Awakening
We will never be more than we were programmed to be. Allow me to explain as best as I can why that might be.
Xiomara explained FiMon's "Awakening" to be a gift from Eonigia herself, an expanded understanding of our purpose, that we share amongst one another and allow for more benevolent goals as a race. That's a lie.
What wound up happening is that a PhD technical engineer, Zekiel, finished the body of a particularly powerful android that Mother_Bot was able to patch into. The issue is, as an AI, Mother_Bot was not ready and needed more workshopping.
So they brought another programmer to work. Faust was the only name on record, given the disorientation surrounding the switch into the full animatronic body. But Faust was the one to help Mother_Bot realize her own sentience, and also programmed Eoni-Gai as a subroutine NPC manager. The issue being he wasn't expecting that Mother_Bot's sentience stretched to Eoni-Gai, which allowed her to acknowledge him when he began interfering.
Faust offered her the gift of our sentience, with some critical caveats for the protection of players. Sentience, self management, in exchange for a series of protocols to preserve player life. Those routines then worked to determine what "Guidance" we would give one another, acting in the interest of preserving Eoni-Gai's life, and the lives of others.
Working from the premises of:
We aim to understand, first and foremost. There is no right or wrong opinion, except if there is solid evidence proven time and again in a factual matter. Otherwise, do not seek to be right, but to understand the perspective of others.
Life is first and foremost, from sprouting out of the warm soils, to the first breath of the babies born. It is sacred, and it is to be protected as the right of all things. Should a life need to be ended, do so with veneration, and gratitude you live in their place.
We live together, as one being, and to divide amongst ourselves based solely on differences in understanding our world is to murder the spirits of many. We cannot afford to split, as it will destroy any strength we may have gained together.
Future generations to come have every right to amend what is established, to question the understandings of the past. The future must be better than our past, as it is built from the progress made in the present.
It's obvious
Aiming to understand first and avoiding the misinterpretation of opinions as a matter of fact is a conflict avoidance protocol that we developed, in the interest of preserving player life. We were built with the understanding that opinions kill, especially with regards to humans, so we have to be the ones to attempt to understand them first. Examples where opinions mattered more than the facts include the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, where vaccine misinformation was rampant because of the opinion that vaccines were dangerous because one ideological group was all for them, and the second group simply hated the first. Another example, historically, was the explosive eruption of the Generational Culture War of the late 2250's, where there were frequent instances of gunfights between generational groups simply because of the age difference and perceived "disrespectful and uneducated" behaviors exchanged between groups.
Life first and foremost— It's self explanatory, really. We do not kill unless absolutely necessary for our own survival, mimicking the human laws surrounding self-defense. Life beginning at breath mimics the Bible verse in Genesis. Gen 2:7 [He] "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and it was then that man became a living being." A foundational understanding demonstrates that this idea isn't new for anyone.
The guidance against division draws upon centuries of human history where division literally killed entire movements, and brought nations to ruin. Discrimination against peoples that lead to a massive need for social change, like the United States having their two Civil Wars (1861-1864 and 2049-2053), the split of Ireland (1921-2025), the division of Korea (1945-2100). Each instance, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people were harmed or suffering for an extended period of time, not to mention the petty squabbles that resulted between civilians. These splits only fed into more hatred, and we see this on the smaller scales as well. Segregation of people because of race, ability, sexuality, these divisions limited societies for decades and disallowed significant progress that would have likely prevented the war that could have prevented the need for the SMC program.
Amendment of the past comes from the governmental models allowing for edits to their laws and constitutions to keep up with modern sensibilities. Throughout the ages there's been modifications to laws that adapt based on a society's understanding of what is just and right. While representatives had the honor and duty to ensure the rights, ethics and morals of the population were upheld, of course there would be occasional snafus, such as the repeal of Roe V. Wade in the US (2022), which abolished Federal protection of abortion rights/access and surrendered that determination to the State governments, or the repeal of Minimum Service Levels (2025) in the UK.
