On Sat, 31 Jan 2026 09:35:50 -0800, David Johnson - piperfan at
zarthani.net (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote to Freelance
Traveller:

>Hi Jeff.
>
>Always love to see a Piper cross-over to Traveller. ?
>
>> How do they reach that conclusion? In some ways, the Scout service's job in
>> defining sophont is harder than the Chartered Zarathustra Company's job in
>> defining sapience, because the Terran Federation wasn't known to have any
>> sapients like Traveller's Schalli or Llellewyloly.
>
>Is it? Perhaps there is a conservative practice of there only needing to be a possibility -- or potential -- for sapience for there to be an interdiction.

The Scouts will still have to make the case, however. They won't be able to
get away with saying "we think these beings might be sophont" and get the
interdict granted; they'll at least have to go as far as "we think these
beings might be sophont _because_ X". The question here is how to define X,
generically.

>(Also, the CZC was working to deny Fuzzy sapience; it was Holloway -- and the Navy, it turned out -- who made the case for sapience.)

Yes, but in order to deny sapience, the CZC would have to have a definition
of sapience that they could point to and say "here is why they can't be
sapient"; that definition would have to cover all of the known sapients
from humans down to the Khoogras of Yggdrasil, but exclude the Fuzzies. The
Friends of Little Fuzzy, in the story, were trying to prove sapience, yes,
and the Navy did get involved (and ultimately "broke the code"), and showed
that the Fuzzies were in fact sapient (through being able to speak - though
in a register that was just barely ultrasonic to humans). But the Friends
of Little Fuzzy had the easier job, because if they could show that the
Fuzzies were sapient under a current accepted definition, they
automatically won; any definition that the CZC were to come up with would
have to be examined and challenged before the Pendarvis court on
Zarathustra would accept it - and the CZC was operating under constraints
that the Friends were not, because for the Friends, it didn't matter
whether the Khoogras were sapient or not.

>> So, we have a situation where His Imperial Majesty's Office of Resource
>> Management, currently headed by the Marquis of Dateeta, is hearing a
>> petition from the Scouts to grant an interdict on the world of Tamara to
>> protect the natives from interference and exploitation. His Excellency is
>> sympathetic, but the Scouts _do_ need to make a reasonable case. What are
>> the guidelines for evaluating a species as sophont, and how do they explain
>> it to the Marquis?
>
>I would imagine that in most instances the Scouts are able to bring a much
>more robust bundle of empirical data to this decision-making process than
>that which was presented in Judge Pendarvis's courtroom on Zarathustra.

This potentially could be touchy, depending on how they get the
information. Consider: if they get the information by capturing a native,
euthanizing him, and dissecting him, and present the information so gained,
then when the natives are found to be sapient, all of the Scout Service
personnel involved (and anyone who coöperated with them) could be charged
with murder (the unprovoked deliberate termination of the life of a
sophont) and kidnapping (the unwarranted capture and/or transport against
the will of the sophont so captured and/or transported), at the very least,
and there may additionally be chargeable crimes pertaining to such things
as desecration of a corpse, mutilation, and such. Your scout researchers
may not be as bad as Josef Mengele, but... I'd be uncomfortable with a
Scout service that did this sort of thing on the one hand while asking for
interdicts so that nobody would do this on the other.

In current jurisprudence, if evidence presented at trial has been obtained
in violation of the law, it is excluded and inadmissible, as "fruit of the
poisoned tree" - in other words, you can't commit crimes to get evidence of
other crimes. In the case of a determination of sapience, you can't really
say that "on Tuesday, when we gathered the evidence, the Fnords were not
sophont; on Thursday, when we presented the evidence to the Marquis, and he
granted us the interdiction, they were"; even if someone were to accept the
statement, they'd likely be inclined to challenge you and ask "So what
changed between Tuesday and Thursday?". "Sophont" isn't merely a legal
status like "citizen"; it's an indication that a particular species has a
particular set of qualities that are distinguishable and mark the species
as "people" rather than "animals".

>For example, given that there's no indication of anything like a Trek-esque
>"Prime Directive" in the Imperium, I would guess that it is routine for the
>Scouts to capture a few locals in remote areas and subject them to all
>sorts of rather invasive physiological, psychological and psionic
>examinations intended to confirm / disconfirm sapience. Then, with a little
>"mind-scrubbing," they can be returned to the same location no worse for
>the wear other than an unsettling temporary loss of memory.

You're assuming that such 'mind-scrubbing' techniques (a) exist, and (b)
work on the prospective sophonts. Granting (a), how do you make the
determination of (b), and what do you do if they _don't_ work?

>Sure, on occasion these measures go awry and someone is killed or injured
>in a manner that cannot be rectified. If they're not sapient, that's no
>particular loss, and if they are, well, that tragedy gets balanced with a
>positive determination to protect their entire species from off-world
>interference.

A not-unreasonable position to take in a canonical Imperium, but somewhat
callous.

>From time to time, some post-interdiction sophonts will be outraged once
>they learn about this past intervention with their ancestors but they just
>as likely will not find a particularly receptive audience among the rest of
>interstellar society.

They don't need to; they'll manage to find the small but noisy set of
professional offense kleptomaniacs. Or the SBNSoPOK will find them...

Now, let's throw a curve ball. I ask those who can acquire a copy of the
Harry Turtledove story "Bluff" to read it, and tell me whether the natives
portrayed therein are sophonts - and why/why not.

("Bluff" is in the Baen Books volume _3 x T_ https://www.baen.com/3xt.html,
along with other good stories by the same author, and was originally
published in _Analog_ February 1985 (available from the Luminist Archives
https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/SF/AN/AN_1985_02.pdf ). Of
special interest to readers of this thread may be the novel
_Noninterference_ in the Baen volume linked above. Another novel that may
be of interest is _Hellspark_ by Janet Kagan [reviewed in Freelance
Traveller, Nov/Dec 2025], available from Baen Books
https://www.baen.com/hellspark.html )

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