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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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Sole Purpose said:
I'll tell you why he dismissed that plan. A magical Girl will produce something around 3-5 seeds a week, based on what someone said about using two gems a week if they didn't do any magic. We don't know how many magical girls are on Earth at the moment, but it's probably somewhere in the millions. That means QB gets at least 3-5 million grief seeds per week.
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That doesn't sound right to me; only about ~150,000 people die every day IRL, so that's just over one million deaths per week.

3 to 5 million grief seeds per week is 3 to 5 million deaths per week, assuming a one-to-one conversion between humans (meguca) and witches. If some of those grief seeds come from familiars that grow into witches, that's even worse, because familiars seem to need to eat multiple humans in order to grow!

But even 3 to 5 million deaths per week is ~430,000 deaths per day to ~715,000 deaths per day, which handily and singlehandedly dwarfs IRL birth rates (360,000 per day).

(These aren't necessarily permanent deaths, because if nothing else, the meguca converted into grief seeds can presumably (hopefully?) and eventually be retrieved by means of soul magic et al, without anything completely ridiculous like rescue simulations or time shenanigans.)

(But they are the 'deaths' of people being removed from society at a rate that seems to massively outstrip the rate at which people enter society, so either some of your numbers are wrong, or I'm just using the wrong benchmark -- it may be that PMMM!humanity has a significantly higher population and birthrate than IRL!humanity.)
 
I think the problem is that you uncovered an insufficiently thought out line of reasoning in the source material.

Some sort of explanation may be used to patch that plot-hole, but that doesn't mean your logic has overlooked anything.
 
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Adhoc vote count started by defenestrator on Sep 22, 2017 at 7:30 AM, finished with 125308 posts and 42 votes.
  • [X] Introduce self and group and goals. Explain why magical girl life sucks. No witchbombing. Open honesty besides that. Reassure that we're not putting Hitomi in any added danger. Explain why normal friends are so important for magical girls, emotional instability is dangerous. Explain soul gems, how most don't know, and finding out is very dangerous because of emotions and grief.
    -[X] Offer to explain to her husband at the same time?
    [X] Overall tone: responsible young woman in a dangerous field, doing her best to protect those around her. Sharing information because it's the right thing to do, and because Hitomi and Madoka are Sayaka's friends, so she needs their support, and they still need their parents' support.
    [X] Rely on Mami to fill in blanks that you don't want to lie about.
    [X] Lead in: Give her the impression of someone who's responsible and concerned for our friends.
    [X]Points to clear up early on.
    -[X] Find out more about Haruka's relationship with magic in the past.
    -[X] Ask why she brought this up.
    -[X] Ask her feelings on us filling in other people about this revelation, both from her family and our friends.
    [X] Conversational goals in rough order of priority.
    -[X] Leave Haruka well inclined to us.
    -[X] Give her cause to realize that Hitomi is safe without overemphasizing it.
    -[X] Fill Haruka in on what we're trying to do. (With particular focus on what we asked her for help with today by proxy)
    -[X] Acquire Haruka's support as an adult we can count on.
    [x] Vote in abeyance.
    [X] Find out the status of Tsuchiya Ritsuko from Kyuubey, later.
    [X] Ask how involved she was in the whole thing. Try to understand how much she knows about stuff without actually revealing the existence of the stuff she doesn't know.
    -[X] She confronted us for a reason... Does she just want to know more about this kind of stuff?
    -[X] Is she just looking to make sure her daughter is safe? Cuz she totally is! Hardly involved at all beyond just being a friend we can unwind with.
    [x] Thank Haruka for breaking the ice.
    [x] Give Mami an opening in case she wants to leave. Homework would work.
    [x] Ask Haruka if she wants her family in here for the explanation.
    [x] Explain the magical girl system.
    -[x] Set up safety nets against infohazards.
    [x] Explain your plans for fixing it and keeping everyone safe.
    [x] Acquire recruits.
    [X] Offer your condolences. Tsuchiya Ritsuko is almost certainly dead, or she would be famous by now for living so long.
    -[X] As far as we know, Hitomi is not a potential. We've involved her at all to prevent exactly Mrs. Shizuki just described.
    [X] Mami has homework, ask if Mrs. Shizuki is opposed to the content of the conversation so far being "public" so Mami has a response to "what was that about?" You'd like to give Mrs. Shizuki the broad strokes of the current situation, go over w. Mami what you're expecting to talk about -- none of it is anything she's unaware of. If you tackle these separately now, you can spend more time together later, yeah?
    [X] Explain briefly: the masquerade, soul gems (lichbomb + need for grief seeds), Walpurgisnacht, your powers, the expected influx of meguca.
    -[X] Disaster insurance might not be a bad idea.
    [X] Sober up. This is serious, yet good.
    -[X] Step 1: Invite
    --[X] Confirm her suspicions
    --[X] Offer to explain as best as you can.
    --[X] Warn that some topics are sensitive, and why
    -[X] Step 2: Inform
    --[X] Besides the obvious dangers (fighting witches), being a magical girl has hidden dangers, and we want to dissuade Contracts.
    --[X] Segue to Hitomi not being a potential, and explain the first hidden danger: "Grief" is literal.
    ---[X] Subtly apologize to Mami, and explain that you've been planning to tell adults about magic for many reasons, this foremost.
    --[X] Connect the resource-management of Grief to Witches, and the second hidden danger: Scarcity.
    --[X] Lead into our powers (and those of the team)
    --[X] Walpurgisnacht.
    -[X] Step 3: Inspire
    --[X] Discuss what we want to accomplish once the immediate problems are resolved.
    --[X] Make sure to stay away from the Lichbomb, Witchbomb, etc.
    ---[X] ...but try and set up an opportunity to talk with her in a context where we can discuss them (and other heavy topics).
    [x] Yeah, your friend either got eaten, murdered, or suffered literally soul crushing despair.
    [x] Mami: Safe, happy.
    [x] Haruka: Informed. Recruited.
    [x] Hitomi: Not pissed off.
    [x] Kyubey: Insulted.
    [x] Look into Hitommy's friend. Probably dead yo, or we'd have heard about her.
    [x] Figure out her angle
    -[x] If she's worried we're dragging Hetumi into barriers, well, okay. Maybe be a little indignant about that.
    -[x] If she's worried her daughter might join our colourful frilly cult, allay those fears.
    -[x] If she's worried about us, she probably knows it's legitimately dangerous; pivot that into a sitrep and hint at bigger plans.
    -[x] If we realise she's ALSO been holding back in order to protect us from potential memetic threats, keep in mind that it's customary to pour alcohol for each other because it's gonna be a long night.
    -[x] If she's truly an innocent, resist the urge to destroy her soul; The Talk can come later.
    [x] Request a meeting to talk business later.
    [x] Thank you, ma'am.
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Maybe it's because I'm sitting on a train on my way back from a conference and I am kinda tired, but I don't really get the point of a lot of these votes.

