I’m pretty sure the Protodermans weren’t meant to have sentience to begin with. Velika gave them sentience. Hard to do a social experiment when the great beings didn’t even plan for it.
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He gave them sapience, not sentience. Everyone is the universe was already sentient to some degree. Also, Velika gave the Matoran sapience; some (including the Toa) were already sapient by design:
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And do you think a non-sapient population makes for a good social experiment? Sorry, a majority non-sapient population.
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Yeah tbf Pylon’s point is still exactly the same.
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The Matoran gained sapience without Velika in The Kingdom AU.
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No. They were preprogrammed sapience from the start.
We’re still given no indication that it can happen by itself, and more importantly is supposed to happen by itself, and every reason to believe the opposite.
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Well in the main universe it isn’t. But in kingdom it is.
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It’s not often you see a theory disproven and proven at the same time.
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The takeaway is that this theory is for the Kingdom AU. But it’s almost definitely false for every other one, including the main one that G1 follows.
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…
I literally addressed this in the Theory Doc though.
Canonically he is said to have gifted this to all the inhabitants of the Matoran Universe, but I posit a different direction: In keeping with the assertion that most non-Matoran inhabitants of the universe were placed there by Mata Nui to continue to observe them, Velika’s gift of sapience only applied to those Matoran Universe beings who were never intended to be anything more than stewards of the integrity of the experiment – the Matoran and their offshoots, and those who were already in existence at the time the GSR left Spherus Magna.
I’ve literally got a whole section addressing just your point. Which is to say that, because we know the role and intended purpose of the Matoran was to simply maintain the robot, while we have no purpose for the remaining non-matoran MU races that isn’t predicated on them having full sapience themselves, that the Social Experiment aspect was intended to focus specifically on non-Matoran species. This builds upon the idea that the non-matoran species of the MU are facsimiles of the species that Mata Nui encountered and observed during his mission.
The takeaway is that the Matoran were part of a social experiment in the Kingdom AU, but it doesn’t invalidate the points made that the MU itself was also a social experiment, it only claims the same that I did - that the Matoran were never intended to do anything but fulfil a job. Note that Greg’s response is to a question about MU inhabitants, but he only names the Matoran as having a job to do.
I mean, mileage may vary but I don’t feel like this necessarily invalidates the greater theory, though it is certainly a point against it if we assume Greg was referencing each individual in the MU having a job to do (including those individuals and species that did not exist prior to the Matoran Universe starting its’ mission, such as the League Races) rather than solely the Matoran.
TL;DR the Matoran weren’t the subjects of the original social experiment, but the non-matoran races could’ve been. Which is literally what I said in the theory and nothing you’ve said directly contradicts that assertion.
EDIT: Having had appropriate time to browse those Ask Greg links, it appears that the Awakening, despite what BS01 would claim, was considered primarily for the Matoran, rather than the Matoran Universe. Which would further lend credibility to the theory, as the theory is based on the idea that the Matoran were the only MU inhabitants who were intended to be essentially just drones, while the Social Experiment was carried out on the sapient non-matoran species, such as Skakdi or Steltians.
Importantly, we also know of Sapient individuals who existed prior to the awakening, such as Hydraxon, so between that Greg Quote and the evidence of Canon, I’m going to assume the Awakening was intended primarily for just the Matoran, and that the social experiment theory as applies to the entire MU is not damaged as such. Unless someone can point me to some newer quotes by Greg that’d assert the opposite. In essence, there’s literally no reason for the toa to be programmed as sapient if the entire rest of the MU wasn’t. What possible use could problem solving in a “protecting from danger” sense have, if the entire universe is programmed to not have free will and thus “danger” is either programmed(?) or nonexistent. If programmed = Social Experiment, if nonexistent = No point.
On the off chance this isn’t a case of “tell me you didn’t read it without telling me you didn’t read it,” I’ll also work to expand that section and my justifications with the information presented here since it fits.
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…this is eerily close to something I’ve been writing. I can totally get behind a theory like this.
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This deserves a completely separate reply because holy I have never seen that quote before. Nor has virtually anyone I know. There’s a solid chance that this quote reframes canon completely with regards to the awakening because currently there’s no quotes on BS01 that attribute it to the entire MU, only people inferring as much when asking about Velika and Greg not correcting them.
If the Awakening only applied to the Matoran… that’s huge. So huge. Insanely Huge. “Wrap up all the inconsistencies and boot them out the door because this little change solves most of the problems” huge. It implies the Matoran and their lack of sapience are the exception more than the rule.
