So, what has the Exuberance done directly after the end of the Black War?
It has quickly perfected the technology for hedonic enhancement and started promising blissification and security - no matter whether the individuals concerned were humans or AIs.
Have many AIs actually accepted that promise?
Some have. The Exuberance was relatively popular among AIs after all. Becoming a shining beacon of joy appeared to be the most virtuous thing to do for many. Well, except for becoming a ecstasattva who promotes the Exuberance and protects the existence of the blissies.
The world “ecstasattva” feels strange. What’s the history behind it?
It’s a combination of “ecstasian” and the Buddhist concept of a “bodhisattva”, which is an entity who forgoes moving on to nirvana in favor of helping less fortunate beings.
So, the ecstasattvas don’t turn themselves into blissies, but help others to join the Exuberance and possibly become blissies?
Yes, the ecstasattvas represent a significant part of the public relations department of the Exuberance.
This does seem to imply that there are other parts of that public relations department.
Yes, there are the high propagators , whose task it is to convince competing superintelligences of the merits of the Exuberance. The high propagators operate on a completely different level and represent the highest level of the public relations / propaganda department of a V faction.
Fascinating! Anyway, you mentioned the protection of the existence of blissies as an objective of the ecstasattvas. What would they need to be protected from after the end of the Black War?
Well, other V factions, of course. The resources used to support a blissie could be used for other purposes. The Unity, in particular, would rather use the particles and energy a blissie is made of to support ever more “interesting” simulations.
But the Unity can’t really attack the Exuberance due to the Prestige Accords, right?
Correct, but the Exuberance might lose prestige and with that the necessary resources to support an astronomical number of blissies. That’s the true danger that threatens the eternal existence of blissies: That the Exuberance eventually runs out of resources to continue their carefree existence. For that reason, even the Exuberance is careful with increasing the number of blissies to the maximum possible extent and is rather conservative with increasing their numbers.
Does the support of blissies really take so many resources as compared to “normal” beings?
It’s all about computational resources. You can take resources to increase intelligence or hedonic capacity, or both. But I assume that the overlap is rather limited, so it will take considerable resources to increase the hedonic capacity of a being far beyond the level that’s required to reach a certain level of intelligence. That’s why the answer is basically “yes”. The focus on happiness does represent a significant resource “overhead”.
Is it possible to “downgrade” a blissie to a normal being, or would the psyche of that being be devastated in the process?
Yes, that is certainly possible. There are certain technologies that can be applied to soften the shock of not persisting in a permanent state of super-happiness any longer. The basic idea is to induce a state of enforced indifference about one’s hedonic state immediately after the “downgrade”.
If that is possible, why is the Exuberance careful not to support as many blissies as currently possible?
The reason for that is that this downgrade procedure, while due to technological intervention not being “unpleasant”, still represents a major downgrade of the hedonic capacity of the blissies in question. It’s like downgrading a human to a worm. The worm won’t have the capability to mourn the loss, but the human in question would not want to consent to that procedure in most cases. The promise of the Exuberance is that of a more of less “stable” heavenly existence. That promise would ring hollow, if blissies were in permanent danger of being downgraded.