses for this revision) that characters stated to be omnipotent (in the "can do anything even if it break logic" sense), transdual characters and other such "theoretically should have no limits by nature"-characters should just get Tier 0 without any feats, unless their state is contradicted?

I don't think that's what he's even trying to propose, I was at first worried that to be something is every single R>F example being a default to 1-A regardless of just perceiving a single Low 2-C with no confirmation of the existence of alternate timelines or quantitatively superior dimensions. And I don't think Ultima is actually trying to go that far based on some other clarifications spoken. But a minimum may very from verse to verse and I at least agree with the basics that quantitatively superior and qualitatively superior are two widely different things with the latter being unfathomably better context wise. But let's say a verse is known to have at least 7 quantitively superiors dimensions in terms of "They exist" combined with the fact that one qualitively superior dimension exists. And while the verse treats it separately and it's only shown to be superior to the first 4 dimensions and/or at least one timeline, it is still officially a higher plane of existence above those other 7 dimensions and thus would be 1-B at minimum. Likewise, plenty of R>F realms have "Beyond dimensionality" statements which only adds further context. And especially if that specifically includes Imaginary/mental dimensions (Which is always Uncountable Infinite), then it's 1-A is the minimum.

 

[DontTalkDT]

I don't think that's what he's even trying to propose

See the post above yours with the quotes on the matter.

I was at first worried that to be something is every single R>F example being a default to 1-A regardless of just perceiving a single Low 2-C with no confirmation of the existence of alternate timelines or quantitatively superior dimensions. And I don't think Ultima is actually trying to go that far based on some other clarifications spoken.

I have the impression he is trying to go that far. If not he should clarify.

But a minimum may very from verse to verse and I at least agree with the basics that quantitatively superior and qualitatively superior are two widely different things with the latter being unfathomably better context wise. But let's say a verse is known to have at least 7 qualitively superiors dimensions in terms of "They exist" combined with the fact that one qualitively superior dimension exists. And while the verse treats it separately and it's only shown to be superior to the first 4 dimensions and/or at least one timeline, it is still officially a higher plane of existence above those other 7 dimensions and thus would be 1-B at minimum.

So you're saying that viewing a verse as fiction should justify a R>F transcendence over it to be at least above the dimensions it's shown to have? I believe we are already doing that.

Likewise, plenty of R>F realms have "Beyond dimensionality" statements which only adds further context. And especially if that specifically includes Imaginary/mental dimensions (Which is always Uncountable Infinite), then it's 1-A is the minimum.

If the fiction explains that their R>F is above dimensions which only theoretically exist, then I'm fine with them being 1-A (or probably rather Low 1-A) as it should be at least above all finite dimensions.
But I believe Ultima's proposal is that such confirmation should not be required.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

What's your stance on Ultima's proposal (that comes with the logic he uses for this revision) that characters stated to be omnipotent (in the "can do anything even if it break logic" sense), transdual characters and other such "theoretically should have no limits by nature"-characters should just get Tier 0 without any feats, unless their state is contradicted?

Quite frankly you seem to have misunderstood my proposal a fair bit, if you think that's what I'm saying should be accepted. But then again, I suppose that's partly on me for being a bit vague regarding what I want Tier 0 to be, thus far.

I'll respond to this all in a bit. Just woke up, so, feeling a bit disoriented at the moment.

 

[DontTalkDT]

Quite frankly you seem to have misunderstood my proposal a fair bit, if you think that's what I'm saying should be accepted. But then again, I suppose that's partly on me for being a bit vague regarding what I want Tier 0 to be, thus far.

I'm not sure how else to interpret

So, if you get me a character that's essentially a perfect portrayal of Transduality, for example (Which is to say, most robust description possible with no contradictions to that status whatsoever), I'll have no issue with saying that character is Tier 0, for the same reasons I say R>F and BDE are inherently above dimensional jumps.

unless "most robust description" means the description involves Tier 0 feats, which would make it kinda redundant to even talk about nature.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I'm not sure how else to interpret

You'll figure it out just fine when I explain it in a bit. Until then you should, preferably, refrain from mischaracterizing me.

 

[DontTalkDT]

Hey, I quoted what you said. Gave the people the opportunity to judge on their own. So I clearly wasn't trying to mischaracterize you.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

He did admit some fault that his description was a bit vague and is kind of tired atm; I also am in a similar state where I woke up recently and feel a bit woozy. I also did not want to derail the thread with verse specific topics but.

But I think it's more so issues with things that haven't been yet updated. And some verses actually have a higher dimension more like a R>F type of transcendence, but treated like a regular quantitatively superior dimension. I know there have been a lot of controversies surrounding Marvel/DC cosmology revisions with the latter getting complaints about mistreatment compared to the former. But there is a realm called the 5th dimension that perceives 4-D universes as comic books and thus appears to be a R>F type of transcendence despite some universes having statements about 10 or 11 dimensions in the spacio-temporal context. Still don't know what the outcome would be, but we shall see.

But I will give Ultima time to wake up and say what he wants to clarify. And I will also admit my understanding of the topic hasn't been the best and there are others better at debating Tier 1 stuff than I.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Sorry for the delay, y'all. I had stuff to do + Had to regulate my sleeping schedule + This took a while to write, overall (And it's still less complete and thorough than I would've liked. I'm really only posting it now because I don't want to delay my replies any further).

Hey, I quoted what you said. Gave the people the opportunity to judge on their own. So I clearly wasn't trying to mischaracterize you.

Firstly: As said above, I was not 100% when I posted the message you're responding to, so, I do apologize for any unduly harsh words.

Secondly: Intentionally or not, you did mischaracterize my positions, yes, since you said that my proposals included rating any technically uncontradicted statements of "Omnipotence" or "Being able to do anything, even the illogical" to be rated at Tier 0. That's not only not really supported by any of what I said, but is something that I specifically denied. Not to mention that I asked you to clarify what exactly you meant by the term "Omnipotence," precisely so I could go more in-depth in explaining my proposals for Tier 0 afterwards.

If you, at least, said that this existed strictly as a logical consequence of my argumentation, that would be one thing, but you explicitly said those were "my proposals," which undoubtedly gives the impression that I explicitly endorsed the above.

---

Anyhow, the following is the actual, extensive detailing of my proposals for the Tiering System, with special focus on the proposal for Tier 0. As you'll see when finishing all this: The validity of the proposals for Tier 0 depends on the validity of the proposals for 1-A. By and large, I am detailing the specifics of my proposed Tiering System's Tier 0 strictly for the sake of full disclosure and unambiguity.

As such, I ask that we, for the moment, focus primarily on debating 1-A, as opposed to shifting direction towards Tier 0. We're discussing the building of a house here, so, let us start by the foundations, and not by the ceiling. Thank You.

@DarkGrath @DarkDragonMedeus @Sir_Ovens @IdiosyncraticLawyer

Spoiler

Outerverse level: Characters whose superiority over lesser realms is qualitative, rather than quantitative. This is to say that their transcendence over lower realms hinges on the very quality of their existence as opposed to mathematical quantities, and as such is completely beyond any and all extensions of the latter. For example, characters to whom lower worlds are literal unreality/fiction, or characters who exceed the necessity of physical size and dimensionality entirely.

This tier can be divided in "layers." For example, a character who sees some dimensioned world as fictional would be considered to be at the "baseline" of this tier. A character who sees that entity as fiction, then, would be a single level above baseline, and so on and so forth. A character who stands infinitely-many layers above the baseline is to receive a "+" modifier next to their tier.

High Outerverse level: Characters who exist in a state of "meta-qualitative" superiority. This is to say, they are completely above the "quality" defining lower levels of qualitative superiority, residing in a wholly different hierarchy that operates on higher qualities entirely. For example, if a cosmology has a hierarchy of levels of Reality-Fiction Transcendences, and then a character above it transcends all forms of reality and fiction, being a part of a hierarchy whose mode of superiority functions on something else entirely, then the character in question is to be rated at High 1-A

Note that, in order to be at this tier, the character must exceed the framework of the lower levels entirely, and not simply be at the top of an existing lower hierarchy.

Boundless: Characters who are completely beyond both quantity, quality and meta-quality. In other words, their superiority over lesser things derives from a total lack of any qualities, instead of simply being above some qualities while still operating on higher ones, as High 1-A characters do.

Here, you can see a fairly clear progression on how the Tiering System scales things. Namely:

Low 2-C to High 1-B = Quantitative superiorities

1-A = Qualitative superiorities

High 1-A = "Meta"-qualitative superiorities

Now, if Tier 0 was just, say, "meta"-meta-qualitative superiorities, that'd effectively be just doing High 1-A again, and when two tiers share what is effectively the same definition, then, clearly, one of them is redundant and has little reason to exist. Therefore Tier 0 has to be something else, cue the above definition.

Now, what exactly does it mean to "lack all qualities" or "be above all qualities"? Surely the former isn't even something that indicates power, right? Power is, itself, a quality, and something that lacks power would actually be the weakest thing possible, no? Well:

Spoiler: Explanation

Up there, I've expressed that I would have no issues with saying "a perfect portrayal of Transduality" would be Tier 0. However, upon further inspection, I realized one thing: Right now, we consider a character who simultaneously exists in two opposing states to be "transdual." So, in actuality, what I have in mind for the tier is well beyond even the default model of what we consider "Transduality" to be.

Specifically: Take a hypothetical character, and now, let us demand that it be totally undifferentiated, and in all senses "one" with regards to its existence, which does not admit any distinctions or compositions whatsoever. (For convenience's sake, let's call it a "Monad")

Right off the bat, this already prevents it from having either time or space: Space and measurement inherently implies composition/differentiation (A distinction between right and left. Up and down. Between this dimension and that dimension, etc), and so does time (As time is divided in moments. So there is me from 2 hours ago, me from now, me from 2 hours in the future, etc).

And so for this being to be without distinctions, it cannot have either of those things. We might thus say that it has no "quantitative distinction." However, in order to actually be totally undifferentiated, a being would need to take this a step further, namely: It would need to have no qualitative distinctions, either.

Which is to say: Even its characteristics and attributes would ultimately be identical to one another, and to its existence; there wouldn't be a set of attributes that, when added together, create such a being. This being would be a single, indivisible thing with no multiplicity in it at all. A Monad wouldn't be a sum or even the "fusion" of anything but instead the most basic and irreducible thing there is.

It's not difficult to practically demonstrate that attempting to assign qualities and definitions to such a thing would be a fool's errand. To start with, any proposition whatsoever requires a subject (The referent) and a predicate (Something about the referent). For example, "Socrates (Subject) is a man (Predicate)" or "The sky (Subject) is blue (Predicate)." And this extends not just to common language but also to mathematical logic, where some property P assigned to an object a can be expressed as P(a)

Now, propositions like these are meaningful because, obviously, subject and predicate are separate things (E.g. Socrates is not identical with the property of manhood itself, and neither is the sky identical to blueness). Consequently, they break apart when the two are one and the same: If "Socrates" and "Is a man" were to, in fact, have the same referent, then there would be no sentence to begin with. For perhaps a spicier example: A sentence like "God is omnipotent" would also also be a meaningless sentence when applied to a Monad, because if "God" and "Is omnipotent" are just different terms of the same referent, you, in fact, failed to say anything at all.

From this, it follows that such an entity would be undefinable, and really have no "qualities" at all. Or, speaking more precisely: It could technically be said to have a single quality, but since that one quality is completely devoid of any differentiation (And our minds inherently operate using the notion of parts/composition), it can hardly be classified as a "quality" in the way we'd understand the term.

As such, they would fit the bill for the definition of Tier 0 I've presented above.

Interestingly, something else a Monad would also need to lack would be the dichotomy between actuality and potentiality. That is: All of us have, inherently, a mix of actualities and potentialities. We all have things that we are, and things that we aren't, but could be (E.g. I could be cooking burgers right now, but I am not). This being would by necessity lack this distinction entirely, though, and so in it there are no "Could Be"s.

Furthermore, another distinction that it would lack would be the distinction between its power and its nature. For example, a character may be physically 3-dimensional but have Tier 1 Attack Potency, and thus their power is distinct from their nature. Such a thing would not be the case in this hypothetical, though: The being's power would necessarily be its nature.

Keep these two details in mind, as we go forwards.

As for requirements and disqualifiers (Mind that, though they are listed separately, they all spring from the same basic principle, so, once you've contradicted one, you've contradicted them all):

Spoiler: Requirements/Disqualifiers

The character cannot undergo any form of change whatsoever

If it can pass from one state to another, then it has potentiality, something which we already established cannot exist in a Tier 0. Naturally, this precludes anything that is shown being created, growing, decreasing, developing, fading, being destroyed, etc. from being Tier 0.

Now, although a Tier 0 cannot change, it can appear to change from the perspective of lesser beings. I believe a great illustration of this would be a passage from Dante's (not the pizza man) The Divine Comedy, where Dante beholds God and says the following:

Now in my recollection of the rest I have less power to speak than any infant wetting its tongue yet at its mother’s breast; and not because that Living Radiance bore more than one semblance, for It is unchanging and is forever as it was before; rather, as I grew worthier to see, the more I looked, the more unchanging semblance appeared to change with every change in me

But overall that should only go for very specific cases. If the would-be Tier 0 character just gets flat-out destroyed or unmade at some point, for example, then you can't really handwave that with the above. Examples of characters that completely fail this requirement are, well, a lot of people from Megami Tensei. The verse has many characters that are framed as being Monads, but practically speaking are shown being defeated and destroyed.

Furthermore: This requirement does not admit loopholes. This is to say that things like "Oh, this character technically was born in Period X, but it was made to have retroactively always existed..." would not suffice to save a character from disqualifying for Tier 0. If there was ever, from any perspective, a time when the character didn't exist, it automatically is disqualified.

There cannot be multiple Tier 0 beings in a verse

Obviously, something is distinguished by the quantities and qualities which it has. For instance, two physical objects A and B are spatiotemporally distinguished by factors such as distance (Two objects cannot occupy the same point in space), time (Two objects can be distinguished by their positions in the timeline. I am distinguished from my self from 2 hours ago in this way, for example), matter, etc.

Abstract objects that are not in spacetime cannot be distinguished in that way, but they can be qualitatively distinguished, which is to say that two aspatial and atemporal entities are made distinct by their attributes. For example, the Platonic Form of "Cat" is different from the Platonic Form of "Chair" because the two embody different properties. There are some things "Cat" has that "Chair" doesn't, and vice-versa, and those differences are what set them apart.

