- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Welcome back! Nice to see that the mods accepted your appeal; it says nice things about their willingness to be flexible.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
-
- Tags
- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard open voting
Welcome back! Nice to see that the mods accepted your appeal; it says nice things about their willingness to be flexible.
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
Going roughly off of @Twofold's long-term char builds, what are some things we can focus on training in the immediate term? (Because I need something to distract me from waiting fro the update to drop.)
For Hazou:
Alternatively, we could consider:
For Hazou:
Things available to us right now include:
- Getting stealth to 15, as specified above. Already have the stats for it, just need to pump in 60 XP to get 14e15.
- Getting Diplo 9 and 10, for 19 XP
- Another level of Roki -- 7 XP, no real point going higher until Decep 16
- Working on Cap or Reg. Cap is expensive, but Reg is fairly cheap - only 40 for Reg 10, which is the final stat in the spread above.
- Starting to purchase more Sub and Transfrom piecemeal -- 23 points for Transform 12, 10 points for Sub 10
- Sealing is currently limited by Int, up until 15 when it matches with our current Wits (5) * 3. So, sealing 15 costs (14+15)*3 = 87 HOLY JASHIN THAT'S EXPENSIVE, FUCK ME SILLY
Nobby is going to end up (hopefully) with Know/Nin 10 and STA 4 at the end of this current round of training. If we can swing getting Hiding in the Mist from J as a reward for the paralytic + watchtowers, he can work on that next.
Alternatively, we could consider:
- Getting Stealth to 15 (65XP).
- Buying up WW/VD arbitrarily high, up to their planned maximums.
- Buy up Transformation and Substitution arbitrarily high, up to their planned maximums.
- Maxing Water Clone at 10.
- Keep pumping Control.
- Stealth 16 and TM20 are the obvious first things to go for, given that she doesn't have to spend anything on stats
- Getting Zephyr 10 would help with learning her future Futon jutsu, so we could knock that out
- Upping Reg is pretty cheap, and she's going to need long-term investment in Cap to get to the point where she can pull out multiple big pangolins
- Deal Making up to 12 needs no further stat buys, so that's always an interim social option
- She has more than enough stats for our long-term Transform and Sub goals, so any leftover XP bits can be slotted in there
- She could get Dispel to 20 since that's her only way to fuck with Mari
- Maxing her current Awareness and Stealth would be solid.
- Getting her a MechApt specialization is viable but requires a good amount of hivemind discussion.
- We should pick something to drop her conditioning XP on, which makes purchasing some more levels of Youthful Fist useful as well.
- Her transformation is pitiful, we should get that up to snuff.
- Upping Reg and Cap are always options - as with the other genin, getting Reg up to 10 is not terribly expensive (but also doesn't have a whole ton of marginal utility)
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
For reference:
Unfortunately, it's a true fact. An idea is a lovely thing, but until you do something with it it's of no significance. There are grey areas -- math concepts, art, ideals -- but even there the value is epsilon at most. If you don't believe me, talk to any venture capitalist. (Note that I say this as an author and a startup founder, so I feel qualified to speak to the subject.)
As to having used it on a mission -- give Jiraiya working seals and designs and he'll likely pay you for them.
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
I mean, the plan calls for doing just that (or at least bringing up the suggestion), and I don't want to actually argue about this, and you clearly have more real-world experience trying to sell ideas, but like. At some level it seems clear to me that the genesis of a change is important in some fundamental way?
Like, if nobody ever thinks 'hey, what if we divide up the task of producing widgets into discrete, repetitive actions?', you don't get an industrial revolution. And if it had happened somewhere/somewhen that wasn't Britain in the 1700s, the last 300 years would be fundamentally different from a political and technological standpoint.
If "the value of an idea is at most epsilon" were a true statement, it feels like I should be able to go back in time to the Roman Empire, talk to lots of people about mass production, and then (assuming I didn't spread super-smallpox or whatever) come back to a 2016 I can still operate in, and my mind just completely rejects that scenario.
You might be about to say something like "but it was what people did with the idea that made the difference", but without the idea they wouldn't have done the thing! Actually being exposed to the idea is a necessary component of doing things based on an idea! And even if Team Uplift all died right now, the version of Leaf in this timeline does better in the next war than a parallel version of Leaf in the timeline where Joutarou killed us all!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, imagine it like this:
OliWhail: Hey, want to hear about mass production? <explains>
Roman citizen: Cool, thanks. I will now forget everything you just said.
