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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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eaglejarl said:
There's 58! possible orders. I hope you read fast.
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58! = 2,350,561,331,282,878,571,829,474,910,515,074,683,828,862,318,181,142,924,420,699,914,240,000,000,000,000

Let's assume you can, by some phenomenal feat of reading power, read the entire series in one second.

Let's assume you have all the jinchuuriki serving as chakra batteries and that lets you field a million shadow clones, each reading the entire series once per second.

Let's assume you kill Jiraiya so he doesn't release any more novels and make this even harder for you.

Let's assume you are all immortal and undisturbed.

The whole process will take 2,350,561,331,282,878,571,829,474,910,515,074,683,828,862,318,181,142,924,420,699,914,240,000,000 seconds, which is 652,933,703,134,132,936,619,298,586,254,187,412,174,683,977,272,539,701,227,972,198,400,000 hours, or 27,205,570,963,922,205,692,470,774,427,257,808,840,611,832,386,355,820,884,498,841,600,000 days. It gets a bit complex with leap years, but assuming 365.25 days per year nets us 74,484,793,877,952,650,766,518,205,139,651,769,584,152,860,742,931,747,801,502,646,406.57 years.

If we assume the Elemental Nations cosmology is similar to ours, then it will take something like 1014​ years for the last stars to die out. If Hazou and his million shadow clones read continuously for this entire time, they will be 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000013% complete their task by the time the sky turns dark forever.
 
MMKII said:
That's more books than I expected, although I'm not sure if the exact number was ever listed in story
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It was, but only in passing. In other news, Happy Birthday, belatedly.

eaglejarl said:
I'm sure Jiraiya's a badass, but no one has time to become a legendary fighter, personally write fifty-seven pretty crappy books, master scores of different ninjutsu, go to the Pure Land to make a bargain with the Toads, become the greatest sealmaster and spy in the world, and bed every woman in the nations of Fire, Earth, and Wind, all while being the secret ruler of Leaf for thirty years."

"Fifty-eight books," Noburi said. "He published a new one shortly before we came to Mist. Also, the Toad Clan resides on the Seventh Path, not in the Pure Land, and I'm sure that it wasn't every woman."
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@eaglejarl, @Velorien, @OliWhail, to confirm, this is how the timeline looks?:


If yes:
  • Move Chapter 247 to above Chapter 242. Both happen on December 25th, but the Ami date happens around noon, whereas the ISC discussion happens at morning.
  • Note that Chapter 243 has scenes from December 25th and December 26th, and that Chapter 245 Scene 2 happens between said scenes.
  • Note that Chapter 244 has scenes from December 26th and December 27th, and that Chapter 246 (as well as Chouji vs. Shino) happens between said scenes.
  • Note that the retconned Chapter 247 had scenes from December 25th and December 27th.
  • Now is the morning of December 27th. Ami's second letter just arrived, and the final two tournament fights are about to happen.
    • (I don't suppose it'll turn out that you were under a mistaken impression that "now" was the afternoon of December 26th, and that correcting said mistake would allow you to make Chapter 247 Scenes 1 to 2 actual again?)
Just so you aren't mislead by the orderly spreadsheet into thinking it's all clear and reasonable, that's how the timeline looks, if plotted against chapter numbers:

Does chronology often break down around Ami? Would asking her that be seen as flirting? We should ask.
 
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Kiba said:
GAAAH! How did we all get into this mess about something as straightforward as tournament matches??!!
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Easily. Tournament matches don't need to be shown in direct chronology with the other plot threads of the day, and many of them don't even matter for days after the fact. (Ino v. Shino)

Honestly, it's the complex situations that force more direct chronology, because the more each story segment interacts and depends on others the less you can put off scenes on one half of things to focus on the other.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Easily. Tournament matches don't need to be shown in direct chronology with the other plot threads of the day, and many of them don't even matter for days after the fact. (Ino v. Shino)