Now, if something has no qualities whatsoever (In the sense that all the things we understand as its "attributes" are actually a single thing that our distinction-based minds can't comprehend), then clearly there cannot be multiple of it, as there is nothing to mark distinctions in the first place. In the same way objects that are aspatial and atemporal cannot be distinguished through time or space (As they don't exist in either)

A Tier 0 cannot have parts

This naturally follows from the requirement of it being completely devoid of differentiation. All-in-all, the character must necessarily be completely indivisible and irreducible to anything more basic than itself, and therefore smaller "parts," "pieces" or "fragments" are things that it cannot have.

Consequently, there can be no such thing as partitions of that being's power, either. No such thing as "He was only using a small portion of his energy!" and the like. And neither there can be such a thing as "A small part of its totality," save as a figure of speech.

Mind you, this is not in a "Infinity divided by a finite number is still infinity" sense, as numerical infinity is still able to be expressed as the result of an infinite sum. A Tier 0, under these proposals, necessarily cannot be the result of any sum, on account of its lack of distinction.

An example of something that fails this requirement? The Overvoid, from DC Comics. Here, it is shown that the Source Wall is able to shield the multiverse from its corrosive effects, even if the Source Wall itself is lesser than the Overvoid. Therefore it stands to reason that there is a division between "the Overvoid in its totality" and "the small portion of the Overvoid that the multiverse is being shielded from." Therefore, clearly it has parts of some kind.

A Tier 0 character cannot be surpassed

For any two things, A and B. A is made superior to B either by some quantity or some quality. That this is the case is obvious enough. A 6-D space is made superior to a 5-D space by its greater volume, for example. Likewise, the set of real numbers is made superior to the set of natural numbers by its greater cardinality.

Likewise, in a hierarchy of R>F Transcendences, Layer A is made superior to Layer B by the fact of its greater "realness." Not by any quantity, but by a quality of its existence.

Now: For something whose existence surpasses distinction of qualities entirely, there is not any mechanism though which it may be surpassed by something else. If it were to be exceeded, then it would seem that it does have some degree of composition, after all, and as such is not totally undifferentiated.

As a matter of fact, a relation of "X is more than Y" inherently imparts some form of differentiation on the attribute being described as "more." For example: 6 apples are more than 3 apples. This is a relationship of superiority, for sure, and the attribute by which it happens is cardinality (The number of things in a set). Thus, there being degrees of cardinality, it follows that "cardinality" as an attribute inherently has differentiation within itself. As does volume, and all other quantitative properties.

And this still applies even to qualitative differences, such as when a verse depicts size-like relations happening between aspatial entities, or when we say a higher reality is "more real" than a lesser one. These attributes have degrees and, evidently, some sense of "proportion," and as such they have internal differentiation as well. The same, of course, can be generalized to "power" as a whole: Power as we think of it has different degrees, it comes in amounts, and therefore it has internal differentiation.

Now, as we went over earlier, a Monad has no differentiation whatsoever, and therefore has no degrees at all. Since its "nature" and its "power" are one and the same, it also follows that its power possesses no degrees. So, in that sense, it must, literally, exceed all proportion with lesser things. If you were to posit something greater than it, you would be automatically introducing degrees and proportions in its existence, and as such simply be disqualifying it from being a Monad at all.

A Tier 0 character cannot be part of a hierarchy

This follows from the above. Ask yourself: What is a hierarchy? It is a division of levels, delineated by the degree of some attribute that is present in each of them. The highest level enjoys the most of that attribute, and the lowest level, the least. Thus, a hierarchy fundamentally denotes the idea of "degree," and it is already clear from the above that such a thing cannot be present in a Monad.

Interestingly, this also means that a Monad cannot be the highest level of a hierarchy, either, as even saying that it has "the greatest amount" of some attribute is to introduce degree to its existence, which we've already established is impossible. Therefore, a being such as this would need to be independent of any and all hierarchies. Completely self-sufficient.

In this case, examples of verses that fail this requirement are SCP, which has many Monad-like characters that nevertheless are part of a hierarchy, and Marvel Comics, which has The One Above All being described as a "pure unity" and yet being the top of a hierarchy that is also the bottom of yet another hierarchy.

A character cannot become Tier 0

This logically follows from the first and fourth requirements. A Tier 0 cannot change, and neither does its power have any "degrees." Therefore it is not possible to "rise up to that level" (i.e. It is impossible to increase the degree of your power until it reaches something with no degree at all)

However, this is worth to note separately, because there is indeed a sense in which a character can "become" Tier 0, even if not in the conventional manner. More specifically, if a verse functions on a nondualist cosmology, where all distinctions are illusory and the innermost core of everything is some undifferentiated ultimate reality, then a character may in a sense "become" Tier 0 by shedding all their individual traits and dissolving back into the nondual ground.

So only in that sense can a character "become Tier 0." Though this is, of course, not at all a conventional ascension to godhood or anything of the like, so much as a "return" to the source of your being, or realizing what you have always been all along. Otherwise, it is impossible to become Tier 0 in the sense of filling a spot that wasn't there before.

There cannot be a character that has Tier 0 power, but some nature that is distinct from that

As we've already established: There cannot be any distinctions whatsoever in such a character, and as such there cannot be a distinction between their power and their nature. Which is to say a character who is physically 3-D but has Tier 0 Attack Potency (And similar) is impossible.

The only way in which this could happen would be if the character in question is something like a manifestation of the already-existing Tier 0, through which they can exert their power. And even then, the manifestation could not have Tier 0 punching strength and the like, and neither would that power be "their own" in that sense.

Now, as for any questions about it:

Spoiler: Q&A

Q: Will any statements of "Omnipotence" or "Being able to do anything, even the illogical" qualify for this tier?

A: Not at all, no. Firstly, random statements of "omnipotence" wouldn't qualify for reasons I already explained.

As for "Able to do anything" and similar: That would not qualify either. As the definition above makes plainly clear, Tier 0 inherently revolves around the nature of the character's existence, and not around the acts of which they are capable. As such, it is already obvious that a layman's understanding of "Omnipotence" (I.e. "Capable of doing literally everything") doesn't really have any immediate place in the Tiering System I am proposing. Any character trying to qualify for 0 would need to have the exact properties I've described above. And if they don't, they simply aren't Tier 0.

An example I often see being brought up in debates regarding this topic is the Magic Gods from To Aru, who are described in the verse as having power that allows them to access all possibilities, including contradictory ones, which thus creates an Omnipotence Paradox. Do they qualify for my proposal of Tier 0? Evidently not. Not only are there multiple of them, but apparently they can die, their power can be divided into parts and decreased, and people can become Magic Gods, so clearly they have composition and differentiation in them, as well as potentiality. Thus, case dismissed.

This effectively falls into the principle of "Statements of limitlessness require a mechanism in order to be taken seriously." In this case, empty claims of unsurpassable power would not qualify for anything, but if there is information which tells us that a character, by the nature of its very existence, is necessarily unsurpassable, then we have an impetus to accept it.

Q: Is it possible to prove that a character is Tier 0 at all?

A: The notion that something being absolute and unsurpassable is "inherently unprovable" is something extremely proliferated across both this community and other communities. In fact, to quote one of our own pages:

Despite the many theological and philosophical perspectives regarding omnipotence and its paradoxes, the term is something that is completely impossible to prove or demonstrate on any conceivable level.

By its very definition, it is something that cannot be used to measure a character, and claims of omnipotence, no matter how complex or developed, should never be viewed as evidence.

In a sense, I don't find this disagreeable at all. Specifically, the notion is correct when we think of attempting to "reach" absoluteness by adding to a character. Usually, a layman will think of terms like "Omnipotence" as "The greatest amount of power possible" and similar definitions. This way of thinking, of course, runs into a wall when considering the fact that, ultimately, something can always be added to. You can always add more attributes to a character. No matter how elaborate a description is, it can always be more elaborate. You can always add to a pile, effectively. As such, it is impossible to objectively tell when, exactly, something can no longer be added to.

However, this kind of thinking doesn't really apply to what I am advocating for, since under the above definitions, Tier 0 is not about "adding" something to a character, but rather about removing things from it (In this case, composition and differentiation), which is to say that absoluteness wouldn't really be gotten through obtaining more qualities (Or increasing the degree of those qualities) but rather by abandoning this whole framework altogether. A funny analogy you could use to understand the concept, I think, is this: Usually, people think of absoluteness as being about having "The biggest house possible." But that's wrong. Absoluteness would in fact require you to not have a house in the first place.

In this sense, it is not impossible to prove that a character is Tier 0 at all, no. If that is deemed impossible to prove, then clearly it is also impossible to prove that a character lacks a soul, or spacetime, or any other attribute.

Now, is it easy to contradict being Tier 0? Extremely, as seen by the list of requirements above. That makes it a rare tier, but by no means an impossible one. However, one might be tempted to argue that such a character being described at all already prevents them from being Tier 0, and as such, that the tier is impossible to obtain. This leads us to...

Q: Is a Tier 0 character just nothingness, then?

A: Evidently not. Nothingness in the most absolute sense would not be capable of producing any effects that extend outwards from itself, as effects require a cause, and the nonexistence of a cause would thus imply the nonexistence of effects. So the Tier 0 character, being an identifiable thing capable of producing effects, must exist in some way.

Now, also evidently, a character with the properties I've outlined cannot be described, either. It has some sense of "ineffability" because our minds necessarily understand things through differentiation and parts, and as such are unable to apprehend it as it is. This is to say: There is something there, but we can't really comprehend it.

And with this, it is important to mark the distinction between something being indescribable and something being "nonexistent," because there are many things even in everyday life that are indescribable. For example: Color is impossible to describe. You can easily describe something as "black," but describing the appearance of "blackness" itself is impossible to do, and if a blind person asked you to describe color to them, you'd find yourself at a loss of words. The only way to "describe" a color in any absolute way would be though self-reference. For example, saying "blackness is black." Which, of course, fails to say anything at all.

Yet, I don't think anyone would say color doesn't exist, or anything of the like, because it is something we directly experience and have a sense of. In principle, the same would apply to a Monad: It is not something able to be described in ordinary language, and yet evidently it must exist, due to displaying properties that only existent things can have.

By extension, this means that descriptions being applied to a Tier 0 character doesn't really contradict their Tier 0 rating, either. Consider: Words such as "Above," "outside," "apart" and "higher" are inherently spatial terms. Does this mean that, every time an aspatial thing is described as "Above space," "Outside of space," "Apart from space" or as "A higher realm above space," a contradiction is being made, and the thing in question is in fact not aspatial at all? Of course not.

Why? Because those terms are being used as analogies, and not really in their most proper senses. Something isn't "outside" space in the same way a mailbox is "outside" a house, but it's similar enough that the same word can be used for both. So we apply generalizations of spatial terminology to non-spatial things, and that's not only perfectly fine, but also a feature of language as a whole. In (See?) fact, "In" is a spatial term as well, and yet we don't take issue with phrases like "He exists in a realm with no space or time."

Likewise, "before" is inherently a temporal term, yet we don't take issue with verbiage such as "Before time" being used. No one would remove Beyond-Dimensional Existence from a character just because they're vaguely described as existing "before" something, for instance. "Now" is also a temporal term, and yet no one would remove Beyond-Dimensional Existence from a character if someone said of them: "They are here now."

So, bottom line is: In indexing, we already deal with things that, by definition, defy ordinary language, and as such can really only be described by using terms in an analogous fashion, i.e. generalizing a certain piece of terminology to things outside of its usual scope. This proposal for Tier 0 is no different.

Q: So characters who are indescribable or ineffable would be Tier 0?

A: Short answer: No.

Long answer: As can be seen from the above explanations, ineffability is a necessary condition for a Tier 0, but it is not a sufficient one, which is to say: All Tier 0 characters are by necessity beyond description, but not all things beyond description are Tier 0.

For example, as has been explained, the appearance of color is fundamentally indescribable, and yet I don't believe anyone would say colors are Tier 0 because of that. For a more out-there example: Concepts/predicates can be seen as things for which no definition can be given, yet this is just a matter of the awkwardness of our linguistics, and not necessarily indicative of anything transcendental.

So, no, statements of something being "Indescribable," "ineffable," "incomprehensible," "undefinable" and the like wouldn't amount to much. Granted, sufficiently thorough statements of that sort may suggest that the character in question is monadic in nature, but those would nevertheless be subject to the definitions and requirements prescribed above, and need to display such qualities.

For example, Twin Peaks has characters reside on a level stated to be a purely unknowable realm "where all words melt into silence." Yet on their scale there is clearly actual distinction and separation, as well as things above them. As such, they would be unfit for this proposal of Tier 0.

Q: Can there be multiple Tier 0 characters in the same verse?

A: This might seem like a strange question to note down, seeing as I've already established that there can only be one Tier 0 being per verse under these proposals. However, it is worth to note down a distinction between "being" and "character." The latter term refers to narrative presentation and characterization, and the former refers to in-universe ontology.

What I mean is: There may be occasions where two characters or more are presented and characterized separately in terms of the plot and narrative, but are in fact of a single essence/existence as per the verse's cosmology. If their individual characterizations are sufficiently notable, then it might be that they deserve individual profiles, even if ultimately they are the same being.

Q: Is existing beyond logic a Tier 0 feat?

A: Depends entirely on what is meant by "Exists beyond logic." A character operating under non-classical logic works in ways that defy the usual laws of thought, and as such they can be described as "beyond logic" on that basis. Yet a character who operates on such alternate systems of logic can be any tier. It's not exactly hard to think of Tier 9 characters who exist in paradoxical states of being and the like.

Now, if by "beyond logic," what is meant is that a character exceeds the significance of even basic logical relations such as ">" (Greater than), "<" (Less than) and "=" (Equal to), then in principle that is correct, yes. However, a character, in order to surpass such things, would need to have all the properties I've spoke about thus far, and as such they would need to meet the criteria prescribed by the Tier 0 definition given above. So, it really is just a roundabout way towards things already discussed, ultimately.

Either way, the final answer is: Depends. The statement itself is ambiguous, and as such a random, contextless "Beyond logic" statement wouldn't get anywhere.

Q: Is existing in multiple (Or all) states at once a Tier 0 feat?

A: Not really, no. Lack of differentiation is not "Existing in multiple states at once." And the reasons why are obvious.

Q: Is this definition anything like the old version of Tier 0?

A: Conceptually, it is similar, but otherwise: Not very much, no. Anyone who was present in the 2017-2018 wiki can attest that, back then, "Tier 0" was just a title. Practically speaking, it was just "Qualitative superiority over 1-A + Treated as the verse's supreme being." It reached a point where a well-known fact about Tier 0 was that it didn't actually mean you were stronger than lower tiers: A character who was Tier 0 in one verse could be weaker than 1-As from another verse.