No perceptible change in the world, right? It's only if the Roman does something with it -- implements it, or at least communicates it to someone who implements it -- that the world is changed.
So, you don't talk to a slave or some random Roman citizen off the street. You talk to a rich noble with your proficient and elegant Latin. You try to persuade them that it is a good idea, without offending him in the process.
Then that person has to put the idea into execution.
Great! Now your noble made some enemies. People who don't like your idea for whatever reason.
You can discover something, but for whatever reason, the time is not ready for idea. Think Charles Baggage, for example, even though he executed part of the idea he has.
Leaf might not ever implement the whole observation tower idea, because the implementation is too easy to copy. It's too much of a transient benefit in warfare.
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minimap_op
plsnerf
- Location
- Lower Lefthand Corner
Well if ideas have no value and as a result Team Uplift losing exclusivity of their own ideas and techniques means no meaningful loss worthy of compensation then it's only logical than Jiraiya wouldn't see any loss of value in denying Leaf exclusivity of those ideas by selling them to other villages and ninjas. He is after all a Spy Master and rather well informed on the value of knowledge so his judgement of the worth of these ideas should be accurate.
Sarcasm aside there isn't much we can do about Jiraiya dicking us over here but he's still pissing on us and telling us it's just your normal everyday sun shower.
Sarcasm aside there isn't much we can do about Jiraiya dicking us over here but he's still pissing on us and telling us it's just your normal everyday sun shower.
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
I'm actually kind of horrified at how fast my mental model of Jiraiya would murder us for doing this.
[1/2 jk] Knock out border patrols of each major non-Fire country and leave them with a list of all our sealing ideas - no actual seals, not even evaluations of their feasibility, just the ideas - and when Jiraiya confronts us about it, point out that ideas aren't worth anything, so we didn't really help his enemies at all.
E: mfw these little shits give me sass like I won't enslave and/or murder them for spreading seal ideas to my enemies
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Jello_Raptor
(Confirmed Jelly)
- Location
- Left of Center
Just as a point of historical note. I don't think the analytical engine was ahead of its time in any particularly salient sense. It was like any number of other costly and speculative endeavours, without the benefit of hindsight, there's a high risk of failure and it's not obvious how much return on investment one would have gotten.
There's a long gap in time between when the technology became feasible (Babbage) and when it became the best solution for a pressing problem despite development cost (Turing and WWII). At any point in that period if someone could have demonstrated that the idea worked it would have taken off.
What gets me is how close the analytical engine was to reality. If Babbage wasn't a dick to his funders (the english government) or Ada Lovelace didn't get cancer, then there's a damn good chance it would have taken off. Babbage's problem is that he was kind of an ass if he didn't get his way, and bad at the management needed to get a useful working prototype together.
There existed an obvious use for the difference engine, though not a pressing need, and getting it to the point where others (esp. the military) would buy them would have been sufficient. From that point the ideas and expertise would have been distributed enough that the analytical engine (or something similar) would have come at some point, either from Babbage or elsewhere.
In a lot of ways Babbage was a great ideas man, but not the right person to turn that idea into something others would use. He refused to recognise the disconnect between his passion for the concept, and the useful black-box tool his funders wanted. In doing so, he ended wasting time, money, and goodwill.
Math, because of how cheap it is to build new mathematical "things", is a great example of the opposite. Take Galois Fields and all the relevant mathematics. It was designed centuries ago, but the pressing need (as part of efficient crypto) has only really appeared recently.
The notion of an idea being before its time is a problematic abstraction over the notions of risk, reward, and cost. There's a point after which an idea can take off on its own if someone can prove that it's useful. There's another, usually much later, point where a need becomes so pressing that it's worth searching for the right idea. But, if you already have the right idea, then between those two points it's just a matter of risk and cost. Are you willing to take the leap that your idea is the right one and prove that it's useful despite outside skepticism?
Admittedly, computing in general is a bit anomalous, because of how much it feeds into its own usefulness. Having a little bit of compute power is often enough to show that it's useful in some new context and start a new feedback loop. But the general principle holds regardless.
