Tiering System Revisions: Tier 0

[Ultima_Reality]

I don't think that is what we would say, no. To take 2-A as an example: If Character A can create infinitely-many possible universes, and Character B can create infinitely-many possible universes, too, except they can't create universes where people like yellow shirts, the two characters would be exactly as powerful as each other, since the "volume" of universes that they can create is the same. The former wouldn't actually be broader than the latter in any way that matters.

Same here. Except it's made notably worse by the fact that both sorts of Monad would transcend the exact same things, as said. Ontop of the other things I've pointed out (The fact that "impossible worlds" in contradiction-free cosmologies can't exist not out of a deficiency of any sort, but due to the fact they fail to meet the basic conditions for existence in the first place, which the Monad is)

To add to this: I should note that the whole "Being able to do more things = Stronger" logic, even if correct (Which it isn't), is still pretty naive thinking when applied to this case, I'd say. At the end of the day, it just falls into the trap of seeing a Tier 0's power as being ultimately reducible to the effects that it is capable of actualizing, which isn't really the case, since it isn't quantitative in any way whatsoever, and so it's not really exhausted by taking the collection of all possible states it can actualize and seeing "how many" are there. At that point you're just thinking of the Monad as being basically a sum of things.

The power of a Tier 0, properly speaking, is found in the nature of its existence, and nowhere else. That's very unlike all the other tiers, which are all indeed reducible to the effects which they can bring about, to one degree or another. (Obviously, 2-As will be fully reducible to that. 1-A is the tier where you can argue a degree of the above irreducibility starts to take effect, but the power of a 1-A character is still expressible through their capability to actualize effects, to a degree. For instance, effects on their own layer of reality)

 

[Agnaa]

Either Low 1-A or High 1-A+. Depends on whether their Omnipotence is defined in terms of metaphysical possibility or logical possibility.

Fair enough.

I don't think that is what we would say, no. To take 2-A as an example: If Character A can create infinitely-many possible universes, and Character B can create infinitely-many possible universes, too, except they can't create universes where people like yellow shirts, the two characters would be exactly as powerful as each other, since the "volume" of universes that they can create is the same. The former wouldn't actually be broader than the latter in any way that matters.

I think that's really wrong. All tiers 2-A and above, to some extent, involve creating "infinitely many universes" (or something equivalent), the thing which differs between those tiers is the content of those universes. Sometimes we consider that additional bulk to be enough to be enough to count as a higher tier. We don't have to take the approach of just looking at the cardinality of the set of universes a character can create; we can do the more nuanced take of looking at which elements are present in one and the other.

This mathematical rigidity seems particularly absurd considering the stretch between 2-A and 1-B corresponds to no meaningful mathematical difference right now.

Same here. Except it's made notably worse by the fact that both sorts of Monad would transcend the exact same things, as said.

They wouldn't. Certain actions, objects, and realities, would lie outside of the space which one of the monads transcends.

Ontop of the other things I've pointed out (The fact that "impossible worlds" in contradiction-free cosmologies can't exist not out of a deficiency of any sort, but due to the fact they fail to meet the basic conditions for existence in the first place, which the Monad is)

As I said, that's not necessarily the case when a monad's described.

I could apply this same process to the above analogy, too: If a verse, for whatever reason, decides that people liking yellow shirts is just a logical contradiction, a non-thing, a meaningless jumble of letters, then Character B's power wouldn't really be met with an obstacle in them being "unable" to create worlds where people like yellow shirts, either. Character A's power would as such cease being "broader" than theirs in any sense whatsoever.

Yes it would, there are cases where such beings are described as being unable to do impossible things. I already responded to this idea earlier (to which your response was just assuming that they weren't described that way). If they are described in that way, it would be a limitation on their power due to something about their fundamental nature.

To add to this: I should note that the whole "Being able to do more things = Stronger" logic, even if correct (Which it isn't), is still pretty naive thinking when applied to this case, I'd say. At the end of the day, it just falls into the trap of seeing a Tier 0's power as being ultimately reducible to the effects that it is capable of actualizing, which isn't really the case, since it isn't quantitative in any way whatsoever, and so it's not really exhausted by taking the collection of all possible states it can actualize and seeing "how many" are there. At that point you're just thinking of the Monad as being basically a sum of things.

The power of a Tier 0, properly speaking, is found in the nature of its existence, and nowhere else. That's very unlike all the other tiers, which are all indeed reducible to the effects which they can bring about, to one degree or another. (Obviously, 2-As will be fully reducible to that. 1-A is the tier where you can argue a degree of the above irreducibility starts to take effect, but the power of a 1-A character is still expressible through their capability to actualize effects, to a degree. For instance, effects on their own layer of reality)

1. One of them having restrictions on the things it can do, and one not having such restrictions, is a difference in their natures.
2. That nature is being argued as tier 0 because of the effects it's argued to bring about. That's why only the specific nature of particular invocations of a monad is being argued as tier 0, and not literally any other theoretically possible nature.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I think that's really wrong. All tiers 2-A and above, to some extent, involve creating "infinitely many universes" (or something equivalent), the thing which differs between those tiers is the content of those universes. Sometimes we consider that additional bulk to be enough to be enough to count as a higher tier. We don't have to take the approach of just looking at the cardinality of the set of universes a character can create; we can do the more nuanced take of looking at which elements are present in one and the other.

This mathematical rigidity seems particularly absurd considering the stretch between 2-A and 1-B corresponds to no meaningful mathematical difference right now.

The stretch between 2-A and High 1-B is there based on higher-dimensional volumes of a kind, which we consider to be infinitely greater than lower-dimensional ones. The reason it exists is not "Well, creating anything more varied means you're more powerful, even if it's something like creating universes where people like yellow shirts!". So it's more like, as far as we are concerned right now, that stretch does correspond to a mathematically meaningful difference.

