On Sat, 31 Jan 2026 21:10:04 -0800, David Johnson wrote:

>>> 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.
>
>Sure, but that would have been relatively straightforward for the Fuzzies:
>they're tool users.

So are gorillas and some other terrestrial animate entities. Sophont status
not yet in evidence. There's even a language to communicate with gorillas
(see: Yerkish), but that's still not enough, apparently.

>A more challenging circumstance would be something like the premise for
>Dolphin sapience in my Earth Colonies campaign, where I have assumed that
>Dolphins are sapient -- naturally so, no "uplift" or other geneering -- and
>Humans have merely failed to recognize that for thousands of years because
>Dolphins don't use tools, don't make sounds that Humans recognize as speech
>(as was the case for Fuzzies), and live in an environment which is markedly
>different from that of Humans.

Compare the Schalli in stock Traveller... so how do you craft a definition
for sophont status that includes them?

>(And, getting "meta" here, humans don't have a robust theory for
>understanding sapience generally, even in humans, because they've never
>considered the question seriously. Consider, for example, the current
>brouhaha around applied statistics, er . . . I mean, "fuzzy -- heh, heh --
>logic," er, . . . I mean "machine learning," er . . . I mean, "artificial
>intelligence.")

Which is part of the impetus for this thread - and, I suspect, for Piper
originally writing the story!

>The result is going to be that, sometimes, even with a conservative "bar"
>the Scouts will get it wrong -- but also not seriously harm some
>prospective sophonts -- and then some Imperial Puritans, er . . . I mean,
>settlers, er . . . I mean pioneers will end up running roughshod over some
>native, sapient species -- just as Humans did to Dolphins until the
>mid-21st Century in the Earth Colonies campaign. . . .

Getting it wrong is a Bad Thing - but as long as you _learn_ from the Bad
Thing, and update your list of ticky-boxes to account for the most recent
Oopses, _and_ _be prepared to rectify errors once discovered_, you're off
to a good start at demonstrating that you're a Responsible Organization.
Which will, in the long run, get you the benefit of the doubt in the
marginal cases.

>>> 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,
>
>Oh, absolutely, but I'm not suggesting anything that severe, as a matter of
>course. Rather, occasionally, despite the Scouts' best intentions an
>abducted prospective sophont will be harmed in an unrecoverable manner.
>That will be treated as an unfortunate accident -- and balanced against the
>millions and millions of sophonts who are protected across dozens and
>dozens of worlds over centuries of the Interdiction regime.

But will it? Or will A Certain Segment of the population seize on it and
demand that the organization be shut down?

>>> 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?

>Well, first off, there's a lot of space between "doesn't work" and "leaves
>the prospective sophont as a mindless pool of jelly."

Yes, there is. But a good chunk of that space is going to be in the
'something definitely happened' area (vs. "It's more likely that this one
is an attention-seeker, or delusional"), and that's where the problems -
both ethical and political - arise.

>Obviously, there will have to be the exercise of (sapient -- pun sort of
>intended) judgment by the Scouts. Here, again, I think some conservatism
>will prevail. If the Scouts' "rountine" physiological, psychological and
>psionic interventions haven't established that a handful of abductees are
>sapient, I wouldn't expect the Scouts to "keep drilling" -- or to keep
>abducting more beings -- but rather to accept that there isn't going to be
>an Interdiction in this instance.

I don't disagree with this; it shouldn't take a large sample to arrive at a
documentable conclusion of sapience. The question I'm asking for this
thread is "what's on the ticky-box list for the scouts to arrive at the
conclusion?". Certainly, talk-and-build-a-fire is a good "first cut",
but... what can you do if it doesn't occur to you that that yeeking might
be ultrasonic speech (Fuzzies) - or that that dolphin-like chittering might
be a language (Schalli)?

>And they absolutely don't have to "get it right" the first time. So, some
>colonists show up, and one day some parent finds their child playing a game
>with a juvenile sophont that is a lot more sophisticated than "fetch" (or
>some old curmudgeon like Holloway finds one in his prospecting cabin and
>gets them to put the crumpled pieces of paper back into the overturned
>waste basket) -- and the next thing you know, the Scouts are called back
>for some more investigation.

An error that results in this isn't the problem. The problem is when the
CZC doesn't find sunstones, and the most valuable thing that they can
export from Zarathustra is Fuzzy fur. The reason that the CZC was so
desperate for the Fuzzies to not be sapient was because of what sapient
Fuzzies would mean for the sunstone trade.

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