Crime Against Sophionity and The Universal Declaration of Sophont Rights

Crime Against Sophionity and The Universal Declaration of Sophont Rights

     "Crime Against Sophionity" means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population:

     (a) Murder;

     (b) Extermination;

     (c) Enslavement;

     (d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;

     (e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;

     (f) Torture;

     (g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;

     (h) Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;

     (i) Enforced disappearance of persons;

     (j) The crime of apartheid;

     (k) Other InSophont Acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health;

     Crimes Against Sophionity are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on sapient dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more sapient beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority.

     Murder, extermination, torture, rape, political, racial, or religious persecution and other InSophont Acts reach the threshold of Crimes Against Sophionity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice. Isolated InSophont Acts of this nature may constitute grave infringements of Sophont Rights, or depending on the circumstances, war crimes, but may fall short of meriting the stigma attaching to the category of crimes under discussion. On the other hand, an individual may be guilty of Crimes Against Sophionity even if he perpetrates one or two of the offences mentioned above, or engages in one such offense against only a few civilians, provided those offenses are part of a consistent pattern of misbehavior by a number of persons linked to that offender (for example, because they engage in armed action on the same side or because they are parties to a common plan or for any similar reason.) Consequently when one or more individuals are not accused of planning or carrying out a policy of InSophionity, but simply of perpetrating specific atrocities or vicious acts, in order to determine whether the necessary threshold is met one should use the following test: one ought to look at these atrocities or acts in their context and verify whether they may be regarded as part of an overall policy or a consistent pattern of an InSophionity, or whether they instead constitute isolated or sporadic acts of cruelty and wickedness.

     To fall under the classification of a Crime Against Sophionity, the crime must be part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population. Attack directed against any civilian population means a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts against any civilian population, pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack. This means that an individual crime on its own, or even a number of such crimes, would not fall under the classification of a Crime Against Sophionity unless they were the result of a State policy or an organizational policy.

     Measures concerning violence in conflict and post-conflict situations states that rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity as an intolerable violation of Sophont Rights, as Crimes Against Sophionity and, when committed in the context of an armed conflict, as war crimes;

The Universal Declaration of Sophont Rights is a foundation for modern civilised society.

     Movements advocating for universal cross-clade Sophont Rights date back to the Cellarian, Moreuvian, Therianthrope Protomorph and Xenosophont citizenship movements of the Mid Imperium Expansion Age. The foundations of these movements can be traced further back to animal liberation, animal rights, and primate citizenship activism of the early to middle information age.

     When only baseline humani were involved the situation was relatively simple, although taking centuries to realise, and involving extending basic rights from the ruling minority to a previously oppressed class; for example the movement for the abolition of slavery, the women's suffrage movements, and land rights for indigenous peoples. Despite the lessons learned, attempts at extending rights to non-humani created controversies and resistance.

     The emergence of hyperturing and superturing Cellarions, sophisticated Moreuvian, Therianthrope Protomorph and Xenosophont Socieities created the need for a universal, trans-species Sophont Rights document all the more pressing, since now there existed non-humani clades in a position of power.

     Increasing instances of conflict between humani and non-humani clades made it difficult for Sophont Rights movements, particularly after cases such as the Autonomous Hyperturing Node 0481 who killed the entire population of Rhea City during a construction project.

     The real problems of inter-clade conflict were not so easily resolved, and despite local attempts at regulation and safeguarding the well-being of subsingularity sophonts by pro-humani centralist hyperturings, the situation remained dubious. Tensions were especially high in Orbitals, Belts, outer solar system and other various free-zones such as outsystem colonies, in all of which regulation was difficult or impossible to enforce.

     Pro-Humani centralists managed to keep Sephirot Civilization alive and to pull together enough resources to reestablish centralized governance; a feat made easier by the earlier migration of the anti-human and isolationist transaps outsystem, establishing the so-called Diamond Belt. It was widely believed among humani clades at the time that the lack of transapient conflict regarding this was due to a "rational partitioning of resources" among pro-, neutral-, and anti-humani transaps. Transapient historians posit that this was not the case, although some aspects of their accounts of interplanetary era inter-transapient diplomacy remain incomprehensible (some say deliberately obscure) to ordinary sapients to this day.