As I said, that's not necessarily the case when a monad's described.

Yes it would, there are cases where such beings are described as being unable to do impossible things. I already responded to this idea earlier (to which your response was just assuming that they weren't described that way). If they are described in that way, it would be a limitation on their power due to something about their fundamental nature.

Yeah, "assuming that they weren't described that way" is just taking as a reference point the idea that the verse is upholding the basic concept of logical Omnipotence (i.e. That the Monad can't do the logically impossible not as any limitation on its part, but just in virtue of logically impossible things being pseudo-tasks without an underlying object). If a verse actually described it as "There is a X such that the Monad fails to be capable of creating it" (As in, there are literally things that are outside the Monad's domain), then I'd consider that an anti-feat for Tier 0, yeah.

They wouldn't. Certain actions, objects, and realities, would lie outside of the space which one of the monads transcends.

I already gave reason for why that's not really the case. Granted, that seems to hinge on the thing above. Looks like it's the actual crux of this discussion.

1. One of them having restrictions on the things it can do, and one not having such restrictions, is a difference in their natures.
2. That nature is being argued as tier 0 because of the effects it's argued to bring about. That's why only the specific nature of particular invocations of a monad is being argued as tier 0, and not literally any other theoretically possible nature.

Doesn't really address what I say. The nature that the above argument appeals to is the general condition of Monadhood. All Monads, logical or illogical, will have their utter simplicity result in a total disconnect between their "power" and the effects of that power.

 

[Agnaa]

The stretch between 2-A and High 1-B is there based on higher-dimensional volumes of a kind, which we consider to be infinitely greater than lower-dimensional ones. The reason it exists is not "Well, creating anything more varied means you're more powerful, even if it's something like creating universes where people like yellow shirts!". So it's more like, as far as we are concerned right now, that stretch does correspond to a mathematically meaningful difference.

You're completely missing the point.

Your argument against the yellow shirts is that "Mathematically, the set of all even numbers, and the set of all whole numbers, have the same size. Therefore, we shouldn't treat either as being more powerful than the other." But that same argument applies against the differences stretching through 2-A and High 1-B.

You're appealing to a certain mathematical standard when referring to my argument, but not when referring to the system, which is inconsistent.

If your point is just as you say at the end, that we assert that there's a mathematically meaningful difference despite there blatantly not being one, why are you happy to give that excuse to that point of our tiering system, but not to, say, tier 0?

Yeah, "assuming that they weren't described that way" is just taking as a reference point the idea that the verse is upholding the basic concept of logical Omnipotence (i.e. That the Monad can't do the logically impossible not as any limitation on its part, but just in virtue of logically impossible things being pseudo-tasks without an underlying object). If a verse actually described it as "There is a X such that the Monad fails to be capable of creating it" (As in, there are literally things that are outside the Monad's domain), then I'd consider that an anti-feat for Tier 0, yeah.

You're treating that as a sort of concession, but you're not actually addressing the example I gave.

I've said your example of explaining that impossible things are only impossible due to such extraneous circumstances would be fine. But I then brought up the example of a simple statement of "X can only do things that aren't logically contradictory". Now you're moving from that simple, default-case example, to "There are certain things that exist and are outside of X's domain".

To some extent it's good that we can agree on those extreme examples, but what really matters is the minimal-context default.

Doesn't really address what I say. The nature that the above argument appeals to is the general condition of Monadhood. All Monads, logical or illogical, will have their utter simplicity result in a total disconnect between their "power" and the effects of that power.

The stuff I'm talking about is an example of those conditions not actually being described in identical ways, so it ceases to really be a general condition.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

You're treating that as a sort of concession, but you're not actually addressing the example I gave.

I've said your example of explaining that impossible things are only impossible due to such extraneous circumstances would be fine. But I then brought up the example of a simple statement of "X can only do things that aren't logically contradictory". Now you're moving from that simple, default-case example, to "There are certain things that exist and are outside of X's domain".

To some extent it's good that we can agree on those extreme examples, but what really matters is the minimal-context default.

Ah, I see. Yeah, I understand your point.

Overall I think we can probably speak of that matter on two levels:

1. Case-by-case analysis. Really just examining whatever context may surround that statement to pick out the most sensible interpretation.

This may sound lackluster, but I do think it's potentially a good standard; "Nothing that entails contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God because contradictions are not actual tasks" is like, the go-to philosophical argument for how Omnipotence can be coherent while remaining absolutely unlimited, so, even if an author only brings up the part before the bolded tidbit in a story, chances are that they're still employing exactly that logic there, imo.

"Actually God only has power over this specific domain and there's a broader spectrum of states that he can't access" sounds like it'd be fringe enough that you'd only see it in verses that are actively going out of their way to try and relativize the "Omnipotence" in question, and that's something which, presumably, you'd be able to tell from other things already.

2. Setting up a standard ourselves. Which is to say: Basically officially take the stance that contradictory objects aren't actual "things" in any sense, neither potential nor actual. So "Can only do logically possible things" would just not amount to any kind of limitation by default.

A combination of the two options could work too, of course.

Not sure if the other two things need responding, now that we seem to have reached the core of the issue. Tell me if you think they're relevant to discuss independently.

 

[Agnaa]

I wouldn't be that generous, but I don't think those stances have any objective flaws.

And yeah, with that out of the way, I don't think the other stuff is too relevant. The monads that are meaningfully limited by not being able to actualise logically inconsistent tasks would be downgraded, that just would be something that requires a bit of evidence to establish.

 

[Agnaa]

Ultima asked me to reflect on where my vote stands, so to look back over the points I brought up in this thread before...

