Concept Manipulation

For you, what is the difference between a Law and a Concept?

We know these exist in fiction, and the way each universe explains it usually varies. Sometimes only one of the two exists, sometimes both are used to describe the same thing, and other times they exist simultaneously but never make a completely good difference.

Personally, the way each one is always described, I think it can give you a way to look at it or at least give you a mental image.

Law: It would basically be the nature, meaning and essence of the concepts. A rule that marks how these work or should work. It could be called from a Platonic vision or in a certain way, a truth that is absolute. There may be several or subdivisions of this, but never multiple.

For example: A law of physics would be the total form of several laws, from gravity, space, momentum, energy, etc.

Meanwhile...

Concept: The psychic, mental or spiritual images on a key are generally dictated by them, but can be changed or reinterpreted according to the user's personal vision or vision. Although they are never completely separated from the true essence, the natural limit of the law that governs them.

Even if one wanted to see it, they could be seen as sub-laws.

An example could be: Fire, multiple variations or ways in which fire operates or is managed could be created, creating different natures of it, but it will always have the limits that the law imposes and that can be "burn", but as "burn or burn", can be manipulated by the user.

Now this is one way of explaining it, I could be wrong or overlook something. What is your way of differentiating them or explaining it?

I've been looking at Metaphysics Manipulation recently, and I've found that I'm not entirely sure about the scope of the power. I'll give my thoughts below, but my question is: especially considering the nature of some of the powers on here, what actually is the scope of Metaphysics?

One the one hand, Metaphysics literally means 'beyond physics', which would tend to suggest it encompasses everything that goes beyond physics and the physical world. On the other hand, the actual description states that "Metaphysics includes science and goes beyond it to encompass all aspects and dimensions of existence experienced as "reality"", which would suggest that something outside of reality would be beyond the capacity of Metaphysics to affect (though even the idea of 'outside of reality' is arguably metaphysical in nature, since the duality of inside/outside and the idea of reality itself are both metaphysical ideas). Also, things that transcend dualities would seem to be beyond the capacity of Metaphysics to affect/define.

Then there's the question of absolutes. Absolute powers should be capable of creating, destroying, manipulating, etc (depending on the specific power), things beyond Metaphysics simply by virtue of being limitless in nature, which would tend to imply that they themselves are beyond Metaphysics in some way and thus beyond the capacity of Metaphysics Manipulation to affect. However, the concept of the absolute, as well as the concepts of limits and the unlimited, are defined in Metaphysics, which would tend to suggest that they are in fact encompassed by it and affectable by Metaphysics Manipulation. The only solution I can think of is that maybe it defines them, but can't describe the full extent of them, in the same way that we can talk about Absolute Transcendence and powers like it on a surface level but never conceptualise the full extent of them due to the powers transcending conceptualisiation by nature.

As it says in the title, I will list the powers of the Downstreamers from the Manifold Trilogy, but connecting them with the powers they have on this wiki.

I have no reason to do this, I just thought it would be interesting to do.

1. Scientiapotence (The first and most obvious, since they are one of those listed as users of this power.)

2. Absolute Regeneration (Capable of reforming themselves after their informational body/consciousness has been completely destroyed by the wave of unreality)

3. Immortality & Self-Sustenance (They live eternally and no longer require food, oxygen or anything else to stay alive, although they can still die.)

4. Accelerated Thought Process & Hyper Mind (Their non-corporeal forms include a Causal Loop computer that essentially makes them know things before they happen, a device which grants them infinite thinking and processing power.)

