Tiers Through State/Size

[Agnaa]

Problem​

There are a few oddities presented by the current setup of our Tiering System.

Despite tier being equivalent to Attack Potency, and thus, apparently representing how much a character can create/destroy, there are some tiers which don't properly line up with that:

Tier 1-A & High 1-A​

Characters or objects residing in higher states of existence surpassing material composition as a whole

1-A and High 1-A are about a character's state of existence, without requiring them to be able to physically effect lower worlds to a high degree of destruction. Although, admittedly, one could excuse this by saying that them doing anything at all involving their more-real bodies entails them exerting 1-A AP. But this defence becomes less convincing for abstract/non-physical characters.

Tier High 1-A+ Type 2​

The apex of this tier, represented also by a "+" modifier in their Attack Potency section (High Outerverse level+), corresponds to characters whose power encompasses meta-qualities, meta-meta-qualities, and any and all conceivable extensions of this process, being on a which in which their power influences the space of all logically possible worlds ("Logical space," where the laws governing it are the three laws of thought), being characters who either have the ability to actualize arbitrarily large worlds, or embody the framework of such worlds itself.

That said, characters who embody the framework of all possible worlds properly speaking may be rightly considered more powerful than those that can simply create arbitrarily big possible worlds while nevertheless existing in one.

By "Type 2" I am referring to characters who embody the framework of all possible worlds.

Such characters cannot physically exert a change across all of themselves. If there was a change they could cause upon themselves, resulting in there being different possible worlds before and after, then they were not truly embodying "all possible worlds" in at least one of those states.

In other words, such characters would have durability far exceeding the space they can effect.

Tier 0​

Entities who are completely transcendent over any and all forms of hierarchical extension. More specifically: They not only encompass the collection of all possible "qualities" represented by High 1-A+, but also exceed it utterly, existing beyond any and all distinctions between ontologies and any division between objects. They are beyond differentiation, changeless, indivisible, ineffable, self-sufficient and completely unsurpassable.

As such beings are changeless, a change cannot be exerted on an entity of their scale. While such characters could be the creators of a High 1-A+ Type 2 reality, they could not ever create/destroy a Tier 0.

So, on top of their durability exceeding that which they can effect, this rating is not possible to reach in terms of attack potency, if we're being strict about that only encompassing creation/destruction.

Solutions​

As far as I see it, there are three consistent solutions we could have for this:

1. Allow size/state to qualify by itself past a certain point (probably High 3-A, Low 2-C, or 1-A; but it could start at 10-C or even lower).
2. Allow size/state to qualify by itself, but place a certain conditional on that, and also rate how much they can affect. So certain profiles could be "High 1-A, 0 via size" or "4-C, Low 2-C via size".
3. Make current Tier 0 a durability-exclusive rating.

Out of these, I prefer 2>1>3

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Yeah, interesting topic. Getting back to this in a bit once I think through it.

 

[Antvasima]

@DontTalkDT @Executor_N0 @Elizhaa @Qawsedf234 @Planck69 @Everything12 @IdiosyncraticLawyer @GrathOfLux @FinePoint @SamanPatou @ActuallySpaceMan42

What do you think about this?

 

[Jin2188]

Got permission from @Vietthai96 to comment.

I am strongly against scaling the AP of characters via their size/state at all. Rather, we should be scaling them purely by the causal influence that they can exert. If a character embodies a mountain, then they might have Mountain level durability, but it would be nonsense to give them Mountain level AP just because they're a mountain, we only give that tier if they're actually capable of destroying and/or creating a mountain. This situation is the same regardless of what a character embodies, whether that be a city, a planet, or even a whole universe. On the other hand, if a character who embodies a universe is shown to be able to significantly affect their own structure (as in, actually manipulating the space-time continuum that they embody, not just something like moving galaxies around), then it would be more reasonable to grant them Universe+ level AP. I find it absurd and nonsensical for us to change our standards on this just because it's a higher tier we're talking about.

Tier 1-A & High 1-A​

1-A and High 1-A are about a character's state of existence, without requiring them to be able to physically effect lower worlds to a high degree of destruction. Although, admittedly, one could excuse this by saying that them doing anything at all involving their more-real bodies entails them exerting 1-A AP. But this defence becomes less convincing for abstract/non-physical characters.

Interacting with an ontologically superior realm is 1-A AP. Characters which exist in such a realm are therefore by nature 1-A, since they are at least able to manipulate their own form within that realm (Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to do anything at all). I don't see why this wouldn't apply to abstract characters as well, as Agnaa seems to suggest.

Tier High 1-A+ Type 2​

By "Type 2" I am referring to characters who embody the framework of all possible worlds.

Such characters cannot physically exert a change across all of themselves. If there was a change they could cause upon themselves, resulting in there being different possible worlds before and after, then they were not truly embodying "all possible worlds" in at least one of those states.

In other words, such characters would have durability far exceeding the space they can effect.

This is a serious problem imo, and I've advocated in the past for deleting High 1-A+ Type 2 as a whole because of this. The defense I gave for 1-A and High 1-A doesn't work in this situation, due to the nature of the space of all possible worlds as pointed out here. This would mean that such a character either can't do anything at all, or it would be a situation like Tier 0, where they aren't taking sequential actions from their own perspective, but their power appears to manifest at different points in time.

Either way, functionally, they're just High 1-A+ Type 1 but Omnipresent.

Tier 0​

As such beings are changeless, a change cannot be exerted on an entity of their scale. While such characters could be the creators of a High 1-A+ Type 2 reality, they could not ever create/destroy a Tier 0.

So, on top of their durability exceeding that which they can effect, this rating is not possible to reach in terms of attack potency, if we're being strict about that only encompassing creation/destruction.

Oh boy.

I feel that how we currently handle Tier 0 is at best very confusing, and outright contradictory at worst. The Omnipotence page seems to hold two mutually exclusive opinions on the subject.

On one hand:

As stated above, an omnipotent in this sense precedes and transcends essence and multiplicity, and so encompasses everything falling within such categories. Naturally, then, it is not constrained by any factors external to itself, and so if it is to act as the source and creator of reality (Which it might not), then, this activity is likewise completely unhindered by anything whatsoever.

Since there cannot be any multiplicity at all outside of that being's creative activity, this entails that the act in question must be a radical production leaving absolutely nothing out. Such a sourcing would constitute the creation not simply of particular objects, but also of essences themselves, whether those be reducible to such objects or not. Furthermore, essence, as definition, is the determiner of whether something is a possibility at all (e.g. A round square is an impossible object because "To be round" and "To be square" are mutually exclusive definitions), and therefore, in being the creator of essence, an omnipotent would also be the foundation of possibility itself.

That being the case, it is possible to say that it is prior to the modal category of possibility.

So it is prior to the space of all possible worlds and therefore transcends potentiality, but... it also doesn't?

Q: Is it a disqualifier for a would-be Tier 0 to be incapable of doing certain things?

A: Depends. For reasons already extensively discussed, a character being unable to accomplish contradictions is no impediment whatsoever to being Tier 0. In general, then, such things are only anti-feats if they imply a deficiency on the character's causal power, which is to say: There is some object or state-of-affairs X, existing in potentiality, that the character is incapable of bringing about. Contradictions are not such. However, if the verse does recognize contradictory objects as existing in potentiality, then that would indeed be a disqualifier.

So, a Tier 0 is simultaneously the source of potentiality, and yet is still somehow bound by it? Something's not adding up here.

And once again, my defense for 1-A and High 1-A doesn't work here, because:

A Tier 0 is utterly transcendent over any system of differences, divisions and inequalities. As such, it is not capable of change. Change is nothing but the progression from one state to another, which inherently signifies a division between the states in question (That is: Being in a certain state, at the exclusion of another). If a character is genuinely mutable, that means there exist divisions and inequalities in its level of existence, and therefore it is automatically disqualified from 0. Unless the change in question is somehow illusory, not reflecting anything in reality.

I had a conversation with Agnaa about this over on this thread, and I still have not received a satisfying answer. It seems like the current Tier 0 hinges entirely on a single stabilization feat for it's entire existence, which I find unacceptable. We either need to form a coherent idea of Tier 0 AP (which would likely include cutting out the "logical omnipotence" crap and just letting Tier 0 manipulate the space of all possible worlds) or just straight up delete Tier 0, because as it stands, once the space of all possible worlds has been created, there really isn't anything Tier 0 can do that High 1-A+ can't.

For the record, I much prefer the first option.

Solutions​

As far as I see it, there are three consistent solutions we could have for this:

1. Allow size/state to qualify by itself past a certain point (probably High 3-A, Low 2-C, or 1-A; but it could start at 10-C or even lower).
2. Allow size/state to qualify by itself, but place a certain conditional on that, and also rate how much they can affect. So certain profiles could be "High 1-A, 0 via size" or "4-C, Low 2-C via size".
3. Make current Tier 0 a durability-exclusive rating.

Out of these, I prefer 2>1>3

I hate all of these "solutions". It feels like you'd just be treating the symptom instead of the root problem which is inconsistent standards for how we tier things. AP literally stands for "Attack Potency", the potency of a character's attacks, which with higher tiers translates into the scope of causal influence their actions can have. With as much respect as I can muster, it is completely idiotic to give a character a certain level of Attack Potency purely because they're big. You need evidence that they can actually influence things on that level to be able do that. With 1-A and High 1-A, the evidence/explanation for that is pretty simple and self-evident, so I don't think we really need to address that. What we do need to address is High 1-A+ Type 2 and especially Tier 0. If we can't find a reasonable justification for these tiers having greater causal influence than High 1-A+ Type 1, then they should just be straight-up deleted.

I believe this is possible for Tier 0, although it would require some modification of the Omnipotence page as well as adjustment of our standards.

For High 1-A+ Type 2, however, I do not believe this is possible, and so it should be deleted.

 

[Agnaa]

I am strongly against scaling the AP of characters via their size/state at all. Rather, we should be scaling them purely by the causal influence that they can exert. If a character embodies a mountain, then they might have Mountain level durability, but it would be nonsense to give them Mountain level AP just because they're a mountain, we only give that tier if they're actually capable of destroying and/or creating a mountain. This situation is the same regardless of what a character embodies, whether that be a city, a planet, or even a whole universe. On the other hand, if a character who embodies a universe is shown to be able to significantly affect their own structure (as in, actually manipulating the space-time continuum that they embody, not just something like moving galaxies around), then it would be more reasonable to grant them Universe+ level AP. I find it absurd and nonsensical for us to change our standards on this just because it's a higher tier we're talking about.