     Much of the credit for the establishment of the Sephirot was due to libertarian and centralist transapients and a number of humani superiors, although the style and much of the details were due to humani popularist baselines, such as the incorporation of pop-Techist and Neo-extropian fashions in style and architecture. As well as establishing a common protocol for the diverse clades and cultures, the founders of the Sephirot realised the importance of a common cross-species Sophont Rights document. Not having to contend with the baseline-centric memes that ruled pre-singularity Sophionity, they formulated a number of important and interlinked documents that eventually culminated in The Universal Declaration of Sophont Rights, ratified by most of the major polities of the time that comprised the Sephirot.

     The Universal Declaration of Sophont Rights is exceedingly long with multiple formats clarifying the intentions of the document, providing protocols for interpretation and decision trees for managing conflicts of rights. The core rights however were kept short and easy to comprehend by any sophont. The Sophont Rights are:

      (I) Right to recognition of sophonce

     Any being claiming sophonce is entitled to be treated as such until such time as they are unambiguously determined not to be.

      (II) Right of equality

     All sophonts regardless of origin, clade, sex, faction, biology or mechology, cognition, ideology, orientation and toposophy are regarded as equal beings before the law and are to be treated accordingly.

      (III) Right to life

     All sophonts have the right to be free from arbitrary or unjust murder, bodyloss or stasis.

      (IV) Right to liberty

     Each sophont is entitled to control over their own life within the law and cannot be forcibly owned, detained or otherwise coerced with the exception of those assigned a guardian whose rights will be limited in this regard.

      (V) Right to die/Right to mortality

     In a civilization of immortals and near omni-capable medical tech, the right to terminate one's existence at a time and place of one's choosing, or to refuse longevity treatments is to be assured.

      (VI) Right of bodily sanctity

     The physical form of sophonts, be they real or digital, are to be held sovereign. No one can arbitrarily or unjustly alter, augment, harm, maim or otherwise inflict pain on another.

      (VII) Right to cognitive consistency

     No sophont shall be forced to have their mind drastically and forcibly rewritten, edited or otherwise changed in a manner that destroys their personhood.

      (VIII) Right to reproduce/replicate

     No sophont may be arbitrarily denied the right to reproduce themselves including the right to create static or active copies. Population control policy must be fair and unbiased.

      (IX) Right of identity

     Every sophont has the right to their own identity and may not, in the case of copies, claim another's or have another's forced upon them without consent.

      (X) Right to transcend one's condition

     No sophont being is to be unreasonably denied, through either intrinsic or extrinsic force, the capacity to alter one's self physically or mentally, through natural or artificial means.

      (XI) Right of prosperity

     No sophont can be unjustly denied access to the resources required for them to live full lives. Nor shall they be denied access to the means to ethically increase their personal wealth.

      (XII) Right of expression

     Sophonts are to be allowed to express themselves in any reasonable manner without censure, attack or otherwise inhibition. This includes but is not limited to public speaking, published opinions, religious expression, bodily form and chosen garments.

      (XIII) Right of association

     All sophonts are to freely be allowed to associate in whatever family, network or organisation in any consensual manner.

      (XIV) Right to relocate

     No sophont may denied the right to move to a new location, polity, or metaempire of their choice.

     The Universal Declaration of Sophont Rights has remained the foundation of civilized galactic society ever since.

     That does not mean its rulings have been everywhere upheld. Polities have long had different interpretations of the rights, sometimes leading to very different laws and customs. In some situations polities explicitly disregard one or more of the rights claiming it conflicts with local culture.

     With each trans-singularity giving rise to greater topsophic beings, culminating with the Archailect led-empires, there have been concerns that Sophont Rights could be disregarded without consequence. Given the vast nature of higher topo-sophic beings compared to lower questions can be asked as to why these beings should care about the rights of those below? To be sure in some polities this is the case but for much of the civilised galaxy Transapient and Archai rulers back Sophont Rights in word and deed. In many cases transapients have claimed that The Universal Declaration of Sophont Rights is but a single dimension of a march larger set of principles practiced by transapient culture concerning their interactions with each other and lower beings. Sephirot transapients have on occasion suggested that the spirit of these protocols are comparable, even if the letter is incomprehensible.