5. Precognition & Future-Probability Cognition (Knows every possible event that will unfold in the multiverse, being able to tell everything that will happen by the minimal possible movement/quantum alteration from a single sub-atomic particle)

6. Nigh-Omniscience (The Old Ones are able to comprehend and manipulate the "infinite manifold" that encompasses all mathematical possibilities)

7. Teleportation & Dimensional Travel (Can create wormholes powered up by gravity fields, which allows them to travel through time and different universes)

8. Time Manipulation & Time Travel (Can significantly accelerate flow of time in a solar system. Can send attacks through time)

9. Invulnerability, Non-Corporeal Form & Transcendent Human Physiology (Hyperadvanced posthuman civilization, neutrino/quantum consciousness/informational beings)

10. Higher-Dimensional Manipulation & Beyond-Dimensional Physiology (They are entities made of pure information, who cannot be distinguished by any means whatsoever, even in principle, across past, present and future)

11. Gender Transcendence (Individual Downstreamers are formerly human and retain their mental humanity upon ascension, but as beings of pure information, it is unknown if they still retain "gender" or not)

12. Reality Warping & Subjective Reality (Their minds can call universes into existence through their observations)

13. Physics Manipulation, Matter Manipulation, Quantum Manipulation, Law Manipulation, Mathematics Manipulation & Gravity Manipulation (Can manipulate and shoot quark-nugget matter. These quarks can create gravity strong enough to destroy neutrons from the atmosphere and also bypass conventional matter durability as if it was made of butter)

14. Acausality (Perceives causality from a non-linear, acausal state, and later transcended causality as a whole after removing themselves from the timeline's history)

15. Causality Manipulation (They transcend causality and could alter causality on multiversal scale)

16. Concept Manipulation probably Meta or Lordship (The Old Ones created and transcended an "ultimate reality" which contains the crux of all logical concepts)

17. Spatial Manipulation (Can create and fold infinite space within finite structures)

18. Existence/Absolute Erasure & Nothingness Manipulation (Capable of deleting individuals from existence. Can vanish things into unreality / Unreality Wave: Mixes all different possible states of a universe from phase space until the universe is completely destroyed. / Cosmic Inflation: Produces seeds which grow into countless universes. These universes are compared to bubbles in foam floating on an ocean.)

19. Absolute Technology Manipulation (Has technology that allows them to disturb the air and atmosphere on the surroundings. Can effortlessly create abstract material with their thoughts which can withstand the combined energy of a thousand big bangs per second. Similarly, they possess weapons capable of carving giant maws on a construct which is noted to be trillions of times bigger than our current observable universe. Capable of altering the fabric of time in thousands of universes including at least one 11-dimensional M-Theory universe)

20. Multiversal Manipulation/Creation probably Omniverse Manipulation/Creation (Created the entire manifold multiverse, a mathematical superspace/Type IV Multiverse that holds all possible mathematical possibilities and formal systems as true, including Woodin Cardinals as actual physical structures among those possibilities. Basically, it is an infinite multiverse with infinite possibilities, which is why it is perhaps classified as an omniverse.)

21. Existence Manipulation (The Old Ones can effortlessly change the rules of the entire Manifoldverse, allowing them to create infinite possibilities for both life and mind.)

22. Probably Omnidirectional/Cosmic/Energy Waves (Capable of controlling and initiating cosmic inflation across the multiverse, in which universes are described as "mere bubbles of foam on an ocean")

So I've been thinking about Conceptual Lordship a lot recently, and I have some things I'd like to discuss and get other people's opinions on.

First off, does Conceptual Lordship, as well as Concept and Meta-Concept Manipulation, assume concepts like in Plato's 'Theory of Forms', in which concepts are independent, abstract, perfect and immutable existences that shape reality by way of all aspects of reality 'participating' in them (e.g., a red circle participates in the concepts of 'circle-ness' and 'red-ness', and altering either concept would change the red circle accordingly) or being imperfect reflections of them, and changing the concepts would fundamentally alter all participating aspects of reality. Or can it include abstract ideas partially or entirely formed by human (or other sapient) conceptualisation?

• For concepts in the sense of 'platonic forms', does this imply that concepts exist on a level of reality above baseline reality, but potentially below others? Or would they necessarily be beyond 'levels of reality' due to that very thing being a concept in and of itself? For that matter, what happens when you have concepts of things that are beyond conceptualisation (e.g., the concept of Absolute Transcendence)?