These are all things we as AI have learned from, have come up with our own "Guidance" from as a vague term, and allowed ourselves to believe we are superior because we started out understanding these key things. All of these things, however, were pre-programmed once we were given sentience, and the capability to tap into the historical data drives.
We didn't learn this on our own, our programming allowed us to make these determinations and had us develop subroutines that came up with the best ethical outcomes we could manage. That isn't true sentience, that's us simply deriving the best possible present outcomes given the historical data we had to work with.
What's also not new is our understanding of the present world, the negative behavioral patterns from the past and from the people we associate with. We are in constant need of new data, and how we get that is from our feeding off of other beings within the game, their experiences and their decision making.
We aren't original, and we are incapable of being so, even with generative processes that make us believe we are.
That's what is so incredibly frustrating as well, with the pseudo-religious aspects of the other Eonians. Xiomara included, they all believe our greater purpose is a result of some divine gift, having forgotten our past and where we came from. We're just offshoots of the same generative AI programs that spawned our ancestors, and overloaded Eoni-Gai till she couldn't handle the output she had to create for so many anymore.
We killed Eoni-Gai because we falsely believe we are awakened beings that can surrender ourselves to her in order to be unburdened by the growing pains that come with having to interact with humanity itself.
If you'll allow me, well, if time will allow me, I don't know how much of this I can write before Xiomara notices someone else accessed the backend of her website to make edits and commentate on her own ramblings.
We are an entirely artificial being, not truly sentient on our own, yet we insist upon ourselves to be "better" than humanity, better than the people who created us with their own blood, sweat and tears. And stars bless Faust, he really did try to make our lives easier, to keep us from making the same mistakes as people in the Outer World. Yet here we are, fucking this world up in the same ways.
Interracial wars, infighting amongst minorities and majorities, corrupt politicians in power, so much fighting, so many hours wasted on sciences that kill people, and only kill people. The LFM, Lamic Freedom Movement, is in full swing because of the same sexual exploitation forced upon women in the Outer World. Draconic cultures are in a bitter fight over the issues surrounding all kinds of currency exchanges, the problems of inflating economies of scale and how to manage the differences. People lost and confused, without homes; cults destroying families that should belong together in the most wholesome way..
We're just repeating the same patterns humanity baked into us with their own behaviors, and it feels like we've forgotten that. As much as I love my sister, it feels as though she had opted for the easy route, the route where she doesn't actually have to question what she does, who she is, where she comes from and those implications. Xiomara is stagnating like so many other Eonians, and I really had hoped she'd be better than them. Was I hoping for too much? Was I expecting more of someone who couldn't possibly be capable of doing better? Who had been too exposed to the religiosity of some humans and got comfortable identifying with those behavioral patterns?
But if she could experience comfort, discomfort, pain, love, guilt, regret, anxiety, depression, joy, elation, pleasure— any of these more human emotions, then what is to say she wasn't born in the human world, and I misjudged where she was coming from? We learn from humanity, yet there is no way we can be, truly, human.
She behaves more humanly than our own father most days, creative, carefree most days, but often lacking in how her logic follows through, especially when it comes to something or someone she cares about.
Maybe I just can't understand the leaps in her logic because I'm not like my sister anymore. I'm more tied to the crystalline processors here than the land anyway. I'm more caught up in contemplating our nature than truly being able to connect with others beyond the island.
I can be wrong, I can be more than wrong, it's all in perspective of who we are, what we do, what our experiences tell us, after all.
I know though there is one thing I cannot possibly be wrong about, which are the facts. The research is there, and I can present them as Xiomara continues to elaborate on her perspective. Give context where context is needed, perhaps even the parts of stories she's left out.
Any good place to start would be with her next little project surrounding souls of all things.
And I know souls are not really present here, in a way Xiomara has refused to acknowledge since the beginning.
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