• It's weird for omnipotence and a Type IV multiverse to be given such different tiers: This isn't actually what Ultima's suggesting; omnipotence is insufficient for tier 0, a character would have to establish being an existence without essence, which is meaningfully different from a Type IV multiverse. I find this satisfactory.
• High interpretation, and proof by a lack of anti-feats: I still don't like this, and would prefer our current system for this reason, but it's ultimately an arbitrary choice. I find this myeh.
• Enshrinement of monads despite cosmology and quality: Justification was provided for this which I have no counterarguments to. I find this satisfactory.
• Divine simplicity faces similar challenges to apophatic theology, while the latter is rejected due to its incoherence: I don't know enough about this to evaluate Ultima/Deagon's invocation of the relevant authorities, and I typically find myself siding with whoever posted on it most recently. I find this inconclusive.
• Enshrinement of the cosmological/ontological arguments: Part of this is sidestepped, and the rest has a sidestep attempt through saying that the ontological argument asserts that due to those conclusions, such a being must exist, while Ultima doesn't assert that. But I don't think that works; verbiage Ultima has used in the OP of this thread like "the actualizer of all categories and possibilities cannot be within any category or possibility" inherently implies the existence of a monad IRL, and really in every verse, since they have categories and possibilities which must be actualized by a being which can only be a monad. If such language and arguments are retracted I'd find this fine, but until then I find this quite concerning.
• A setting with a cosmology lower than tier 0 could have it be fundamentally impossible for a tier 0 being to preside over it: This is how Ultima says it would work, and I find that unsatisfactory.
• Does this extension beyond the established cosmology apply to other accepted things like omniscience and omnipresence? It depends on the mechanism, and tier 0 has a coherent mechanism implying this broadening beyond the original cosmology which most examples of those abilities lack. I find this satisfactory.
• How is contradictory evidence handled? It is handled satisfactorily.
• Monads restricted by logical impossibilities, and those not: Those who are meaningfully restricted by it should be downgraded. Evidence standards for this are lower than I'd like, so I find this myeh.

I'm closer to neutral, but I'd still lean towards disagree due to the enshrinement of the ontological argument, and having High 1-A+s able to make cosmologies where 0s are unable to exist.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Ultima asked me to reflect on where my vote stands, so to look back over the points I brought up in this thread before...

• It's weird for omnipotence and a Type IV multiverse to be given such different tiers: This isn't actually what Ultima's suggesting; omnipotence is insufficient for tier 0, a character would have to establish being an existence without essence, which is meaningfully different from a Type IV multiverse. I find this satisfactory.
• High interpretation, and proof by a lack of anti-feats: I still don't like this, and would prefer our current system for this reason, but it's ultimately an arbitrary choice. I find this myeh.
• Enshrinement of monads despite cosmology and quality: Justification was provided for this which I have no counterarguments to. I find this satisfactory.
• Divine simplicity faces similar challenges to apophatic theology, while the latter is rejected due to its incoherence: I don't know enough about this to evaluate Ultima/Deagon's invocation of the relevant authorities, and I typically find myself siding with whoever posted on it most recently. I find this inconclusive.
• Enshrinement of the cosmological/ontological arguments: Part of this is sidestepped, and the rest has a sidestep attempt through saying that the ontological argument asserts that due to those conclusions, such a being must exist, while Ultima doesn't assert that. But I don't think that works; verbiage Ultima has used in the OP of this thread like "the actualizer of all categories and possibilities cannot be within any category or possibility" inherently implies the existence of a monad IRL, and really in every verse, since they have categories and possibilities which must be actualized by a being which can only be a monad. If such language and arguments are retracted I'd find this fine, but until then I find this quite concerning.
• A setting with a cosmology lower than tier 0 could have it be fundamentally impossible for a tier 0 being to preside over it: This is how Ultima says it would work, and I find that unsatisfactory.
• Does this extension beyond the established cosmology apply to other accepted things like omniscience and omnipresence? It depends on the mechanism, and tier 0 has a coherent mechanism implying this broadening beyond the original cosmology which most examples of those abilities lack. I find this satisfactory.
• How is contradictory evidence handled? It is handled satisfactorily.
• Monads restricted by logical impossibilities, and those not: Those who are meaningfully restricted by it should be downgraded. Evidence standards for this are lower than I'd like, so I find this myeh.

I'm closer to neutral, but I'd still lean towards disagree due to the enshrinement of the ontological argument, and having High 1-A+s able to make cosmologies where 0s are unable to exist.

So should your vote be counted as neutral or disagree?

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Enshrinement of the cosmological/ontological arguments: Part of this is sidestepped, and the rest has a sidestep attempt through saying that the ontological argument asserts that due to those conclusions, such a being must exist, while Ultima doesn't assert that. But I don't think that works; verbiage Ultima has used in the OP of this thread like "the actualizer of all categories and possibilities cannot be within any category or possibility" inherently implies the existence of a monad IRL, and really in every verse, since they have categories and possibilities which must be actualized by a being which can only be a monad. If such language and arguments are retracted I'd find this fine, but until then I find this quite concerning.

To clarify: That was back when I was of the opinion that only characters who embody all possible worlds can be High 1-A+, since I reasoned that anything with this scale of influence otherwise has to be beyond all possible worlds and therefore just a Monad. I still hold to that, to an extent, but I eventually qualified High 1-A+ by allowing in characters who can actualize arbitrarily large logically possible worlds, which I realized wouldn't necessarily have to exceed the High 1-A+ framework itself. Overall, I'm fine with retracting that language.

and having High 1-A+s able to make 0s unable to exist.

Wouldn't say that's really "The High 1-A+ is making a Tier 0 unable to exist" so much as "The verse says a Tier 0 isn't a thing, plain and simple, and the High 1-A+ is the next best thing." If it does do that, though, I'd just call that feat fake as shit, yeah.