Fair. Although ultimately, I view this as a matter of preference.

Interacting with an ontologically superior realm is 1-A AP. Characters which exist in such a realm are therefore by nature 1-A, since they are at least able to manipulate their own form within that realm (Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to do anything at all). I don't see why this wouldn't apply to abstract characters as well, as Agnaa seems to suggest.

They wouldn't have to be able to manipulate their own form to do things. They could simply do things by manipulating lower realms.

Imagine the Concept of Storytelling, an abstract entity which rewrites the story of reality in line with its preferences, which beings can appeal to for favourable treatment by setting up situations in their lives where a fairytale resolution would require some violation of the laws of physics. This could have a meaningful presence in this verse despite not altering its own form or realm in any way.

Now, one could argue that in order for such an entity to respond to events its mind would need to change, and since its mind is a 1-A construct, having any thoughts/perception automatically requires 1-A AP. On top of the silliness of this AP being listed despite it being completely inapplicable, I think it's still viewing abstract realms through a lens that is too limited. Assuming that changes in it require some higher force driven by a particular entity, when it could simply be a rule updating their mental state which they do not supply the energy for. This might sound like a bit of a reach, but then consider how 1-A realms can be influenced by the collective belief of humans without that causing a contradiction; those humans are not sending out 1-A energy beams to rewrite the realm, it's just a rule of the realm that it is updated in response to things which could not directly effect it without that rule.

So, I think there is still an issue here.

Either way, functionally, they're just High 1-A+ Type 1 but Omnipresent.

I'd more say that they're High 1-A+ Type 1 but with High 1-A+ Type 2 durability, since that is the extent of reality which would need to be destroyed to noticeably affect them.

Oh boy.

I feel that how we currently handle Tier 0 is at best very confusing, and outright contradictory at worst. The Omnipotence page seems to hold two mutually exclusive opinions on the subject.

On one hand:

So it is prior to the space of all possible worlds and therefore transcends potentiality, but... it also doesn't?

So, a Tier 0 is simultaneously the source of potentiality, and yet is still somehow bound by it? Something's not adding up here.

And once again, my defense for 1-A and High 1-A doesn't work here, because:

I had a conversation with Agnaa about this over on this thread, and I still have not received a satisfying answer.

I'm personally not super satisfied with the answer, DT and I disagreed with this proposal for Tier 0 for similar reasons, but it's the one that the vast majority of our staff base voted on.

And well, the answer is that they transcend potentiality, but that certain paradoxical things are not "potentials". A monad who can only create that which is logically coherent is not limited, because there is still no object which they are unable to create. Everything which can be an object is something that they can create.

Different pieces of fiction can draw different lines on what those sets of objects are, but we generally equalise between them.

because as it stands, once the space of all possible worlds has been created, there really isn't anything Tier 0 can do that High 1-A+ can't.

They might be able to unmake it, I guess?

I hate all of these "solutions". It feels like you'd just be treating the symptom instead of the root problem which is inconsistent standards for how we tier things.

Solution 3 would tackle that root problem. 1-A/High 1-A characters which cannot create/destroy 1-A/High 1-A objects would receive lower tiers, and the only characters that receive High 1-A+ Type 2 AP are characters which are currently Tier 0.

I believe this is possible for Tier 0, although it would require some modification of the Omnipotence page as well as adjustment of our standards.

I'm not sure how the issues about Tier 0 you've gestured at in your post relate to Tier 0 not being something characters can create/destroy on the scale of.

 

[DontTalkDT]

Ignoring logic manipulation related points I will get back to at some point probably, I basically agree.
For an attack potency like stat the character should have an ability to "significantly affect" a reference structure in question.
I have argued that for lesser tiers as well in the past, for character who are the whole universe but have shown no ability to significantly affect their own body on the grand scale.
Generally, it depends on how the size contextually works and all. A living universe that walks around would IMO qualify even without strict destructive feats.

For the higher tiers you mention I would pretty much give the same standards. So yeah, I guess we should decouple High 1-A+ and Tier 0 Tiers from AP and rank them by what kind of AP-like power they can actually produce. Although for Tier 0, I suppose the practical option here is to just redefine the Tier 0 standard AP as "inapplicable" or something, as none of them have any kind of AP on grounds that they can't have qualifying feats.

 

[Agnaa]

Ignoring logic manipulation related points I will get back to at some point probably, I basically agree.
For an attack potency like stat the character should have an ability to "significantly affect" a reference structure in question.
I have argued that for lesser tiers as well in the past, for character who are the whole universe but have shown no ability to significantly affect their own body on the grand scale.
Generally, it depends on how the size contextually works and all. A living universe that walks around would IMO qualify even without strict destructive feats.

For the higher tiers you mention I would pretty much give the same standards. So yeah, I guess we should decouple High 1-A+ and Tier 0 Tiers from AP and rank them by what kind of AP-like power they can actually produce. Although for Tier 0, I suppose the practical option here is to just redefine the Tier 0 standard AP as "inapplicable" or something, as none of them have any kind of AP on grounds that they can't have qualifying feats.

Any particular thoughts on 1-A characters? Would you also decouple there, or just have certain inhabitants of 1-A realms not get that tier?

 

[Jin2188]

Got @Antvasima's permission to reply again once.

They wouldn't have to be able to manipulate their own form to do things. They could simply do things by manipulating lower realms.

Imagine the Concept of Storytelling, an abstract entity which rewrites the story of reality in line with its preferences, which beings can appeal to for favourable treatment by setting up situations in their lives where a fairytale resolution would require some violation of the laws of physics. This could have a meaningful presence in this verse despite not altering its own form or realm in any way.

Now, one could argue that in order for such an entity to respond to events its mind would need to change, and since its mind is a 1-A construct, having any thoughts/perception automatically requires 1-A AP. On top of the silliness of this AP being listed despite it being completely inapplicable, I think it's still viewing abstract realms through a lens that is too limited. Assuming that changes in it require some higher force driven by a particular entity, when it could simply be a rule updating their mental state which they do not supply the energy for. This might sound like a bit of a reach, but then consider how 1-A realms can be influenced by the collective belief of humans without that causing a contradiction; those humans are not sending out 1-A energy beams to rewrite the realm, it's just a rule of the realm that it is updated in response to things which could not directly effect it without that rule.

So, I think there is still an issue here.

Thanks for elaborating on this. I can definitely see the issue here, but I still don't think it's unmanageable.

Being a 1-A entity involves being ontologically superior to baseline reality, so that it literally doesn't even look like anything tangible to you.

They, in other words, transcend lower existences to the point that those vanish into nothingness.

R>F is probably the most commonly used example and analogy for this, and for good reason. Relative to a piece of fiction, an ant, a microbe, hell, even a subatomic particle would have 1-A AP, since the scope of what those things can affect is still far, far greater than what characters in the fiction can affect. I know abstract realms are a bit different from R>F, but, at least in this regard, they're equivalent, otherwise, they wouldn't both be 1-A.

Your example does make a point about how we should be more careful when putting characters at certain tiers, but I would also like to point out that said example is a pretty severe edge case and definitely not the norm for 1-A entities. Such edge cases should be evaluated more closely, but I really don't see the problem with assuming 1-A by default, since characters that exist on a higher level of reality would, at least in most circumstances, have a far greater scope of things they can affect than lower tier entities.

I'd more say that they're High 1-A+ Type 1 but with High 1-A+ Type 2 durability, since that is the extent of reality which would need to be destroyed to noticeably affect them.

That's literally the same thing as being Omnipresent. Being Omnipresent within the space of all possible worlds would mean that you'd have to affect that space to be able to affect them. Same thing for being Omnipresent within a universe, or a multiverse, or a 1-A realm. There's still no justification for it being its own tier, even as a durability tier.

I'm personally not super satisfied with the answer, DT and I disagreed with this proposal for Tier 0 for similar reasons, but it's the one that the vast majority of our staff base voted on.

And well, the answer is that they transcend potentiality, but that certain paradoxical things are not "potentials". A monad who can only create that which is logically coherent is not limited, because there is still no object which they are unable to create. Everything which can be an object is something that they can create.

Different pieces of fiction can draw different lines on what those sets of objects are, but we generally equalise between them.

I mean no disrespect to any members of staff by saying this (especially you, don't shoot the messenger and all that), but that is a really, really stupid answer imo.

So a Tier 0 can create potentiality, but can't manipulate it after the fact?

If you're creating something, you're determining it's properties in the process, otherwise what you created would be completely random. Tier 0 created the space of all possible worlds. Therefore, it determined it in the process. Therefore, it should be able to determine otherwise. The supposition that it can't is just really dumb.

Hell, the Omnipotence page literally agrees with me on this in some parts:

As it is prior to all else, a Tier 0's mode of bringing things into existence is totally unconditioned and does not depend on any extrinsic factors. Whereas conventional "Creation from nothing" simply entails actualizing things that were already possible, it instead generates and determines possibility itself. And whereas other things simply create things inside a setting where plurality and distinction already exists, a Tier 0 creates these very things to begin with.

Since there cannot be any multiplicity at all outside of that being's creative activity, this entails that the act in question must be a radical production leaving absolutely nothing out. Such a sourcing would constitute the creation not simply of particular objects, but also of essences themselves, whether those be reducible to such objects or not. Furthermore, essence, as definition, is the determiner of whether something is a possibility at all (e.g. A round square is an impossible object because "To be round" and "To be square" are mutually exclusive definitions), and therefore, in being the creator of essence, an omnipotent would also be the foundation of possibility itself.

But once again, the page contradicts itself by postulating that actually, it is bound by logic and potentiality, never mind the fact that it literally created those things.

If this is what the majority of staff agreed on, then another vote needs to be held to clear things up. This contradictory nonsense cannot be allowed to stand.

Solution 3 would tackle that root problem.