And, quite frankly, this was largely because, back then, no one was well-versed in any of these topics whatsoever, so no one could ever really establish any logical reason, foundation or mechanism that justified Tier 0 being "unsurpassable." Needless to say, this is not the case here: If you don't qualify for Tier 0, then you are weaker than a Tier 0. It's that simple.

---

Frankly, I initially planned to post this alongside the counterpoints to DontTalk's above posts, but then all these explanations ended up taking more space than expected. Given that, I'll respond to the posts later. A couple hours from now, most likely. So, until then, I ask that people hold off from any potential parallel conversations (And this includes keeping any potential objections to the Tier 0 proposal to yourself, for now)

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Sorry for the delay, y'all. I had stuff to do + Had to regulate my sleeping schedule + This took a while to write, overall (And it's still less complete and thorough than I would've liked. I'm really only posting it now because I don't want to delay my replies any further).


Firstly: As said above, I was not 100% when I posted the message you're responding to, so, I do apologize for any unduly harsh words.

Secondly: Intentionally or not, you did mischaracterize my positions, yes, since you said that my proposals included rating any technically uncontradicted statements of "Omnipotence" or "Being able to do anything, even the illogical" to be rated at Tier 0. That's not only not really supported by any of what I said, but is something that I specifically denied. Not to mention that I asked you to clarify what exactly you meant by the term "Omnipotence," precisely so I could go more in-depth in explaining my proposals for Tier 0 afterwards.

If you, at least, said that this existed strictly as a logical consequence of my argumentation, that would be one thing, but you explicitly said those were "my proposals," which undoubtedly gives the impression that I explicitly endorsed the above.

---

Anyhow, the following is the actual, extensive detailing of my proposals for the Tiering System, with special focus on the proposal for Tier 0. As you'll see when finishing all this: The validity of the proposals for Tier 0 depends on the validity of the proposals for 1-A. By and large, I am detailing the specifics of my proposed Tiering System's Tier 0 strictly for the sake of full disclosure and unambiguity.

As such, I ask that we, for the moment, focus primarily on debating 1-A, as opposed to shifting direction towards Tier 0. We're discussing the building of a house here, so, let us start by the foundations, and not by the ceiling. Thank You.

@DarkGrath @DarkDragonMedeus @Sir_Ovens @IdiosyncraticLawyer

Spoiler

Outerverse level: Characters whose superiority over lesser realms is qualitative, rather than quantitative. This is to say that their transcendence over lower realms hinges on the very quality of their existence as opposed to mathematical quantities, and as such is completely beyond any and all extensions of the latter. For example, characters to whom lower worlds are literal unreality/fiction, or characters who exceed the necessity of physical size and dimensionality entirely.

This tier can be divided in "layers." For example, a character who sees some dimensioned world as fictional would be considered to be at the "baseline" of this tier. A character who sees that entity as fiction, then, would be a single level above baseline, and so on and so forth. A character who stands infinitely-many layers above the baseline is to receive a "+" modifier next to their tier.

High Outerverse level: Characters who exist in a state of "meta-qualitative" superiority. This is to say, they are completely above the "quality" defining lower levels of qualitative superiority, residing in a wholly different hierarchy that operates on higher qualities entirely. For example, if a cosmology has a hierarchy of levels of Reality-Fiction Transcendences, and then a character above it transcends all forms of reality and fiction, being a part of a hierarchy whose mode of superiority functions on something else entirely, then the character in question is to be rated at High 1-A

Note that, in order to be at this tier, the character must exceed the framework of the lower levels entirely, and not simply be at the top of an existing lower hierarchy.

Boundless: Characters who are completely beyond both quantity, quality and meta-quality. In other words, their superiority over lesser things derives from a total lack of any qualities, instead of simply being above some qualities while still operating on higher ones, as High 1-A characters do.

Here, you can see a fairly clear progression on how the Tiering System scales things. Namely:

Low 2-C to High 1-B = Quantitative superiorities

1-A = Qualitative superiorities

High 1-A = "Meta"-qualitative superiorities

Now, if Tier 0 was just, say, "meta"-meta-qualitative superiorities, that'd effectively be just doing High 1-A again, and when two tiers share what is effectively the same definition, then, clearly, one of them is redundant and has little reason to exist. Therefore Tier 0 has to be something else, cue the above definition.

Now, what exactly does it mean to "lack all qualities" or "be above all qualities"? Surely the former isn't even something that indicates power, right? Power is, itself, a quality, and something that lacks power would actually be the weakest thing possible, no? Well:

Spoiler: Explanation

Up there, I've expressed that I would have no issues with saying "a perfect portrayal of Transduality" would be Tier 0. However, upon further inspection, I realized one thing: Right now, we consider a character who simultaneously exists in two opposing states to be "transdual." So, in actuality, what I have in mind for the tier is well beyond even the default model of what we consider "Transduality" to be.

Specifically: Take a hypothetical character, and now, let us demand that it be totally undifferentiated, and in all senses "one" with regards to its existence, which does not admit any distinctions or compositions whatsoever. (For convenience's sake, let's call it a "Monad")

Right off the bat, this already prevents it from having either time or space: Space and measurement inherently implies composition/differentiation (A distinction between right and left. Up and down. Between this dimension and that dimension, etc), and so does time (As time is divided in moments. So there is me from 2 hours ago, me from now, me from 2 hours in the future, etc).

And so for this being to be without distinctions, it cannot have either of those things. We might thus say that it has no "quantitative distinction." However, in order to actually be totally undifferentiated, a being would need to take this a step further, namely: It would need to have no qualitative distinctions, either.

Which is to say: Even its characteristics and attributes would ultimately be identical to one another, and to its existence; there wouldn't be a set of attributes that, when added together, create such a being. This being would be a single, indivisible thing with no multiplicity in it at all. A Monad wouldn't be a sum or even the "fusion" of anything but instead the most basic and irreducible thing there is.

It's not difficult to practically demonstrate that attempting to assign qualities and definitions to such a thing would be a fool's errand. To start with, any proposition whatsoever requires a subject (The referent) and a predicate (Something about the referent). For example, "Socrates (Subject) is a man (Predicate)" or "The sky (Subject) is blue (Predicate)." And this extends not just to common language but also to mathematical logic, where some property P assigned to an object a can be expressed as P(a)

Now, propositions like these are meaningful because, obviously, subject and predicate are separate things (E.g. Socrates is not identical with the property of manhood itself, and neither is the sky identical to blueness). Consequently, they break apart when the two are one and the same: If "Socrates" and "Is a man" were to, in fact, have the same referent, then there would be no sentence to begin with. For perhaps a spicier example: A sentence like "God is omnipotent" would also also be a meaningless sentence when applied to a Monad, because if "God" and "Is omnipotent" are just different terms of the same referent, you, in fact, failed to say anything at all.

From this, it follows that such an entity would be undefinable, and really have no "qualities" at all. Or, speaking more precisely: It could technically be said to have a single quality, but since that one quality is completely devoid of any differentiation (And our minds inherently operate using the notion of parts/composition), it can hardly be classified as a "quality" in the way we'd understand the term.

As such, they would fit the bill for the definition of Tier 0 I've presented above.

Interestingly, something else a Monad would also need to lack would be the dichotomy between actuality and potentiality. That is: All of us have, inherently, a mix of actualities and potentialities. We all have things that we are, and things that we aren't, but could be (E.g. I could be cooking burgers right now, but I am not). This being would by necessity lack this distinction entirely, though, and so in it there are no "Could Be"s.

Furthermore, another distinction that it would lack would be the distinction between its power and its nature. For example, a character may be physically 3-dimensional but have Tier 1 Attack Potency, and thus their power is distinct from their nature. Such a thing would not be the case in this hypothetical, though: The being's power would necessarily be its nature.

Keep these two details in mind, as we go forwards.

As for requirements and disqualifiers (Mind that, though they are listed separately, they all spring from the same basic principle, so, once you've contradicted one, you've contradicted them all):

Spoiler: Requirements/Disqualifiers

The character cannot undergo any form of change whatsoever

If it can pass from one state to another, then it has potentiality, something which we already established cannot exist in a Tier 0. Naturally, this precludes anything that is shown being created, growing, decreasing, developing, fading, being destroyed, etc. from being Tier 0.

Now, although a Tier 0 cannot change, it can appear to change from the perspective of lesser beings. I believe a great illustration of this would be a passage from Dante's (not the pizza man) The Divine Comedy, where Dante beholds God and says the following:



But overall that should only go for very specific cases. If the would-be Tier 0 character just gets flat-out destroyed or unmade at some point, for example, then you can't really handwave that with the above. Examples of characters that completely fail this requirement are, well, a lot of people from Megami Tensei. The verse has many characters that are framed as being Monads, but practically speaking are shown being defeated and destroyed.

Furthermore: This requirement does not admit loopholes. This is to say that things like "Oh, this character technically was born in Period X, but it was made to have retroactively always existed..." would not suffice to save a character from disqualifying for Tier 0. If there was ever, from any perspective, a time when the character didn't exist, it automatically is disqualified.

There cannot be multiple Tier 0 beings in a verse

Obviously, something is distinguished by the quantities and qualities which it has. For instance, two physical objects A and B are spatiotemporally distinguished by factors such as distance (Two objects cannot occupy the same point in space), time (Two objects can be distinguished by their positions in the timeline. I am distinguished from my self from 2 hours ago in this way, for example), matter, etc.

Abstract objects that are not in spacetime cannot be distinguished in that way, but they can be qualitatively distinguished, which is to say that two aspatial and atemporal entities are made distinct by their attributes. For example, the Platonic Form of "Cat" is different from the Platonic Form of "Chair" because the two embody different properties. There are some things "Cat" has that "Chair" doesn't, and vice-versa, and those differences are what set them apart.

Now, if something has no qualities whatsoever (In the sense that all the things we understand as its "attributes" are actually a single thing that our distinction-based minds can't comprehend), then clearly there cannot be multiple of it, as there is nothing to mark distinctions in the first place. In the same way objects that are aspatial and atemporal cannot be distinguished through time or space (As they don't exist in either)

A Tier 0 cannot have parts

This naturally follows from the requirement of it being completely devoid of differentiation. All-in-all, the character must necessarily be completely indivisible and irreducible to anything more basic than itself, and therefore smaller "parts," "pieces" or "fragments" are things that it cannot have.

Consequently, there can be no such thing as partitions of that being's power, either. No such thing as "He was only using a small portion of his energy!" and the like. And neither there can be such a thing as "A small part of its totality," save as a figure of speech.

Mind you, this is not in a "Infinity divided by a finite number is still infinity" sense, as numerical infinity is still able to be expressed as the result of an infinite sum. A Tier 0, under these proposals, necessarily cannot be the result of any sum, on account of its lack of distinction.

An example of something that fails this requirement? The Overvoid, from DC Comics. Here, it is shown that the Source Wall is able to shield the multiverse from its corrosive effects, even if the Source Wall itself is lesser than the Overvoid. Therefore it stands to reason that there is a division between "the Overvoid in its totality" and "the small portion of the Overvoid that the multiverse is being shielded from." Therefore, clearly it has parts of some kind.

A Tier 0 character cannot be surpassed

For any two things, A and B. A is made superior to B either by some quantity or some quality. That this is the case is obvious enough. A 6-D space is made superior to a 5-D space by its greater volume, for example. Likewise, the set of real numbers is made superior to the set of natural numbers by its greater cardinality.

Likewise, in a hierarchy of R>F Transcendences, Layer A is made superior to Layer B by the fact of its greater "realness." Not by any quantity, but by a quality of its existence.

Now: For something whose existence surpasses distinction of qualities entirely, there is not any mechanism though which it may be surpassed by something else. If it were to be exceeded, then it would seem that it does have some degree of composition, after all, and as such is not totally undifferentiated.

As a matter of fact, a relation of "X is more than Y" inherently imparts some form of differentiation on the attribute being described as "more." For example: 6 apples are more than 3 apples. This is a relationship of superiority, for sure, and the attribute by which it happens is cardinality (The number of things in a set). Thus, there being degrees of cardinality, it follows that "cardinality" as an attribute inherently has differentiation within itself. As does volume, and all other quantitative properties.

And this still applies even to qualitative differences, such as when a verse depicts size-like relations happening between aspatial entities, or when we say a higher reality is "more real" than a lesser one. These attributes have degrees and, evidently, some sense of "proportion," and as such they have internal differentiation as well. The same, of course, can be generalized to "power" as a whole: Power as we think of it has different degrees, it comes in amounts, and therefore it has internal differentiation.

Now, as we went over earlier, a Monad has no differentiation whatsoever, and therefore has no degrees at all. Since its "nature" and its "power" are one and the same, it also follows that its power possesses no degrees. So, in that sense, it must, literally, exceed all proportion with lesser things. If you were to posit something greater than it, you would be automatically introducing degrees and proportions in its existence, and as such simply be disqualifying it from being a Monad at all.

A Tier 0 character cannot be part of a hierarchy

This follows from the above. Ask yourself: What is a hierarchy? It is a division of levels, delineated by the degree of some attribute that is present in each of them. The highest level enjoys the most of that attribute, and the lowest level, the least. Thus, a hierarchy fundamentally denotes the idea of "degree," and it is already clear from the above that such a thing cannot be present in a Monad.

Interestingly, this also means that a Monad cannot be the highest level of a hierarchy, either, as even saying that it has "the greatest amount" of some attribute is to introduce degree to its existence, which we've already established is impossible. Therefore, a being such as this would need to be independent of any and all hierarchies. Completely self-sufficient.

In this case, examples of verses that fail this requirement are SCP, which has many Monad-like characters that nevertheless are part of a hierarchy, and Marvel Comics, which has The One Above All being described as a "pure unity" and yet being the top of a hierarchy that is also the bottom of yet another hierarchy.

A character cannot become Tier 0

This logically follows from the first and fourth requirements. A Tier 0 cannot change, and neither does its power have any "degrees." Therefore it is not possible to "rise up to that level" (i.e. It is impossible to increase the degree of your power until it reaches something with no degree at all)

However, this is worth to note separately, because there is indeed a sense in which a character can "become" Tier 0, even if not in the conventional manner. More specifically, if a verse functions on a nondualist cosmology, where all distinctions are illusory and the innermost core of everything is some undifferentiated ultimate reality, then a character may in a sense "become" Tier 0 by shedding all their individual traits and dissolving back into the nondual ground.

So only in that sense can a character "become Tier 0." Though this is, of course, not at all a conventional ascension to godhood or anything of the like, so much as a "return" to the source of your being, or realizing what you have always been all along. Otherwise, it is impossible to become Tier 0 in the sense of filling a spot that wasn't there before.