 

[Agnaa]

Yeah okay cool. With that retraction & clarification, chuck me to neutral.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

What else needs to be debated before we vote on this?

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I'll call back Deagon to see if he would like to continue the discussion on his side. He's said off-site that he may not respond, but I'd rather make certain.

DontTalk, I believe, has said that he doesn't care if threads are finished up in his absence. If he still wants to say something, then I don't mind waiting a bit. But if his initial statement is not sufficient, then someone who has contact with him can try to reach out and verify if he's indeed fine with things proceeding without him.

 

[Deagonx]

I'll call back Deagon to see if he would like to continue the discussion on his side.

Thanks.

I hold to my view that ultimately there's not a good reason to string all of these qualities together, nor to envision this specific combination of qualities as being uniquely powerful, and that other valid and philosophically precedented versions are not.

However, I think we've more or less exhausted the main points of contention, and given my relatively low forum activity these days and how busy I've been with work/college, I'm fine leaving this where it is. I may disagree with this, but I'm not a voting party and I won't hold the thread hostage.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

@Antvasima Could you check with DT if he's okay with leaving the thread to us?

 

[Antvasima]

I will ask, but I think that he much prefers if we wait regarding such an important issue.

 

[Antvasima]

DontTalk has replied.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Didn't take you for a light mode user...

Anyway: With that in mind, I suppose I can just write a summary of the thread and yada yada. The discussion itself was relatively short (This thread would be only 2 pages long before those were reduced in length), so, shouldn't be difficult distilling the essence of the argumentation. I'll ping all the ones involved here and in the past thread afterwards.

 

[Antvasima]

Didn't take you for a light mode user...

I greatly prefer light over darkness in general. Just check here for example:

https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/User:Antvasima#Fiction_Preferences

Anyway: With that in mind, I suppose I can just write a summary of the thread and yada yada. The discussion itself was relatively short (This thread would be only 2 pages long before those were reduced in length), so, shouldn't be difficult distilling the essence of the argumentation. I'll ping all the ones involved here and in the past thread afterwards.

That seems fine to me.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Alrighty then.

Spoiler: The Proposal

For the actual, longer descriptions which these proposals are summarizing, see:

• The OP (Original pitch)
• Second post (More elaborate description of how the concept works, and how it is suited for the highest tier, in the spoiler box)
• Third post (Another, yet more elaborate account, under the reply to Deagon)

So, up until this point, the Tiering System revisions have went like this:

1-A = Qualitative superiority over normal reality. Exceeding physical composition to the point you can't be "made up" of anything that is in a lesser state of existence than yourself. Reality-Fiction Transcendence as the "posterboy" example of this tier.

High 1-A = Transcending 1-A levels of existence in a similar fashion to the way they transcend everything else. If the 1-A thing is a hierarchy of layers, for instance, then this tier is operating on a fundamentally greater hierarchy, which works on a measuring stick that likewise is fundamentally greater than the lower one's. "Meta"-qualitative superiority, if you will.

You can generalize High 1-A endlessly. You could have hierarchies of hierarchies of hierarchies of hierarchies of hierarchies... and so on and so forth. Naturally, to avoid definitional redundancy, I propose Tier 0 to be a tier completely beyond any and all hierarchy-stacking of that sort.

Basically, Tier 0 in this proposal is Transduality, in a sense. Although it's important to qualify what sense this is. To quote the current Nonduality page:

For this ability, dualities refer to logical dualities where the duality is between "A" and "not A" where A is some object or attribute. For example, fire and water are not a duality; the duality of fire would be fire and not fire. The duality of existence would be existence and not existence, or, alternately, existence and nonexistence or existence and void.

So, currently, we base Transduality on the idea of transcending "logical" dualities. Like in the example above: Fire and not-Fire (e.g. A transdual character would be neither fire, nor would they be not fire), existence and non-existence ("Nonexistence" being in the normal sense of the word, and not in the sense of void-realm, as you see a lot in many verses), and etc.

So, this is not really what this proposal is. Tier 0, here, is effectively about transcending actual ontological divisions, distinctions and separations between things, and not "logical" dualities, which largely are not things you can transcend without logical contradiction. (For example: "Transcending existence and nonexistence," if by "nonexistence" you don't mean some magical void-state, but just plain-old nothing, is a pretty meaningless statement. Nonexistence is not a "thing" to transcend, after all)

This results, as I'd argue, in quite a lot of things, since really any limiting factor that we can think of comes from division and separation of some kind. Spacetime entails differentiation, for example. And indeed the whole logic behind having differing layers of reality is based on ontological differentiations. So, transcending them fundamentally must entail transcending quantity, and quality, and meta-quality, and meta-meta-quality, and so on and so forth, to quote myself from earlier:

Obviously, it is aspatial and atemporal, because space and time inherently introduce divisions and separations into a thing: My right hand is not the same as my left hand. The point (1,6,3) is not the same as the point (3,7,9,4,10) in a coordinate space. Myself from two hours ago is in a separate section of spacetime than myself from right now, or from 10 years ago. If you transcend separations entirely, then obviously you transcend all of that, as well.

But remember: It doesn't just transcend physical divisions. It transcends the whole notion of a division between "This, not that" and "That, not this." Naturally, then, it transcends any concept of "I am here, not there," and as such it transcends any notion of "meta-space" that a verse might want to entertain, too. On that basis, even the differentiation between higher and lower layers of reality is something it transcends.

By extension, it also transcends any idea of a progression between states, and as such transcends change and mutability as well. And much less is it capable of increase or decrease, inasmuch as both of these involve going from "this state" to "that state." Put it simply: It transcends the dichotomies of "Before" and "After," and also transcends addition and subtraction.

