>>36633987It's not a ridiculous idea if you consider that the soul is inherently tied to our physical form (in some way). Our physical forms have clear objective rankings, primarily our capacity to affect our environment. No matter how many invasive species flourish and dominate biospheres, assuming their complexity never reaches something similar to or above a humans, they will never create rockets and leave the atmosphere, or edit their own genes, or create artificial intelligence. I'm not saying this is 'good' or anything, just that from an objective stance we can measure 'capacity' or 'ability' even from light-years away, just by listening for radio waves. Crabs will never make radios, not until their complexity has advanced far enough that they're now considered a separate species. My point being that complexity is a form of ranking (whether it's an important ranking or not is besides my point, and up to subjectivity), and if our souls are capable of development in the same way our physical bodies are, they also can be 'ranked'.
Though /vt/ isn't exactly the place for this discussion.