Chapter 86: The Appeal of Death
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Things were tense after Hazou's conversations with Noburi and Keiko. Fortunately they were left alone until mid-afternoon, except for a short visit from the team of servants who brought in lunch. The meal was a quiet affair; the genin occupied themselves with their food as an excuse to not talk. Kagome's stress had gotten to the point where his only comprehensible speech was monosyllabic grunts in reply to direct questions, with a constant string of grumbling just below the threshold of hearing. He ate lunch with his left hand, the right being occupied with a kunai that he clutched like a child clutching a safety blanket.
Given the mood of the room it was an incredible relief when the knock on the door finally came.
"Good morning," Hazou said, bowing shallowly and gesturing the Leaf team in. "We're just finishing up. Would you like some tea? Or maybe some gyoza?"
Akimichi's eyes lit up. "Gyoza? I wouldn't mind."
"Help yourself," Inoue-sensei said, gesturing to the food. Whatever Konoha's intentions might be for the team, they definitely didn't include starvation; everyone had stuffed themselves and the table was still half-full. Akimichi fell on the leftovers with focused intent, chopsticks flashing as he scarfed them down. The team watched in amusement for a moment.
"Gotta tell you," Noburi said to Asuma, "it's really nice to be able to visit Leaf in a friendly way. We hear a lot about you guys."
"You better be friendly!" Kagome said, jumping to his feet with kunai in both hands. He was twitching slightly, his eyes flicking around like an animal in a trap, and his knuckles were white where he gripped his weapons. "I hear a lot about you too, and I won't let you do that to my team! If you try it, I'll—"
With the first words, Nara and Yamanaka had shifted into a combat stance and Akimichi had paused in his eating to look up at Kagome. Sarutobi didn't blink, simply continuing to smoke his cigarette peacefully.
"Sensei, it's all right," Hazou said, reaching slowly for Kagome's arm. Physical contact reassured the man...and also made it easier to physically restrain him if it became necessary.
"Jiraiya assigned us to protect you," Sarutobi said calmly, taking a long drag on his cigarette and keeping his hands carefully visible. "Yes, we're also to protect Leaf from you, but our primary job is to keep you and your identities safe."
"A likely story!" Kagome said, shaking Hazou's hand off without seeming to notice it and backing away.
Inoue-sensei rose, moving slowly and carefully, and stepped between Kagome and the Leaf team. "It's okay, Kagome," she said, her voice and gentle. "Look at me."
Reluctantly, Kagome dragged his eyes away from what he clearly thought of as the enemy and looked at the tiny redhead. Hazou noticed that he was careful not to meet her eyes.
"Kagome, I need you to breathe for me, okay?" Inoue-sensei said. "They aren't going to hurt us, and starting a fight would be a bad thing to do. We want to get along with them, and they want to get along with us. We're here under Jiraiya's protection, remember? He doesn't want to get in trouble with the Toads for fighting the Pangolin summoner or her team."
It took a few seconds, but eventually Kagome's muscles relaxed and the whites of his eyes were no longer visible. "Fine," he grumbled. "Stinkers."
"Please excuse him," Hazou said to Team Asuma. "He's really jumpy without his explosives." He studied them for a moment, then decided to take a chance. "It might actually be safer to let him have a few tags. I think it would calm him down."
Yamanaka snorted and Nara muttered "Troublesome." Akimichi went back to scarfing down gyoza.
Sarutobi shrugged. "I'll talk to Jiraiya about it, but I wouldn't hold your breath."
"So, what's on the agenda for today?" Inoue-sensei said brightly.
"We thought we'd start with a tour of the city," Sarutobi said.
"And some shopping!" Yamanaka said, her eyes shining with fever-brightness. "I'm sure you need things after being out in the woods for so long, and I know the best places."
"Troublesome," Nara muttered.
Sarutobi snorted. "You're just excited about the idea of shopping on an expense account," he teased.
"Expense account?" Keiko asked.
"Jiraiya authorized a budget from the Materials and Equipment fund," Sarutobi reminded them. "And ordered us to pick up Wakahisa's barrel and materials for repairing same as our first stop."
"Right!" Noburi said, jumping to his feet. "It'll be great to have it back."
Inoue-sensei checked in with the team by eye and saw that everyone was ready and Kagome wasn't about to start murderizing things.
"Just to check, our cover is that we're visiting dignitaries, right?" Hazou asked. "What are the rules? What are we allowed to do or not do?"
