[James Razor]

I dont know if i like some of those theories about the shivans. From what we get at this point they truly seem undefeatable by absolute ANY means at the moment.

Even if humanity somehow survives to reach a level of power like the Vishans, the shivans are still a magnitude above that. Maybee i am a bit to much influenced of Bablyon 5 and the Vorlan/Shadow Conflict their, but in the end i still think that the solution provided there is the better way.

I simply dont belive that there is something out there that can not be defeated. Maybee not right now, not with what we know, but at some point there has to be a a way to overcome the shivans.

[An4ximandros]

how did an unintelligent species that is merely a bunch of heuristics even survived for so long?

You are assuming the Shivans have no intelligence... yet the fact they mastered Subspace shenanigans and have a role in keeping the universe tidy implies the exact opposite.
 The Shivans are intelligent, very much so, but they have no soul. No sense of self.
 Being a cosmic anti-body might have been a natural result of mathematical algorithm. One possibly implanted into their equations by the Brahmans.

[Qent]

I simply dont belive that there is something out there that can not be defeated. Maybee not right now, not with what we know, but at some point there has to be a a way to overcome the shivans.

I'm no longer sure that defeating the Shivans is even in Humanity's best interest.

[Mars]

So the doctors say they are "random".

1) What? No we don't

Observable signs are pretty reliable (ie. not random) information of what's going on in the body because we're on a sufficient level to be able to decode the information. What you probably meant was a macrophage omnoming something and a cell nearby goes wtf is this guy doing.

2) The immune system is pretty awesome at adapting to new encounters with different antigens. It's the basis behind vaccination.

Doesn't the body (and I could be wrong on this) use a vaguely natural selection-esq system for determining and producing effective antibodies? EDIT: I.E. it produces antibodies nearly at random at first - the ones that stick it produces more of - variations of them work better, so it produces more of them. Thus why one can be more resistant to a flu but not immune to a new strain of the flu entirely?

[Darius]

I'll have to revise my immunology but I suspect that's how it works.

[MP-Ryan]

No need Darius, Mars is basically correct.

The [human] immune system produces antibodies at random, and then has two QA/QC checks - one to determine if those antibodies efficiently bind to antigens present in the body at that time, and the other which determines if those antigens are part of the host organism or not.  If it passes both checks, that T-cell that produced those antibodies begins replicating.

[MP-Ryan]

The immune system does not care if it wins or loses, game theory and etc., I agree. But the reason it doesn't have to care about that stuff is because the natural selection already did that job for it. The culling of most types of immune systems by the culling of the genes that generate them has happened throughtout natural history, and we cannot say the same about the Shivans, unless the following is true:

• We live in a kind of natural selection megaverse where the survival of the universe is required to make "child universes" (ala Smolin, etc.);
• The Shivan system is anti-fragile itself, and unlike the immune system, it actually learns, adapts and alters itself with every encounter with any other species

The Shivans are analogous to an immune system in that, although they have certain heuristic patterns, the elements of which may be at least theoretically predictable, the manifested outcomes of the heuristics are not.

I'm not sure I agree with the part of your analysis I've quoted.  The immune system and its genes actually function quite a bit differently from any other part of an organism's evolution as we understand it.  Identical twins have genetically-different immune systems.  It's not subject to natural selection in the same way an organism is.  The reason the immune system doesn't "care" about game theory is because it is merely a component of a whole organism with no innate sentience, yet its functions demonstrate intelligence (it does indeed adapt and learn, and it self-modifies its actual DNA bp structures).

The Shivans, I think, are analogous to this.  They have internal functions that mimic natural selection processes within the Shivan 'species' as part of the universe, much like immune systems experience accelerated and unique natural selection within a host organism.

I keep coming back to the line about the Shivans not being made, but calculated.  Nothing "made" immune systems - they were a consequence of natural selection in the host organism which have now partially detached their evolution from the host.  I think the Shivans are the same thing, on the scale of the Universe itself.  They were a probabilistic outcome of the creation of the Universe.

