The problem here is that conductivity is an emergent property. It's a consequence of the movement of charge on microscopic scales, not an independent property that can be dialed up and down without changing anything else. Therefore, any rune that suppresses conduction is doing one of two things:
- Altering some fundamental rule in a way that incidentally suppresses electrical conductivity.
- Recognizing places where electrical conduction is happening and selectively preventing it from happening.
You repeat the "emergent property" objection many times in your post, and use it as the basis of your greater objection, so I must address it thoroughly in one place.
1. Evidently false by previous results: If we can make a rune that can dial up and down
time, the "emergent property" defense for not being able to screw with conductivity does not hold water. It's clear that chakra doesn't care.
2. A false assumption in the first place: "Emergent properties" are turtles all the way down, hence stopping at any point and saying "but
this is the fundamental property we can change to get knock-down effects above; ignore everything below it." would be invalid. You can't point to one arbitrary point on that turtle tower and say "chakra-manipulabale physics start
here. You can't touch anything above
or below."
Any "you have to choose which fundamental (sub)atomic interaction property you would need to mess with to get the
actual effect you want" objection is therefore pointless. And highly likely to be outside of our (to be specific,
my. I can't follow Hazou into Strings-land...) capabilities.
(As an aside, do you think Hazo knows even about relativity?)
If this line of reasoning is false, I will address your points built upon the "emergent property" objection. It could well be! But until then, that would be working under false a false premise, hence misleading.
I would contend that the first method would result in very major side effects, effectively no matter what you actually change. The second method results in a rune whose function depends on its definition of 'electrical conduction'; conduction of electricity in metals is extremely different from conductivity in ion-containing liquids, and there's no particular reason to think that a rune which suppresses one would also suppress the other, particularly that (as I argue below) Hazō has no reason to think that (to him) Raiton energy is involved in nerve signal transmission.
Two asides:
1. DanZapman already addressed the Raiton energy knowledge being present in-story, so I won't belabor that point further except to say that I am sure you can imagine that Hazo is somewhat aware of what one of the five human elements does to the human body - both academically and through in-person observation, since ninja throw that at each other.
2. Creating the new requirement that "Hazo should know
why Raiton has the effects it does" feels, at best, like splitting hairs. And is unnecessary anyway, since he will observe the effect he expects.
---
I will address your two other points that are not based on "but an emergent property", shortly:
1. The myelin sheath doesn't fit: You are right. The myelin sheath example was an auxiliary idea I had before our discussion, which I specifically noted was used for secondary reasoning. (e.g. I do not know what is going on here, but changing this variable seems to cause this, so...). Therefore it does not fit with the rest, and may make it seem like I arbitrarily go between those two definitions of "conductivity". The second and third
are specifically for electrical conductivity.
2. Side effects:
Summary of what I got from this:
- Regardless of the mechanism, any rune sufficiently general to hit both metallic conduction and ionic conduction is likely to have major side effects, whether to the action of chemistry (e.g. fires), to the integrity of nearby matter, or to the propagation of light. Precedent with Temporal Runes suggests that Hazō is unlikely to produce such side effects in a rune, and therefore there's no particular reason to think that a rune preventing electron conduction (which is what has Hazō has primarily seen of electrical conduction, since lightning is sufficient to cause dielectric breakdown in most materials and so even materials that normally conduct ionically will conduct an immediate lightning strike through electron movement) would also prevent ionic conduction, or have the 'side effect' of preventing nerve operation.
- If Hazō is aware that nerves involve 'electricity' in their operation, and decides to specifically research a rune that does have that effect, that's of course another story. However, the thrust of your argument was that an anti-conduction rune would not require metaknowledge to shut down nerves; that Hazō is aware that Raiton energy can produce muscle spasms doesn't imply that he's aware of the normal function of charge movement in the nervous system.
- As a comparison, Hazō is presumably aware of many neurotoxins, even if poison-resistance traning means they don't work on ninja; he would be unlikely to make the inference from the existence of neurotoxins which produce abnormal function that neurotransmitters exist and are important to normal function. Indeed, he probably shouldn't; mercury produces neurotoxic effects, but there are no heavy metals involved in normal nerve function.
While it is a repeat, this bears repeating:
If you make the same post about the time rune, you will find that it (at least) causes molecular breakdowns on its threshold and
possibly causes sub-atomic breakdowns on its threshold. Have we seen perfect slices out of the landscape (and-or MeatPuppet192108), or more exotic consequences like hellfire consuming the area? No.
In fact, as a happy coincidence, some of your points
must exactly be the same, as both electron and ion transfer "will" break down at the barrier, hence the time rune must also result in the major side effects you mention, "whether to the action of chemistry (e.g. fires), to the integrity of nearby matter, or to the propagation of light"
Do any of these things happen?
No. (Barring the fire, which I doubt Hazo checked)
So this is a double-standard. If the time rune does not have those problems, neither will the conductivity rune.
Edit:
Still, not disputing that Hazō can (in principle) research a rune that shuts off nerve signal transmission. The claim I have a problem with is that a rune that shuts of electrical conduction (as Hazō would understand it) would automatically have that effect, which I think is a reasonable reading of @Halil 's post.
Okay, I want to cut through chasing definitions if I can. Otherwise I can see this stretching out a bit. Let's see:
To be clear, are you saying: "If Hazo looks at / considers Raiton's effects on animal or human bodies (and-or discusses with Noburi what shocking corpses can do), considers his knowledge about conductivity[1], and decides to take that away, the resulting rune would not shut people down immediately?"
[1]: They have ninja wire - and according to the wiki a fundamental use of lightning release is channeling it through ninja tools. One trivial observation any such ninja can make would be "why are we/they using metal tools for Raiton", for instance. Alternatively "why does Raiton make people faster/twitchier?"... Or even: Regardless of what we think, Raiton works on nerves. The whole definition debate is therefore superfluous, because Raiton on nerves would be Hazou's natural inspiration
.
Because if you don't think so, then
our discussion over definitions don't matter. Through the grace of Hazou and chakra, everything works regardless.
Regardless, thank you for engaging this idea so thoroughly. It is sincerely better than the alternative.