"Don't kill anyone," Sarutobi told us. "And maintain cover. Inoue, you're the leader of a minor village here to open trade arrangements with Konoha. These are some of your ninja, here as your bodyguards."
"Easy peasy," Yamanaka said with a laugh. "Just look noble and arrogant."
Inoue-sensei nodded and yawned. "Guess I should be a guy, huh? Pity." She stretched, rising up on her toes with both hands reaching overhead, then twisted from side to side a few times to get probably-nonexistent kinks out of her back. Sarutobi swallowed and Yamanaka shot her a fulminating glare full of envy.
"Troublesome."
There was a faint shimmer and Inoue-sensei was replaced by a tall, wiry man with salt-and-pepper hair and a hooked nose. "Let's get this show on the road," he said in a light tenor.
Moments later the rest of the team was ready, henges hiding both weapons and faces, and out the door into the crowded streets of Konoha.
The place was a marvel—the equal or possibly superior of Kirigakure, much less the small hamlets and towns that the team had spent most of their time in for the last year. People bustled back and forth, the streets were lined with shops, and smaller merchants sold food and goods off the back of carts. There were buskers on every other corner—musicians, jugglers, and storytellers. None of them seemed to be making a rich living, but they all had at least a few ryo in their hats.
"This place looks nice," Hazou said, gesturing to a clothing shop they were passing. Like most shops it was open on the street side, with a gate that could be pulled across at night. Shirts, pants, and shoes lined the walls and the marked prices were reasonable.
"As if," Yamanaka said with a derisive snort. "Those are just for peasants. No style at all, and they were designed for softfoots. They wouldn't stand up to ninja life."
Hazou frowned, looking at the clothes. They seemed perfectly nice to him. There were brightly-colored ones but the majority were in shades of grey or brown. It was the sort of stuff he'd grown up wearing, and hearing it dismissed so bluntly...well, it wasn't a good feeling.
"Come on, there's a better place down this way," Yamanaka said, diving into an alley with the ease of someone who'd grown up here and knew the place like the back of her hand.
"Reel it in, Ino," Sarutobi said. "We're going to Secure Storage first, remember?" The blonde grumbled, but followed along.
The Secure Storage facility could have been any warehouse in the Elemental Nations except for the subtle yet impressive security. A few passwords and forms later and Noburi's broken barrel was being loaded onto a dolly to be taken to their quarters. Noburi's eyes tracked it hungrily but he made no protest.
"Where to next?" Inoue-sensei asked. "Back to that store young Miss Yamanaka was so excited about?"
"Yes!" the girl said, her eyes gleaming with an unholy light. "You all need new clothes."
Sarutobi and Akimichi groaned and Nara muttered his catchphrase. Clearly there was some history here.
"Their clothes are fine," Sarutobi said. "I was thinking more along the lines of the theater district."
"No," Yamanaka said firmly. "They are supposed to be a visiting noble and his entourage, and those clothes aren't even remotely convincing. Well, except for hers—his." She gave a disgruntled wave towards Inoue-sensei. "And those are still so far out of style that you'd be laughed out of any serious meeting. I mean, really? Mandarin collar? That is so last year."
Inoue-sensei shrugged. "I've been mostly out in the woods for over a year," she reminded the girl. "When I have been around people it's mostly been in tiny little nothing towns. Little hard to keep up with the trends."
"Hmph. Fine," the blonde said, her nose lifting unconsciously. "Still, you need something better than that."
"And of course you have no intention of purchasing anything for yourself," Nara said.
"Wellll...I did see this really cute top yesterday. And there were some wedges that would look so good with that skirt I bought last week...."
"Wedges? What do you need wedges for?" Kagome asked, kunai suddenly in his hands. "You're going to use them on us, aren't you, you stinker!"
"They're shoes, Kagome," Inoue-sensei said quietly. "It's a style of shoe."
This did not help.
"Shoes?! Wedge shoes? I knew it! They're going to use them to crush our feet so we can't run! Quick, we need to—"
Kagome's panic cut off as Inoue-sensei snagged him in her Sunny Day genjutsu. The tension slid out of his body and he smiled.
"Thanks," he said.
She rested a hand on his shoulder for a minute, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "Sorry, my friend."
He shrugged. "Better than starting a fight," he said. He looked at Sarutobi and ducked his head in embarrassment. "Sorry about that."