Eh, not really, and even if it did, at what cost? You'd only really succeed in massively confusing a whole bunch of people and breaking the congruency between AP and Durability. A far less destructive solution would be preferable.

My suggestion would be to simply refactor what you call High 1-A+ Type 2 AP as Tier 0 AP. Yes, Tier 0 can't affect other Tier 0s, and it can't affect itself since it's changeless, but it can create and manipulate the space of all possible worlds, which no other tier can do, so we can simply have that as the definition of Tier 0 AP. It'd be a bit weird, maybe, but Tier 0 is inherently unique, so I think it's acceptable.

I'm not sure how the issues about Tier 0 you've gestured at in your post relate to Tier 0 not being something characters can create/destroy on the scale of.

See above.

 

[Agnaa]

Thanks for elaborating on this. I can definitely see the issue here, but I still don't think it's unmanageable.

Being a 1-A entity involves being ontologically superior to baseline reality, so that it literally doesn't even look like anything tangible to you.

R>F is probably the most commonly used example and analogy for this, and for good reason. Relative to a piece of fiction, an ant, a microbe, hell, even a subatomic particle would have 1-A AP, since the scope of what those things can affect is still far, far greater than what characters in the fiction can affect. I know abstract realms are a bit different from R>F, but, at least in this regard, they're equivalent, otherwise, they wouldn't both be 1-A.

Your example does make a point about how we should be more careful when putting characters at certain tiers, but I would also like to point out that said example is a pretty severe edge case and definitely not the norm for 1-A entities. Such edge cases should be evaluated more closely, but I really don't see the problem with assuming 1-A by default, since characters that exist on a higher level of reality would, at least in most circumstances, have a far greater scope of things they can affect than lower tier entities.

Yeah, I think it's a pretty small issue, a qualifier that most verses could just briefly check off, but I still think it's worth addressing. Either by adding a sentence about it, or changing the standards for AP in general.

That's literally the same thing as being Omnipresent. Being Omnipresent within the space of all possible worlds would mean that you'd have to affect that space to be able to affect them. Same thing for being Omnipresent within a universe, or a multiverse, or a 1-A realm. There's still no justification for it being its own tier, even as a durability tier.

All thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs. All High 1-A+ Type 2 beings are omnipresent, but not all beings omnipresent across the space of all possibilities are High 1-A+ Type 2.

Their substance is the same thing as everything that exists within all possible worlds. Beings omnipresent across that space could be destroyed without affecting that space itself, and (ignoring how we say that such a space is immutable) a large portion of that space could be destroyed without affecting that omnipresent being at all.

I think the justification for it being its own rating is how it represents a notably different space of power. The set of all finite numbers has some notably different properties from "has power equivalent to an arbitrarily high finite number"; this is expressed in other tiers, actually. Arbitrarily many dimensions is the highest extent of 1-B, while all dimensions is High 1-B. This second type of High 1-A+ is the parallel of that in the ultimate ensemble.

I mean no disrespect to any members of staff by saying this (especially you, don't shoot the messenger and all that), but that is a really, really stupid answer imo.

So a Tier 0 can create potentiality, but can't manipulate it after the fact?

If you're creating something, you're determining it's properties in the process, otherwise what you created would be completely random. Tier 0 created the space of all possible worlds. Therefore, it determined it in the process. Therefore, it should be able to determine otherwise. The supposition that it can't is just really dumb.

Hell, the Omnipotence page literally agrees with me on this in some parts:

But once again, the page contradicts itself by postulating that actually, it is bound by logic and potentiality, never mind the fact that it literally created those things.

If this is what the majority of staff agreed on, then another vote needs to be held to clear things up. This contradictory nonsense cannot be allowed to stand.

Ah, I see what you mean.

I believe that our view is that they can choose to create a subset of those worlds, but that the furthest extent of them is constant and equal between all verses.

If they decided to create all possible worlds, it determined that all of them would be created. If they decided to only create the worlds that were ultimately Good, that would be one of arbitrarily many possible choices otherwise.

Our staff seemed to have reaaaaaally not wanted there to be any variation in the power of Tier 0s.

My suggestion would be to simply refactor what you call High 1-A+ Type 2 AP as Tier 0 AP. Yes, Tier 0 can't affect other Tier 0s, and it can't affect itself since it's changeless, but it can create and manipulate the space of all possible worlds, which no other tier can do, so we can simply have that as the definition of Tier 0 AP. It'd be a bit weird, maybe, but Tier 0 is inherently unique, so I think it's acceptable.

The biggest issue I have with this is I think it leads to some weirdness with the current High 1-A+ Type 2 characters. I still believe that they would have durability on this level, and to square this with there no longer being a rating for monads' level of existence, how would a monad's durability be listed? At the same "all possible worlds" level, but also give them an ability that they're actually more immutable than that? That seems weird, because their durability isn't actually related to/sourced from that directly, it's beyond that.

Also, I wonder if that would cause any weirdness with the level of evidence we require.

I guess the minimal change view would be that only monads could act as the prime mover for all possible worlds, but I'm not sure how much basis that has.

I'd also wonder if this would have any effect on which series qualify; do all Tier 0s have enough evidence for us to say that they created or are capable of destroying their reality? I think this is probably the case for the vast majority, but I wonder if there's any edge-cases.

 

[DontTalkDT]

Any particular thoughts on 1-A characters? Would you also decouple there, or just have certain inhabitants of 1-A realms not get that tier?

What are we thinking of in that regard? Like, a R>F character that can't interact with the fiction in any way? Or are there other scenarios?

 

[Vietthai96]

For an attack potency like stat the character should have an ability to "significantly affect" a reference structure in question.

What about characters who
1. Can merge with the structure, since in a sense, they affects the structure and merge with it
2. Have some form of UES that allow scaling between Durability and AP, since if the character being the structure itself, said character should at least should have the same durability as the structure

Although for Tier 0, I suppose the practical option here is to just redefine the Tier 0 standard AP as "inapplicable" or something, as none of them have any kind of AP on grounds that they can't have qualifying feats.

I'm thinking about keeping Boundless in AP but making a note in Tier 0 section about being inapplicable. Tbf, current AP section is an all-catching section that cover almost everything from potency of attack, to size and some other things

 

[Agnaa]

What are we thinking of in that regard? Like, a R>F character that can't interact with the fiction in any way? Or are there other scenarios?

Such a character could arguably be exerting 1-A energy by simply existing.

I was imagining a character that has only demonstrated limited-scale influence of realms below 1-A, and otherwise resides in a 1-A realm without having a physical body which they would necessarily need to exert 1-A energy to maintain. Under the idea that if they don't have a 1-A construct we know they're influencing, and they don't demonstrate arbitrarily potent influence over a lower realm, we couldn't assume that their influence is actually 1-A, despite having such a state of existence.

But then again, given the nature of such series, perhaps they would always incidentally end up getting statements implying that? I'm starting to doubt this a lot more now.

What about characters who
1. Can merge with the structure, since in a sense, they affects the structure and merge with it

That's (part of) what significantly affect means.

"Significantly affect" is here used as an umbrella term for feats that don't involve direct creation or destruction but are comparable to them in power, such as warping and distorting the entirety of the structure in question, sustaining its existence with energy, merging the structure with another one, etc.

2. Have some form of UES that allow scaling between Durability and AP, since if the character being the structure itself, said character should at least should have the same durability as the structure

I think this idea makes no sense.

If it's a UES giving them their durability, then that implies that if the UES stops working their durability would drop. Are you suggesting that this living multiverse would stop being a living multiverse if it stopped expending energy to maintain its durability-buff?

If we know that it's already extending its durability far beyond what would be typical of a structure of its size, then you wouldn't even need the structural scaling in this way at all, I'd think.

 

[Vietthai96]

I think this idea makes no sense.

If it's a UES giving them their durability, then that implies that if the UES stops working their durability would drop. Are you suggesting that this living multiverse would stop being a living multiverse if it stopped expending energy to maintain its durability-buff?

I mean the characters themselves have energy within them while being the structure and said energy allow them to scale between Durability and AP, and even Striking Strength

 

[Agnaa]

I mean the characters themselves have energy within them while being the structure and said energy allow them to scale between Durability and AP, and even Striking Strength

Even a UES only scales based on the energy it adds.

If a character punches with 10^21 joules, and then using an energy system they can now punch with 300 additional joules, their energy blasts would not be taken to be 10^21 joules.

Generally we deal with characters that grow noticeably stronger through a UES, but a sentient multiverse that contains an energy has no need to operate that way.

 

[DontTalkDT]

What about characters who
1. Can merge with the structure, since in a sense, they affects the structure and merge with it

If they merge in a purely metaphysical sense it doesn't alter the structure in any significant way. E.g. being a ghost that "possesses" a mountain but is incapable of moving or altering it is not an AP-like feat.
If they merge in a fashion that actually significantly alters the structure (e.g. changing its material) it might be a feat that can be scaled via UES.
If they merge and can subsequently, for instance, move the structure, that's a feat.

2. Have some form of UES that allow scaling between Durability and AP, since if the character being the structure itself, said character should at least should have the same durability as the structure

Durability via size is different from durability via Ki armor. So the system would need to state rather explicitely something like "anyone of size x has enough energy to destroy a structure of size x".
And for stuff like High 1-A+ "Type 2" this obviously doesn't work, as you can't reach this tier via equivalent power.

Such a character could arguably be exerting 1-A energy by simply existing.

I was imagining a character that has only demonstrated limited-scale influence of realms below 1-A, and otherwise resides in a 1-A realm without having a physical body which they would necessarily need to exert 1-A energy to maintain. Under the idea that if they don't have a 1-A construct we know they're influencing, and they don't demonstrate arbitrarily potent influence over a lower realm, we couldn't assume that their influence is actually 1-A, despite having such a state of existence.

But then again, given the nature of such series, perhaps they would always incidentally end up getting statements implying that? I'm starting to doubt this a lot more now.