So, a consequence is that this type of character is so utterly transcendent that they are completely self-defined and independent from anything whatsoever. As a result (of this and of the general transformations happening to the Tiering System), you don't really need a large cosmology to reach this tier. Everyone has an equal shot. A verse with a 3-A cosmology has as much of a chance at getting a Tier 0, provided the correct descriptions, as a verse with a High 1-A cosmology.

That said, there are boundaries to be followed to qualify for Tier 0, and those are;

• There can't be more than one Tier 0 in a verse (There can be a plurality of Tier 0 "characters," but only if those characters are the same being)
• The character can't be surpassed. Must be supreme. (Having a "higher layer" above this character would entail that it exists in a framework of divisions and differentiations, which it is supposed to transcend. A contradiction)
• Can't be divided (Since it transcends all division and separation on an ontological level, then obviously it can't have literal "chunks" or "fragments," nor a division of energies, nor anything of that sort. No such thing, for example, as "half of a Tier 0" or "50% of a Tier 0's power," nor even "A bunch of characters fuse to originate a Tier 0")
• Can't change. The character is wholly immutable.
• A character can't "become" Tier 0 (At least, in the sense of filling up a spot that wasn't there before. There is one kind of exception to that, and I can think of a second kind. I elaborate that in more depth in the OP)
• There can't be a character who has "Tier 0 power" but a nature distinct from that. Which is to say: No "This guy is 3-D but has Tier 0 AP." For more information, again, see the OP

Furthermore, to quote myself again:

The nucleus of the objection there is a valid concern, true. But it largely rests upon a misunderstanding; I would say statements of something being "All-in-One" aren't really sufficient on their own, no. What is sufficient is the general concept of distinctions between objects breaking down and being dissolved into unity as one shifts between states of reality [as a result of transcendence and superiority] (That's what the Cthulhu Mythos' cosmology is, as one relevant and contentious example). You'd be hard-pressed to try and fit these kinds of cosmologies with any of what you claim is a "counterexample" to this proposal's arguments.

But, generally speaking, some vague notion of "oneness" is not going to cut it, still. If there's a cosmology where at first there was some messy heap of reality stuff that then somehow became organized into specific things, then you could plausibly describe said heap as "All-in-One" and "Undifferentiated," and what have you, but obviously that wouldn't automatically be Tier 0 here. With regards to Yog-Sothoth in particular, for instance, I wouldn't have deemed him a possible candidate for Tier 0 at all if it weren't for the prior context of the story. If the "All-in-One and One-in-All of limitless being and self" statement was the only thing available, he wouldn't have been considered.

As said, it's of interest to debate "edge" cases of what qualifies for Tier 0 under these proposals, since one particular instance of this type of character is already extremely easy to identify as is, anyway. But it's of course also important to note that it's not like, say, this or this is Tier 0.

So, yeah. I am basically bringing back Omnipotence. No strings attached, really.

As a complement to that, I pitched another proposal:

After Tier 0, there is another thing that I would like to propose: High 1-A+.

To explain the proposal for that, let me draw an analogy here: Imagine a Tier 0 character is a dreamer, if you will. And that all the things lesser than the Tier 0 are thus dreams. Now, imagine a character who personifies the dream itself. Essentially, the space where exist all things the Tier 0 can dream about. All possibilities that the Tier 0 can create, which, obviously, exclude the Tier 0 itself.

The character personifying the dream would be High 1-A+. Effectively, the collection of all possible effects which the Tier 0 can bring about. Not "Omnipotence," per se, but moreso the space of all worlds that an omnipotent being can create. You might want to refer to the concept of possible worlds for this, and more specifically to the concept of modal realism.

But it doesn't have to be solely that, of course. Here, for example, is the Self-Reference ENGINE. And its first key is its manifest "shell," which comprises the set of all possible combinations of letters and characters, each of which constitutes a different world.

Due to the nature of how it works, High 1-A+ has similar properties to Tier 0, in a way. For instance, all characters in that tier are exactly equal. You can't really be above the collection of all possibilities and yet be, yourself, one of those possibilities, as that'd be an obvious contradiction. So ultimately, transcending a High 1-A+ means you're Tier 0, and if you supposedly do that while also displaying traits very unlike those of a Tier 0, then the thing you transcended was just never High 1-A+ to begin with.

While the basic concept remained constant all throughout the discussion, I eventually amended it slightly. See spoiler box here. So, it isn't exclusively "Embodies all (at least logically) possible worlds" anymore, but also "Character who can create arbitrarily large possible worlds." Basically a slightly more formal version of the layman's idea of Omnipotence ("'Can do anything!")

With that in mind, I'm not entirely sure if I still keep to the claim of "All High 1-A+ characters are exactly equal." Seems a bit difficult to say who is stronger between a character who can actualize any kind of possible world and a character who embodies the framework of all possible worlds itself. But, either way, transcending this kind of existence on a fundamental level makes you Tier 0.

Oh yeah, and, of course: You can have multiple High 1-A+ beings.

Spoiler: Counterargument Summary

So, I'll place the counterarguments that there have been to this proposal in groups of several, since they all have commonalities that can be tackled at once. If you'd like to take a closer look at the past exchanges themselves, click the second and third links provided above. In particular, the second. Scroll up to see the actual things it's responding to.

I will not count the charges of "this is paradoxical," since those were borne of a misunderstanding of what these revisions are actually proposing to begin with, as clarified halfway through the discussion.

The first prominent counterargument attacks the premise that these conditions net an uniquely powerful state of existence to begin with: After all, if we grant that something can be higher-dimensional in its own layer of reality, but nonexistent in a higher layer, what's to stop something similar from happening here? Why can't a character be beyond all ontological distinctions in their own layer of reality, but not so in a higher R>F level?

An addendum that could be made, furthermore, is reasoning that treating "Transcendence over all ontological distinctions" in that manner would result in us having to treat transcendence over any concept as Tier 0, since any of them could potentially exist in a higher 1-A or above layer.