Sarutobi chuckled. "Don't worry about it. We've got plenty of ninja here who have been on one too many missions. If you want it—and only if you want it—there are a number of priests that you could talk to. It's not magic, but they're good at listening and it can help. No pressure, though. We aren't going to force you into it."
Kagome's smile slipped and a trace of tension returned to his shoulders. "No."
Sarutobi raised his hands placatingly. "Okay," he said. "Like I said, no pressure."
"Come on!" Yamanaka said, setting off with the determination of a freshly-graduated genin on her first mission. "Shopping awaits!"
o-o-o-o
Yamanaka knew more about clothing styles than Hazou knew about taijutsu. It was almost terrifying watching the girl flip through the stacks of clothing on the shelves of the second store they'd been dragged into—they'd been in the first one for less than a minute before Yamanaka had pronounced it "hopeless" and swept out, pulling them all effortlessly along in her wake. Apparently the selection at this one was better; she was so excited that she was actually using shunshin to move around the store.
"Crazy, huh?" Hazou muttered to Keiko.
Keiko nodded. "Yes. What I find more impressive, though, is that this city is so rich that they actually have multiple styles and sizes of clothes lying around their shops. Not only that, but apparently they even have styles that change more than annually, thereby requiring the fashionable to update their wardrobes. And there is enough wealth to support that excess."
Hazou blinked. "That is a very good point," he said. "I'm impressed. I would not have thought of that."
Keiko shrugged with one shoulder. "Logistics," she muttered, as though that explained everything.
o-o-o-o
"Does she do this often?" Noburi asked Akimichi. It was nice to not be the fattest one in the room for a change, and the larger boy seemed friendly enough.
"Yup," Akimichi said, chewing placidly on a potato chip he'd pulled from a small leather pouch. "Don't get the wrong idea, though; she's actually a really good ninja even if she gets a little too excited about shopping."
"I didn't think otherwise," Noburi said. "Your team leader is the Third Hokage's son. They're not going to put dead weight with him." He paused. "Hey, the genin who brought our food said that the three of you are all clan heirs. Is that right?"
Akimichi ducked his head in embarrassment. "Yup. It's not really a big thing, though. We aren't better than anyone else just because we're clan, so what does it matter if my dad is the current head?"
"Hey, shopkeeper, get over here!" Yamanaka called. When the old man bustled over she thrust a red blouse at him. "Do you have this in green?"
He bowed immediately. "I'm terrible sorry, ma'am. Just what you see on the shelves."
She sniffed in irritation. "All right well, I guess red is okay. It'll go with that belt I got for my birthday."
"Try this," Inoue-sensei said, offering a crushed-linen skirt. It was asymmetric, cut ankle-length on the right and above the knee on the left, and it was a wash of green and blue that started off a rich jewel tone at the top and dimmed to pastels at the bottom. "It'll look great with that."
Yamanaka's eyebrows went up, but she grabbed the skirt with polite thanks and vanished into the changing room. Squeals of delight indicated a probable sale.
"You know your colors, sir," the shopkeeper said to Inoue-sensei.
The henged jounin shrugged modestly. "My wife is a clothes horse. After buying enough birthday presents you start to pick it up just in sheer self-defense."
The shopkeeper laughed. "Very wise, sir."
Sarutobi had been fidgeting more and more since they walked in, and clearly had reached his breaking point. "Ino!" he called. "Pack it up! We're out of here in two minutes and whatever you haven't bought by then stays here!"
A loud squawk from the changing room gave a few seconds notice before Yamanaka came tearing out, hands full of clothes. She tossed them on the counter and began frantically counting ryo out of her pouch.
"No haggling," Hazou noted to Keiko, fingering his own newly-purchased clothes. Before diving into her own shopping crusade, Yamanaka had used her shopping powers for good by picking out clothes for the team. She'd tried hard to urge Hazou into some clothes that she swore up and down were stylish, but they were too fancy for him. He'd let her guide him on styles and materials, but had insisted on simple construction, minimal decoration, and no embroidery. Based on Yamanaka's anguished complaints you would have thought he was stabbing her in the heart instead of merely refusing shopping advice. Still, the royal blue silk shirt and slate-grey pants were the nicest things he'd ever owned. The fact that they were new was a bizarre concept, and the fact that he hadn't needed to pay a ryo for them was just amazing.
