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You are thinking of the mind as the 'consciousness'. A mind can become unconscious but it will still be there. My understanding is that the Mind in outsider is 'tangible' and as long as it exists then it can be detected telepathically. Freezing the vessel of the mind may freeze the consciousness but the tangible sensation of the mind that is detectable through telepathy is still there to be detected.

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:That seems to be a straight-up contradiction of what you said earlier.
A mind which has been cryo-frozen is not conscious. It's been suspended; there's no consciousness to detect, because there's no activity going on in the mind.

The in-game explanation was that non-damaging cryogenics is not technologically possible in the outsider universe or at least the Umiak don't have that technology.
It is true that "Umiakcicles" - as Arioch put it so nicely - would be literally dead & therefore undetectable, but if you argue that you would need days to revive & regenerate possible tissue damage, then of course it would be useless.

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

Arioch wrote:Again, Farseers are not detecting the physical brain; they are detecting the mind, or consciousness itself.

That seems to be a straight-up contradiction of what you said earlier.
A mind which has been cryo-frozen is not conscious. It's been suspended; there's no consciousness to detect, because there's no activity going on in the mind.

Telepathy in outsider requires that sentience itself has some physical, persistent property; it's not the physical brain or the brain activity, but some sort of metaphysical state that exists from moment to moment. I'm not sure how to explain the theoretical end of it without writing an essay, which I'm not going to do right now, so I'll tackle it from the practical end: it's not a practical possibility for an Umiak to simply "suspend" its mind in the way you describe. A brain which has been literally frozen is dead; the mind is destroyed. It's possible to have sufficient technology to bring a dead brain back to life (or even build a new one from scratch) and thus create a new mind with the same memories; however, the Umiak do not possess such technology.

I wonder if Loroi religious zealots could conclude that since humans have no detectable mind, they have no soul. Great, now I'm gonna have to scour the threads and extras for references to Loroi Religion.

Quazel wrote:I wonder if Loroi religious zealots could conclude that since humans have no detectable mind, they have no soul. Great, now I'm gonna have to scour the threads and extras for references to Loroi Religion.

Fortunately the Loroi don't have a conventional religion.

Arioch wrote:Telepathy in outsider requires that sentience itself has some physical, persistent property; it's not the physical brain or the brain activity, but some sort of metaphysical state that exists from moment to moment.

Something something fourth spatial dimension?

Hālian wrote:

Arioch wrote:Something something fourth spatial dimension?

I think there are a number of useful ways to visualize it. There's an element to it though that should be deliberately mysterious; "this is something that the ancients had mastery of but we really don't understand today."

For the sake of clarity, perhaps quote the original post instead of what appears to be your take on it?

Arioch wrote:

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:You could still use a fleet which is automated to a very significant degree. Farseers detect concentrations of minds at distance, they can't, say, pinpoint a single shuttleful of folks at interstellar distance, IIRC.

This is incorrect; Farseers can detect a single Umiak mind, if it's the only mind in a star system. What they would have trouble with is distinguishing it amongst other minds nearby.

Is that amongst any minds or amongst minds of the same species? For example, do they have any issues detecting Rigai Mozin when he is on board the Tempest?

Hālian wrote:

Arioch wrote:Telepathy in outsider requires that sentience itself has some physical, persistent property; it's not the physical brain or the brain activity, but some sort of metaphysical state that exists from moment to moment.

Something something fourth spatial dimension?

I think there are a number of useful ways to visualize it. There's an element to it though that should be deliberately mysterious; "this is something that the ancients had mastery of but we really don't understand today."

Geomodder wrote:For the sake of clarity, perhaps quote the original post instead of what appears to be your take on it?

Sorry, that was my error: I hit the "edit" button instead of the "quote" button. I have restored Hālian's original post.

inxsi wrote:Is that amongst any minds or amongst minds of the same species? For example, do they have any issues detecting Rigai Mozin when he is on board the Tempest?

Individual minds are more difficult to resolve from amongst a group nearby, especially at great range, whereas a lone mind is like a candle in a great dark place. The Farseer on board Tempest would have no difficulty detecting the presence of Mozin aboard the same ship, but another Farseer in a different system might have some difficulty identifying a single Barsam mind amongst ~800 Loroi.

The single biggest problem for the Loroi, regardless of whatever the Umiak have found out, is that they very likely broadcast the capabilities of their farseer network 100% of the time, and never made the Umiak have to guess about whether or not they'd been spotted. Of course they may not have had the luxury to introduce any fudge factor in that, but now they'll pay the price. In other news it would be a valuable piece of information however to blast a ship open and see what corpses stream out, as I very much doubt that this attack isn't decades old in the making at the minimum.

Just noticed that Talon's suit lights up as she sits down in the pilot's seat. Great attention to detail.