In my mind, this argument springs from a general misunderstanding of how Reality-Fiction Transcendence works in the new Tiering System. I address that sufficiently, I believe, in the second half of this post. A slightly more technical response can be found in the spoiler box here, too.

The second formulation of it is slightly more persuasive, but in my mind, no good either, since Tier 0 here isn't exactly about transcending any particular, unitary concept so much as transcending the relation between different ontologies. As I put it above, transcending the division between "That, not this" and "This, not that." It's not really about going to some higher layer of reality with a correspondingly higher concept of X or Y.

The next group of counterarguments is what I'd term the more "philosophical" arguments. Essentially, arguing that it is preferable to stick to a "feats-based" Tiering System, where we require that a verse spell out things for us, instead of making conclusions ourselves. The idea, of course, being that there is no reason to assume that literally anything one could possibly think of was included in a would-be Tier 0 statement, so we should stick just to what the verse shows in its cosmology.

This branches forth into the general idea that this tier, in effect, makes characters the strongest things ever "by omission." The objection being that, since it doesn't need to all be spelled out, the transcendence of this kind of characters ultimately needs not to be proven, but disproven. So, then, we need to go with a lowball. The "lowest reasonable interpretation."

Yeah, so, I don't think those arguments are any good, either. They ultimately are just extensions of the same philosophy that underlaid the objections to the first part of the Tiering System revisions: "How do you know that, just because this character transcends Xness, it transcends all possible extensions of X, and not just the X that exist in their cosmology?". In that case, it was dimensions. In this case, it's "ontological distinctions." But at the end of the day, the results of the former thread ground the responses to this one.

At the end of the day, we already ditched that kind of thinking when the first part of the revisions was accepted. "The verse doesn't include this structure in its cosmology" is ultimately irrelevant when the character's nature exceeds the basic logic that would ground those structures anyway. A character who transcends dimensionality is in the 1-A range now, even if their verse only has 3 or 4 dimensions. Roughly the same thing here.

The illusion of a difference only emerges, in my mind, because 1-A and High 1-A feel like more "specific" and "particular" things than something as mundane as dimensions, but they ultimately aren't. They can be equally grouped under the general idea of "essence" or "ontology," which the type of character that would qualify for Tier 0 here fundamentally exceeds and acts as the foundation of. Just like every tier from 11-C to Low 1-A can be grouped under a single category which 1-As by nature transcend.

And I believe I've already said here that transcending this kind of character is literally just logically contradictory, as well. As I see it, there is no "lowest reasonable interpretation" that isn't Tier 0 here. Anything else isn't a "lowball" so much as "Assume the statement is actually false."

So, at the end of the day, it, to my mind, is no different from "assuming" that, say, infinity is inherently greater than any finite thing. Not a very outrageous "assumption." These conclusions all logically and necessarily follow from the basic premises, and a "lowball" would only be valid if they didn't.

The following group of objections is, weirder, compared to the last ones. Basically, arguing that this proposal is inappropriate because it places one notion of "Omnipotence" over others, which apparently constitutes disrespect to the faith of people who don't abide those notions. Furthermore, it is also argued to be artificially limiting, because it's placing a cap on human creativity, while dismissing anything that dares try and venture beyond that cap.

I called these "objections" because they honestly feel less like arguments, properly speaking, and more like appeals to inner sensibilities. I think the first one, in particular, is pretty ridiculous: Firstly because the concept in question isn't even specifically religious or theological, and is something you find in a lot of secular contexts too (uno, dos, tres). Secondly because this proposal isn't grounded on any kind of favoritism, but on the general principle that statements of limitlessness need a sufficient mechanism and explanatory principle to justify themselves, and this concept happens to provides both with the most efficacy. And it's not like other views of "Omnipotence" are getting snubbed, either. High 1-A+ exists.

Thirdly, because we're not actually tiering religious figures of any kind, just general metaphysical concepts. If you follow this reluctance to its logical conclusion, then you might as well refuse to tier any metaphysical idea, because every single piece of metaphysics has been incorporated into a religion in some fashion. For example, a lot of religions maintain that God is above space (Christians, for instance, call that "Divine Immensity"). I don't believe this ought to force us to refuse to tier Beyond-Dimensional Existence. Ultimately: 1) It's coherent enough. 2) It nets out relevant tiers. 3) It's used in fiction. Ergo: We can use it.

The second one, likewise, I find pretty weak. We, as a wiki, have never maintained, nor should maintain, a "The costumer is always right!" approach to things. At least, not with regards to things that lead to actual logical contradiction, which I'd argue is what happens if you say this type of character can be transcended like every other. See above. So, yeah, I dare say that the costumer is not, in fact, always right. Sometimes the costumer doesn't care about being right, even. Sometimes the customer also just doesn't know what they're talking about. Sometimes the customer just forgoes conventional logic, intentionally.

---

• Agree: Ultima_Reality (thread starter), Antvasima, Sir_Ovens, Maverick_Zero_X, Planck69, IdiosyncraticLawyer, KLOL506, CloverDragon03
• Neutral: Agnaa
• Disagree: DontTalkDT, Deagonx

@DarkDragonMedeus @DarkGrath @Sir_Ovens @Everything12 @Elizhaa @Maverick_Zero_X @Firestorm808 @Celestial_Pegasus @Qawsedf234 @Mr. Bambu @Planck69 @CrimsonStarFallen @Theglassman12 @IdiosyncraticLawyer @Executor_N0 @CloverDragon03 @KLOL506

Formalities be like that, so, those who have already voted but aren't listed may restate their votes and scram. Those who have questions about these proposals should go ahead and ask them as needed. Leave no stone unturned.

 

[KLOL506]

My vote remains the same. The proposal is a far more sensible approach than the counterarguments against it.