"It's a high-end shop," Keiko murmured back. "I suspect it caters only to clan ninja and the wealthiest members of the bureaucracy. You see how inflated the prices are?"
In truth, Hazou had taken one look at the prices and started to walk back out the door. Even when he was told that the trip was covered under their expense account he'd been extremely uncomfortable and finally settled for just not looking at the tags.
It was more than two minutes before they walked out the door, but at least they weren't burdened when they did. Amidst much bowing and expressions of gratitude, the shopkeeper agreed to have their purchases delivered.
Hazou blinked as they emerged from the shade of the store into the full sun of the outside. He was just opening his mouth to ask about food when he was beaten to the punch.
"Shoes!" Yamanaka said. "Yours are all worn out, we need to get you something better. There's a great place just a mile from here, come on!"
"Are you sure you don't just want new boots to go with your new skirt?" Nara asked slyly.
"Well, I did see this really kicky pair—no! It's all about our visitors!"
"Troublesome," Nara said, shaking his head. "You are very troublesome, Ino."
She stuck her tongue out at him. "Are you coming or not?"
"A mile away, just for shoes? Too much like work." Despite his protests, Nara followed her as she turned right and headed out at a quickstep.
"Hey, can we stop for lunch?" Akimichi asked hopefully. "I'm starving."
"You can't be starving, you just ate this morning!" Yamanaka said.
"Yeah, but—"
Hazou shook his head and trailed along behind the bickering team. He really hoped Akimichi won this argument. And that there was something other than shopping that they could do for the rest of the day. If there wasn't, honorable suicide became a much more appealing option.
EDIT: Konoha has allowed you to each have two kunai, as a gesture of good faith. Nothing else -- no chain scythe, no exploding tags, no seals of any kind, etc.
Noburi has his barrel, tools, and materials necessary to repair it.
XP AWARD: 5
Vote time! What to do now?
Voting ends on Wednesday, November 30, 2016, at 12pm London time.
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- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
OH MY GOD LET'S GET ON THAT PLEEEEASE
Awww poor Nobby
Jello_Raptor
(Confirmed Jelly)
- Location
- Left of Center
(new post so that it pings people)
It occurs to me that both @eaglejarl and @OliWhail could interpret this as support for their position. I'm actually somewhere in between. I agree with EJ if we're close to the latter point, where the idea itself is easy to think of and gets lost in the noise of who's the first to prove it works, and OW if we're closer to the former point, where simply bringing the idea to someone's attention is much more valuable.
Given how it seems like Jiraiya and co had a vague desire for "aerial surveillance", but it wasn't so big an issue for them to have task forces dedicated to finding a solution to the problem, I'd argue we're much closer to the earlier point. Doubly so since his exclamation in our meeting with him and the Hokage implied that the idea is self evidently useful. Our service wasn't bringing a solution for him to use, but showing that a solution exists and sketching its broad outlines. Without this, the aerial surveillance would have been a vague threat in the background until Konoha heard of one of their enemies developing a technology this counters.1 At which point they'd have to work double-time to figure this out, possibly while losing their nin to whatever this defends against.
Sure the prototypes and seals are valuable, but even just sharing the idea has saved Konoha the time, money, and lives they would have spend figuring this out while defending against an attack.
Also, @eaglejarl, the notion that you're qualified to talk about the value of ideas simply because you're working in a startup mildly annoys me. Sure, you definitely have a better understanding than a random person, but American startup culture is deeply anomalous. While your position is basically correct for the tech startup world, it doesn't generalize nearly as well as you imply.
Our startup scene2 is built on how cheap experimentation is. Computers and software are weird as fuck in a historical context. Software is stupid cheap to experiment with. Our globalized economy means that I routinely have people in Asia build electronics for me and have it in my hands within days of having finished the design. And that's physical shit, pure code is even more ludicrous. The low cost of experimentation means that an idea for a solution isn't very far removed from the insight that a problem exists. Anyone who has that insight can try a dozen different solutions in a month for pocket change.3 Each of those potential solutions can build on a thousand different pieces of shared infrastructure that would otherwise have to be developed from scratch.
Take Uber for instance, they use Google Maps and/or Waze for driver navigation. Without that, they'd have had to build their own mapping systems or rely on driver skill. Both options are costly and have significant issues. Yet when we talk about how valuable Uber is, we tend to forget what they're building on top of. Mapping infrastructure, cell networks, the internet as a whole, etc..