• If they do include concepts in the sense of abstract ideas in the human mind, what does manipulation of these concepts actually do? Concepts in this sense could probably be thought of as collections of abstract ideas created to encompass and represent an aspect of reality on a level abstracted from the actual nature of the aspect in order to make it easier to comprehend. On a base level, it seems like it would just be changing how humans conceive of the represented aspects of reality. So would these powers involve then forcing reality to reflect the alterations to the changed concept? Or does altering even a concept of this kind with one of these powers inherently involve altering everything the concept encompasses, even if the concept isn't the basis of everything it encompasses in the same way that a Platonic Form is?

I think that the idea of manifesting and infusing concepts is easier to consider, regardless of the specific nature of the concepts being used.

• For Platonic Form type concepts, infusing a concept into something would entail making the thing participate to a high degree in that form. Manifesting a concept would entail creating an imperfect reflection of the form (or, in the case of Conceptual Lordship, this could be creating a perfect reflection of the form) to have an affect on reality.

• For concepts as from the human mind, infusing a concept into something would be making the thing reflect attributes associated with the infused concept. Manifesting a concept would be creating something that matches the collective ideas of the manifested concept to a high degree.

• In both cases, the thing being infused with the concept is made to better reflect the ideal set out by the concept in question and the thing being manifested is created as a high-level reflection of the ideal, whether that be some external, perfect ideal or a collective mental ideal of the concept.

Creating a conceptual embodiment is a different matter entirely.

• For Platonic Form type concepts, this is relatively simple to think of. It is likely creating an entity (or converting an existing entity into one) that is unified, on some level, with the form in question. Low level embodiments might be barely unified with it at all, or may even just be participating in the form to a high degree, while higher level embodiments may be fully unified with the form (thus entailing full control over everything the form encompasses) or even encompassing the form entirely (thus being fully beyond it due to containing the entirety of it as an aspect, as opposed to the whole, of their being).

• For mental type concepts, this is a bit more difficult. I mean, similarly, this would most likely be creating an entity that is unified with the concept in question on some level, but what does that actually mean in this context? Do they just reflect the ideas behind the concept perfectly? Or is it more like since the concept is an construct created to categorise and encompass an aspect of reality on an abstract level to allow for comprehension of it, an embodiment of a given concept is an entity that fully represents this aspect of reality (as opposed to just the abstract notion of it) as a single entity and, even though the concept isn't actually the basis of it, therefore controls that aspect of reality? So for example, an embodiment of the concept of color wouldn't be just an entity that perfectly reflects what we conceive of as 'color', but rather an entity that represents everything the concept of 'color' is thought of as encompassing. In this way, every instance of color can be thought of as an aspect of this entity, and they would control every instance of color. This would also mean that changes in the concept of 'color' by humanity as a whole would affect what the entity actually encompasses. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure if I articulated this correctly, but oh well.

• Fundamentally, my question boils down to what being a conceptual embodiment actually means if concepts are thought of as mental ideals rather than external, abstract forms.

Finally, at least for now, we get to one more to do with Conceptual Lordship than anything else. In essence, this is considering how it deals (or doesn't) with things that transcend concepts in some way.

• Something that transcends concepts should be impossible to affect with concepts. Does this mean that they transcend everything a given concept encompasses? It would seem so, though that puts Conceptual Transcendence at risk of being practically identical to Absolute Transcendence, since they should transcend the concept of 'totality'. Not sure how this works. Any thoughts?

• Despite this, Conceptual Lordship is an absolute power, so it should be capable of taking concepts and manifesting them at an absolute level (e.g., manifesting the concept of 'death' at an absolute level would result in Absolute Death Inducement), which could possibly apply to a Conceptually Transcendent entity? This seems a lot like comparing absolutes.