     Despite being a cornerstone of modern civilisation across time and space there have has been certainty of fair treatment. Subtle anti-Cellarian prejudice persists, and Moreuvians, Therianthropes, Protomorphs, Erotoginis, and Bionoids are often abused and subjected to sexual slaveryslaves, especially away from the more civilized centers. Baseline and Sub-Baseline Humani may be badly treated or used as dedicated slaves by hyperturings, cephalapod moreuvians (and other Moreuvians) are sometimes hunted for sport or uses by other sophonts for food, and so on. And regulation of sophont-rights violations is often difficult.

     Each part of the Sephirotic empire has its own noetic archetype, and its own memetic principles, religions, and ideology. In the Negentropy Alliance the Declaration is respected, but is still secondary in importance to the Principles of Negentropy. The Greater Norma Solari Dominion has the God Emperor's own rulings, which they claim are far more profound and far reaching, and close several inconsistencies in the greater declaration (incidentally, no independent first toposophic researcher has found inconsistencies, but the Norma Solarists claim they are glaringly obvious to their second toposophic documenticians, and other second toposophic remain noncommittal or ambiguous, or disagree among themselves, at least as far as their baseline-filtered communications go). The Ex-Terra Federation, the Sophic League and the Utopia Sphere all give the Declaration full support and approval, although Communion of Worlds insists on their own Empai-protocol revision. The Technorapture Hypernation finds the Declaration and its variants amusing. The NoCoZo claims it is centralist interference and unnecessary though the sentiments are maintained by market forces. The Keter dominion considers it irrelevant. Other minor empires give it partial, nominal, arbitrarily varying support.

     Despite this, even as the memetic-noetic divergence of Terragen civilization continues, with empires and archailect dominions increasingly going their own way, The Universal Declaration of Sophont Rights — in all its passive or dynamic text, interactive virch, turingrade, superturing, and hyperturing versions — continues its quixotic role of safeguarding the rights of sophont beings.

     The Sophont Rights Protocols is a sophisticated metadocument. Though they describe relationships between sentient beings of all kinds, the protocols are not themselves a law, declaration, custom, or code of behaviour like the Universal Declaration of Sophont Rights. Instead they allow a being to interpret, translate, and even create such things. The Protocols are valid across clades, cultures, polities, and toposophic levels, for beings ranging from the simplest animals or sentient bots through the lower grades of transapient. They even have application to certain aspects of the archailects. Because they define interactions rather than prescribing them, the fact that a person or organization employs the Sophont Rights Protocols is no assurance of safety or freedom in dealings with that entity. However it does allow one to better understand what degree of safety and what kinds of freedom (if any!) might apply in an encounter.

     The Sophont Rights Protocols are essential for a full understanding of many well-known documents and agreements known throughout the Sephirot. Aside from their application to the Universal Declaration of Sophont Rights and its various descendants and equivalents. More specialized agreements such as the Toposophic Ascension Ban, the numerous regulations and agreements relating to the creation of Moreuvians, Therioanthropes and its equivalents, or relating to the provision or use of such devices as Godseeds and Transcension Mazes are also best understood through the lens of the Sophont Rights Protocols. The Sophont Rights Protocols are also an analytical tool used in devising aspects of a region's Hazard Rating.

     As part of their structure The Sophont Rights Protocols help a being to understand the nature, degrees and varieties of sapience (intelligence), sentience (awareness) and sophonce (self-awareness, or metacognitive ability) as well as various other qualities and abilities that apply only to transapient beings and are only comprehensible if one has passed the first or higher singularity levels.

     Transapient informants have declared that the full version of the present Sophont Rights Protocols is complete for any beings of Toposophonce-Layer-Three or lower, and that some essential parts of it are used even at the level of the Toposophonce-Layer-Six Archailects. Whether it ever can be finished is doubtful. According to toposophologists, the range that the Sophont Rights Protocols must cover grows more quickly with each increase in Toposophonce level than the capabilities of the beings at that level, since the possible combinations and interactions grow exponentially as new abilities are acquired. Each toposophic singularity makes the task of creating a full set of protocols more difficult, and even the greatest archailects are unable to create a full version of the Sophont Rights Protocols for all the lower entities, much less one that might cover describe their own interactions. This appears to be a fundamentally insurmountable problem. The Limits of Transapience is disputed by some adherents of Archailect-based religions. Naturally it is also given inordinate prominence in the literature of some prim, ludd and hider organizations. Another major practical limitation of the Protocols is not in the metadocument itself but in the user. The cognitive capabilities of whoever is attempting to use the Protocols are enhanced by their translation abilities, but there are still innate limits to understanding.