Your view of the value of ideas lacks a fundamental context. For the startup world, a whole bunch of variables are more-or-less constant and your position assumes these are universal constants rather than local truths.
The fundamental difference between our world and MfD is that they have none of this stuff. Trying new things is costly, often deadly, draining limited resources that could be spent on more pressing needs. Here, even though Hiruzen knows he has a aerial surveillance problem, he doesn't have the resources to search for a solution. There is a much larger gap between noticing a problem and finding a solution. Simply sketching out a solution saves Hiruzen and Jiraiya the search. A search which is much costlier for them than it is for people in the tech industry.
Honestly, this is all a similar set of issues to my annoyance at your and @Velorien's heuristic of "If this idea is so great, why isn't everyone doing it already?". The efficient market hypothesis is not a valid approximation of a market (even markets of techniques and ideas) unless the market is huge and deeply interconnected. Both of which are very true of our world, but incredibly false for the world of MfD.
[1]: Likely when "hearing of it" is only a side effect of something more ... kinetic in nature.
[2]: The US Tech Startup World. Which I'm tangentially part of, and will likely become more involved in in the near future.
[3]: The exact numbers here vary depending on the problem being solved, but for solutions that can be tested using existing infrastructure, PaaS tools, and people's home computers, it's entirely realistic. Oh, and discounting labour costs, but all of silicon valley does that anyway.
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Jello_Raptor
(Confirmed Jelly)
- Location
- Left of Center
Fuking yes! Keiko gets it!
Jello_Raptor
(Confirmed Jelly)
- Location
- Left of Center
[X] Action Plan : Mix and Match
Edit 2: I'm super busy the next few days so don't expect me to write up either a Hospital Plan or actual Action Plan.
Edit: Also backup null votes ... for reasons.
[X] Action Plan : Lore Update
[X] Training Hazou : None
[X] Training Noburi : None
[X] Training Akane : None
[X] Training Keiko : None
- If Akane is ready for a visit, immediately perform the highest rated Hospital Plan
- If there are no hospital plans, then goto the second highest rated Action Plan anyway.
- Otherwise, perform the second highest rated Action Plan.
Edit 2: I'm super busy the next few days so don't expect me to write up either a Hospital Plan or actual Action Plan.
Edit: Also backup null votes ... for reasons.
[X] Action Plan : Lore Update
- Preferred Option: Pangolin Lore
- Their actual lore, rather than just Pandaa being adorable.
-
[X] Training Hazou : None
[X] Training Noburi : None
[X] Training Akane : None
[X] Training Keiko : None
Last edited:
- Location
- Academy City
- Pronouns
- They
[X] Action Plan : Mix and Match
[X] Action Plan : Lore Update
[X] Training Hazou : None
[X] Training Noburi : None
[X] Training Akane : None
[X] Training Keiko : None
[X] Action Plan : Lore Update
[X] Training Hazou : None
[X] Training Noburi : None
[X] Training Akane : None
[X] Training Keiko : None
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
[X] Action Plan : Mix and Match
[X] Action Plan : Lore Update
[X] Training Hazou : None
[X] Training Noburi : None
[X] Training Akane : None
[X] Training Keiko : None
Jello_Raptor
(Confirmed Jelly)
- Location
- Left of Center
I would just like to remind people that they should recind their lore update votes when there's a plan they actually like.
I will be mildly amused if paranoia over [REDACTED] leads to us voting in a lore update by mistake.
I will be mildly amused if paranoia over [REDACTED] leads to us voting in a lore update by mistake.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
So what do you guys think about suggesting to Mari to learn therapy from their psychiatric staff? That's the only way I can see Kagome accepting therapy, and while it would be awkward between her and Keiko, she's certainly competent enough to manage that herself.
I thought they don't really have psychiatry? Maybe it's more of a proto-science.
Anyway, it took two thousand nine hundred words to interact with just three canon characters, and yet I don't see much character progression or interactions. It felt depressingly slow and shallow.
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
I mean, how many words did we spend interacting with just Kagome before he was actually on our side? I don't really have a problem with fluffy chapters for a while, after this last week's whole charlie-foxtrot.
E: Plus it gives me and @ChronOblivion a chance to sort out what's up with our XP totals