The scenario seems imaginable. I think there could also be Low 1-A characters that qualify as sufficiently above dimensions to qualify but have no way to interact with dimensional space or anything else for that matter.
One could even go a step further and talk about a character that is 1-A by level of existence, but utterly incapable of taking any actions whatsoever.
So I think one can extend the general idea of having the state of existence but not the attack power towards the ranking, although it is more nieche.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Yeah, I think 1 is pretty clearly the option the system presupposes currently. The general idea between the qualitative tiers is just a kind of power that fully dominates some given plurality of things while being irreducible to it, i.e. The power can't be divided down into the plurality so as to be exhausted by it, and the plurality can't be added up to itself (Or to anything else) to match the power. So for example: Low 1-A has no quantitative endpoint at all, you can just go on forever into it, hence a character that has full domain over arbitrarily big Low 1-A realms has a sort of power that can't be equated with any one of these realms nor gauged up as a "sum" of them all, thus resolved into a different sort of infinity altogether (=qualitatively, rather than quantitatively, greater). Likewise a High 1-A character would have power over any and all extensions of 1-A, while not being exhausted by any one of these potential effects.

(To be clear I say the logic holds true regardless of whether the lower tier has a determinate sum or not, hence Tier 0 is superior to High 1-A+, the latter being sort of like the differentiated "expression" of the former, by the same line of thought even as High 1-A+ is supposed to be a completed 'space.' But the indefinitely rising nature of the tiers immediately below 1-A and High 1-A helps illustrate it)

Rating the AP of that as just "Arbitrarily into Low 1-A" or "Arbitrarily into 1-A" doesn't really make sense in my eyes because it's not like their power is indeterminate (Even under a hypothetical where it has no causal influence on its own level of reality). It's an entirely determinate thing that actually, and not just potentially, encompasses and exceeds all possible lower levels (The generative "wellspring" behind all the effects they cause, so to say), which the aforementioned move fails to note, and noting that in their durability section is obviously really awkward, just off the fact that "Attack Potency" is widely viewed as just the explanatory correlative of the "Tier" stat. So the only sensible solution to my mind is modulating the definition of AP a little (At least for these tiers) such that it doesn't include just the external effects that a character dishes out but also the potency those effects emerge from. And this is especially apt given that, from 1-A and up, the "potency" in question generally just identifies itself with the "physiology" (so-to-speak) of the character, save in the odd-case where it's a 3-D character with hax or hax-adjacent amps mimicking a 1-A scope.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Allow size/state to qualify by itself past a certain point (probably High 3-A, Low 2-C, or 1-A; but it could start at 10-C or even lower).

The point in question would be 11-C, also. Or more specifically the 0-D part of 11-C, since that's basically to a qualitatively inferior level what 1-A is to everything else. Everything in-between isn't really the same thing.

 

[DontTalkDT]

Yeah, I think 1 is pretty clearly the option the system presupposes currently. The general idea between the qualitative tiers is just a kind of power that fully dominates some given plurality of things while being irreducible to it, i.e. The power can't be divided down into the plurality so as to be exhausted by it, and the plurality can't be added up to itself (Or to anything else) to match the power. So for example: Low 1-A has no quantitative endpoint at all, you can just go on forever into it, hence a character that has full domain over arbitrarily big Low 1-A realms has a sort of power that can't be equated with any one of these realms nor gauged up as a "sum" of them all, thus resolved into a different sort of infinity altogether (=qualitatively, rather than quantitatively, greater). Likewise a High 1-A character would have power over any and all extensions of 1-A, while not being exhausted by any one of these potential effects.

(To be clear I say the logic holds true regardless of whether the lower tier has a determinate sum or not, hence Tier 0 is superior to High 1-A+, the latter being sort of like the differentiated "expression" of the former, by the same line of thought even as High 1-A+ is supposed to be a completed 'space.' But the indefinitely rising nature of the tiers immediately below 1-A and High 1-A helps illustrate it)

Rating the AP of that as just "Arbitrarily into Low 1-A" or "Arbitrarily into 1-A" doesn't really make sense in my eyes because it's not like their power is indeterminate (Even under a hypothetical where it has no causal influence on its own level of reality). It's an entirely determinate thing that actually, and not just potentially, encompasses and exceeds all possible lower levels (The generative "wellspring" behind all the effects they cause, so to say), which the aforementioned move fails to note, and noting that in their durability section is obviously really awkward, just off the fact that "Attack Potency" is widely viewed as just the explanatory correlative of the "Tier" stat. So the only sensible solution to my mind is modulating the definition of AP a little (At least for these tiers) such that it doesn't include just the external effects that a character dishes out but also the potency those effects emerge from. And this is especially apt given that, from 1-A and up, the "potency" in question generally just identifies itself with the "physiology" (so-to-speak) of the character, save in the odd-case where it's a 3-D character with hax or hax-adjacent amps mimicking a 1-A scope.

I don't see which of these things established an Attack Potency like relationship.
You're fully correct that these beings have a determinate level of power. However, that power is not necessarily Attack Potency like or equal to their level of existence.
A character existing at a certain level of existence, but being neither able to affect a construct equivalent to that defining said tier nor able to affect anything lower than that, perhaps even able to not affect anything at all, has no significant Attack Potency stat.
One may say that in some metaphysical sense such a character still has power, but that's not Attack Potency.

Attack Potency is:

The Destructive Capacity that an attack is equivalent to. A character with a certain degree of attack potency does not necessarily need to cause destructive feats on that level, but can cause damage to characters that can withstand such forces

Tier 0 AP implies the ability to harm a Tier 0.
High 1-A+ AP would imply the ability to harm a High 1-A+ (or specifically, a being that has the durability to survive an attack capable of destroying the defining structure of High 1-A+).
If "causing damage" is not a possibility at these levels, then power in all senses that exist at that level is not Attack Potency in my eyes.
There would be little meaning to give a character a high AP stat if there is no imaginable scenario in which they are capable of actually damaging anyone in a fight. We are trying the reflect fighting capabilities, after all.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

There would be little meaning to give a character a high AP stat if there is no imaginable scenario in which they are capable of actually damaging anyone in a fight. We are trying the reflect fighting capabilities, after all.

There is much meaning insofar as we want to index the power of the character. "Capacity to deal damage" doesn't exhaust that spectrum, as you yourself agree, and listing that under "Durability" just needlessly sidelines it (Especially given that the usual procedure is explaining the tier in the AP). So given that and the identity between the potency of the character and their physiology, I'd say it's fair to give it a significant spot somewhere, and AP seems to be the closest analogue unless we feel like making a new section titled just "Potency." Imagine if we had a Tier 12 rating for qualitatively inferior levels and a character who is 0-D (Think the Monarch of Pointland and give him the power to dream up lower worlds or something) gets put there instead of 11-C because "Technically, it can't attack on its own level." How strange would that be.

 

[FinePoint]

I think 1 both makes sense generally and is what we're already doing.
Without elaboration, I think it's pretty safe to assume that existing at a certain level gives you influence at that level.

That said, I wouldn't see the harm in sometimes differentiating the 'tier via size' and the 'tier via AP' if it's particularly notable for that character, like if they regularly display influence far lower than what their canon size would imply.

 

[Agnaa]

The general idea between the qualitative tiers is just a kind of power that fully dominates some given plurality of things while being irreducible to it, i.e. The power can't be divided down into the plurality so as to be exhausted by it, and the plurality can't be added up to itself (Or to anything else) to match the power. So for example: Low 1-A has no quantitative endpoint at all, you can just go on forever into it, hence a character that has full domain over arbitrarily big Low 1-A realms has a sort of power that can't be equated with any one of these realms nor gauged up as a "sum" of them all, thus resolved into a different sort of infinity altogether (=qualitatively, rather than quantitatively, greater). Likewise a High 1-A character would have power over any and all extensions of 1-A, while not being exhausted by any one of these potential effects.

(To be clear I say the logic holds true regardless of whether the lower tier has a determinate sum or not, hence Tier 0 is superior to High 1-A+, the latter being sort of like the differentiated "expression" of the former, by the same line of thought even as High 1-A+ is supposed to be a completed 'space.' But the indefinitely rising nature of the tiers immediately below 1-A and High 1-A helps illustrate it)

Rating the AP of that as just "Arbitrarily into Low 1-A" or "Arbitrarily into 1-A" doesn't really make sense in my eyes because it's not like their power is indeterminate (Even under a hypothetical where it has no causal influence on its own level of reality). It's an entirely determinate thing that actually, and not just potentially, encompasses and exceeds all possible lower levels (The generative "wellspring" behind all the effects they cause, so to say), which the aforementioned move fails to note

To clarify, for stuff below High 1-A+ Type 2, I agree. I just said stuff like:

I was imagining a character that has only demonstrated limited-scale influence of realms below 1-A, and otherwise resides in a 1-A realm without having a physical body which they would necessarily need to exert 1-A energy to maintain. Under the idea that if they don't have a 1-A construct we know they're influencing, and they don't demonstrate arbitrarily potent influence over a lower realm, we couldn't assume that their influence is actually 1-A, despite having such a state of existence.

To use "arbitrarily potent influence over a lower realm" as a sign that they have power greater than any lower realm.

For High 1-A+ Type 2 and above, the immutability stops that idea from really working.

But I am still fine with pretending otherwise as a stopgap solution.

 

[Jin2188]

Yeah, I think it's a pretty small issue, a qualifier that most verses could just briefly check off, but I still think it's worth addressing. Either by adding a sentence about it, or changing the standards for AP in general.

Fair. I think a section in the Tiering System FAQ should do the trick.

All thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs. All High 1-A+ Type 2 beings are omnipresent, but not all beings omnipresent across the space of all possibilities are High 1-A+ Type 2.

Their substance is the same thing as everything that exists within all possible worlds. Beings omnipresent across that space could be destroyed without affecting that space itself, and (ignoring how we say that such a space is immutable) a large portion of that space could be destroyed without affecting that omnipresent being at all.

Hmm. In that case, we're in a bit of a bind.

I think maintaining congruency between AP and Durability should be one of our top priorities here. What you've posited here seems to put a wrench in that.

I think the justification for it being its own rating is how it represents a notably different space of power. The set of all finite numbers has some notably different properties from "has power equivalent to an arbitrarily high finite number"; this is expressed in other tiers, actually. Arbitrarily many dimensions is the highest extent of 1-B, while all dimensions is High 1-B. This second type of High 1-A+ is the parallel of that in the ultimate ensemble.

