On Mon, 2 Feb 2026 15:40:09 -0800, David Johnson wrote:

>>>> 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.
>
>Maybe. I don't know; I'm not a xenologist.

Nor I - but that's sorta the point; neither were any of the characters in
_Little Fuzzy_, and the impression I got was that "talk-and-build-a-fire"
was neither legislatively declared nor a Xenologist-created rule, just a
matter of case law (remember, Piper's Terro-Human Future History was really
more "Yanks in Space" than anything else - even in the "feudal" eras of the
Sword Worlds or the Empire).

>>> 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?
>
>Using the "68A rule
><https://www.travellerrpg.com/threads/rule-68a-a-refs-guide-to-the-classic-traveller-task-system.14517/>,"
>I would assume this is a difficult task, requiring a successful throw of
>10+, with a positive DM equal to the character's Xenology skill -- which
>would be a prerequisite for any Scout serving in this "Interdiction
>recommendation" role. (I might also come up with some sort of additive DM
>to allow for multiple Scout xenologists to cooperate in reaching a
>conclusion.)

Yes, but leaving the decision entirely to that makes it "roll-playing"
rather than "role-playing". What do you do when the Referee wants you to
actually argue the case in Judge Pendarvis's courtroom (and will use your
"rule 68A" to decide how well the argument flies)?

>>> (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!
>
>Oh, sorry, can't help you there -- just like I mostly can't explain how jumpspace navigation or engineering works.
>
>>> 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.
>
>Which I presume the Scouts have done handily over the past few centuries. . . .

Yes, but the question here is "What's on that list of ticky-boxes?". And
how do you _read_ the resulting list of yesses-and-noes to come to the
conclusion "This is a sapient race"?

Part of the issue here is that if the scouts _do_ get it wrong, and declare
a sapient race to be non-sapient, it's likely to be a _long_ time before
the re-examination can be scheduled - and now they're going to be opposed
by the Chartered Zarathustra Company, who don't want to have to set aside a
majority of their sunstone profits in trust for the natives that they can
no longer skin and sell the pelts of as a fashion item.

>> 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)?

>I believe there is whole bunch of "data" and "analysis" arising from 57th
>Century (CE) physiology, psychology and psionics -- and the associated
>technologies used to apply that knowledge -- which helps the Scouts to do
>this in ways that we can't even begin to imagine, much less understand.
>Like jump drive, it's "hand-waving" all the way down to the last turtle.
>
>I'm not trying to be snarky here. I'm simply comfortable assuming that
>there is a process, the Scouts are pretty good at it and in the Imperium
>are generally trusted in its practice -- and that there are pretty
>straightforward game mechanics for us to sort out the relevant role-playing
>details.
>
>I have thought about this a bit with respect to the Dolphins in the Earth
>Colonies campaign. There's no way I am going to convince you that
>contemporary dolphins are sapient -- it takes a leap of faith, Your Grace
>-- but I'm pretty confident that I could refute any argument you might make
>that they're not sapient on the basis of it being, essentially,
>self-referential.
>
>A lot of that boils down to you not being able to insist, on any
>evidentiary basis, that the sounds we can detect dolphins making don't
>constitute a language.

Yes, that's definitely an issue. We don't currently (in AD2025) have a
solid definition of sapience - and what we do have does seem to be
self-referential (in the sense that "we're sapient, we do it this way, so
doing it this way must be a sign of sapience").

Someone elsewhere in the thread mentioned the NAS; my problem with that is
that it's not described as a _qualitative_ device; the operator is supposed
to conclude that activity over a certain (quantitative, but unspecified)
threshhold is indicative of sapience. But that only begs the question; how
did the Scouts get to the point where they could say "Quantity Q of neural
activity = Sapience", and does the size of the neural framework in which
this activity is occuring have an effect?

>Piper had a yarn <https://www.zarthani.net/future_history_bibliography.htm#omnilingual> about that problem too, sort of. ?

Actually; I think you're thinking of "Naudsonce" rather than "Omnilingual";
the latter was more-or-less about finding a "Rosetta Stone" for _written_
Martian.

"Naudsonce" was the one where no two native seemed to have the same
pronunciation for a word with a given meaning; it was later discovered that
it wasn't a sonic language in the consonant-and-vowel sense that human
language are, but that specific frequency clusters in the utterances were
what carried the meaning, and they did so in a way that the natives
actually _felt_ the meaning.

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