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"Does this world have the problem where people don't have rigorous tools to evaluate weird arguments generated by people smarter with them, and so have to either test those arguments personally if that's possible or ignore them?"
"I mean, my model is that some people do get those tools at least somewhat? From what I've heard of Oluna Foluna she tried to teach skills like that before she left the Curdime school? But, uh, the way that went was that… she offered concealing robes to everyone attending her lectures so that people could plausibly claim to have been or deny having been in her class. The former of which was necessary for making sure people wouldn't just attend to get status, since they could lie. The latter of which was necessary because taking her class were concerned it would be harmful to their careers in the military. So even when the tools are available, there are … forces against their circulation. But also, my model is that if you tried to give those tools to someone of average intelligence it just wouldn't work well enough."
"I've heard a lot of claims about people of average intelligence, and I haven't had as much opportunity and spare time to test them as I'd like."
Also, Oluna Foluna sounds like a relatable person with good taste.
"I could maybe find us a minor archon who's willing to go into informational lockdown and in terms of intelligence around the population average for Suaal, if you'd like that? Since you feel less sense of urgency and we'd like to provide you with reasonable resources."
"So, this is an awkward subject and it varies a lot between planes. When a soul reaches a plane that takes it, it's pretty damaged, in ways that many people don't like to think about and which even the Upper Planes doesn't really publicize much, though they don't lie about it. One of the most notable things if you're alive is that outsiders, at least the quintessence-based ones, don't have truly original ideas? Which are obviously a tremendous strategic advantage, any god would want that for emself and eir most trusted servants if ey could get it. People tend to underestimate the downsides of godhood. They can do some temporal tricks to have a mortal's ideas before the mortal has them, but they still genuinely need the mortal."
"Beyond that, when everything is very fragile, you can get some things but not everything and you need to prioritize. Or, well, you can be the Maelstrom and not prioritize and possibly even randomly shove memories into people they don't belong to but it's not really a winning strategy. Hell doesn't care about pretty much anything of personal value to most people, but will damage souls greatly in order to extract memories if they're of strategic relevance. Heaven tends to prioritize friendships and keeping the person intact, but even they still have to patch over a lot of losses with material that just isn't the same as what was there originally and does cause personality changes when used for patching. I don't actually know what Axis does with souls though it's probably a matter of public record. Elysium probably tends to do the same sorts of things Heaven does but they're less predictable? The Abyss … my coworker saw a case study. I can give you all the details there but I'm not sure you want them. Dead souls are very, very vulnerable. Abaddon is a special case, their process is extremely destructive and they somehow get functional daemons via that destruction. Hell and the Abyss torture their starting materials into unrecognizeability, sure, but there's still forms of continuity they have and Abaddon lacks."
"Thaaaat sure is a constraint on the behavior of gods that seems rather well-designed to have powerful gods yet force mortals to still be extremely relevant to plots."
"I suppose you could describe it that way, but mortals except for a small handful like … okay, Shyka the Many was more than a small handful but was one entity in some meaningful ways, Rhoswen was relevant, but overall my Old Aiquzall evidence doesn't support mortals being that relevant, and Rhoswen claimed that godhood had limitations and she was familiar with Old Aiquzall godhood."
Before Keltham formulates a response, the locked door opens and a glowing orrery heads in. (If he's looking, there's some kind of magical airlock setup.)
Griffie smiles. "Keltham, this is a Harbinger Archon for your conversational experiment and also other reasonable tasks at her discretion. Her name is Irret."
Griffie's expression gets more awkward. "Irret, this is our can-reasonably-consider-himself-imprisoned-by-us guest, Keltham."
"Greetings, Keltham! I'm sorry about all this, we like to do better. What's the secret mission me having some mind injuries makes me helpful for?"
"Oversight, sorry." Griffie hands over some paper and offers a writing utensil as well.
Irret doesn't take the utensil, but does take the paper, and golden letters that Keltham can't actually read appear on the page.
"I do still have writing on my own down."
It takes Irret a long time and a fair amount of note-referencing, which she says is an advantage many mortals won't have, literacy rates are unfortunately low. Even after hours, she's still having trouble reliably evaluating whether statements are 'correct' according to the rules at hand, and she certainly hasn't internalized the explanations for the rules.
If this is what the typical cognitive capacity for Suaal mortals is like, that's unfortunate. Irret's help is much appreciated.
Irret is happy to help. In response to Keltham's assessment, she comments "I think Arbiters are only a bit smarter than I am right now, but they're built to understand pure Law? I'm not. I go with simpler rules and I can actually trust my superiors."