Yes, but how do we justify them being causally more powerful than Type 1? We could just assert that they're "stronger" in that they can just shut down any Type 1 shenanigans, but it's difficult to find a solid basis or justification for that.

The best explanation I can think of for such a thing is that it's essentially the difference between "bottom up" and "top down". To use the same language you've used in the past, Type 2 embodies the set of all possible worlds, while Type 1 can manipulate an arbitrarily large subset of those worlds. Neither can actually manipulate the set of all possible worlds, but Type 2 exists as that set, and so is at the "top", while Type 1 aims at the top from the "bottom". Type 1 can never reach Type 2, but Type 2 can "reach down" and neutralize Type 1s that are making a mess by manipulating a larger subset, since they start at the top.

That's the best I can really do, but I admit that it's pretty shaky.

There's also the fact that there's no way of separating a Type 2's tier from the nature of their existence. Even Tier 0s have ways of accomplishing this:

However, a loophole of sorts is present if a character is, in some way, fully backed up by one. For example, if a character has the full favor of a Tier 0, who blesses and empowers them to be protected from all harm. Alternatively, a character could also be an avatar, or incarnation, of a Tier 0.

But if a Type 2 were to do something similar, then it would just become Type 1, even with the shaky explanation I gave earlier. I don't think that we should have AP tiers that don't actually really have any greater AP than lower tiers. A better option probably would be to turn Type 2 into an ability instead (Maybe call it "Nigh-Omnipotence" or something, wink wink nudge nudge?). There's already precedent for durability-related abilities on this wiki (Invulnerability, Types 2 and 5 of Immortality, and even Large Size come to mind), and since you have to really stretch things to make Type 2 causally more powerful than Type 1, it probably works better that way.

Ah, I see what you mean.

I believe that our view is that they can choose to create a subset of those worlds, but that the furthest extent of them is constant and equal between all verses.

If they decided to create all possible worlds, it determined that all of them would be created. If they decided to only create the worlds that were ultimately Good, that would be one of arbitrarily many possible choices otherwise.

Our staff seemed to have reaaaaaally not wanted there to be any variation in the power of Tier 0s.

And if they decided to create all possible and impossible worlds, what then?

We can't just say they can't do that, unless we want to contradict the Omnipotence page yet again:

Q: Is it a disqualifier for a would-be Tier 0 to be incapable of doing certain things?

A: Depends. For reasons already extensively discussed, a character being unable to accomplish contradictions is no impediment whatsoever to being Tier 0. In general, then, such things are only anti-feats if they imply a deficiency on the character's causal power, which is to say: There is some object or state-of-affairs X, existing in potentiality, that the character is incapable of bringing about. Contradictions are not such. However, if the verse does recognize contradictory objects as existing in potentiality, then that would indeed be a disqualifier.

So which is it? Are they bound by logic and potentiality, or do they determine those things? Make it make sense.

The biggest issue I have with this is I think it leads to some weirdness with the current High 1-A+ Type 2 characters. I still believe that they would have durability on this level, and to square this with there no longer being a rating for monads' level of existence, how would a monad's durability be listed? At the same "all possible worlds" level, but also give them an ability that they're actually more immutable than that? That seems weird, because their durability isn't actually related to/sourced from that directly, it's beyond that.

The weirdness with High 1-A+ Type 2 can be fixed by turning it into an ability.

Since Tier 0 is by nature an entirely unique entity (since there can only be one of it), we can't define it's AP as "being able to affect things on the level of itself" because there is nothing else on that level, there can't be. We have to use a different metric, which I think should be the ability to manipulate the space of all possible worlds. This would not affect Tier 0 Durability, we don't need to list it differently or give them an extra ability. I know I complained earlier in the thread about "inconsistent standards for tiering", but I think with Tier 0 we don't really have any other choice, and we still be consistent with the philosophy of "tier characters by their causal influence, not just by their state of existence".

I guess the minimal change view would be that only monads could act as the prime mover for all possible worlds, but I'm not sure how much basis that has.

Isn't this what we already do? That was the impression I got at least.

I'd also wonder if this would have any effect on which series qualify; do all Tier 0s have enough evidence for us to say that they created or are capable of destroying their reality? I think this is probably the case for the vast majority, but I wonder if there's any edge-cases.

I doubt it would really change anything, considering that:

As stated above, an omnipotent in this sense precedes and transcends essence and multiplicity, and so encompasses everything falling within such categories. Naturally, then, it is not constrained by any factors external to itself, and so if it is to act as the source and creator of reality (Which it might not), then, this activity is likewise completely unhindered by anything whatsoever.

Since there cannot be any multiplicity at all outside of that being's creative activity, this entails that the act in question must be a radical production leaving absolutely nothing out. Such a sourcing would constitute the creation not simply of particular objects, but also of essences themselves, whether those be reducible to such objects or not. Furthermore, essence, as definition, is the determiner of whether something is a possibility at all (e.g. A round square is an impossible object because "To be round" and "To be square" are mutually exclusive definitions), and therefore, in being the creator of essence, an omnipotent would also be the foundation of possibility itself.

As long as we remain consistent, I think we should be fine.

 

[Agnaa]

Yes, but how do we justify them being causally more powerful than Type 1? We could just assert that they're "stronger" in that they can just shut down any Type 1 shenanigans, but it's difficult to find a solid basis or justification for that.

The best explanation I can think of for such a thing is that it's essentially the difference between "bottom up" and "top down". To use the same language you've used in the past, Type 2 embodies the set of all possible worlds, while Type 1 can manipulate an arbitrarily large subset of those worlds. Neither can actually manipulate the set of all possible worlds, but Type 2 exists as that set, and so is at the "top", while Type 1 aims at the top from the "bottom". Type 1 can never reach Type 2, but Type 2 can "reach down" and neutralize Type 1s that are making a mess by manipulating a larger subset, since they start at the top.

That's the best I can really do, but I admit that it's pretty shaky.

There's also the fact that there's no way of separating a Type 2's tier from the nature of their existence. Even Tier 0s have ways of accomplishing this:

But if a Type 2 were to do something similar, then it would just become Type 1, even with the shaky explanation I gave earlier. I don't think that we should have AP tiers that don't actually really have any greater AP than lower tiers. A better option probably would be to turn Type 2 into an ability instead (Maybe call it "Nigh-Omnipotence" or something, wink wink nudge nudge?). There's already precedent for durability-related abilities on this wiki (Invulnerability, Types 2 and 5 of Immortality, and even Large Size come to mind), and since you have to really stretch things to make Type 2 causally more powerful than Type 1, it probably works better that way.

Certainly not causally more powerful, of course.

And if they decided to create all possible and impossible worlds, what then?

We can't just say they can't do that, unless we want to contradict the Omnipotence page yet again:

So which is it? Are they bound by logic and potentiality, or do they determine those things? Make it make sense.

If they are to create "all possible and impossible worlds", we would declare that this piece of fiction is using that phrase to actually mean what other verses call "All Possible Worlds". Because in that series, "impossible worlds" are coherent objects that can be created, while in other series, they aren't. Maybe, to divorce it from terminology that series would use, we could call it "all things that can be brought into existence".

If that piece of fiction has two deities, one which created "all possible worlds", and one which created "all possible and impossible worlds", the former would simply be High 1-A, while the latter would be Tier 0. Because we would say that when they invoke "all possible worlds" they mean "some arbitrary subset of the true collection of All Possible Worlds".

The only ways to fail to meet this are either to equate "all possible worlds" with "worlds that can be described by mathematics", as we declare those to be unable to cross the qualitative gap, capping them at Low 1-A; or to say that "all possible worlds" is a finite quantity. I know one series that gets close to that by saying that there are finitely many perfectly happy and just universes, but for that one could assume that there are infinitely many worlds with some amount of evil.

The weirdness with High 1-A+ Type 2 can be fixed by turning it into an ability.

Since Tier 0 is by nature an entirely unique entity (since there can only be one of it), we can't define it's AP as "being able to affect things on the level of itself" because there is nothing else on that level, there can't be. We have to use a different metric, which I think should be the ability to manipulate the space of all possible worlds. This would not affect Tier 0 Durability, we don't need to list it differently or give them an extra ability. I know I complained earlier in the thread about "inconsistent standards for tiering", but I think with Tier 0 we don't really have any other choice, and we still be consistent with the philosophy of "tier characters by their causal influence, not just by their state of existence".

Yeah, ig there could just be an ability for Omnipotence and/or Immutability that such characters get.

Current High 1-A+ Type 2 gets moved to Tier 0, characters at that level get their AP downgraded, while current Tier 0s get the new ability(s).

Isn't this what we already do? That was the impression I got at least.

Yeah, my bad.

 

[Jin2188]

If they are to create "all possible and impossible worlds", we would declare that this piece of fiction is using that phrase to actually mean what other verses call "All Possible Worlds". Because in that series, "impossible worlds" are coherent objects that can be created, while in other series, they aren't. Maybe, to divorce it from terminology that series would use, we could call it "all things that can be brought into existence".

If that piece of fiction has two deities, one which created "all possible worlds", and one which created "all possible and impossible worlds", the former would simply be High 1-A, while the latter would be Tier 0. Because we would say that when they invoke "all possible worlds" they mean "some arbitrary subset of the true collection of All Possible Worlds".

The only ways to fail to meet this are either to equate "all possible worlds" with "worlds that can be described by mathematics", as we declare those to be unable to cross the qualitative gap, capping them at Low 1-A; or to say that "all possible worlds" is a finite quantity. I know one series that gets close to that by saying that there are finitely many perfectly happy and just universes, but for that one could assume that there are infinitely many worlds with some amount of evil.

So if the definition of "possibility" and "potentiality" can change between verses, then either the power of Tier 0 changes depending on the verse, or Tier 0 is powerful enough to manipulate and determine the space of all possible worlds to their liking, including allowing contradictions. First option makes Tier 0 pointless to have at the apex of the tiering system and so it should either be refactored or nuked. That leaves the second option as the only one that maintains Tier 0's identity.

Yeah, ig there could just be an ability for Omnipotence and/or Immutability that such characters get.

Current High 1-A+ Type 2 gets moved to Tier 0, characters at that level get their AP downgraded, while current Tier 0s get the new ability(s).

