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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Kiba said:
I don't think it works quite that way, giving the premises of this quest.

A social system that works would need to be understandable by us mere mortals.
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Another option I gave was that the Hivemind could throw out ideas and the QMs could just pick one they like and say that it works. Does that potentially work, or would that not work for similar reasons?

Edit:
I would like to say that Lailoken's idea sounds good in general. I'm not sure I believe that it will scale up quite well enough to keep the pangolin military busy (water poisoning might be an issue. Also, at a certain point the upkeep of all the pangolins will probably exceed Keiko's ability to keep chugging), but it's a great idea for clearing out a lot of chakra beasts, creating an image/spread the word of uplift, and creating trade.
 
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Sentient Tree said:
Another option I gave was that the Hivemind could throw out ideas and the QMs could just pick one they like and say that it works. Does that potentially work, or would that not work for similar reasons?
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That requires effort from them, still. Also, we're not as smart as the Nara or the collective military intelligence of a nation.

(Well, I'm not anyway. :p)
 
Cariyaga said:
That requires effort from them, still. Also, we're not as smart as the Nara or the collective military intelligence of a nation.

(Well, I'm not anyway. :p)
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It does require a lot of work from them, true. For the second part though, I would say that it's still the best way of generating ideas we have (some of which are even good ones! :p )
 
Cariyaga said:
That requires effort from them, still. Also, we're not as smart as the Nara or the collective military intelligence of a nation.

(Well, I'm not anyway. :p)
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You're asking fifty people to design a social system that impact an alien species' way of life, which is likely at least thousand of individuals.

In real life, social systems are designed through trial and error, and maybe some forethought, and sometime not at all.
 
Kiba said:
You're asking fifty people to design a social system that impact an alien species' way of life, which is likely at least thousand of individuals.

In real life, social systems are designed through trial and error, and maybe some forethought, and sometime not at all.
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Yep, neither the Hivemind nor the QMs have anywhere near enough processing power to simulate this adequately. That's why I suggested having the QMs just pick an idea and say that it works. As long as the Nara/pangolins are capable of and properly motivated to find a solution, I think it can be argued that it is more simulationist to just say that it works than to say that it doesn't because we don't have the processing power to figure out a solution. In real life there are plenty of people who outsource their thinking to other people (like to engineers or lawyers), and often never find out what the exact solution is.
On the other hand, these people also often find out that there was an unexpected flaw in the thinking which makes everything fail. But that's when they pay those same people to fix it for them, so I dunno.
 
Sentient Tree said:
Yep, neither the Hivemind nor the QMs have anywhere near enough processing power to simulate this adequately. That's why I suggested having the QMs just pick an idea and say that it works. As long as the Nara/pangolins are capable of and properly motivated to find a solution, I think it can be argued that it is more simulationist to just say that it works than to say that it doesn't because we don't have the processing power to figure out a solution. In real life there are plenty of people who outsource their thinking to other people (like to engineers or lawyers), and often never find out what the exact solution is.
On the other hand, these people also often find out that there was an unexpected flaw in the thinking which makes everything fail. But that's when they pay those same people to fix it for them, so I dunno.
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For the record, I don't think I could stomach this. It's basically abandoning the commitment to simulationism and rationality at the altar of magical Nara intelligence. If neither the players nor the QMs can think of a solution to this problem, then for the purposes of the simulation, there should be no solution. It's bad enough for us to try to outsource our thinking to the QMs, but this new idea that if the QMs themselves can't think of a solution, then we should all just pretend one exists without specifying what it is, is simply awful. This isn't Sealing or some other type of nonsensical chakra magic, it's international relations. If we can't figure it out on our own, we don't deserve it to be solved.
 
Roomba said:
For the record, I don't think I could stomach this. It's basically abandoning the commitment to simulationism and rationality at the altar of magical Nara intelligence. If neither the players nor the QMs can think of a solution to this problem, then for the purposes of the simulation, there should be no solution. It's bad enough for us to try to outsource our thinking to the QMs, but this new idea that if the QMs themselves can't think of a solution, then we should all just pretend one exists without specifying what it is, is simply awful. This isn't Sealing or some other type of nonsensical chakra magic, it's international relations. If we can't figure it out on our own, we don't deserve it to be solved.
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We could always level Deceit to like 50, grab Nagato's eyeballs and just convince them we are the reincarnation of the Pantokrator.
 