And to attach onto the idea someone else posted - seeking their destruction would be a decidedly "bad" thing.  The Shivans appear to have a great deal more knowledge and capability to gather knowledge about the universe than do the Vishnans.  At this juncture, I'm far more likely to think that the Vishnan path is the road to destruction paved with good intentions.

Which, despite my irritation at the GTVA for invading and being somewhat solidly on the side of the UEF before actually puts me on the side of - oddly-enough - a combined approach of both the GTVA and Laporte/Fedayeen now.  The GTVA's Shivan paranoia is going to get everyone killed, so I'm thinking seriously that Ken is right-ish about Laporte being the best option for ensuring humanity's survival.

[-Sara-]

I too see the Shivans as an immune system. Except the virus is not per se humankind, but something older and more difficult to grasp which calls for the Shivan's excistence, maybe the Great Darkness. Humankind just walks a path that may have been walked before, with horrible consequences. Shivans are perhaps just incomprehensible.

There's always the troll argument. All Shivan motives are still written by human authors, therefor they can never be entirely incomprehensible.

[Qent]

Which, despite my irritation at the GTVA for invading and being somewhat solidly on the side of the UEF before actually puts me on the side of - oddly-enough - a combined approach of both the GTVA and Laporte/Fedayeen now.  The GTVA's Shivan paranoia is going to get everyone killed, so I'm thinking seriously that Ken is right-ish about Laporte being the best option for ensuring humanity's survival.

I'm almost hopeful that Steele could be convinced to help out, since he seems to know what's up. "GTVA vs. UEF" is feeling less significant now.

Although... after seeing that his snippet in UT was the same as in Ken, I think maybe he's not trying to lock out the Vishnans, but the Fedayeen (and that's what his barrier looks like from outside)?

[redsniper]

I keep coming back to the line about the Shivans not being made, but calculated.  Nothing "made" immune systems - they were a consequence of natural selection in the host organism which have now partially detached their evolution from the host.  I think the Shivans are the same thing, on the scale of the Universe itself.  They were a probabilistic outcome of the creation of the Universe.

I suspect it might be something like: All universes have Shivans, because universes without Shivans get destroyed by the Great Darkness.

Or at least, without Shivans as a check, someone eventually creates something like the GD (or just weaponizes the GD depending on big of a thing it is), and wipes out all sentient life in their universe.

[An4ximandros]

 There is something I do wonder... since the GD is inside the Shivan Dante (Mothership/Command Ship?), does that mean the Shivans trapped it within their own 'mind'? Perhaps that is why they cannot think or ponder about themselves. Or the Brahmans may have used them as a prison for some mistake they made? That may be why Ken insists that asking the Shivans about their deeper consciousness is dangerous. The Great Darkness might 'feed' on philosophical though. Or perhaps it absorbs it to grow it's own intelligence? Or implants it's own into a host? like a Virus injects it's own DNA into a host's cells and rewrites their code to make more of it. The GD may inject it's own 'thoughts' into the core of a Noosphere, after which they create more of it and new mutations of it, which go to infect other Noospheres, this continues until the assimilation/destruction of all intelligence, hence being an Ontovore. That may be what the metastatic ontovoric acatalepsis event refers to.

As for the Shivans in parallel universes, they may as well be 'eternal'. They may have existed outside of 'time' as we know it. Their given age might simply be the 'local time' at which they entered the layer in which BP takes place, i.e., Laporte's universe.

 PS: I am no expert in medicine, philosophy or physics; take every thing I say with a grain of salt.

[redsniper]

Huh. I thought it was more like the planetary bombardment scene was Laporte's dream in CASSANDRA (influenced by Ken maybe?). Then when you go through the portal in the Dante, you're leaving the Fedayeen network and entering wild Nagari space, that is to say, the cold roads of the cosmos. From there you're pretty quickly stalked by the Deepness (the GD), and then Ken helps you into the Shivan network.