That’s some seriously good digging. I am impressed 
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And this is the main problem I have with most of this theory. It’s a lot of positing. It’s a whole lot of What Ifs almost solely on a tremendous amount of assumptions that come from nothing but pure speculation. I won’t say it’s invalid, it’s just not more convincing than the straight story version.
You’re assuming the only possible reason for sapience to exist in the GSR is to be experimented on. That’s a pretty gigantic leap. Just off the cuff I can posit an alternative: maintenance and problem solving require more than literal drones. Imagine sending a god powered planet sized robot on a hundred thousand year space voyage with nothing but rote drone workers to work out the most complex catastrophes that will inevitably occur out of expected parameters. Including the Toa -
Do you think all danger and unexpected catastrophe in the universe comes from sapient intention? You can have need for intelligent, adaptative protection for the matoran in a universe as complex and emergent as the GSR running autonomously for 100,000 years. I mean don’t even take it from me, Greg straight up says sapience is part of the Toa’s job requirement in protecting the matoran:
You’re also assuming that just because a species in the MU was never shown to us to have a defined “vital function” to the GSR (Steltians and Skakdi) that means they have none. Not that the limited story never got around to developing them. Not that their actions across a planet sized robot could be intended to have emergent effects for Mata Nui. Not that sapience is inherently uncontrollable and in many cases just developed into something the Great Beings never intended like most of the entire MU breaking down because everything the Great Beings touch breaks according to Greg. Just nothing.
Then, related, you just assume your own role onto those same species, that simply because their roles for the story have been for conflict that that must be their true designed purpose within the story. Again just assuming that the tidbits we’re given represent their whole function over a hundred thousand years.
And as for the actual alternative model here: Mata Nui “passively” observes alien species and recreates conflict simulations in himself to glean conclusions from. Maybe this would be more plausible if not for the entire point of Mata Nui’s character in 2009 being that he was so busy looking outside himself he literally stopped caring what was happening inside. And I have to seriously question whether an entire world of sexless, immortal, nonreproductive cyborgs who absorb food from their hands and have casual familiarity with straight up magic (yeah yeah, Greg says fire bending and astral projection is just “technology”) is supposed to be a helpful reproduction of any organic society, let alone the one left behind on the Spherus Magna shards.
There’s nothing that absolutely invalidates your theory man, it’s just not convincing enough to justify all the leaps to get there especially when we already have the story’s self consistent answer: the Great Beings dunn goofed. It’s an interesting conjecture. But not one I’d consider in compliment to the existing story.
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bees and ants would like to have a word with you
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coughs with ‘i haven’t posted in this topic in a meaningful way so what am I doing here’ inflection
Granted if I had decided to keep that quote in my memory I could have easily won some arguments here on the boards but I have seen it, it’s just been a while
As a rule, the more complex the operating procedure of something is, the more thing can go wrong. The simpler something is, the less there is that can fail, although some amount of luxury may be lost.
Now the GSR could have the excuse that the Great Beings are so smart that they considered literally every contingency, but keep in mind the frontrunner of the group forgot about his Toa-murdering robot hidden away until after the Toa came back and then only got to its location after it had already activated and escaped. While forethought may be their strong suit, forethought is not their strong suit.
A point against this is that not even the Skakdi could figure out what they were supposed to do. Nektann’s only character trait outside of being a warmongering tactician is his conflicted worldview with the rest of the universe forcing him to contemplate why he even existed.
Maybe he was just a dumb dumb, or maybe the original purpose of the Skakdi was lost after Spiriah’s meddling - or maybe they never had one to begin with. But if even the one supposedly accomplishing the function can’t figure it out, maybe there’s nothing for him to figure out.
The rest of your post I absolutely agree with, and it’s probably what I would have posted had I not been consistently lazy about it. If Kini can rewrite his theory to get over these hurdles, he should be golden.
bear steps on the nest and decimates the entire hive
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Actually, the GBs only gave the MU inhabitants the two real genders, not any falsehood nonsense.
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Have them call me when they’re running a planet sized space ship.
Ehh I’d take even that with a grain of salt tbh. If you’re mainly referring to Nektann’s thoughts, that was tens of thousands of years after his species was forcibly mutated away from their original forms and lived as an entirely different people. Even species that did retain some understanding of their world roles strayed further and further from the literal context of their functions - being cogs in the giant world-reforming machine. There’s a difference between not remembering your original purpose and not having one to begin with. And the memories of the MU inhabitants are a poor indicator of what actually occurred before their beginning, especially the motivations of the Great Beings.
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Actually they only gave them gender identities, because there’s no physical differences.
Helryx?
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