No I will not elaborate why

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Noted.

 

[Sir_Ovens]

Ultima makes sense here.

 

[Antvasima]

Should I send a notification to the remaining administrators as well?

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Ultima makes sense here.

Noted.

Should I send a notification to the remaining administrators as well?

Not sure. The majority of people generally are not interested in threads of this nature, and I'd rather not disturb them needlessly, hence I only pinged people who previously participated here. Up to you, in the end.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. I suppose that we can wait and see if it becomes necessary then.

 

[GrathOfLux]

I don't have the time to respond at the moment. If the thread is not concluded by Saturday, I'll look through the arguments and offer my input then.

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you very much for helping out.

 

[Agnaa]

To summarize my oustanding discontentments, since most of them weren't brought up by Ultima....

I view this suggested system as taking quite a high interpretation of the characters involved (the highest possible, with there not being any room in the system above it), and almost consequentially, past a certain minimum for qualifying, adding more information can only make such characters weaker, by introducing anti-feats and contradictory information that would get them downgraded. I've for a while liked how our system, by taking minimal interpretations, always leaves room for series that elaborate more. Although that is admittedly a rather subjective reason not to switch.

On a different note, Ultima and Deagon's back-and-forth about the challenges towards this view of divine simplicity have been weird to read through. I've essentially agreed with whoever made the most recent post, and while Ultima has come back, Deagon's found himself too exhausted to respond any further. So I have a small amount of concern that Deagon's ultimately right; that there are philosophers who find reasonable flaws with Ultima's described basis for the tier. Which, I think, becomes a bit more of a problem since Ultima dismisses some concepts which, if taken seriously, would land higher, but are on even shakier philosophical ground (such as hard apophatic theology), despite fiction invoking those too. Although that reasoning is admittedly not too concrete.

And lastly, Ultima by default assumes that such tier 0 characters, were they to get a simple statement without much elaboration like "well, the Deity can't do that, they can only do things that are logically possible", would still be considered equal in power to tier 0 characters who can explicitly perform things that are logical contradictions. He justifies this by arguing that it's a common philosophical view that logically impossible tasks aren't tasks at all, and so that it's no limit on a being's power to not be able to actualise them. If they could be, such a deity would have the power to do so, and so both series should be treated as having equal power. I think this is a bit of a stretch too far for a low-context default. Although that is admittedly not too big of a deal.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Yeah, I kind of figured that those didn't really need to be there, since you basically summarized your stance a few posts up from my summary anyway. I see some of those discontentments as basically falling under the ones I've listed already, so, to give a quick overview of how. Not really for the sake of argument, just clarification:

To summarize my oustanding discontentments, since most of them weren't brought up by Ultima....

I view this suggested system as taking quite a high interpretation of the characters involved (the highest possible, with there not being any room in the system above it), and almost consequentially, past a certain minimum for qualifying, adding more information can only make such characters weaker, by introducing anti-feats and contradictory information that would get them downgraded. I've for a while liked how our system, by taking minimal interpretations, always leaves room for series that elaborate more. Although that is admittedly a rather subjective reason not to switch.

On a different note, Ultima and Deagon's back-and-forth about the challenges towards this view of divine simplicity have been weird to read through. I've essentially agreed with whoever made the most recent post, and while Ultima has come back, Deagon's found himself too exhausted to respond any further. So I have a small amount of concern that Deagon's ultimately right; that there are philosophers who find reasonable flaws with Ultima's described basis for the tier. Which, I think, becomes a bit more of a problem since Ultima dismisses some concepts which, if taken seriously, would land higher, but are on even shakier philosophical ground (such as hard apophatic theology), despite fiction invoking those too. Although that reasoning is admittedly not too concrete.

And lastly, Ultima by default assumes that such tier 0 characters, were they to get a simple statement without much elaboration like "well, the Deity can't do that, they can only do things that are logically possible", would still be considered equal in power to tier 0 characters who can explicitly perform things that are logical contradictions. He justifies this by arguing that it's a common philosophical view that logically impossible tasks aren't tasks at all, and so that it's no limit on a being's power to not be able to actualise them. If they could be, such a deity would have the power to do so, and so both series should be treated as having equal power. I think this is a bit of a stretch too far for a low-context default. Although that is admittedly not too big of a deal.

Since the first reason is pretty arbitrary/subjective at the end of the day, I won't really bother to pick it down.

The second is the one I just grouped under the "I won't recount the accusations of paradox here," since ultimately that's what said back-and-forth was about (Deagon thought I was saying Tier 0s transcend even the distinction between adjectives. As in, even mind-dependent distinctions were invalid for them). Otherwise, I wouldn't say this concept is any more "incoherent" than anything else we already accept and endorse (BDE, for example)

And lastly, Ultima by default assumes that such tier 0 characters, were they to get a simple statement without much elaboration like "well, the Deity can't do that, they can only do things that are logically possible", would still be considered equal in power to tier 0 characters who can explicitly perform things that are logical contradictions. He justifies this by arguing that it's a common philosophical view that logically impossible tasks aren't tasks at all, and so that it's no limit on a being's power to not be able to actualise them. If they could be, such a deity would have the power to do so, and so both series should be treated as having equal power. I think this is a bit of a stretch too far for a low-context default. Although that is admittedly not too big of a deal.

To be more specific: Not just because "it's a common philosophical view that's probably just what an author would be thinking of when saying that" (Though that does play a part, as someone who can scroll up and see our previous back-and-forth can take a gander at), but also as a general rule of thumb. I'd consider the threshold for when concepts become problematic to be "It causes contradictions." So I figured it's just quite natural to consider contradictory objects to be just, not things at all, even in potential.