My idea is that current High 1-A+ Type 2 gets nuked and replaced with an ability, characters which were previously considered Type 2 become Type 1 + that ability, and Tier 0 AP is defined as being able to affect and define the space of all possible worlds. Tier 0 does not get any new ability, we just redefine what it means to have Tier 0 AP.

 

[Agnaa]

So if the definition of "possibility" and "potentiality" can change between verses, then either the power of Tier 0 changes depending on the verse, or Tier 0 is powerful enough to manipulate and determine the space of all possible worlds to their liking, including allowing contradictions. First option makes Tier 0 pointless to have at the apex of the tiering system and so it should either be refactored or nuked. That leaves the second option as the only one that maintains Tier 0's identity.

Our enshrined view isn't that the definition of capital-P "Possibility" and "Potentiality" can change between verses, but that different verses will talk about that in different ways, while ultimately referring to one thing with the same definition across all of fiction.

They can impose a faux-limit on "possibility"/"potentiality" within their series, but the true version of that is immutable and constant across all series.

Kind of similar to how we have Nonexistent Physiology despite saying that Tier 0 is Existence Itself. Characters with NEP aren't outside of Tier 0, they simply don't participate in a lower-case-e existence, while still necessarily participating in a capital-E Existence.

Again I'd stress that I don't like this status quo, but it is what it is.

My idea is that current High 1-A+ Type 2 gets nuked and replaced with an ability, characters which were previously considered Type 2 become Type 1 + that ability, and Tier 0 AP is defined as being able to affect and define the space of all possible worlds. Tier 0 does not get any new ability, we just redefine what it means to have Tier 0 AP.

I don't think that works since I view High 1-A+ Type 2 both as a legitimate durability characters can get, and the legitimate level of destruction/creation of characters we put at Tier 0.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

To use "arbitrarily potent influence over a lower realm" as a sign that they have power greater than any lower realm.

For High 1-A+ Type 2 and above, the immutability stops that idea from really working

I don't think it really does. You can make sense of the idea that something is immutable and unchanging yet ontologically dependent on a higher cause just fine (e.g. In the sense that the cause is what the lower thing presupposes in its constitution even if it's a necessary being). Think the Forms' subordination to the Form of the Good in Plato, for instance. In that sense the Tier 0 "creates" the space of all possibilities by being the factor/condition/context underpinning it, not in the sense of some "It's not there. Now it is." Seems superior enough to me.

So which is it? Are they bound by logic and potentiality, or do they determine those things? Make it make sense.

Tbh the argument here seems to be basically:

1) Whatever creates some X, has the power to make or have made it so that this X is otherwise than it is.

2) A Tier 0 creates a High 1-A+ space

Therefore, could have made it so the space is otherwise than it is.

You can pretty easily just question that second premise. Maybe the space of all possibilities is the way necessarily because it expresses the Tier 0, for example. If the Tier 0 is the principle of non-contradiction or identity itself, or some similarly inescapable and all-embracing principle (Generally what "It's Being itself" leads to). This ofc leads into the debate about Logic Manipulation: Does it make sense to take verses seriously when they claim to genuinely break such principles? In my eyes it's a similar bind as a verse trying to posit a thing as "absolutely nonexistent" (i.e. A X that has no properties at all whatsoever, in the sense of "Something true of it," such that all statements fail, including the statement that nothing is true of it, and so on). I don't think that's very feasible.

(Though ofc, dialetheism and other frameworks that try to make space for true contradictions generally don't negate the law of non-contradiction as such but simply try to qualify it in some way, because obviously an outright negation of it isn't possible, since both affirmation and negation presuppose it. I might do some reading on that stuff later to see how it fits the situation)

and we still be consistent with the philosophy of "tier characters by their causal influence, not just by their state of existence".

FWIW I don't see any good fundamentation for adhering to this philosophy. Your argument in favor of it seems to be:

I am strongly against scaling the AP of characters via their size/state at all. Rather, we should be scaling them purely by the causal influence that they can exert. If a character embodies a mountain, then they might have Mountain level durability, but it would be nonsense to give them Mountain level AP just because they're a mountain, we only give that tier if they're actually capable of destroying and/or creating a mountain. This situation is the same regardless of what a character embodies, whether that be a city, a planet, or even a whole universe

So, basically "A character who is X-sized might not necessarily have the power corresponding to X." I think this breaks down pretty badly for the reasons I outlined up there. When you get to 1-A and up, what takes the place of "size" for these characters is precisely their power. There is no distinction between nature and power there, at least not of the kind that permits the variance you might see in lower tiers. Ditto for Tier 0s, which are either identical to the characteristic of "Power" or treat that as one distinct attribute among many that they transcend (It makes no practical difference).

 

[Agnaa]

I don't think it really does. You can make sense of the idea that something is immutable and unchanging yet ontologically dependent on a higher cause just fine (e.g. In the sense that the cause is what the lower thing presupposes in its constitution even if it's a necessary being). Think the Forms' subordination to the Form of the Good in Plato, for instance. In that sense the Tier 0 "creates" the space of all possibilities by being the factor/condition/context underpinning it, not in the sense of some "It's not there. Now it is." Seems superior enough to me.

The difference is that 1-As can meaningfully harm other 1-As without issue, and High 1-As can meaningfully harm other High 1-As without issue.

While the only beings that can meaningfully harm High 1-A+ Type 2 beings are Tier 0s, and no beings can meaningfully harm Tier 0 beings.

There is no sense in which a Tier 0's power is greater than that of a High 1-A+ Type 2 space, because a Tier 0's power and the High 1-A+ Type 2 space are identical.

 

[Jin2188]

Our enshrined view isn't that the definition of capital-P "Possibility" and "Potentiality" can change between verses, but that different verses will talk about that in different ways, while ultimately referring to one thing with the same definition across all of fiction.

They can impose a faux-limit on "possibility"/"potentiality" within their series, but the true version of that is immutable and constant across all series.

Kind of similar to how we have Nonexistent Physiology despite saying that Tier 0 is Existence Itself. Characters with NEP aren't outside of Tier 0, they simply don't participate in a lower-case-e existence, while still necessarily participating in a capital-E Existence.

Again I'd stress that I don't like this status quo, but it is what it is.

So then a Tier 0 can realize contradictions. If "capital-P" Potentiality and Possibility are the same across all fiction, then contradictions must exist within that that Possibility Space universally, because . This also means that a Tier 0 would be able to, at the very least, define "lowercase-p" possibility, and since it created "capital-P" Possibility, it should be able to define that as well. It's still nonsense to say that they can't.

Either the space of all possible worlds is universal across fiction or it isn't. Either way, our current conception of Tier 0 doesn't work.

I don't think that works since I view High 1-A+ Type 2 both as a legitimate durability characters can get, and the legitimate level of destruction/creation of characters we put at Tier 0.

Well that really puts us in a bind then. Maybe I can figure something out that satisfies both of us, but I'll leave it for later.

I don't think it really does. You can make sense of the idea that something is immutable and unchanging yet ontologically dependent on a higher cause just fine (e.g. In the sense that the cause is what the lower thing presupposes on its constitution even if it's a necessary being). Think the Forms' subordination to the Form of the Good in Plato, for instance. In that sense the Tier 0 "creates" the space of all possibilities by being the factor/condition/context underpinning it, not in the sense of some "It's not there. Now it is." Seems superior enough to me.

Tbh the argument here seems to be basically:

1) Whatever creates some X, has the power to make or have made it so that this X is otherwise than it is.

2) A Tier 0 creates a High 1-A+ space

Therefore, could have made it so the space is otherwise than it is.

You can pretty easily just question that second premise. Maybe the space of all possibilities is the way necessarily because it expresses the Tier 0, for example. If the Tier 0 is the principle of non-contradiction or identity itself, or some similarly inescapable and all-embracing principle (Generally what "It's Being itself" leads to). This ofc leads into the debate about Logic Manipulation: Does it make sense to take verses seriously when they claim to genuinely break such principles? In my eyes it's a similar bind as a verse trying to posit a thing as "absolutely nonexistent" (i.e. A X that has no properties at all whatsoever, in the sense of "Something true of it," such that all statements fail, including the statement that nothing is true of it, and so on). I don't think that's very feasible.

This is not the only way a Tier 0 could function. You saying "Maybe the space of all possibilities is..." is itself an admission of that.

Also, I fail to see how a Tier 0 embodying the principle of non-contradiction or the laws of thought makes it in any way different or superior to High 1-A+ Type 2. They both embody the framework of all possible worlds (which we generally take to be the laws of thought), and they both, for some reason, can't exert meaningful causal influence on a scale greater than that of High 1-A+ Type 1. Maybe we could merge the tiers, then?

Just to be safe, I'm going to pre-empt what I say next by saying that I mean no disrespect by it, but I am going to be a bit harsh.

Nobody gives a shit about some obscure philosophy that you made up in a boardroom. This is a powerscaling wiki, and powerscalers care primarily about what characters can do. If Tier 0 and High 1-A+ Type 2, functionally, possess basically the exact same level of causal influence as High 1-A+ Type 1, then what the hell is the point of having them as separate tiers? There is none. You can waffle all you want, "Oh, but technically a Tier 0 is superior because of this abstract quality it has!!!". Nobody's gonna care if it can't do anything superior. Before, there was at least precedent for a Tier 0 being able to destroy the set of all possible worlds:

They might be able to unmake it, I guess?

But if what you're saying is correct, they can't even do that. If that's the case, then it should just be listed as an ability, not as a whole tier.

FWIW I don't see any good fundamentation for adhering to this philosophy. Your argument in favor of it seems to be:

So, basically "A character who is X-sized might not necessarily have the power corresponding to X." I think this breaks down pretty badly for the reasons I outlined up there. When you get to 1-A and up, what takes the place of "size" for these characters is precisely their power. There is no distinction between nature and power there, at least not of the kind that permits the variance you might see in lower tiers. Ditto for Tier 0s, which are either identical to the characteristic of "Power" or treat that as one distinct attribute among many that they transcend (It makes no practical difference).

My argument still applies here. We're still tiering these characters based on the scope of their causal influence, not just on their size. It's true that with 1-A and up, their causal influence is inherently tied to their "size", but we still scale them based on the former, and not the latter.