There's no immediate danger and a mom already knowing about magical girls makes involving the parents much easier. Just calmly answering her questions and reassuring her that we won't put Hitomi in danger should be enough.

[X] Godwinson
 
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Numbers wise, millions of meguca worldwide means meguca are 1/1000 or higher (the pool being girls, so ~5 billion, young (say about the bottom fifth of the global population pyramid), so maybe 1 billion).

So a city like Mitakihara would in that scenario have a couple hundred magical girls to several thousand. Even if several of those witch out instantaneously, the maths do not add up.
So more likely is magical girls are 1/10 000 or 1/100 000 or higher: no more than tens to hundreds of thousands of magical girls worldwide.
Iow: you are probably overestimating grief seed production by one to two orders of magnitude or more.
 
Racoras said:
As for The Phoenixian's plan, I'm mainly wary (given the way conversation in the thread as a whole has gone, and thus potentially BrinaPilot) of the open-ended nature of "Fill Haruka in on what we are trying to do".

Its hard to figure out a meaning of that which, unless stated otherwise, doesn't include our desire to revise the current Grief/Witch system? Or at least our openly-stated desire to alter the grief-seed economy that Magical Girls depend on and go to war over? (Remembering that Heroin is more valuable by weight than gold, and possibly moreso than raw uranium, how would you say Grief Seeds are valued by Meguca? Its a biological need and not just an enjoyable treatment to their ailment).

Seems still a bit further than we want to dump on her immediately without planning or having others around.... and again with it being so open ended, could be anything from an info-dump to a short briefing.
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Yes, "how much to inform her and of what" is definitely a tricky proposition. I still don't have it down quite right to any degree beyond, well, "trust 'brina."