There cannot be a character that has Tier 0 power, but some nature that is distinct from that

As we've already established: There cannot be any distinctions whatsoever in such a character, and as such there cannot be a distinction between their power and their nature. Which is to say a character who is physically 3-D but has Tier 0 Attack Potency (And similar) is impossible.

The only way in which this could happen would be if the character in question is something like a manifestation of the already-existing Tier 0, through which they can exert their power. And even then, the manifestation could not have Tier 0 punching strength and the like, and neither would that power be "their own" in that sense.

Now, as for any questions about it:

Spoiler: Q&A

Q: Will any statements of "Omnipotence" or "Being able to do anything, even the illogical" qualify for this tier?

A: Not at all, no. Firstly, random statements of "omnipotence" wouldn't qualify for reasons I already explained.

As for "Able to do anything" and similar: That would not qualify either. As the definition above makes plainly clear, Tier 0 inherently revolves around the nature of the character's existence, and not around the acts of which they are capable. As such, it is already obvious that a layman's understanding of "Omnipotence" (I.e. "Capable of doing literally everything") doesn't really have any immediate place in the Tiering System I am proposing. Any character trying to qualify for 0 would need to have the exact properties I've described above. And if they don't, they simply aren't Tier 0.

An example I often see being brought up in debates regarding this topic is the Magic Gods from To Aru, who are described in the verse as having power that allows them to access all possibilities, including contradictory ones, which thus creates an Omnipotence Paradox. Do they qualify for my proposal of Tier 0? Evidently not. Not only are there multiple of them, but apparently they can die, their power can be divided into parts and decreased, and people can become Magic Gods, so clearly they have composition and differentiation in them, as well as potentiality. Thus, case dismissed.

This effectively falls into the principle of "Statements of limitlessness require a mechanism in order to be taken seriously." In this case, empty claims of unsurpassable power would not qualify for anything, but if there is information which tells us that a character, by the nature of its very existence, is necessarily unsurpassable, then we have an impetus to accept it.

Q: Is it possible to prove that a character is Tier 0 at all?

A: The notion that something being absolute and unsurpassable is "inherently unprovable" is something extremely proliferated across both this community and other communities. In fact, to quote one of our own pages:



In a sense, I don't find this disagreeable at all. Specifically, the notion is correct when we think of attempting to "reach" absoluteness by adding to a character. Usually, a layman will think of terms like "Omnipotence" as "The greatest amount of power possible" and similar definitions. This way of thinking, of course, runs into a wall when considering the fact that, ultimately, something can always be added to. You can always add more attributes to a character. No matter how elaborate a description is, it can always be more elaborate. You can always add to a pile, effectively. As such, it is impossible to objectively tell when, exactly, something can no longer be added to.

However, this kind of thinking doesn't really apply to what I am advocating for, since under the above definitions, Tier 0 is not about "adding" something to a character, but rather about removing things from it (In this case, composition and differentiation), which is to say that absoluteness wouldn't really be gotten through obtaining more qualities but rather by abandoning this whole framework altogether. A funny analogy you could use to understand the concept, I think, is this: Usually, people think of absoluteness as being about having "The biggest house possible." But that's wrong. Absoluteness would in fact require you to not have a house in the first place.

In this sense, it is not impossible to prove that a character is Tier 0 at all, no. If that is deemed impossible to prove, then clearly it is also impossible to prove that a character lacks a soul, or spacetime, or any other attribute.

Now, is it easy to contradict being Tier 0? Extremely, as seen by the list of requirements above. That makes it a rare tier, but by no means an impossible one. However, one might be tempted to argue that such a character being described at all already prevents them from being Tier 0, and as such, that the tier is impossible to obtain. This leads us to...

Q: Is a Tier 0 character just nothingness, then?

A: Evidently not. Nothingness in the most absolute sense would not be capable of producing any effects that extend outwards from itself, as effects require a cause, and the nonexistence of a cause would thus imply the nonexistence of effects. So the Tier 0 character, being an identifiable thing capable of producing effects, must exist in some way.

Now, also evidently, a character with the properties I've outlined cannot be described, either. It has some sense of "ineffability" because our minds necessarily understand things through differentiation and parts, and as such are unable to apprehend it as it is. This is to say: There is something there, but we can't really comprehend it.

And with this, it is important to mark the distinction between something being indescribable and something being "nonexistent," because there are many things even in everyday life that are indescribable. For example: Color is impossible to describe. You can easily describe something as "black," but describing the appearance of "blackness" itself is impossible to do, and if a blind person asked you to describe color to them, you'd find yourself at a loss of words. The only way to "describe" a color in any absolute way would be though self-reference. For example, saying "blackness is black." Which, of course, fails to say anything at all.

Yet, I don't think anyone would say color doesn't exist, or anything of the like, because it is something we directly experience and have a sense of. In principle, the same would apply to a Monad: It is not something able to be described in ordinary language, and yet evidently it must exist, due to displaying properties that only existent things can have.

By extension, this means that descriptions being applied to a Tier 0 character doesn't really contradict their Tier 0 rating, either. Consider: Words such as "Above," "outside," "apart" and "higher" are inherently spatial terms. Does this mean that, every time an aspatial thing is described as "Above space," "Outside of space," "Apart from space" or as "A higher realm above space," a contradiction is being made, and the thing in question is in fact not aspatial at all? Of course not.

Why? Because those terms are being used as analogies, and not really in their most proper senses. Something isn't "outside" space in the same way a mailbox is "outside" a house, but it's similar enough that the same word can be used for both. So we apply generalizations of spatial terminology to non-spatial things, and that's not only perfectly fine, but also a feature of language as a whole. In (See?) fact, "In" is a spatial term as well, and yet we don't take issue with phrases like "He exists in a realm with no space or time."

Likewise, "before" is inherently a temporal term, yet we don't take issue with verbiage such as "Before time" being used. No one would remove Beyond-Dimensional Existence from a character just because they're vaguely described as existing "before" something, for instance. "Now" is also a temporal term, and yet no one would remove Beyond-Dimensional Existence from a character if someone said of them: "They are here now."

So, bottom line is: In indexing, we already deal with things that, by definition, defy ordinary language, and as such can really only be described by using terms in an analogous fashion, i.e. generalizing a certain piece of terminology to things outside of its usual scope. This proposal for Tier 0 is no different.

Q: So characters who are indescribable or ineffable would be Tier 0?

A: Short answer: No.

Long answer: As can be seen from the above explanations, ineffability is a necessary condition for a Tier 0, but it is not a sufficient one, which is to say: All Tier 0 characters are by necessity beyond description, but not all things beyond description are Tier 0.

For example, as has been explained, the appearance of color is fundamentally indescribable, and yet I don't believe anyone would say colors are Tier 0 because of that. For a more out-there example: Concepts/predicates can be seen as things for which no definition can be given, yet this is just a matter of the awkwardness of our linguistics, and not necessarily indicative of anything transcendental.

So, no, statements of something being "Indescribable," "ineffable," "incomprehensible," "undefinable" and the like wouldn't amount to much. Granted, sufficiently thorough statements of that sort may suggest that the character in question is monadic in nature, but those would nevertheless be subject to the definitions and requirements prescribed above, and need to display such qualities.

For example, Twin Peaks has characters reside on a level stated to be a purely unknowable realm "where all words melt into silence." Yet on their scale there is clearly actual distinction and separation, as well as things above them. As such, they would be unfit for this proposal of Tier 0.

Q: Can there be multiple Tier 0 characters in the same verse?

A: This might seem like a strange question to note down, seeing as I've already established that there can only be one Tier 0 being per verse under these proposals. However, it is worth to note down a distinction between "being" and "character." The latter term refers to narrative presentation and characterization, and the former refers to in-universe ontology.

What I mean is: There may be occasions where two characters or more are presented and characterized separately in terms of the plot and narrative, but are in fact of a single essence/existence as per the verse's cosmology. If their individual characterizations are sufficiently notable, then it might be that they deserve individual profiles, even if ultimately they are the same being.

Q: Is existing beyond logic a Tier 0 feat?

A: Depends entirely on what is meant by "Exists beyond logic." A character operating under non-classical logic works in ways that defy the usual laws of thought, and as such they can be described as "beyond logic" on that basis. Yet a character who operates on such alternate systems of logic can be any tier. It's not exactly hard to think of Tier 9 characters who exist in paradoxical states of being and the like.

Now, if by "beyond logic," what is meant is that a character exceeds the significance of even basic logical relations such as ">" (Greater than), "<" (Less than) and "=" (Equal to), then in principle that is correct, yes. However, a character, in order to surpass such things, would need to have all the properties I've spoke about thus far, and as such they would need to meet the criteria prescribed by the Tier 0 definition given above. So, it really is just a roundabout way towards things already discussed, ultimately.

Either way, the final answer is: Depends. The statement itself is ambiguous, and as such a random, contextless "Beyond logic" statement wouldn't get anywhere.

Q: Is existing in multiple (Or all) states at once a Tier 0 feat?

A: Not really, no. Lack of differentiation is not "Existing in multiple states at once." And the reasons why are obvious.

Q: Is this definition anything like the old version of Tier 0?

A: Conceptually, it is similar, but otherwise: Not very much, no. Anyone who was present in the 2017-2018 wiki can attest that, back then, "Tier 0" was just a title. Practically speaking, it was just "Qualitative superiority over 1-A + Treated as the verse's supreme being." It reached a point where a well-known fact about Tier 0 was that it didn't actually mean you were stronger than lower tiers: A character who was Tier 0 in one verse could be weaker than 1-As from another verse.

And, quite frankly, this was largely because, back then, no one was well-versed in any of these topics whatsoever, so no one could ever really establish any logical reason, foundation or mechanism that justified Tier 0 being "unsurpassable." Needless to say, this is not the case here: If you don't qualify for Tier 0, then you are weaker than a Tier 0. It's that simple.

---

Frankly, I initially planned to post this alongside the counterpoints to DontTalk's above posts, but then all these explanations ended up taking more space than expected. Given that, I'll respond to the posts later. A couple hours from now, most likely. So, until then, I ask that people hold off from any potential parallel conversations (And this includes keeping any potential objections to the Tier 0 proposal to yourself, for now)

What do you propose we do with Tier 11 and the proposed Tier 12?

 

[Ultima_Reality]

What do you propose we do with Tier 11 and the proposed Tier 12?

Conceptually I'd be fine with a Tier 12, but given the already thin amount of characters in Tier 11, it might be best to just ditch tidiness for practicality with this one. But let's not derail.

 

[DontTalkDT]

I hope you don't mind if I do at least a few very brief comments on the Tier 0 thing for now.

As you'll see when finishing all this: The validity of the proposals for Tier 0 depends on the validity of the proposals for 1-A. By and large, I am detailing the specifics of my proposed Tiering System's Tier 0 strictly for the sake of full disclosure and unambiguity.

As such, I ask that we, for the moment, focus primarily on debating 1-A, as opposed to shifting direction towards Tier 0. We're discussing the building of a house here, so, let us start by the foundations, and not by the ceiling. Thank You.

Remember though that if A implies B, then not B implies not A. So I don't think it is irrelevant for the subject exactly because it builds upon your 1-A ideas.

In fact, I think it mirrors some of my fundamental problems with your proposal quite well, which might make explaining them somewhat easier.

Spoiler

Outerverse level: Characters whose superiority over lesser realms is qualitative, rather than quantitative. This is to say that their transcendence over lower realms hinges on the very quality of their existence as opposed to mathematical quantities, and as such is completely beyond any and all extensions of the latter. For example, characters to whom lower worlds are literal unreality/fiction, or characters who exceed the necessity of physical size and dimensionality entirely.

This tier can be divided in "layers." For example, a character who sees some dimensioned world as fictional would be considered to be at the "baseline" of this tier. A character who sees that entity as fiction, then, would be a single level above baseline, and so on and so forth. A character who stands infinitely-many layers above the baseline is to receive a "+" modifier next to their tier.

High Outerverse level: Characters who exist in a state of "meta-qualitative" superiority. This is to say, they are completely above the "quality" defining lower levels of qualitative superiority, residing in a wholly different hierarchy that operates on higher qualities entirely. For example, if a cosmology has a hierarchy of levels of Reality-Fiction Transcendences, and then a character above it transcends all forms of reality and fiction, being a part of a hierarchy whose mode of superiority functions on something else entirely, then the character in question is to be rated at High 1-A

Note that, in order to be at this tier, the character must exceed the framework of the lower levels entirely, and not simply be at the top of an existing lower hierarchy.

Boundless: Characters who are completely beyond both quantity, quality and meta-quality. In other words, their superiority over lesser things derives from a total lack of any qualities, instead of simply being above some qualities while still operating on higher ones, as High 1-A characters do.

Here, you can see a fairly clear progression on how the Tiering System scales things. Namely:

Low 2-C to High 1-B = Quantitative superiorities

1-A = Qualitative superiorities

High 1-A = "Meta"-qualitative superiorities

Now, if Tier 0 was just, say, "meta"-meta-qualitative superiorities, that'd effectively be just doing High 1-A again, and when two tiers share what is effectively the same definition, then, clearly, one of them is redundant and has little reason to exist. Therefore Tier 0 has to be something else, cue the above definition.

Now, what exactly does it mean to "lack all qualities" or "be above all qualities"? Surely the former isn't even something that indicates power, right? Power is, itself, a quality, and something that lacks power would actually be the weakest thing possible, no? Well:

Spoiler: Explanation

Up there, I've expressed that I would have no issues with saying "a perfect portrayal of Transduality" would be Tier 0. However, upon further inspection, I realized one thing: Right now, we consider a character who simultaneously exists in two opposing states to be "transdual." So, in actuality, what I have in mind for the tier is well beyond even the default model of what we consider "Transduality" to be.

Specifically: Take a hypothetical character, and now, let us demand that it be totally undifferentiated, and in all senses "one" with regards to its existence, which does not admit any distinctions or compositions whatsoever. (For convenience's sake, let's call it a "Monad")

Right off the bat, this already prevents it from having either time or space: Space and measurement inherently implies composition/differentiation (A distinction between right and left. Up and down. Between this dimension and that dimension, etc), and so does time (As time is divided in moments. So there is me from 2 hours ago, me from now, me from 2 hours in the future, etc).

And so for this being to be without distinctions, it cannot have either of those things. We might thus say that it has no "quantitative distinction." However, in order to actually be totally undifferentiated, a being would need to take this a step further, namely: It would need to have no qualitative distinctions, either.

Which is to say: Even its characteristics and attributes would ultimately be identical to one another, and to its existence; there wouldn't be a set of attributes that, when added together, create such a being. This being would be a single, indivisible thing with no multiplicity in it at all. A Monad wouldn't be a sum or even the "fusion" of anything but instead the most basic and irreducible thing there is.