Roomba said:
For the record, I don't think I could stomach this. It's basically abandoning the commitment to simulationism and rationality at the altar of magical Nara intelligence. If neither the players nor the QMs can think of a solution to this problem, then for the purposes of the simulation, there should be no solution. It's bad enough for us to try to outsource our thinking to the QMs, but this new idea that if the QMs themselves can't think of a solution, then we should all just pretend one exists without specifying what it is, is simply awful. This isn't Sealing or some other type of nonsensical chakra magic, it's international relations. If we can't figure it out on our own, we don't deserve it to be solved.
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Fair enough. Do you think we can figure out a way to solve it eventually?
 
I think the added constraint of "Solve this SOON." combined with "Don't compromise on ditching the more morally suspect aspects of the Pangolin conquest/stop the conquest." is making this almost impossible.

Assuming you want the Pangolins to stay alive and/or to keep good relations with them, of course.
 
Sentient Tree said:
Fair enough. Do you think we can figure out a way to solve it eventually?
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It's not like preventing further genocide is a very difficult problem in principle. As a clan, we have the leverage we need over the Pangolins, we simply need to convince Jiraiya to approve a hardline negotiating stance. Jiraiya's necessary condition for that is to get the clan financially stable without Pangolin gold, which is something we're working on.

If you want to solve it right now, then we have some options, though none without significant cost. For example, we could convince Keiko to talk to Pantsa about the conquests. We've avoided that because we're afraid of the consequences, both from Pantsa and from Jiraiya, but it is absolutely doable, and would likely help a lot.

What I don't think we can do, is get what we want without paying for it in some significant manner.
 
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Roomba said:
It's not like preventing further genocide is a very difficult problem in principle. As a clan, we have the leverage we need over the Pangolins, we simply need to convince Jiraiya to approve a hardline negotiating stance. Jiraiya's necessary condition for that is to get the clan financially stable without Pangolin gold, which is something we're working on.

If you want to solve it right now, then we have some options, though none without significant cost. For example, we could convince Keiko to talk to Pantsa about the conquests. We've avoided that because we're afraid of the consequences, both from Pantsa and from Jiraiya, but it is absolutely doable, and would likely help a lot.

What I don't think we can do, is get what we want without paying for it in some significant manner.
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Actually, the conversation brought up a good point. How do we verify that the pangolins are actually stopping the genocide? Would asking the toads work? Military conquest is a bit more noisy than mistreatment of a population, I guess?
 
Can I vote that the Pangolins continue their line of conquest in exchange for ensuring that the defeated nations don't get slaughtered in their entirety?
 
faflec said:
Yeah but the thread wants to change that.
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Right.

I would like their war crimes to be reduced to at least a C-rank level before giving them an inch there on negotiations.

If we could just get them to stay the fuck put for a couple years so they can regroup/build up strength/etc, that would be great.

Maybe we can negotiate a new deal implementing @Lailoken 's solution in some manner? Something along the lines of "Defensive Seals and chakra beast meat/goods per month in exchange for Sitting still for a while+ lots of $$$ + Pangolin Support (Her Tessera + a couple others maybe?)".

I'm confident that in a year or two the worst case scenario is that we are in a position where we can just tell them to fuck off.
 
Roomba said:
For the record, I don't think I could stomach this. It's basically abandoning the commitment to simulationism and rationality at the altar of magical Nara intelligence. If neither the players nor the QMs can think of a solution to this problem, then for the purposes of the simulation, there should be no solution. It's bad enough for us to try to outsource our thinking to the QMs, but this new idea that if the QMs themselves can't think of a solution, then we should all just pretend one exists without specifying what it is, is simply awful. This isn't Sealing or some other type of nonsensical chakra magic, it's international relations. If we can't figure it out on our own, we don't deserve it to be solved.
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I disagree vehemently with this and think that not being willing to do this would be abandoning the commitment to simulationism.

We aren't omnisicient; that we -- or even the QMs -- can't think of a solution does not mean one doesn't exist. Furthermore, none of us are financially motivated to think of one.
 
The argument that, if they expand too much more, they will cause other clans to have their summoner act against us, which may cut off their seal supplies, may at least have traction enough to give us more time to try to affect longer term planing and behavior.
 
ClawClawBite said:
The argument that, if they expand too much more, they will cause other clans to have their summoner act against us, which may cut off their seal supplies, may at least have traction enough to give us more time to try to affect longer term planing and behavior.
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That and they must be spreading themselves thin holding all that territory. I don't think a couple months does much for your military size if you've got a population of a few hundred.
 
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