I'll note that, given Haruka was friends with Tsuchiya for a year, there's a chance she may have seen the effects of seed shortages on a magical girl. (There's some debate in the discord on the matter that I should post when I have a moment. Especially given that Firn was involved in it. Alas I am out of time.)

If you have further thoughts, any aid in figuring out a format for this would be appreciated.

----------------------------

Vote Revamp. It turns out my vote was actually closer to what I was arguing for than I remembered, but it could still be better fit to that ideal, now that I've properly codified it.

Not switching to it yet, since that'll take some proper examination and I'm short on time, but I'll post a preview of my thoughts right now:

[jk]Suddenly, inexplicably, become Invisitext.

[] Lead in: Give her the impression of someone who's responsible and concerned for our friends, but friendly.

[]Points to clear up early on.
-[] Find out more about Haruka's relationship with magic in the past.
-[] Ask why she brought this up.
-[] Give her a chance to get her husband involved, if that's what she wants.

[] Conversational goals in rough order of priority.
-[] Leave Haruka well inclined to us.
-[] Give her cause to realize that Hitomi is safe without overemphasizing it.
-[] Give Haruka what she wants out of this conversation.
-[] Fill Haruka in, as appropriate. (and safe)
-[] Acquire Haruka's support as an adult we can count on.

[] Vote in abeyance.
[] Find out the status of Tsuchiya Ritsuko from Kyuubey, later.

(wordcount: 131)
 
Subrosian_Smithy said:
That doesn't sound right to me; only about ~150,000 people die every day IRL, so that's just over one million deaths per week.

3 to 5 million grief seeds per week is 3 to 5 million deaths per week, assuming a one-to-one conversion between humans (meguca) and witches. If some of those grief seeds come from familiars that grow into witches, that's even worse, because familiars seem to need to eat multiple humans in order to grow!

But even 3 to 5 million deaths per week is ~430,000 deaths per day to ~715,000 deaths per day, which handily and singlehandedly dwarfs IRL birth rates (360,000 per day).

(These aren't necessarily permanent deaths, because if nothing else, the meguca converted into grief seeds can presumably (hopefully?) and eventually be retrieved by means of soul magic et al, without anything completely ridiculous like rescue simulations or time shenanigans.)

(But they are the 'deaths' of people being removed from society at a rate that seems to massively outstrip the rate at which people enter society, so either some of your numbers are wrong, or I'm just using the wrong benchmark -- it may be that PMMM!humanity has a significantly higher population and birthrate than IRL!humanity.)
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The grief production "calcs" are based on how many seeds meguca will give to QB per week. At some point someone said that they would only use two seeds a week, if they did not go witch hunting or use magic of any kind. Most guca wont give over seeds that are unused, so QB gets about 3-5 seeds per week per meguca.
I'm probably way off in total population though.

Jonen C said:
Numbers wise, millions of meguca worldwide means meguca are 1/1000 or higher (the pool being girls, so ~5 billion, young (say about the bottom fifth of the global population pyramid), so maybe 1 billion).

So a city like Mitakihara would in that scenario have a couple hundred magical girls to several thousand. Even if several of those witch out instantaneously, the maths do not add up.
So more likely is magical girls are 1/10 000 or 1/100 000 or higher: no more than tens to hundreds of thousands of magical girls worldwide.
Iow: you are probably overestimating grief seed production by one to two orders of magnitude or more.
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Your probably right. I've never been one of hard math (or easy math), but tens to hundreds of thousands does sound more reasonable than millions.
 
Sole Purpose said:
A magical Girl will produce something around 3-5 seeds a week, based on what someone said about using two gems a week if they didn't do any magic. We don't know how many magical girls are on Earth at the moment, but it's probably somewhere in the millions. That means QB gets at least 3-5 million grief seeds per week.
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That math is off in a large number of ways. Let's do it properly:

In PMAS, we know that:
• In Sendai, a city with an IRL population of around ~1 million, there are ten magical girls, for a 1:100000 magical girl:human ratio.
• Mami says that a magical girl needs one grief seed every two weeks to survive on subsistence levels of magic usage.

If we assume that the global population is the same as IRL!2011, that gives a pretty safe estimate of about 70 thousand total global magical girls.