It's not difficult to practically demonstrate that attempting to assign qualities and definitions to such a thing would be a fool's errand. To start with, any proposition whatsoever requires a subject (The referent) and a predicate (Something about the referent). For example, "Socrates (Subject) is a man (Predicate)" or "The sky (Subject) is blue (Predicate)." And this extends not just to common language but also to mathematical logic, where some property P assigned to an object a can be expressed as P(a)

Now, propositions like these are meaningful because, obviously, subject and predicate are separate things (E.g. Socrates is not identical with the property of manhood itself, and neither is the sky identical to blueness). Consequently, they break apart when the two are one and the same: If "Socrates" and "Is a man" were to, in fact, have the same referent, then there would be no sentence to begin with. For perhaps a spicier example: A sentence like "God is omnipotent" would also also be a meaningless sentence when applied to a Monad, because if "God" and "Is omnipotent" are just different terms of the same referent, you, in fact, failed to say anything at all.

From this, it follows that such an entity would be undefinable, and really have no "qualities" at all. Or, speaking more precisely: It could technically be said to have a single quality, but since that one quality is completely devoid of any differentiation (And our minds inherently operate using the notion of parts/composition), it can hardly be classified as a "quality" in the way we'd understand the term.

As such, they would fit the bill for the definition of Tier 0 I've presented above.

Interestingly, something else a Monad would also need to lack would be the dichotomy between actuality and potentiality. That is: All of us have, inherently, a mix of actualities and potentialities. We all have things that we are, and things that we aren't, but could be (E.g. I could be cooking burgers right now, but I am not). This being would by necessity lack this distinction entirely, though, and so in it there are no "Could Be"s.

Furthermore, another distinction that it would lack would be the distinction between its power and its nature. For example, a character may be physically 3-dimensional but have Tier 1 Attack Potency, and thus their power is distinct from their nature. Such a thing would not be the case in this hypothetical, though: The being's power would necessarily be its nature.

Keep these two details in mind, as we go forwards.

Isn't that inherently paradoxical? Classifying an entity as you describe as Tier 0 would be.... how did you put in? A category error?
By the description classifying it as such can inherently not be true by its nature, because it can't be truthfully classified at all.
Likewise, it could not be concluded to ever win any fight or to be more powerful, superior or bigger than anyone or anything.
The key part of its nature, which the ranking is based on, appears inherently untierable.

The problem with this might become clearer if one asks: Why is it tiering-wise (i.e. power wise) superior to a non-indivisible character that is omnipotent? And I mean omnipotent in the sense that the character is truly able to do anything even beyond the bounds of logical contradiction (I assume you do not deny that such a nature could technically be proven by your standards, in much the same way ). Such an omnipotent character erasing a Monad is like an unstoppable force vs an unmovable object. One nature needs to overcome the other. Which, I guess, means that such omnipotent characters should technically be able to get Tier 0 as well?
Like, I acknowledge your later explanation that such omnipotent characters don't meet your definition for Tier 0, but I question the idea that your Tier 0 characters have a good reason to be tiered above all your High 1-A characters.

As for requirements and disqualifiers (Mind that, though they are listed separately, they all spring from the same basic principle, so, once you've contradicted one, you've contradicted them all):

Spoiler: Requirements/Disqualifiers

The character cannot undergo any form of change whatsoever

If it can pass from one state to another, then it has potentiality, something which we already established cannot exist in a Tier 0. Naturally, this precludes anything that is shown being created, growing, decreasing, developing, fading, being destroyed, etc. from being Tier 0.

Now, although a Tier 0 cannot change, it can appear to change from the perspective of lesser beings. I believe a great illustration of this would be a passage from Dante's (not the pizza man) The Divine Comedy, where Dante beholds God and says the following:



But overall that should only go for very specific cases. If the would-be Tier 0 character just gets flat-out destroyed or unmade at some point, for example, then you can't really handwave that with the above. Examples of characters that completely fail this requirement are, well, a lot of people from Megami Tensei. The verse has many characters that are framed as being Monads, but practically speaking are shown being defeated and destroyed.

Furthermore: This requirement does not admit loopholes. This is to say that things like "Oh, this character technically was born in Period X, but it was made to have retroactively always existed..." would not suffice to save a character from disqualifying for Tier 0. If there was ever, from any perspective, a time when the character didn't exist, it automatically is disqualified.

There cannot be multiple Tier 0 beings in a verse

Obviously, something is distinguished by the quantities and qualities which it has. For instance, two physical objects A and B are spatiotemporally distinguished by factors such as distance (Two objects cannot occupy the same point in space), time (Two objects can be distinguished by their positions in the timeline. I am distinguished from my self from 2 hours ago in this way, for example), matter, etc.

Abstract objects that are not in spacetime cannot be distinguished in that way, but they can be qualitatively distinguished, which is to say that two aspatial and atemporal entities are made distinct by their attributes. For example, the Platonic Form of "Cat" is different from the Platonic Form of "Chair" because the two embody different properties. There are some things "Cat" has that "Chair" doesn't, and vice-versa, and those differences are what set them apart.

Now, if something has no qualities whatsoever (In the sense that all the things we understand as its "attributes" are actually a single thing that our distinction-based minds can't comprehend), then clearly there cannot be multiple of it, as there is nothing to mark distinctions in the first place. In the same way objects that are aspatial and atemporal cannot be distinguished through time or space (As they don't exist in either)

A Tier 0 cannot have parts

This naturally follows from the requirement of it being completely devoid of differentiation. All-in-all, the character must necessarily be completely indivisible and irreducible to anything more basic than itself, and therefore smaller "parts," "pieces" or "fragments" are things that it cannot have.

Consequently, there can be no such thing as partitions of that being's power, either. No such thing as "He was only using a small portion of his energy!" and the like. And neither there can be such a thing as "A small part of its totality," save as a figure of speech.

Mind you, this is not in a "Infinity divided by a finite number is still infinity" sense, as numerical infinity is still able to be expressed as the result of an infinite sum. A Tier 0, under these proposals, necessarily cannot be the result of any sum, on account of its lack of distinction.

An example of something that fails this requirement? The Overvoid, from DC Comics. Here, it is shown that the Source Wall is able to shield the multiverse from its corrosive effects, even if the Source Wall itself is lesser than the Overvoid. Therefore it stands to reason that there is a division between "the Overvoid in its totality" and "the small portion of the Overvoid that the multiverse is being shielded from." Therefore, clearly it has parts of some kind.

A Tier 0 character cannot be surpassed

For any two things, A and B. A is made superior to B either by some quantity or some quality. That this is the case is obvious enough. A 6-D space is made superior to a 5-D space by its greater volume, for example. Likewise, the set of real numbers is made superior to the set of natural numbers by its greater cardinality.

Likewise, in a hierarchy of R>F Transcendences, Layer A is made superior to Layer B by the fact of its greater "realness." Not by any quantity, but by a quality of its existence.

Now: For something whose existence surpasses distinction of qualities entirely, there is not any mechanism though which it may be surpassed by something else. If it were to be exceeded, then it would seem that it does have some degree of composition, after all, and as such is not totally undifferentiated.

As a matter of fact, a relation of "X is more than Y" inherently imparts some form of differentiation on the attribute being described as "more." For example: 6 apples are more than 3 apples. This is a relationship of superiority, for sure, and the attribute by which it happens is cardinality (The number of things in a set). Thus, there being degrees of cardinality, it follows that "cardinality" as an attribute inherently has differentiation within itself. As does volume, and all other quantitative properties.

And this still applies even to qualitative differences, such as when a verse depicts size-like relations happening between aspatial entities, or when we say a higher reality is "more real" than a lesser one. These attributes have degrees and, evidently, some sense of "proportion," and as such they have internal differentiation as well. The same, of course, can be generalized to "power" as a whole: Power as we think of it has different degrees, it comes in amounts, and therefore it has internal differentiation.

Now, as we went over earlier, a Monad has no differentiation whatsoever, and therefore has no degrees at all. Since its "nature" and its "power" are one and the same, it also follows that its power possesses no degrees. So, in that sense, it must, literally, exceed all proportion with lesser things. If you were to posit something greater than it, you would be automatically introducing degrees and proportions in its existence, and as such simply be disqualifying it from being a Monad at all.

A Tier 0 character cannot be part of a hierarchy

This follows from the above. Ask yourself: What is a hierarchy? It is a division of levels, delineated by the degree of some attribute that is present in each of them. The highest level enjoys the most of that attribute, and the lowest level, the least. Thus, a hierarchy fundamentally denotes the idea of "degree," and it is already clear from the above that such a thing cannot be present in a Monad.

Interestingly, this also means that a Monad cannot be the highest level of a hierarchy, either, as even saying that it has "the greatest amount" of some attribute is to introduce degree to its existence, which we've already established is impossible. Therefore, a being such as this would need to be independent of any and all hierarchies. Completely self-sufficient.

In this case, examples of verses that fail this requirement are SCP, which has many Monad-like characters that nevertheless are part of a hierarchy, and Marvel Comics, which has The One Above All being described as a "pure unity" and yet being the top of a hierarchy that is also the bottom of yet another hierarchy.

A character cannot become Tier 0

This logically follows from the first and fourth requirements. A Tier 0 cannot change, and neither does its power have any "degrees." Therefore it is not possible to "rise up to that level" (i.e. It is impossible to increase the degree of your power until it reaches something with no degree at all)

However, this is worth to note separately, because there is indeed a sense in which a character can "become" Tier 0, even if not in the conventional manner. More specifically, if a verse functions on a nondualist cosmology, where all distinctions are illusory and the innermost core of everything is some undifferentiated ultimate reality, then a character may in a sense "become" Tier 0 by shedding all their individual traits and dissolving back into the nondual ground.

So only in that sense can a character "become Tier 0." Though this is, of course, not at all a conventional ascension to godhood or anything of the like, so much as a "return" to the source of your being, or realizing what you have always been all along. Otherwise, it is impossible to become Tier 0 in the sense of filling a spot that wasn't there before.

There cannot be a character that has Tier 0 power, but some nature that is distinct from that

As we've already established: There cannot be any distinctions whatsoever in such a character, and as such there cannot be a distinction between their power and their nature. Which is to say a character who is physically 3-D but has Tier 0 Attack Potency (And similar) is impossible.

The only way in which this could happen would be if the character in question is something like a manifestation of the already-existing Tier 0, through which they can exert their power. And even then, the manifestation could not have Tier 0 punching strength and the like, and neither would that power be "their own" in that sense.

Now, as for any questions about it:

Spoiler: Q&A

Q: Will any statements of "Omnipotence" or "Being able to do anything, even the illogical" qualify for this tier?

A: Not at all, no. Firstly, random statements of "omnipotence" wouldn't qualify for reasons I already explained.

As for "Able to do anything" and similar: That would not qualify either. As the definition above makes plainly clear, Tier 0 inherently revolves around the nature of the character's existence, and not around the acts of which they are capable. As such, it is already obvious that a layman's understanding of "Omnipotence" (I.e. "Capable of doing literally everything") doesn't really have any immediate place in the Tiering System I am proposing. Any character trying to qualify for 0 would need to have the exact properties I've described above. And if they don't, they simply aren't Tier 0.

An example I often see being brought up in debates regarding this topic is the Magic Gods from To Aru, who are described in the verse as having power that allows them to access all possibilities, including contradictory ones, which thus creates an Omnipotence Paradox. Do they qualify for my proposal of Tier 0? Evidently not. Not only are there multiple of them, but apparently they can die, their power can be divided into parts and decreased, and people can become Magic Gods, so clearly they have composition and differentiation in them, as well as potentiality. Thus, case dismissed.

This effectively falls into the principle of "Statements of limitlessness require a mechanism in order to be taken seriously." In this case, empty claims of unsurpassable power would not qualify for anything, but if there is information which tells us that a character, by the nature of its very existence, is necessarily unsurpassable, then we have an impetus to accept it.

Q: Is it possible to prove that a character is Tier 0 at all?

A: The notion that something being absolute and unsurpassable is "inherently unprovable" is something extremely proliferated across both this community and other communities. In fact, to quote one of our own pages:



In a sense, I don't find this disagreeable at all. Specifically, the notion is correct when we think of attempting to "reach" absoluteness by adding to a character. Usually, a layman will think of terms like "Omnipotence" as "The greatest amount of power possible" and similar definitions. This way of thinking, of course, runs into a wall when considering the fact that, ultimately, something can always be added to. You can always add more attributes to a character. No matter how elaborate a description is, it can always be more elaborate. You can always add to a pile, effectively. As such, it is impossible to objectively tell when, exactly, something can no longer be added to.

However, this kind of thinking doesn't really apply to what I am advocating for, since under the above definitions, Tier 0 is not about "adding" something to a character, but rather about removing things from it (In this case, composition and differentiation), which is to say that absoluteness wouldn't really be gotten through obtaining more qualities (Or increasing the degree of those qualities) but rather by abandoning this whole framework altogether. A funny analogy you could use to understand the concept, I think, is this: Usually, people think of absoluteness as being about having "The biggest house possible." But that's wrong. Absoluteness would in fact require you to not have a house in the first place.

In this sense, it is not impossible to prove that a character is Tier 0 at all, no. If that is deemed impossible to prove, then clearly it is also impossible to prove that a character lacks a soul, or spacetime, or any other attribute.

Now, is it easy to contradict being Tier 0? Extremely, as seen by the list of requirements above. That makes it a rare tier, but by no means an impossible one. However, one might be tempted to argue that such a character being described at all already prevents them from being Tier 0, and as such, that the tier is impossible to obtain. This leads us to...

Q: Is a Tier 0 character just nothingness, then?

A: Evidently not. Nothingness in the most absolute sense would not be capable of producing any effects that extend outwards from itself, as effects require a cause, and the nonexistence of a cause would thus imply the nonexistence of effects. So the Tier 0 character, being an identifiable thing capable of producing effects, must exist in some way.

Now, also evidently, a character with the properties I've outlined cannot be described, either. It has some sense of "ineffability" because our minds necessarily understand things through differentiation and parts, and as such are unable to apprehend it as it is. This is to say: There is something there, but we can't really comprehend it.

And with this, it is important to mark the distinction between something being indescribable and something being "nonexistent," because there are many things even in everyday life that are indescribable. For example: Color is impossible to describe. You can easily describe something as "black," but describing the appearance of "blackness" itself is impossible to do, and if a blind person asked you to describe color to them, you'd find yourself at a loss of words. The only way to "describe" a color in any absolute way would be though self-reference. For example, saying "blackness is black." Which, of course, fails to say anything at all.