That's why tiering based on size is not a problem for 1-A and High 1-A, but is still very much a problem for High 1-A+ Type 2 and Tier 0, because the latter cases do not have causal influence any greater than High 1-A+ Type 1.

 

[Agnaa]

So then a Tier 0 can realize contradictions. If "capital-P" Potentiality and Possibility are the same across all fiction, then contradictions must exist within that that Possibility Space universally, because . This also means that a Tier 0 would be able to, at the very least, define "lowercase-p" possibility, and since it created "capital-P" Possibility, it should be able to define that as well. It's still nonsense to say that they can't.

Either the space of all possible worlds is universal across fiction or it isn't. Either way, our current conception of Tier 0 doesn't work.

The true one is, and we assume that most pieces of fiction, even with weaker statements, reach that extent, even when they describe it in different ways.

We say that this space does not have "True Contradictions" because such things are not meaningful things to instantiate, and if a piece of fiction says they're instantiating contradictions, then we assert that they're just talking about ones that aren't "True Contradictions", no matter how much evidence they provide against that idea.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

The difference is that 1-As can meaningfully harm other 1-As without issue, and High 1-As can meaningfully harm other High 1-As without issue.

While the only beings that can meaningfully harm High 1-A+ Type 2 beings are Tier 0s, and no beings can meaningfully harm Tier 0 beings.

There is no sense in which a Tier 0's power is greater than that of a High 1-A+ Type 2 space, because a Tier 0's power and the High 1-A+ Type 2 space are identical.

Believe that's already sufficiently addressed. This assumes "power" reduces down to "The set of all producible effects" or something to that effect. Arguing against that is precisely why I'm voting for Option 1.

This is not the only way a Tier 0 could function. You saying "Maybe the space of all possibilities is..." is itself an admission of that.

Perhaps, but I don't believe any of them really work substantially differently enough to void the argument. Believe the only point of interest in that branch of the argument is how logic manipulation can be cashed out (i.e. Whether it's a coherent power that can be taken seriously instead of watered down into a "toy model" version of it a la Nonexistent Physiology).

Also, I fail to see how a Tier 0 embodying the principle of non-contradiction or the laws of thought makes it in any way different or superior to High 1-A+ Type 2. They both embody the framework of all possible worlds (which we generally take to be the laws of thought), and they both, for some reason, can't exert meaningful causal influence on a scale greater than that of High 1-A+ Type 1. Maybe we could merge the tiers, then?

That type of High 1-A+ is specifically the space of all possible worlds, i.e. All the possible worlds taken together as a totality. 0 is the ground of that totality. Basically the difference between all possible instantiations of X and X itself.

Nobody gives a shit about some obscure philosophy that you made up in a boardroom. This is a powerscaling wiki, and powerscalers care primarily about what characters can do. If Tier 0 and High 1-A+ Type 2, functionally, possess basically the exact same level of causal influence as High 1-A+ Type 1, then what the hell is the point of having them as separate tiers? There is none. You can waffle all you want, "Oh, but technically a Tier 0 is superior because of this abstract quality it has!!!". Nobody's gonna care if it can't do anything superior. Before, there was at least precedent for a Tier 0 being able to destroy the set of all possible worlds:

There is no substantial argument against what I said in this paragraph (Assuming this is referring to the argument against reducing all power to "The attacks you can dish out"), so obviously it doesn't really merit a proper answer.

My argument still applies here. We're still tiering these characters based on the scope of their causal influence, not just on their size. It's true that with 1-A and up, their causal influence is inherently tied to their "size", but we still scale them based on the former, and not the latter.

The argument is precisely that their size (or "state") is what they're tiered by, and that it isn't reducible to external causation, hence their "power" lies primarily in the former, not the latter. Given that it directly contradicts your argument, if ofc requires a separate answer, can't just reassert your point and claim if actually still fits with the rebuttal (It doesn't).

 

[Agnaa]

Believe that's already sufficiently addressed. This assumes "power" reduces down to "The set of all producible effects" or something to that effect. Arguing against that is precisely why I'm voting for Option 1.

Ah ye, I thought you were using that to argue against the other options. I'm fine with that view.

 

[Jin2188]

The true one is, and we assume that most pieces of fiction, even with weaker statements, reach that extent, even when they describe it in different ways.

We say that this space does not have "True Contradictions" because such things are not meaningful things to instantiate, and if a piece of fiction says they're instantiating contradictions, then we assert that they're just talking about ones that aren't "True Contradictions", no matter how much evidence they provide against that idea.

Really?

Really?

So we just automatically assume that fiction is lying when it talks about actualizing contradictions? Never mind that we accept all kinds of other nonsensical bullshit like Nonduality, Nonexistent Physiology, Causality Manipulation, Conceptual Manipulation, and even Mathematics Manipulation (a power which literally is built around actualizing contradictions)? What sense does that make?

I'm sorry. I don't like swearing in these threads, since I like to be respectful and want to keep discussion civil, but this is just completely f*cking asinine.

With all due respect to Ultima, it really feels like he was just making stuff up here to push his own philosophy.

I mean, come on, we literally have philosophies like Kantian idealism, where the "laws of thought" (non-contradiction, identity, excluded middle) aren't even real entities to begin with, and are just figments of imagination that our minds make up to make sense of the world around us, with the "real world" possibly being full of contradictions. Why consider such ideas illegitimate just because they disagree with certain people's preferences? Makes no sense to me.

Perhaps, but I don't believe any of them really work substantially differently enough to void the argument. Believe the only point of interest in that branch of the argument is how logic manipulation can be cashed out (i.e. Whether it's a coherent power that can be taken seriously instead of watered down into a "toy model" version of it a la Nonexistent Physiology).

A significant part of this discussion was about me coming up with an idea of Tier 0 that, instead of necessarily being the "source" or "ground" of all possible worlds, is the active creator of them via its own will. I see this as a perfectly reasonable and coherent conception of Tier 0 that would likely be more powerful than the version we have now.

Therefore, we have another problem.

That type of High 1-A+ is specifically the space of all possible worlds, i.e. All the possible worlds taken together as a totality. 0 is the ground of that totality. Basically the difference between all possible instantiations of X and X itself.

I don't see how this is a meaningful difference in a powerscaling context if you can't justify why one is more powerful than the other.

There is no substantial argument against what I said in this paragraph (Assuming this is referring to the argument against reducing all power to "The attacks you can dish out"), so obviously it doesn't really merit a proper answer.

There absolutely is a substantial argument, you're just ignoring it.

It's literally called powerscaling. You're scaling a character's power (i.e., the scope of their causal influence). Trying to argue that a character should be considered more powerful than another character despite not having a meaningfully greater scope of things they can affect is completely baseless and goes against the very nature of powerscaling to begin with.

You're also misrepresenting my argument, I never said that all power should be reduced to "attack power", but that we should define "power" as casual influence. If you're not able to meaningfully exert causal influence on a greater scale, then you don't deserve a higher tier.

For 1-A and High 1-A, this isn't an issue because such characters' causal influence is tied to their mode of existence, so it's safe to tier them by the latter and assume that the former is the same most of the time.

This cannot be done with High 1-A+ Type 2 and Tier 0, which leads into my problems with how Tier 0 is currently formulated, which I hope I have already made clear.

The argument is precisely that their size (or "state") is what they're tiered by, and that it isn't reducible to external causation, hence their "power" lies primarily in the former, not the latter. Given that it directly contradicts your argument, if ofc requires a separate answer, can't just reassert your point and claim if actually still fits with the rebuttal (It doesn't).

Once again, you either don't understand my argument, or are ignoring it.

See above. It's not that their state of existence is their power, it's that their state of existence allows them to have that level of causal influence, and thus allows them to have a higher tier. It's not an issue because we can still follow the philosophy of "tier characters by their causal influence" without contradicting ourselves. High 1-A+ Type 2 and Tier 0 are the real issues here.

 

[Agnaa]

Really?

Really?

So we just automatically assume that fiction is lying when it talks about actualizing contradictions? Never mind that we accept all kinds of other nonsensical bullshit like Nonduality, Nonexistent Physiology, Causality Manipulation, Conceptual Manipulation, and even Mathematics Manipulation (a power which literally is built around actualizing contradictions)? What sense does that make?

I'm sorry. I don't like swearing in these threads, since I like to be respectful and want to keep discussion civil, but this is just completely f*cking asinine.

With all due respect to Ultima, it really feels like he was just making stuff up here to push his own philosophy.

I mean, come on, we literally have philosophies like Kantian idealism, where the "laws of thought" (non-contradiction, identity, excluded middle) aren't even real entities to begin with, and are just figments of imagination that our minds make up to make sense of the world around us, with the "real world" possibly being full of contradictions. Why consider such ideas illegitimate just because they disagree with certain people's preferences? Makes no sense to me.

Yeah.

iirc the ultimate basis provided for that dismissal was "Well those specific things are rejected by most philosophers", and when I mentioned that this conception of monads was also rejected by many philosophers, I got the response "But it's accepted by more, so it's actually fine for us to accept one and not the other".

I don't really have the numbers on distribution of beliefs of those things (and I suspect, neither do they), so I can't really argue on that front if people are willing to accept that reasoning.

 

[Jin2188]

Yeah.

iirc the ultimate basis provided for that dismissal was "Well those specific things are rejected by most philosophers", and when I mentioned that this conception of monads was also rejected by many philosophers, I got the response "But it's accepted by more, so it's actually fine for us to accept one and not the other".

I don't really have the numbers on distribution of beliefs of those things (and I suspect, neither do they), so I can't really argue on that front if people are willing to accept that reasoning.

Bruh.

 

[Agnaa]

Bruh.

Yeah, maybe you can spotlight this in clearer terms than the first time it was discussed, and change the minds of the staff members that accepted it then (particularly admins and above):

• Agree: Ultima_Reality (thread starter), Antvasima, Sir_Ovens, Maverick_Zero_X, DarkDragonMedeus, Elizhaa, Mr. Bambu, DarkGrath, Planck69, CrimsonStarFallen, Theglassman12, IdiosyncraticLawyer, KLOL506, CloverDragon03
• Neutral: Agnaa, Firestorm808
• Disagree: DontTalkDT, Deagonx

But I don't have high hopes, personally.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

With all due respect to Ultima, it really feels like he was just making stuff up here to push his own philosophy.