QB's take, thus, is closer to 35 thousand grief seeds a week, not 3 million.

Of course, that's still a lot, and I'd peg the actual number as around a hundred thousand seeds per week or so, since subsistence rate survival is rare.
 
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Redshirt Army said:
That math is off in a large number of ways. Let's do it properly:

In PMAS, we know that:
• In Sendai, a city with an IRL population of around ~1 million, there are ten magical girls, for a 1:100000 magical girl:human ratio.
• Mami says that a magical girl needs one grief seed every two weeks to survive on subsistence levels of magic usage.

If we assume that the global population is the same as IRL!2011, that gives a pretty safe estimate of about 70 thousand total global magical girls.

QB's take, thus, is closer to 35 thousand grief seeds a week, not 3 million.

Of course, that's still a lot, and I'd peg the actual number as around a hundred thousand seeds per week or so, since subsistence rate survival is rare.
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Considering that the IRL death-rate is roughly a million people per week, this means that a notable proportion of all deaths are being fed into the Incubator's system.
 
My life has become batshit crazy lately, and is likely going to be for the rest of the year. I'm not sure how much longer I can keep up with this ten-pages-per-day pace. This is me trying to catch up on everything from yesterday....

SaltyWaffles said:
Remember what he said? "They simply fail to ask the right questions."
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Except that they actually do ask the right question in Episode 2: "Where do witches come from?" Kyubey gave them a meaningless non-answer. "You didn't ask," is just Kyubey deflecting blame and ducking responsibility. They did ask. He gave a technically accurate and utterly meaningless answer.

Vebyast said:
It's probably a reasonable approximation for what happens when you hand a neat, tidy infodump to an expert from a different field before asking them to look over it for anything interesting.
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If you start cackling maliciously when you hand it over, then yeah, they're going to expect there to be something nasty hidden in there and start looking for it.

Onmur said:
I expect the millenia old paperclip maximizer to consider the possibility of research and improvement before dismissing the idea. Otherwise it wouldn't be a paperclip maximizer. :p
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It should be noted that this particular paperclip maximizer is known to be extremely unimaginative. It's possible that the idea that we could find ways to scale up our grief output high enough to be meaningful simply never occured to him.

At the start of this in-story day I advocated being cooperative with Kyubey on the subject of reduced visibility with the intent that we could get a concession in return: being put in contact with Kuroki and stealthguca. Kyubey instead gave us fuck-all, but we made the concession anyway. It doesn't incline me towards trying to make deals with him again in the future. At a bare minimum, we'd at least have to remember to include in our vote to withhold our bargaining chip if he's uncooperative.

DschingisKhan said:
How much time do we have left to decide?
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We never know until the new update appears.
 
Godwinson said:
Considering that the IRL death-rate is roughly a million people per week, this means that a notable proportion of all deaths are being fed into the Incubator's system.
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Hm. Back of the napkin math, 35k-100k deaths per week is ~3% to ~10% of the global death rate (one million per week, as you said).

A bit over 100 billion people have ever lived and died -- using real life as a benchmark -- so assuming a constant rate of 'harvesting' from the population over time, Kyubey has collected 3 billion to 10 billion Grief Seeds.

Kyubey might have more girls trapped in hell than there are people currently alive on the surface of the earth. Yikes.
 
Subrosian_Smithy said:
Hm. Back of the napkin math, 35k-100k deaths per week is ~3% to ~10% of the global death rate (one million per week, as you said).

A bit over 100 billion people have ever lived and died -- using real life as a benchmark -- so assuming a constant rate of 'harvesting' from the population over time, Kyubey has collected 3 billion to 10 billion Grief Seeds.

Kyubey might have more girls trapped in hell than there are people currently alive on the surface of the earth. Yikes.
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Also remember that not all grief seeds are made of just one soul.
 
Don't know why this one didn't come up when I hit the Insert Quote button before....
Karnewarrior said:
He'd hit us from orbit with a KKV.
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We have no evidence to indicate that the Incubators have any weapons platforms anywhere near Earth. If they did, you'd think they would have used them when they realized what Madoka's wish was going to be, or to put an end to Homura's looping. Whether it's a programming limitation or a practical one, the Incubators don't seem to ever take direct action and instead rely on manipulation.
 
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