Yet, I don't think anyone would say color doesn't exist, or anything of the like, because it is something we directly experience and have a sense of. In principle, the same would apply to a Monad: It is not something able to be described in ordinary language, and yet evidently it must exist, due to displaying properties that only existent things can have.

By extension, this means that descriptions being applied to a Tier 0 character doesn't really contradict their Tier 0 rating, either. Consider: Words such as "Above," "outside," "apart" and "higher" are inherently spatial terms. Does this mean that, every time an aspatial thing is described as "Above space," "Outside of space," "Apart from space" or as "A higher realm above space," a contradiction is being made, and the thing in question is in fact not aspatial at all? Of course not.

Why? Because those terms are being used as analogies, and not really in their most proper senses. Something isn't "outside" space in the same way a mailbox is "outside" a house, but it's similar enough that the same word can be used for both. So we apply generalizations of spatial terminology to non-spatial things, and that's not only perfectly fine, but also a feature of language as a whole. In (See?) fact, "In" is a spatial term as well, and yet we don't take issue with phrases like "He exists in a realm with no space or time."

Likewise, "before" is inherently a temporal term, yet we don't take issue with verbiage such as "Before time" being used. No one would remove Beyond-Dimensional Existence from a character just because they're vaguely described as existing "before" something, for instance. "Now" is also a temporal term, and yet no one would remove Beyond-Dimensional Existence from a character if someone said of them: "They are here now."

So, bottom line is: In indexing, we already deal with things that, by definition, defy ordinary language, and as such can really only be described by using terms in an analogous fashion, i.e. generalizing a certain piece of terminology to things outside of its usual scope. This proposal for Tier 0 is no different.

Q: So characters who are indescribable or ineffable would be Tier 0?

A: Short answer: No.

Long answer: As can be seen from the above explanations, ineffability is a necessary condition for a Tier 0, but it is not a sufficient one, which is to say: All Tier 0 characters are by necessity beyond description, but not all things beyond description are Tier 0.

For example, as has been explained, the appearance of color is fundamentally indescribable, and yet I don't believe anyone would say colors are Tier 0 because of that. For a more out-there example: Concepts/predicates can be seen as things for which no definition can be given, yet this is just a matter of the awkwardness of our linguistics, and not necessarily indicative of anything transcendental.

So, no, statements of something being "Indescribable," "ineffable," "incomprehensible," "undefinable" and the like wouldn't amount to much. Granted, sufficiently thorough statements of that sort may suggest that the character in question is monadic in nature, but those would nevertheless be subject to the definitions and requirements prescribed above, and need to display such qualities.

For example, Twin Peaks has characters reside on a level stated to be a purely unknowable realm "where all words melt into silence." Yet on their scale there is clearly actual distinction and separation, as well as things above them. As such, they would be unfit for this proposal of Tier 0.

Q: Can there be multiple Tier 0 characters in the same verse?

A: This might seem like a strange question to note down, seeing as I've already established that there can only be one Tier 0 being per verse under these proposals. However, it is worth to note down a distinction between "being" and "character." The latter term refers to narrative presentation and characterization, and the former refers to in-universe ontology.

What I mean is: There may be occasions where two characters or more are presented and characterized separately in terms of the plot and narrative, but are in fact of a single essence/existence as per the verse's cosmology. If their individual characterizations are sufficiently notable, then it might be that they deserve individual profiles, even if ultimately they are the same being.

Q: Is existing beyond logic a Tier 0 feat?

A: Depends entirely on what is meant by "Exists beyond logic." A character operating under non-classical logic works in ways that defy the usual laws of thought, and as such they can be described as "beyond logic" on that basis. Yet a character who operates on such alternate systems of logic can be any tier. It's not exactly hard to think of Tier 9 characters who exist in paradoxical states of being and the like.

Now, if by "beyond logic," what is meant is that a character exceeds the significance of even basic logical relations such as ">" (Greater than), "<" (Less than) and "=" (Equal to), then in principle that is correct, yes. However, a character, in order to surpass such things, would need to have all the properties I've spoke about thus far, and as such they would need to meet the criteria prescribed by the Tier 0 definition given above. So, it really is just a roundabout way towards things already discussed, ultimately.

Either way, the final answer is: Depends. The statement itself is ambiguous, and as such a random, contextless "Beyond logic" statement wouldn't get anywhere.

Q: Is existing in multiple (Or all) states at once a Tier 0 feat?

A: Not really, no. Lack of differentiation is not "Existing in multiple states at once." And the reasons why are obvious.

Q: Is this definition anything like the old version of Tier 0?

A: Conceptually, it is similar, but otherwise: Not very much, no. Anyone who was present in the 2017-2018 wiki can attest that, back then, "Tier 0" was just a title. Practically speaking, it was just "Qualitative superiority over 1-A + Treated as the verse's supreme being." It reached a point where a well-known fact about Tier 0 was that it didn't actually mean you were stronger than lower tiers: A character who was Tier 0 in one verse could be weaker than 1-As from another verse.

And, quite frankly, this was largely because, back then, no one was well-versed in any of these topics whatsoever, so no one could ever really establish any logical reason, foundation or mechanism that justified Tier 0 being "unsurpassable." Needless to say, this is not the case here: If you don't qualify for Tier 0, then you are weaker than a Tier 0. It's that simple.

Leaving the soundness of the philosophical ideas (and alternate philosophical viewpoints) aside I still need to ask:

Do I understand correct that my misrepresentation regarding your intention of Tier 0 was not in saying that it can be reached without any feats, but in saying that omnipotent and transdual characters get it?

So, for example, a character that has a (reliable) statement that "it exceeds the significance of even basic logical relations such as ">" (Greater than), "<" (Less than) and "=" (Equal to)" would be Tier 0 even if the character doesn't have any feat and the verse consists of a single 3D universe without any qualitative hierarchies or anything else like that, just as long as there is no contradiction? Actually, they may not even scale to anything, as scaling above something is a contradiction, isn't it?

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Side-note, I said up there that I'd get to the above posts in "a couple hours." Yeah, I got caught up in some stuff, and will continue being caught up for the remainder of the week (In fact, I'll be absent for pretty much the entirety of tomorrow). After that, though? I'll be free as a bird. So, do expect reduced activity from me in that period.

Anyway: I really hate making long posts like this, but some things need to be explained and clarified, so that was just necessary. From here and onwards, I'll try to make my posts shorter.

Isn't that inherently paradoxical? Classifying an entity as you describe as Tier 0 would be.... how did you put in? A category error?

Honestly the smug way in which this is written makes for a really funny contrast with the typo. Same energy as this video.

Hah. I jest, I jest.

Remember though that if A implies B, then not B implies not A. So I don't think it is irrelevant for the subject exactly because it builds upon your 1-A ideas.

In fact, I think it mirrors some of my fundamental problems with your proposal quite well, which might make explaining them somewhat easier.

That logical consequent makes no sense, but that aside: Of course. I never said we should avoid discussing Tier 0 entirely, just that it shouldn't be at the spotlight compared to 1-A. I do fully acknowledge that establishing my premises for it makes arguing my side easier, as well.

Isn't that inherently paradoxical? Classifying an entity as you describe as Tier 0 would be.... how did you put in? A category error?
By the description classifying it as such can inherently not be true by its nature, because it can't be truthfully classified at all.
Likewise, it could not be concluded to ever win any fight or to be more powerful, superior or bigger than anyone or anything.
The key part of its nature, which the ranking is based on, appears inherently untierable.

Actually, they may not even scale to anything, as scaling above something is a contradiction, isn't it?

That's honestly not even a sound argument. But fret not, I'll explain why.

You ever read any Aristotle? I assume not. As a preliminary for the following explanation, I give you this blogpost, though.

Anyway: When we predicate something of any two subjects, this predication is divided in the following ways:

• Equivocal Predication, which is when two terms share the same name, but have completely unrelated definitions. For example, we say there is a equivocity between a "pen" in the sense of a writing instrument and a "pen" in the sense of an enclosure where pigs live.
  
• Univocal Predication, which is when two things participate not only in the exact same name, but also the exact same definition. For example, "cold" is used in the same sense both for a room with low temperature and for a frozen piece of steak. There is an univocity between both.

There is a third type, though, and that's Analogical Predication, which is when two terms share the same name, and don't wholly share of the same definition, but nevertheless agree on some common point. An example of that? When you say some magical realm is "Outside of space" and when you say a mailbox is "Outside the house," you aren't using the term "outside" in the same sense across both phrases.

Yet there's a similarity between the two relations (The relation between the magical realm and space, and the relation between the mailbox and the house) that allows the same term to be used for both. We say there is an analogy between them, and thus that the term "outside" is being used analogically, rather than equivocally or univocally.

Do I commit a category error if I try to predicate "outside" of both the magical realm and the mailbox in an univocal fashion? Of course. Do I commit a category error if I try to predicate "outside" of both in an analogical fashion? Not really, that's just proper linguistics.

Another example would be the term "before." Say I have two phrases: "He existed before time" and "He was born two hours before the accident." Do I commit a category error if I try to say that there is an univocity between the two usages of "Before"? Yeah, I do. Do I commit a category error if I say that there is analogy between them, instead? No.

Same goes here. A Monad can't be spoken about univocally, but it can be spoken about analogically. It is not "superior" to other things in the same way, say, aleph-2 is superior to aleph-1, but there's a similarity between the two relations that allows the term "superior" to be applied to the Monad in an analogical fashion. Even if saying it's "stronger" is, of course, a category error if you try to do so univocally.

In fact, in a sense, this point of yours backfires on the current Tiering System itself. Technically, we assign the label "Attack Potency" both to things that operate through joules and to things that are beyond joules entirely. The only way for that to be coherent is, of course, for you to say that "Attack Potency" as a term is applied to the two things only analogically, but not univocally. But you're essentially arguing that all meaningful predication must be univocal, which makes that impossible. Thus your argument also attacks even the current system.

Spoiler: boop

And before anyone tries to pull that out: Analogy isn't the same as equality, so the above argumentation does not, in fact, justify the current Tiering System's "methods." Unless you want to say a mailbox standing 10 meters outside a house is "equivalent" to a magical realm that's outside space altogether.

So, news flash: I already addressed that.

The problem with this might become clearer if one asks: Why is it tiering-wise (i.e. power wise) superior to a non-indivisible character that is omnipotent? And I mean omnipotent in the sense that the character is truly able to do anything even beyond the bounds of logical contradiction (I assume you do not deny that such a nature could technically be proven by your standards, in much the same way ). Such an omnipotent character erasing a Monad is like an unstoppable force vs an unmovable object. One nature needs to overcome the other. Which, I guess, means that such omnipotent characters should technically be able to get Tier 0 as well?

Firstly, if you're talking about true contradictions, then no Tiering System can possibly account for them. All formalized (Or semi-formalized) tiering requires us to stay true to the principle of "If a character is claimed to have Property X, but something happens to them that'd be impossible if that was true, then they simply never actually had Property X at all." For example, if a realm is described as being utterly devoid of space, but later on is stated to be 30 m³ in size, then it evidently just isn't devoid of space to begin with.

Taking a more familiar example: If a character is stated to be beyond and unaffected by change and causation, and then later on just experiences changes and causations with no explanation, then, clearly, the initial statement simply wasn't true to begin with. In fact, this same principle is what causes us to argue that characters with Nonexistent Physiology are not totally nonexistent, but only nonexistent in some aspects (Because they behave in was that require them to exist in some fashion)

So that idea of "Omnipotence" you speak of is not compatible with any form of tiering whatsoever. Neither with yours, nor with mine. The Tiering System may even accept light contradictions, true, such as "This character is alive and dead at the same time," but not more severe ones, like "This character is stronger than itself." The whole thing just makes debating useless. Not just VS Threads, but even actual important debates, like this one, so I don't deem it valid or worth entertaining in any way whatsoever.

Now, you may try and lighten up the question: What about logical omnipotence? (Which you did bring up here). Well: A layman's definition of Omnipotence essentially boils down to "Can actualize all modal possibilities." Which is to say, they can make actual any and all possible worlds. So, for example, since I am a contingent entity, and not a necessary one, me not existing doesn't cause any logical contradiction, and thus there is a possible world where I don't exist, and an omnipotent being erasing me is really just them actualizing that possibility.

How does that compare to the Monad? Well, as I've already established, the Monad cannot have any potentiality, which is to say that, in it, there is no possibility. It is purely actual, and in no way possible. As such, it is not contained in any possible world, and so not part of the possibilities that the omnipotent character can actualize. Therefore, it cannot be erased or affected in that manner.

In fact, "logical omnipotence" by necessity requires that you be a Monad, as an omnipotent being cannot be restricted by anything external to itself, and may only be "limited" by its own nature (Which is to say, not limited at all, hence the quotations). So, suppose that you have a so-called "logically omnipotent" entity, and now assume that it is, in all ways, a 3-D body. This causes a contradiction, as then the logical principles that prevent it from doing certain things (True contradictions) are things external to itself, which it is subordinate to. Thus that entity's case for omnipotence is inherently invalidated.

Furthermore, an omnipotent being may not deny itself (E.g. It can't erase itself from existence). Yet, if it has all the attributes that a 3-dimensional creature has, it inherently is exemplified in some possibility, some possible world, and thus it'd be able to actualize the possibility of itself being erased from existence, thus denying itself. More: If the character is present in a possibility, and their omnipotence (The power to cause all possibilities) is an intrinsic part of them, then that means their omnipotence is part of the possibilities that it could cause, which is illogical and again invalidates it being omnipotence altogether.

As such, for a being to be Omnipotent, even in the logical version of it, it would need to be exempt from all possibilities, and thus be purely actual. Which just circles back to it being a Monad. So for a "logical omnipotence" thing to qualify for 0, it'd still need to fit all seven of the requirements I've listed above, because there cannot be a character who is omnipotent but not a monad.

Do I understand correct that my misrepresentation regarding your intention of Tier 0 was not in saying that it can be reached without any feats, but in saying that omnipotent and transdual characters get it?

So, for example, a character that has a (reliable) statement that "it exceeds the significance of even basic logical relations such as ">" (Greater than), "<" (Less than) and "=" (Equal to)" would be Tier 0 even if the character doesn't have any feat and the verse consists of a single 3D universe without any qualitative hierarchies or anything else like that, just as long as there is no contradiction?

Quite frankly, the complaint of "You can get there without any feats" itself is not really coherent, because being a genuine Monad is, itself, the feat that gets you there.

So, by that token, you may only argue against it on the grounds of "These parameters don't necessarily imply such high levels of power." Otherwise, your point just boils down to "The tier is attained too easily." And surely, you don't want your whole argument to be founded on that, yes?