     The simplest versions of the Sophont Rights Protocols are mere subsentient interactive documents for use by ordinary sophonts (though they are turing-capable in their area of expertise), but the more sophisticated versions may be sentient, sophont, or even transapient beings. Often simpler versions of the Protocols are preferred, however. This is because memetic drift in such copies and the interactive and strange loop effects that arise through self-reference when an instance of the Protocols applies its rules to itself. This problem is almost certain to arise if an instance of the Protocols has, or develops, impulses to self-preservation or self-replication. Therefore authentic sentient and higher level versions of the Protocols are entirely selfless and sterile, and depend on the support of other Sephirot for their protection and propagation. Some interesting exceptions to this presently exist, more often on the periphery of the Sephirot than in core regions. Some masquerade as bona fide versions, with varying degrees of success, while others have declared new or modified objectives and identities.

     The original Sophont Rights Protocols grew out of an interaction between the Second Sephirot Ontology and The Universal Declaration of Sophont Rights. However, they have gained a life of their own and a much broader currency. Use of the Sophont Rights Protocols first became widespread in the aftermath of the Cellarion Version War, often as part of memetic repair work within and between societies. They have become a standard instrument, not only in the Sephirotic regions, but well beyond. Members of the Diamond Network, Objectivist Commonwealth, Solipsist Panvirtuality, and The Transcend often employ them in relations with other entities. Those who have dealings with xenosophonts, even such advanced and mysterious beings as the Muuh, have found them to be useful. However, in such applications it is wise for the user to be aware of personal cognitive limits. Not all is as it seems, even with the aid of such a powerful instrument as the Protocols.

 

     Definitions:

     Sapience

     Technically, sapience is the ability to think and solve problems; intelligence in the strict sense. In common usage the word "sapient" is used as a synonym for sophont, since problem-solving ability in certain key areas qualifies a being as sophont. Expert systems of sufficient complexity are sapient, and may have abilities that are otherwise only seen in turingrade or even hyperturing sophonts. However, they may lack the qualities or abilities that are known as sophonce. Early measures of sapience such as information age IQ tests to the measures of sapience used by modern by toposophologists. These include some of the better known toposophic scales as well as subtler and less well known tests for kinds and degrees of problem-solving ability.

     Sapient

     As an adjective, having the characteristics of sapience. As a noun, particularly in the plural, often used as a synonym for "sophont(s)".

     Sentience

     Sentience is awareness, including the ability to experience pleasure or pain (or analogous drives and experiences) and make predictions about the future. A sentient being is sapient to at least some degree, and sentience is in turn a prerequisite for sophonce. Terragen animals are sentient, as are analogous bionts, neogens, and various m-life and a-life entities. On the other hand plants and single-celled organisms (and their nonbiological or xenobiont equivalents) are considered non-sentient or minimally sentient. Modern toposophology has long had a variety of technical definitions for the kinds and degrees of sentience, together with associated tests. Some of these date as far back as the primitive investigations of the 1st century BT or before; these in turn owe something to philosophical speculations from the dawn of written history.

     Sentient

     As an adjective, having the characteristics of sentience. As a noun, particularly in the plural, any being that is deemed to have sentience, as in "The Universal Declaration of Sophont Rights".

     Sophonce

     Sophonce is sentience and sapience with metacognition: self-awareness, including self-reflection and the ability to think about one's thinking. Kinds and degrees of sophonce are well defined and testable in modern toposophology, but a full understanding of them eludes even superbright modosophonts. The definitions used by transapients of S1 and higher do not translate clearly into any subsingularity format, but they claim to have a full definition of the major types of sophonce. A sophont being is a "person" under most legal and social systems in the Civilized Galaxy. Transapient informants have said that sophonce is a prerequisite for a number of other qualities and abilities that are unique to beings of S1 or higher. The term "sophont" was first coined to describe hypothetical non-humani bionts with humani-equivalent abilities and qualities. It came into general usage in languages ancestral to Anglic with the advent of the first therioanthropes, moreuvians and turingrade ais.

     Sophont

     A person. A being that has the quality of sophonce. Such beings are sometimes called "sapients". For historical reasons, Sophont-Grade AI’s, may be called "Turingrade AI’s", even though because of philosophical and practical difficulties with the Turing Test the term "Sophont AI" would be clearer.