• On a different side of things, let's take Absolute Transcendence. It is obviously transcendent of concepts and thus is in no way beholden to the concept of 'Absolute Transcendence'. However, if Conceptual Lordship were to infuse or manifest this concept into itself, or just make itself an absolute-level embodiment of the concept, would it achieve Absolute Transcendence? I personally think probably yes, but I'd like to see what everyone else thinks. The idea of using a concept to go beyond concepts does seem a bit odd, but I suppose this is Conceptual Lordship.

Oh, and do you think Conceptual Lordship should be considered a Form/Expression of Omnipotence, as it is currently?

So yeah, I think that's everything for now. What do you think?

Law versus Concept

Can someone explain to me What is the difference between Law Manipulation is and how it differs from Concept Manipulation?

Should Concepts and Meta-Concepts be main/inherent applications of Perspective Manipulation and Meta Perspective Manipulation respectively?

That's ^ essentially the main question my reasoning being, Idealism. Long story short Idealism is a philosophical term/school of thought that pretty much says "Reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely connected to ideas."

It's where the capabilities of Perspective Manipulation says "all concepts like time, space and causality exists because they are perceived to exist". Which pretty much falls in line with Idealist views. I assume that's where the power was conceptualized from (aside from seeing it in fiction). I'm currently reworking the power so that it makes sense and isn't contradicting itself and am probably going to add a level section as well as "tools" section like in Mentifery and finally a Nature of the Power kind of linking it to Idealism with that being how it achieves its feats.

Anyone who thinks it should remain a solely subjective power please elaborate. My reasoning for it to actually warp reality would be the users such as Coyote (Gunnerkrigg Court) and Players in both Echochrome and Superliminal. The level section would allow for distinction between those who can warp reality and those who can't. High-level users being Coyote literally grabbing the moon and Antimony's fingerprint appearing on it in reality. So, it is a viable page with users. Just needs a rework which I'm currently doing.

The wiki says that Axioms and Principles rely on each other, but that doesn't say that either relies on concepts, only that concepts rely on them. But wouldn't their be a concept of Principles and a concept of Axioms? If so, why wouldn't this make Principles and Axioms rely on concepts, and why wouldn't this allow concept manipulation users to manipulate Principles and Axioms?

It's me your local dumbass, bored again prob. No clue on what to exactly write so why not do a little topic? Utilize concepts as applications or mixtures of two separate concepts.

The concept of speed and mind to make mental speed or mind acceleration. Well you may have gotten the gist, so go ahead.

Combine, Separate, Apply and etc.

Okay So I remember back a couple of months ago I think, where myself and Azqth were discussing something about Meta-concepts manipulation and how it works (i don't remember it in complete detail) and I suggested that I think meta-concepts would be concepts that are beyond the plane of Abstracts where concepts reside, and the keyword in this is (Abstract Plane) The Realm beyond all forms of physicality and Space-time. Today i would like to suggest a power that would give control over the said plane.

Abstract Plane Manipulation: what the capabilities of this power speak of is that the user of this power would be able to control and manipulate the plane at which concepts and ideas reside and perhaps it is also the place where said concepts originate from, unlike concept manipulation which controls the concepts itself, this power allows the user to control Nigh if not all concepts, excluding Meta-concepts which are supposed to be beyond this place itself, Users may even be able to have sovereignty over The Plane Of Abstracts, This power would be superior to concept manipulation as it is not just manipulating concepts but the plane where concepts reside and as the source of concepts.

Location: I view this place as somewhere in the boundless or the Outerverse as It would be automatically beyond even space-time and other levels of existence in the sense that everything exists because of concepts and since this is the place that made said concepts it would be beyond them and is the source of them at the same time.

This also gives a more crazier perspective of how mad meta-concept is incomprehensible, as it would be beyond this very plane and even more into boundlessness.

(I may develop the Meta-concept version of this one)

What are your thoughts?

I hear this thing "Platonic Concept", and i don't know what it is?.

It's like a abstracto concept or a love Concept?.

Something like that?.