For perspective: Imagine an alternate universe where High 3-A and above doesn't exist, and the Tiering System caps at 3-A. In that universe, I am arguing that a High 3-A tier should exist, and you're arguing against that. What you're saying right now is equivalent to, in that hypothetical, saying "So you want a tier that characters can get without any feats? Just through reliable and uncontradicted statements/showings of infinite power?". And of course, that is just silly.

 

[Antvasima]

I appreciate that you are trying to properly explain your reasoning, but please try to use a more respectful tone. DontTalk is an extremely valued staff member who has faithfully helped out with building our wiki for almost as long as I have.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I appreciate that you are trying to properly explain your reasoning, but please try to use a more respectful tone. DontTalk is an extremely valued staff member who has faithfully helped out with building our wiki for almost as long as I have.

It's all in good fun. No offense intended at all.

 

[Elizhaa]

I am still largely agree with Ultima's points, after the arguments.

 

[Agnaa]

Is there any possibility of a quick summary from the pro-side? The OP is ludicrously long, and from a summary Dee/Aeyu has provided, this sounds like something I'd oppose.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Is there any possibility of a quick summary from the pro-side? The OP is ludicrously long, and from a summary Dee/Aeyu has provided, this sounds like something I'd oppose.

These two posts:

So, about this:


So, basically:

A Reality-Fiction Transcendence being equal to a jump of +1 dimensions is objectively wrong. This is because:

1) When you go from n dimensions to n+1 dimensions, what you're doing is taking infinite objects of n dimensions to create an object of n+1 dimensions. So, for example, when you construct a cube, you're really just summing up infinite squares. In easier terms: You can glue together aleph-1 points to make a line. Aleph-1 lines to make a square. Aleph-1 squares to make a cube. And so on.

2) By contrast, you can't make reality (Something) out of fiction (Nothing). No amount of "nothing" will ever add up to "something." Take the empty set, for example, which is a set containing nothing. The union of the empty set with itself is always the empty set (i.e. Nothing + Nothing = Nothing). And this holds no matter how many times you do it. If you put together aleph-1 empty sets, the result would still be an empty set. If you put together aleph-2 empty sets, the result would still be an empty set. If you put together an inaccessible cardinal's worth of empty sets, the result will still be an empty set.

So, clearly, the gap between unreality and reality is not equal to the gap between n dimensions and n+1 dimensions.

Furthermore, if you say that it is, you are essentially claiming that the empty set is 11-A and as such on par with 2-D space. This is untrue, since the empty set has no members. In fact, its cardinality is 0, so it's even smaller than a 0-D object (Which is 11-C). So, the current treatment of R>F Transcendences is plainly incoherent.

The end result is that Reality-Fiction Transcendences are above any dimensionality or cardinality. Therefore, under the current arrangement of tiers, they're Tier 0.

The same applies not only to metafictional cosmologies, but also to any cosmology where the lower side is literally "unreality" and the higher side is "reality." So, cosmologies where the world is illusory and there is a "true" reality beyond it, for example, are also affected by this. Generally speaking: Any superiority hinging strictly on metaphysical quality, not physical quantity, is affected by this.

---

Transcending dimensionality altogether being equal to a single dimensional jump is incorrect. There is absolutely no way to equate something that is beyond space with something that is spatial, on pain of commiting a category error.

Otherwise: If a character is "superior to dimensionality" not because of any feats of external AP (i.e. Blowing shit up), but by virtue of their non-dimensional physiology itself, then no matter how many dimensions are added to a cosmology, it won't reach them. Another way to put it is: Since their transcendence exceeds dimensions and is therefore not physical or quantitative in nature, it can only be qualitative. Therefore it can't be equal to any quantitative superiority (E.g. Dimensional jumps or jumps in cardinality)

---

The above reasoning, put simply, results in qualitative superiorities in general being Tier 0 under the current arrangement of the Tiering System. This causes logistical problems, so I am suggesting we make 1-A and above be the tiers for qualitative superiorities. Quantitative superiority will get kicked down to the rest of Tier 1. So, dimensional jumps, huge numbers and etc. won't get past High 1-B under this proposal. Perhaps there would be a High 1-B+ tier for spaces with uncountably infinite dimensions, or something like that, though.

Sorry for the delay, y'all. I had stuff to do + Had to regulate my sleeping schedule + This took a while to write, overall (And it's still less complete and thorough than I would've liked. I'm really only posting it now because I don't want to delay my replies any further).


Firstly: As said above, I was not 100% when I posted the message you're responding to, so, I do apologize for any unduly harsh words.

Secondly: Intentionally or not, you did mischaracterize my positions, yes, since you said that my proposals included rating any technically uncontradicted statements of "Omnipotence" or "Being able to do anything, even the illogical" to be rated at Tier 0. That's not only not really supported by any of what I said, but is something that I specifically denied. Not to mention that I asked you to clarify what exactly you meant by the term "Omnipotence," precisely so I could go more in-depth in explaining my proposals for Tier 0 afterwards.

If you, at least, said that this existed strictly as a logical consequence of my argumentation, that would be one thing, but you explicitly said those were "my proposals," which undoubtedly gives the impression that I explicitly endorsed the above.

---

Anyhow, the following is the actual, extensive detailing of my proposals for the Tiering System, with special focus on the proposal for Tier 0. As you'll see when finishing all this: The validity of the proposals for Tier 0 depends on the validity of the proposals for 1-A. By and large, I am detailing the specifics of my proposed Tiering System's Tier 0 strictly for the sake of full disclosure and unambiguity.

As such, I ask that we, for the moment, focus primarily on debating 1-A, as opposed to shifting direction towards Tier 0. We're discussing the building of a house here, so, let us start by the foundations, and not by the ceiling. Thank You.

@DarkGrath @DarkDragonMedeus @Sir_Ovens @IdiosyncraticLawyer

Spoiler

Outerverse level: Characters whose superiority over lesser realms is qualitative, rather than quantitative. This is to say that their transcendence over lower realms hinges on the very quality of their existence as opposed to mathematical quantities, and as such is completely beyond any and all extensions of the latter. For example, characters to whom lower worlds are literal unreality/fiction, or characters who exceed the necessity of physical size and dimensionality entirely.

This tier can be divided in "layers." For example, a character who sees some dimensioned world as fictional would be considered to be at the "baseline" of this tier. A character who sees that entity as fiction, then, would be a single level above baseline, and so on and so forth. A character who stands infinitely-many layers above the baseline is to receive a "+" modifier next to their tier.

High Outerverse level: Characters who exist in a state of "meta-qualitative" superiority. This is to say, they are completely above the "quality" defining lower levels of qualitative superiority, residing in a wholly different hierarchy that operates on higher qualities entirely. For example, if a cosmology has a hierarchy of levels of Reality-Fiction Transcendences, and then a character above it transcends all forms of reality and fiction, being a part of a hierarchy whose mode of superiority functions on something else entirely, then the character in question is to be rated at High 1-A

Note that, in order to be at this tier, the character must exceed the framework of the lower levels entirely, and not simply be at the top of an existing lower hierarchy.

Boundless: Characters who are completely beyond both quantity, quality and meta-quality. In other words, their superiority over lesser things derives from a total lack of any qualities, instead of simply being above some qualities while still operating on higher ones, as High 1-A characters do.

Here, you can see a fairly clear progression on how the Tiering System scales things. Namely:

Low 2-C to High 1-B = Quantitative superiorities

1-A = Qualitative superiorities

High 1-A = "Meta"-qualitative superiorities

Now, if Tier 0 was just, say, "meta"-meta-qualitative superiorities, that'd effectively be just doing High 1-A again, and when two tiers share what is effectively the same definition, then, clearly, one of them is redundant and has little reason to exist. Therefore Tier 0 has to be something else, cue the above definition.

Now, what exactly does it mean to "lack all qualities" or "be above all qualities"? Surely the former isn't even something that indicates power, right? Power is, itself, a quality, and something that lacks power would actually be the weakest thing possible, no? Well:

Spoiler: Explanation

Up there, I've expressed that I would have no issues with saying "a perfect portrayal of Transduality" would be Tier 0. However, upon further inspection, I realized one thing: Right now, we consider a character who simultaneously exists in two opposing states to be "transdual." So, in actuality, what I have in mind for the tier is well beyond even the default model of what we consider "Transduality" to be.

Specifically: Take a hypothetical character, and now, let us demand that it be totally undifferentiated, and in all senses "one" with regards to its existence, which does not admit any distinctions or compositions whatsoever. (For convenience's sake, let's call it a "Monad")

Right off the bat, this already prevents it from having either time or space: Space and measurement inherently implies composition/differentiation (A distinction between right and left. Up and down. Between this dimension and that dimension, etc), and so does time (As time is divided in moments. So there is me from 2 hours ago, me from now, me from 2 hours in the future, etc).

And so for this being to be without distinctions, it cannot have either of those things. We might thus say that it has no "quantitative distinction." However, in order to actually be totally undifferentiated, a being would need to take this a step further, namely: It would need to have no qualitative distinctions, either.

Which is to say: Even its characteristics and attributes would ultimately be identical to one another, and to its existence; there wouldn't be a set of attributes that, when added together, create such a being. This being would be a single, indivisible thing with no multiplicity in it at all. A Monad wouldn't be a sum or even the "fusion" of anything but instead the most basic and irreducible thing there is.

It's not difficult to practically demonstrate that attempting to assign qualities and definitions to such a thing would be a fool's errand. To start with, any proposition whatsoever requires a subject (The referent) and a predicate (Something about the referent). For example, "Socrates (Subject) is a man (Predicate)" or "The sky (Subject) is blue (Predicate)." And this extends not just to common language but also to mathematical logic, where some property P assigned to an object a can be expressed as P(a)

Now, propositions like these are meaningful because, obviously, subject and predicate are separate things (E.g. Socrates is not identical with the property of manhood itself, and neither is the sky identical to blueness). Consequently, they break apart when the two are one and the same: If "Socrates" and "Is a man" were to, in fact, have the same referent, then there would be no sentence to begin with. For perhaps a spicier example: A sentence like "God is omnipotent" would also also be a meaningless sentence when applied to a Monad, because if "God" and "Is omnipotent" are just different terms of the same referent, you, in fact, failed to say anything at all.

From this, it follows that such an entity would be undefinable, and really have no "qualities" at all. Or, speaking more precisely: It could technically be said to have a single quality, but since that one quality is completely devoid of any differentiation (And our minds inherently operate using the notion of parts/composition), it can hardly be classified as a "quality" in the way we'd understand the term.

As such, they would fit the bill for the definition of Tier 0 I've presented above.

Interestingly, something else a Monad would also need to lack would be the dichotomy between actuality and potentiality. That is: All of us have, inherently, a mix of actualities and potentialities. We all have things that we are, and things that we aren't, but could be (E.g. I could be cooking burgers right now, but I am not). This being would by necessity lack this distinction entirely, though, and so in it there are no "Could Be"s.

Furthermore, another distinction that it would lack would be the distinction between its power and its nature. For example, a character may be physically 3-dimensional but have Tier 1 Attack Potency, and thus their power is distinct from their nature. Such a thing would not be the case in this hypothetical, though: The being's power would necessarily be its nature.

Keep these two details in mind, as we go forwards.

As for requirements and disqualifiers (Mind that, though they are listed separately, they all spring from the same basic principle, so, once you've contradicted one, you've contradicted them all):

Spoiler: Requirements/Disqualifiers

The character cannot undergo any form of change whatsoever

If it can pass from one state to another, then it has potentiality, something which we already established cannot exist in a Tier 0. Naturally, this precludes anything that is shown being created, growing, decreasing, developing, fading, being destroyed, etc. from being Tier 0.

Now, although a Tier 0 cannot change, it can appear to change from the perspective of lesser beings. I believe a great illustration of this would be a passage from Dante's (not the pizza man) The Divine Comedy, where Dante beholds God and says the following:



But overall that should only go for very specific cases. If the would-be Tier 0 character just gets flat-out destroyed or unmade at some point, for example, then you can't really handwave that with the above. Examples of characters that completely fail this requirement are, well, a lot of people from Megami Tensei. The verse has many characters that are framed as being Monads, but practically speaking are shown being defeated and destroyed.

Furthermore: This requirement does not admit loopholes. This is to say that things like "Oh, this character technically was born in Period X, but it was made to have retroactively always existed..." would not suffice to save a character from disqualifying for Tier 0. If there was ever, from any perspective, a time when the character didn't exist, it automatically is disqualified.

There cannot be multiple Tier 0 beings in a verse

Obviously, something is distinguished by the quantities and qualities which it has. For instance, two physical objects A and B are spatiotemporally distinguished by factors such as distance (Two objects cannot occupy the same point in space), time (Two objects can be distinguished by their positions in the timeline. I am distinguished from my self from 2 hours ago in this way, for example), matter, etc.

Abstract objects that are not in spacetime cannot be distinguished in that way, but they can be qualitatively distinguished, which is to say that two aspatial and atemporal entities are made distinct by their attributes. For example, the Platonic Form of "Cat" is different from the Platonic Form of "Chair" because the two embody different properties. There are some things "Cat" has that "Chair" doesn't, and vice-versa, and those differences are what set them apart.

Now, if something has no qualities whatsoever (In the sense that all the things we understand as its "attributes" are actually a single thing that our distinction-based minds can't comprehend), then clearly there cannot be multiple of it, as there is nothing to mark distinctions in the first place. In the same way objects that are aspatial and atemporal cannot be distinguished through time or space (As they don't exist in either)

A Tier 0 cannot have parts

This naturally follows from the requirement of it being completely devoid of differentiation. All-in-all, the character must necessarily be completely indivisible and irreducible to anything more basic than itself, and therefore smaller "parts," "pieces" or "fragments" are things that it cannot have.

Consequently, there can be no such thing as partitions of that being's power, either. No such thing as "He was only using a small portion of his energy!" and the like. And neither there can be such a thing as "A small part of its totality," save as a figure of speech.

Mind you, this is not in a "Infinity divided by a finite number is still infinity" sense, as numerical infinity is still able to be expressed as the result of an infinite sum. A Tier 0, under these proposals, necessarily cannot be the result of any sum, on account of its lack of distinction.

An example of something that fails this requirement? The Overvoid, from DC Comics. Here, it is shown that the Source Wall is able to shield the multiverse from its corrosive effects, even if the Source Wall itself is lesser than the Overvoid. Therefore it stands to reason that there is a division between "the Overvoid in its totality" and "the small portion of the Overvoid that the multiverse is being shielded from." Therefore, clearly it has parts of some kind.