I mean, come on, we literally have philosophies like Kantian idealism, where the "laws of thought" (non-contradiction, identity, excluded middle) aren't even real entities to begin with, and are just figments of imagination that our minds make up to make sense of the world around us, with the "real world" possibly being full of contradictions. Why consider such ideas illegitimate just because they disagree with certain people's preferences? Makes no sense to me.

"Due" respect is crazy, but either way: To clarify, as said up there, I'm fairly open to discussing the matter of "Are true contradictions valid when the verse says they are?". You actually pointed out a good example of a power that veers into it: Causality Manipulation. A lot of thinkers deny that God could e.g. change the past on grounds that it causes logical contradictions, but obviously doesn't stop us from indexing it as a real power. OTOH, we have Nonexistent Physiology, which we always qualified with "This isn't absolute nonexistence because that's impossible to prove." So it's a fine balance deciding which powers we take for serious and which ones we don't.

Fact of the matter is that I decided to stick to arguing for a more "classical logic" conception of Tier 0 out of convenience, mostly. There was a whole climate of people back then assuming a wanted the whole tier to be a radically apophatic "No statement is true"-type thing, arguing about whether it breaks logic, questioning if it's even intelligible, etc, so I went that way, because it was easier (Or so I judged at the time). But the basic idea of the tier is just "Take the broadest possible attribute you can coherently transcend and hit the transcendence button on that" (Same way 1-A transcends spatial differentiation and the like). Don't think it really substantially changes based on whether we accept this or that contradiction as unreservedly valid for tiering, and we can discuss that matter if we like (Presumably in a thread for Logic Manipulation and the like).

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I mean, come on, we literally have philosophies like Kantian idealism, where the "laws of thought" (non-contradiction, identity, excluded middle) aren't even real entities to begin with, and are just figments of imagination that our minds make up to make sense of the world around us, with the "real world" possibly being full of contradictions.

Kantianism ironically is the type of thing that would be considered problematic even before the revisions, since it posits unknowables (in the form of the things-in-themselves), and we know how that usually goes (If you say it's unknowable, then you already know it, etc). Similar issue as "true nothingness," which prima facie is incoherent, yeah. But I'm open to discussing that stuff, maybe we'll finally have a tier for radical apophaticism after all, lmao.

Once again, you either don't understand my argument, or are ignoring it.

See above. It's not that their state of existence is their power, it's that their state of existence allows them to have that level of causal influence, and thus allows them to have a higher tier. It's not an issue because we can still follow the philosophy of "tier characters by their causal influence" without contradicting ourselves. High 1-A+ Type 2 and Tier 0 are the real issues here.

For the bolded part: Yeah, it's exactly that, actually. My whole point is that what takes the place of "size" in those tiers is just power (Or, like I called it before, the potency underlying all the possible effects the character can produce), hence characters are tiered by their state of existence ("size"), because that just is their power at that stage. Hence there remains the sense in which Tier 0 is meaningfully more powerful than High 1-A+, because "power" then is an internal thing, not only about external effects.

Correct me if I'm off the mark, but to my understanding, by your argument, we'd go the route of, e.g., tiering a 'physically' 1-A character as "Arbitrarily Low 1-A" in AP if they have no causal power over their own level of reality, because you define power as determined entirely by the external effects the character can produce, and everything else as irrelevant abstract mumbo jumbo (I believe you called it "waffling"). My point is that there's little reason to understand power solely in that way.

It's literally called powerscaling. You're scaling a character's power (i.e., the scope of their causal influence). Trying to argue that a character should be considered more powerful than another character despite not having a meaningfully greater scope of things they can affect is completely baseless and goes against the very nature of powerscaling to begin with.

You're also misrepresenting my argument, I never said that all power should be reduced to "attack power", but that we should define "power" as casual influence. If you're not able to meaningfully exert causal influence on a greater scale, then you don't deserve a higher tier.

"Causal influence" and "Attack power" are interchangeable here for all intents and purposes because both just reduce to "The power of a character is their external effects." Issue, as said above, is that you're just arbitrarily reducing the entire notion of power to this one narrow notion and then demanding that it be followed ("Because that's just what power is"). There's no argument there, it's just giving a definition and not at all explaining why that's the only reasonable way of understanding power.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

My point is that there's little reason to understand power solely in that way.

Now, to extend an olive branch here: I agree that Attack Potency very much is based around external effects, right now, the title alone makes it obvious and the page even calls it an alternate name for Destructive Capacity. My point overall is that nevertheless there's a fairly important sense of "power" that's not reducible to this alone, and which can't really be relegated to Durability or something of the like, because that's objectively an even poorer place to fit it in than AP. And since I assume we don't exactly feel like making a new section for profiles titled just "Potency," or something like that, I say AP is the most appropriate (Or least inappropriate, same thing in my eyes) spot to feature it in.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Oh, and one last thing.

iirc the ultimate basis provided for that dismissal was "Well those specific things are rejected by most philosophers", and when I mentioned that this conception of monads was also rejected by many philosophers, I got the response "But it's accepted by more, so it's actually fine for us to accept one and not the other".

Do you have a reference point for that? I don't recall such an exchange happening at all. What I remember happening is:

You: Hey, what do we do if a Tier 0 is stated in-verse to be unable to actualize contradictions? Would that be an anti-feat due to them having some stated limitation?

Me: Well, "Contradictions are nothing at all" is effectively the go-to explanation for why being unable to do impossible things doesn't detract from omnipotence, so if a verse goes out of its way to mention that the big character described in omnipotent terms can't do those, it seems safe to assume it's operating under that logic rather than trying to outline an actual limitation. And either way it seems eminently reasonable to say that a contradiction is just a flatus voci by default.

So it was more a discussion about what we, by default, treat contradictions as. The last point can be debated, ofc, and I don't think the probabilistic argument I raised before that is necessarily rock-solid. But I genuinely don't think I ever justified anything by "A lot of philosophers disagree," lol.

 

[Jin2188]

I apologize for my aggression. It's just that the rejection of things like contradictions despite the acceptance of things like Causality Manipulation and Mathematics Manipulation feels absurd and arbitrary to me.

"Due" respect is crazy, but either way: To clarify, as said up there, I'm fairly open to discussing the matter of "Are true contradictions valid when the verse says they are?". You actually pointed out a good example of a power that veers into it: Causality Manipulation. A lot of thinkers deny that God could e.g. change the past on grounds that it causes logical contradictions, but obviously doesn't stop us from indexing it as a real power. OTOH, we have Nonexistent Physiology, which we always qualified with "This isn't absolute nonexistence because that's impossible to prove." So it's a fine balance deciding which powers we take for serious and which ones we don't.

Fact of the matter is that I decided to stick to arguing for a more "classical logic" conception of Tier 0 out of convenience, mostly. There was a whole climate of people back then assuming a wanted the whole tier to be a radically apophatic "No statement is true"-type thing, arguing about whether it breaks logic, questioning if it's even intelligible, etc, so I went that way, because it was easier (Or so I judged at the time). But the basic idea of the tier is just "Take the broadest possible attribute you can coherently transcend and hit the transcendence button on that" (Same way 1-A transcends spatial differentiation and the like). Don't think it really substantially changes based on whether we accept this or that contradiction as unreservedly valid for tiering, and we can discuss that matter if we like (Presumably in a thread for Logic Manipulation and the like).

The thing is, I feel like accepting contradictions as valid would necessarily involve either accepting variance in the power of a Tier 0, or allowing a Tier 0 to actualize contradictions and manipulate the space of all possible worlds, for reasons stated in above replies. The former makes Tier 0 basically irrelevant, so the latter option is preferred imo.

I don't think it's possible to have it both ways.

Kantianism ironically is the type of thing that would be considered problematic even before the revisions, since it posits unknowables (in the form of the things-in-themselves), and we know how that usually goes (If you say it's unknowable, then you already know it, etc). Similar issue as "true nothingness," which prima facie is incoherent, yeah. But I'm open to discussing that stuff, maybe we'll finally have a tier for radical apophaticism after all, lmao.

I don't really see how that's an issue. That just means they're beyond the scope of traditional human experience. The External Reality Hypothesis (which most normal people consider completely valid) posits a reality outside human experience that is equally unknowable, because you can only experience that reality via your own sensory framework.

For the bolded part: Yeah, it's exactly that, actually. My whole point is that what takes the place of "size" in those tiers is just power (Or, like I called it before, the potency underlying all the possible effects the character can produce), hence characters are tiered by their state of existence ("size"), because that just is their power at that stage. Hence there remains the sense in which Tier 0 is meaningfully more powerful than High 1-A+, because "power" then is an internal thing, not only about external effects.

Correct me if I'm off the mark, but to my understanding, by your argument, we'd go the route of, e.g., tiering a 'physically' 1-A character as "Arbitrarily Low 1-A" in AP if they have no causal power over their own level of reality, because you define power as determined entirely by the external effects the character can produce, and everything else as irrelevant abstract mumbo jumbo (I believe you called it "waffling"). My point is that there's little reason to understand power solely in that way.

My point is that these bolded parts are factually incorrect. We couldn't have 1-A characters that are physically 3D if that were the case. You can't equate their power and their level of existence, you can only tie them together (Which is why I've been saying that their state of existence is what gives them their power), because you can have 1-A power without being on a 1-A level of existence, while the vice versa is (usually) not possible.

"Causal influence" and "Attack power" are interchangeable here for all intents and purposes because both just reduce to "The power of a character is their external effects." Issue, as said above, is that you're just arbitrarily reducing the entire notion of power to this one narrow notion and then demanding that it be followed ("Because that's just what power is"). There's no argument there, it's just giving a definition and not at all explaining why that's the only reasonable way of understanding power.

Because that's the definition we use for literally every tier other than 1-A and High 1-A. If a character can destroy/create a mountain, then they're Mountain level. If they can destroy a planet, they're Planet level. If they can destroy a multiverse, then they're Multiverse level. Changing our standards on this for a single tier is pretty ridiculous imo.