 

[Firestorm808]

• Divine simplicity faces similar challenges to apophatic theology, while the latter is rejected due to its incoherence: I don't know enough about this to evaluate Ultima/Deagon's invocation of the relevant authorities, and I typically find myself siding with whoever posted on it most recently. I find this inconclusive.
  • I'm gonna need a recap on both to give a proper judgement.
• Enshrinement of the cosmological/ontological arguments: Part of this is sidestepped, and the rest has a sidestep attempt through saying that the ontological argument asserts that due to those conclusions, such a being must exist, while Ultima doesn't assert that. But I don't think that works; verbiage Ultima has used in the OP of this thread like "the actualizer of all categories and possibilities cannot be within any category or possibility" inherently implies the existence of a monad IRL, and really in every verse, since they have categories and possibilities which must be actualized by a being which can only be a monad. If such language and arguments are retracted I'd find this fine, but until then I find this quite concerning.
  • Is there an alternative wording that we can use?
• A setting with a cosmology lower than tier 0 could have it be fundamentally impossible for a tier 0 being to preside over it: This is how Ultima says it would work, and I find that unsatisfactory.
  • I also share Ag's sentiment.
• Monads restricted by logical impossibilities, and those not
  • Considering that we're calling Tier 0 "Boundless," such a restriction is significant.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Divine simplicity faces similar challenges to apophatic theology, while the latter is rejected due to its incoherence: I don't know enough about this to evaluate Ultima/Deagon's invocation of the relevant authorities, and I typically find myself siding with whoever posted on it most recently. I find this inconclusive.

• I'm gonna need a recap on both to give a proper judgement.

See this post, and the one below it. Basically, the back-and-forth started because I described Tier 0 using wording like "Beyond qualities" and "Unity of all attributes." Deagon objected because he thought that, by "qualities" and "attributes," I meant grammatical adjectives and such, which led to objections like "Having no attributes is an attribute, so the concept is illogical." Like I said, that's not really how I was using the terms.

• Enshrinement of the cosmological/ontological arguments: Part of this is sidestepped, and the rest has a sidestep attempt through saying that the ontological argument asserts that due to those conclusions, such a being must exist, while Ultima doesn't assert that. But I don't think that works; verbiage Ultima has used in the OP of this thread like "the actualizer of all categories and possibilities cannot be within any category or possibility" inherently implies the existence of a monad IRL, and really in every verse, since they have categories and possibilities which must be actualized by a being which can only be a monad. If such language and arguments are retracted I'd find this fine, but until then I find this quite concerning.
  • Is there an alternative wording that we can use?
• A setting with a cosmology lower than tier 0 could have it be fundamentally impossible for a tier 0 being to preside over it: This is how Ultima says it would work, and I find that unsatisfactory.
  • I also share Ag's sentiment.

Agnaa and I already wrapped those concerns up. See here.

Monads restricted by logical impossibilities, and those not

• Considering that we're calling Tier 0 "Boundless," such a restriction is significant.

That one got wrapped up here (After a few misunderstandings). Scroll back to see the full discussion if you like.

 

[Agnaa]

Part of the reason for restating is to avoid confusion on those which were since resolved.

But on your clarifications, Ultima, I'd say you're focusing on a different point of the disagreement with Deagon than I am; the paradox stuff was clarified far earlier, while the current stuff is just about philosophers endorsing some forms of divine simplicity, without it entailing all of the qualities Ultima has prescribed to the tier. The most recent relevant posts for that being here and here.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

while the current stuff is just about philosophers endorsing some forms of divine simplicity, without it entailing all of the qualities Ultima has prescribed to the tier. The most recent relevant posts for that being here and here.

Oh, that. I thought you were talking about the paradox stuff, since you mentioned "philosophers who find reasonable flaws with Ultima's described basis for the tier." Yeah, that's stuff I already deem addressed in the summary above, both in my clarifications that not every notion of "oneness" is sufficient for Tier 0 and in me linking my last big post.

(EDIT: Agnaa is directly responding my post answering him, by the way)

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

I'm going to support this revision, though not with as much fervor as the previous one. With that, it was a succinct, persuasive argument against a highly flawed system that, in my mind, presented an extremely logical alternative I had no excuse to not support. This one, on the other hand, though I can't find any problems in it that would lead me to oppose it, seems to me like trying to fill a gap almost nobody realized was there, so there's less fervor over my support this time because it's trying to make a mostly new addition where there wasn't anything before, which isn't a as necessarily needed thing as dismantling an inherently broken system, even if it's sound. Overall, I would've been content if we'd passed the previous thread and left it at that; this one feels more like a dose of "icing" I like but don't necessarily need in the Tiering System. Still, I'm supporting it.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I'm going to support this revision, though not with as much fervor as the previous one. With that, it was a succinct, persuasive argument against a highly flawed system that, in my mind, presented an extremely logical alternative I had no excuse to not support. This one, on the other hand, though I can't find any problems in it that would lead me to oppose it, seems to me like trying to fill a gap almost nobody realized was there, so there's less fervor over my support this time because it's trying to make a mostly new addition where there wasn't anything before, which isn't a as necessarily needed thing as dismantling an inherently broken system, even if it's sound. Overall, I would've been content if we'd passed the previous thread and left it at that; this one feels more like a dose of "icing" I like but don't necessarily need in the Tiering System. Still, I'm supporting it.

Noted.

 

[Planck69]

My vote is unchanged and I support the revision.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

My vote is unchanged and I support the revision.

Noted.

 

[Maverick_Zero_X]

[ping]

I still find the proposals to be more sensible than the current system and the counter arguments, so I remain in support of this revision.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I still the proposals to be more sensible than the current system and the counter arguments, so I remain in support of this revision.

Noted.

 

[CloverDragon03]

It’s definitely trickier for me to wrap my head around this revision as opposed to the previous one, but from what I understand, I believe this revision makes sense and I support it