A Tier 0 character cannot be surpassed

For any two things, A and B. A is made superior to B either by some quantity or some quality. That this is the case is obvious enough. A 6-D space is made superior to a 5-D space by its greater volume, for example. Likewise, the set of real numbers is made superior to the set of natural numbers by its greater cardinality.

Likewise, in a hierarchy of R>F Transcendences, Layer A is made superior to Layer B by the fact of its greater "realness." Not by any quantity, but by a quality of its existence.

Now: For something whose existence surpasses distinction of qualities entirely, there is not any mechanism though which it may be surpassed by something else. If it were to be exceeded, then it would seem that it does have some degree of composition, after all, and as such is not totally undifferentiated.

As a matter of fact, a relation of "X is more than Y" inherently imparts some form of differentiation on the attribute being described as "more." For example: 6 apples are more than 3 apples. This is a relationship of superiority, for sure, and the attribute by which it happens is cardinality (The number of things in a set). Thus, there being degrees of cardinality, it follows that "cardinality" as an attribute inherently has differentiation within itself. As does volume, and all other quantitative properties.

And this still applies even to qualitative differences, such as when a verse depicts size-like relations happening between aspatial entities, or when we say a higher reality is "more real" than a lesser one. These attributes have degrees and, evidently, some sense of "proportion," and as such they have internal differentiation as well. The same, of course, can be generalized to "power" as a whole: Power as we think of it has different degrees, it comes in amounts, and therefore it has internal differentiation.

Now, as we went over earlier, a Monad has no differentiation whatsoever, and therefore has no degrees at all. Since its "nature" and its "power" are one and the same, it also follows that its power possesses no degrees. So, in that sense, it must, literally, exceed all proportion with lesser things. If you were to posit something greater than it, you would be automatically introducing degrees and proportions in its existence, and as such simply be disqualifying it from being a Monad at all.

A Tier 0 character cannot be part of a hierarchy

This follows from the above. Ask yourself: What is a hierarchy? It is a division of levels, delineated by the degree of some attribute that is present in each of them. The highest level enjoys the most of that attribute, and the lowest level, the least. Thus, a hierarchy fundamentally denotes the idea of "degree," and it is already clear from the above that such a thing cannot be present in a Monad.

Interestingly, this also means that a Monad cannot be the highest level of a hierarchy, either, as even saying that it has "the greatest amount" of some attribute is to introduce degree to its existence, which we've already established is impossible. Therefore, a being such as this would need to be independent of any and all hierarchies. Completely self-sufficient.

In this case, examples of verses that fail this requirement are SCP, which has many Monad-like characters that nevertheless are part of a hierarchy, and Marvel Comics, which has The One Above All being described as a "pure unity" and yet being the top of a hierarchy that is also the bottom of yet another hierarchy.

A character cannot become Tier 0

This logically follows from the first and fourth requirements. A Tier 0 cannot change, and neither does its power have any "degrees." Therefore it is not possible to "rise up to that level" (i.e. It is impossible to increase the degree of your power until it reaches something with no degree at all)

However, this is worth to note separately, because there is indeed a sense in which a character can "become" Tier 0, even if not in the conventional manner. More specifically, if a verse functions on a nondualist cosmology, where all distinctions are illusory and the innermost core of everything is some undifferentiated ultimate reality, then a character may in a sense "become" Tier 0 by shedding all their individual traits and dissolving back into the nondual ground.

So only in that sense can a character "become Tier 0." Though this is, of course, not at all a conventional ascension to godhood or anything of the like, so much as a "return" to the source of your being, or realizing what you have always been all along. Otherwise, it is impossible to become Tier 0 in the sense of filling a spot that wasn't there before.

There cannot be a character that has Tier 0 power, but some nature that is distinct from that

As we've already established: There cannot be any distinctions whatsoever in such a character, and as such there cannot be a distinction between their power and their nature. Which is to say a character who is physically 3-D but has Tier 0 Attack Potency (And similar) is impossible.

The only way in which this could happen would be if the character in question is something like a manifestation of the already-existing Tier 0, through which they can exert their power. And even then, the manifestation could not have Tier 0 punching strength and the like, and neither would that power be "their own" in that sense.

Now, as for any questions about it:

Spoiler: Q&A

Q: Will any statements of "Omnipotence" or "Being able to do anything, even the illogical" qualify for this tier?

A: Not at all, no. Firstly, random statements of "omnipotence" wouldn't qualify for reasons I already explained.

As for "Able to do anything" and similar: That would not qualify either. As the definition above makes plainly clear, Tier 0 inherently revolves around the nature of the character's existence, and not around the acts of which they are capable. As such, it is already obvious that a layman's understanding of "Omnipotence" (I.e. "Capable of doing literally everything") doesn't really have any immediate place in the Tiering System I am proposing. Any character trying to qualify for 0 would need to have the exact properties I've described above. And if they don't, they simply aren't Tier 0.

An example I often see being brought up in debates regarding this topic is the Magic Gods from To Aru, who are described in the verse as having power that allows them to access all possibilities, including contradictory ones, which thus creates an Omnipotence Paradox. Do they qualify for my proposal of Tier 0? Evidently not. Not only are there multiple of them, but apparently they can die, their power can be divided into parts and decreased, and people can become Magic Gods, so clearly they have composition and differentiation in them, as well as potentiality. Thus, case dismissed.

This effectively falls into the principle of "Statements of limitlessness require a mechanism in order to be taken seriously." In this case, empty claims of unsurpassable power would not qualify for anything, but if there is information which tells us that a character, by the nature of its very existence, is necessarily unsurpassable, then we have an impetus to accept it.

Q: Is it possible to prove that a character is Tier 0 at all?

A: The notion that something being absolute and unsurpassable is "inherently unprovable" is something extremely proliferated across both this community and other communities. In fact, to quote one of our own pages:



In a sense, I don't find this disagreeable at all. Specifically, the notion is correct when we think of attempting to "reach" absoluteness by adding to a character. Usually, a layman will think of terms like "Omnipotence" as "The greatest amount of power possible" and similar definitions. This way of thinking, of course, runs into a wall when considering the fact that, ultimately, something can always be added to. You can always add more attributes to a character. No matter how elaborate a description is, it can always be more elaborate. You can always add to a pile, effectively. As such, it is impossible to objectively tell when, exactly, something can no longer be added to.

However, this kind of thinking doesn't really apply to what I am advocating for, since under the above definitions, Tier 0 is not about "adding" something to a character, but rather about removing things from it (In this case, composition and differentiation), which is to say that absoluteness wouldn't really be gotten through obtaining more qualities (Or increasing the degree of those qualities) but rather by abandoning this whole framework altogether. A funny analogy you could use to understand the concept, I think, is this: Usually, people think of absoluteness as being about having "The biggest house possible." But that's wrong. Absoluteness would in fact require you to not have a house in the first place.

In this sense, it is not impossible to prove that a character is Tier 0 at all, no. If that is deemed impossible to prove, then clearly it is also impossible to prove that a character lacks a soul, or spacetime, or any other attribute.

Now, is it easy to contradict being Tier 0? Extremely, as seen by the list of requirements above. That makes it a rare tier, but by no means an impossible one. However, one might be tempted to argue that such a character being described at all already prevents them from being Tier 0, and as such, that the tier is impossible to obtain. This leads us to...

Q: Is a Tier 0 character just nothingness, then?

A: Evidently not. Nothingness in the most absolute sense would not be capable of producing any effects that extend outwards from itself, as effects require a cause, and the nonexistence of a cause would thus imply the nonexistence of effects. So the Tier 0 character, being an identifiable thing capable of producing effects, must exist in some way.

Now, also evidently, a character with the properties I've outlined cannot be described, either. It has some sense of "ineffability" because our minds necessarily understand things through differentiation and parts, and as such are unable to apprehend it as it is. This is to say: There is something there, but we can't really comprehend it.

And with this, it is important to mark the distinction between something being indescribable and something being "nonexistent," because there are many things even in everyday life that are indescribable. For example: Color is impossible to describe. You can easily describe something as "black," but describing the appearance of "blackness" itself is impossible to do, and if a blind person asked you to describe color to them, you'd find yourself at a loss of words. The only way to "describe" a color in any absolute way would be though self-reference. For example, saying "blackness is black." Which, of course, fails to say anything at all.

Yet, I don't think anyone would say color doesn't exist, or anything of the like, because it is something we directly experience and have a sense of. In principle, the same would apply to a Monad: It is not something able to be described in ordinary language, and yet evidently it must exist, due to displaying properties that only existent things can have.

By extension, this means that descriptions being applied to a Tier 0 character doesn't really contradict their Tier 0 rating, either. Consider: Words such as "Above," "outside," "apart" and "higher" are inherently spatial terms. Does this mean that, every time an aspatial thing is described as "Above space," "Outside of space," "Apart from space" or as "A higher realm above space," a contradiction is being made, and the thing in question is in fact not aspatial at all? Of course not.

Why? Because those terms are being used as analogies, and not really in their most proper senses. Something isn't "outside" space in the same way a mailbox is "outside" a house, but it's similar enough that the same word can be used for both. So we apply generalizations of spatial terminology to non-spatial things, and that's not only perfectly fine, but also a feature of language as a whole. In (See?) fact, "In" is a spatial term as well, and yet we don't take issue with phrases like "He exists in a realm with no space or time."

Likewise, "before" is inherently a temporal term, yet we don't take issue with verbiage such as "Before time" being used. No one would remove Beyond-Dimensional Existence from a character just because they're vaguely described as existing "before" something, for instance. "Now" is also a temporal term, and yet no one would remove Beyond-Dimensional Existence from a character if someone said of them: "They are here now."

So, bottom line is: In indexing, we already deal with things that, by definition, defy ordinary language, and as such can really only be described by using terms in an analogous fashion, i.e. generalizing a certain piece of terminology to things outside of its usual scope. This proposal for Tier 0 is no different.

Q: So characters who are indescribable or ineffable would be Tier 0?

A: Short answer: No.

Long answer: As can be seen from the above explanations, ineffability is a necessary condition for a Tier 0, but it is not a sufficient one, which is to say: All Tier 0 characters are by necessity beyond description, but not all things beyond description are Tier 0.

For example, as has been explained, the appearance of color is fundamentally indescribable, and yet I don't believe anyone would say colors are Tier 0 because of that. For a more out-there example: Concepts/predicates can be seen as things for which no definition can be given, yet this is just a matter of the awkwardness of our linguistics, and not necessarily indicative of anything transcendental.

So, no, statements of something being "Indescribable," "ineffable," "incomprehensible," "undefinable" and the like wouldn't amount to much. Granted, sufficiently thorough statements of that sort may suggest that the character in question is monadic in nature, but those would nevertheless be subject to the definitions and requirements prescribed above, and need to display such qualities.

For example, Twin Peaks has characters reside on a level stated to be a purely unknowable realm "where all words melt into silence." Yet on their scale there is clearly actual distinction and separation, as well as things above them. As such, they would be unfit for this proposal of Tier 0.

Q: Can there be multiple Tier 0 characters in the same verse?

A: This might seem like a strange question to note down, seeing as I've already established that there can only be one Tier 0 being per verse under these proposals. However, it is worth to note down a distinction between "being" and "character." The latter term refers to narrative presentation and characterization, and the former refers to in-universe ontology.

What I mean is: There may be occasions where two characters or more are presented and characterized separately in terms of the plot and narrative, but are in fact of a single essence/existence as per the verse's cosmology. If their individual characterizations are sufficiently notable, then it might be that they deserve individual profiles, even if ultimately they are the same being.

Q: Is existing beyond logic a Tier 0 feat?

A: Depends entirely on what is meant by "Exists beyond logic." A character operating under non-classical logic works in ways that defy the usual laws of thought, and as such they can be described as "beyond logic" on that basis. Yet a character who operates on such alternate systems of logic can be any tier. It's not exactly hard to think of Tier 9 characters who exist in paradoxical states of being and the like.

Now, if by "beyond logic," what is meant is that a character exceeds the significance of even basic logical relations such as ">" (Greater than), "<" (Less than) and "=" (Equal to), then in principle that is correct, yes. However, a character, in order to surpass such things, would need to have all the properties I've spoke about thus far, and as such they would need to meet the criteria prescribed by the Tier 0 definition given above. So, it really is just a roundabout way towards things already discussed, ultimately.

Either way, the final answer is: Depends. The statement itself is ambiguous, and as such a random, contextless "Beyond logic" statement wouldn't get anywhere.

Q: Is existing in multiple (Or all) states at once a Tier 0 feat?

A: Not really, no. Lack of differentiation is not "Existing in multiple states at once." And the reasons why are obvious.

Q: Is this definition anything like the old version of Tier 0?

A: Conceptually, it is similar, but otherwise: Not very much, no. Anyone who was present in the 2017-2018 wiki can attest that, back then, "Tier 0" was just a title. Practically speaking, it was just "Qualitative superiority over 1-A + Treated as the verse's supreme being." It reached a point where a well-known fact about Tier 0 was that it didn't actually mean you were stronger than lower tiers: A character who was Tier 0 in one verse could be weaker than 1-As from another verse.

And, quite frankly, this was largely because, back then, no one was well-versed in any of these topics whatsoever, so no one could ever really establish any logical reason, foundation or mechanism that justified Tier 0 being "unsurpassable." Needless to say, this is not the case here: If you don't qualify for Tier 0, then you are weaker than a Tier 0. It's that simple.

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Frankly, I initially planned to post this alongside the counterpoints to DontTalk's above posts, but then all these explanations ended up taking more space than expected. Given that, I'll respond to the posts later. A couple hours from now, most likely. So, until then, I ask that people hold off from any potential parallel conversations (And this includes keeping any potential objections to the Tier 0 proposal to yourself, for now)

 

[Agnaa]

That's 5,500 words. That's, like, 20 pages in a book. That would take me 20 minutes to read. That's not a quick summary.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

That's 5,500 words. That's, like, 20 pages in a book. That would take me 20 minutes to read. That's not a quick summary.

In short, this is Ultima's proposal, though you'd need to read the posts I quoted to truly grasp it:

1. Rename our current definition of qualitative superiorities to "quantitative" superiorities.
2. Knock all higher cardinal infinities down to a new sub-tier of High 1-B called High 1-B+.
3. Delete Low 1-A.
4. Redefine qualitative superiorities as transcendences that transcend dimensionality entirely and make 1-A the tier for such transcendences while letting 1-A be layered like we currently do up to 1-A+.
5. Equalize reality-fiction differences to the new qualitative superiorities instead of quantitative superiorities.
6. Redefine High 1-A as the tier for "meta" qualitative superiorities that transcend the framework of regular quantitative superiorities.
7. Redefine 0 as the tier for superiorities that transcend both quantitative and qualitative superiorities.