Honestly, it's the complex situations that force more direct chronology, because the more each story segment interacts and depends on others the less you can put off scenes on one half of things to focus on the other.
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That's one half of it. I do think that Ami is responsible for the other half.
  • Up to Chapter 241.2, everything was more-or-less linear.
  • Trouble began with Chapter 242, the first meeting with Ami (Dec. 25). Because everyone was eager to skip to it, Velorien did so, leaving (Dec. 24: Chouji vs. Hinata) and (Dec. 25: Ino vs. Shino) behind.
  • Next chapter, Chapter 243, dealt with the immediate aftermath (Dec. 25: vomit + debriefing), but then it skipped to (Dec. 26: Ami Letter 1) for dramatic effect, passing (Dec. 25: Shikamaru vs. Ikeda).
  • Next chapter, Chapter 244, dealt with the immediate aftermath of Ami Letter 1 (Dec. 26: Keiko's interrogation + discussion), but then it again skipped to (Dec. 27: Ami Letter 2), again for dramatic effect, passing (Dec. 26: Keiko vs. Shikamaru + Chouji vs. Shino).
As such, while you're correct that the nature of tournament fights provided the opportunity, the motive for these atemporal crimes was Ami.
 
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eaglejarl said:
There's 58! possible orders. I hope you read fast.
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Inferno Vulpix said:
58! = 2,350,561,331,282,878,571,829,474,910,515,074,683,828,862,318,181,142,924,420,699,914,240,000,000,000,000

Let's assume you can, by some phenomenal feat of reading power, read the entire series in one second.

Let's assume you have all the jinchuuriki serving as chakra batteries and that lets you field a million shadow clones, each reading the entire series once per second.

Let's assume you kill Jiraiya so he doesn't release any more novels and make this even harder for you.

Let's assume you are all immortal and undisturbed.

The whole process will take 2,350,561,331,282,878,571,829,474,910,515,074,683,828,862,318,181,142,924,420,699,914,240,000,000 seconds, which is 652,933,703,134,132,936,619,298,586,254,187,412,174,683,977,272,539,701,227,972,198,400,000 hours, or 27,205,570,963,922,205,692,470,774,427,257,808,840,611,832,386,355,820,884,498,841,600,000 days. It gets a bit complex with leap years, but assuming 365.25 days per year nets us 74,484,793,877,952,650,766,518,205,139,651,769,584,152,860,742,931,747,801,502,646,406.57 years.

If we assume the Elemental Nations cosmology is similar to ours, then it will take something like 1014​ years for the last stars to die out. If Hazou and his million shadow clones read continuously for this entire time, they will be 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000013% complete their task by the time the sky turns dark forever.
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You don't have to read all 58! orders fully (i.e. read 58 * 58! books) to cover all orderings though, because they will to certain degree overlap. There's a lower bound of |W| > n! + (n - 1)! + (n - 2)! + (n - 3)! (Anon et al, 2018), and upper bound of n! + (n - 1)! + (n - 2)! + (n - 3)! + n - 3 (G. Egan).

The upper bound on number of books you have to read to do all the superpermutations is 56.999697428139186 times smaller than actually reading the series 58! times, so we will actually be 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000741% done by the end of the world.
 
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Noumero said:
@eaglejarl, @Velorien, @OliWhail, to confirm, this is how the timeline looks?:


If yes:
  • Move Chapter 247 to above Chapter 242. Both happen on December 25th, but the Ami date happens around noon, whereas the ISC discussion happens at morning.
  • Note that Chapter 243 has scenes from December 25th and December 26th, and that Chapter 245 Scene 2 happens between said scenes.
  • Note that Chapter 244 has scenes from December 26th and December 27th, and that Chapter 246 (as well as Chouji vs. Shino) happens between said scenes.
  • Note that the retconned Chapter 247 had scenes from December 25th and December 27th.
  • Now is the morning of December 27th. Ami's second letter just arrived, and the final two tournament fights are about to happen.
    • (I don't suppose it'll turn out that you were under a mistaken impression that "now" was the afternoon of December 26th, and that correcting said mistake would allow you to make Chapter 247 Scenes 1 to 2 actual again?)
Just so you aren't mislead by the orderly spreadsheet into thinking it's all clear and reasonable, that's how the timeline looks, if plotted against chapter numbers:

Does chronology often break down around Ami? Would asking her that be seen as flirting? We should ask.
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I believe that is roughly how the timeline looks. If in doubt, please check the Players' Timeline document I linked to in my original announcement post.

Also, please don't ask for 247 back. From where I'm standing, it seems like its main draw (writing quality aside) is that it has Hazō solving the players' relationship problems for them.
 
Velorien said:
Also, please don't ask for 247 back. From where I'm standing, it seems like its main draw (writing quality aside) is that it has Hazō solving the players' relationship problems for them.
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I mean... yes and no? It's that Hazou was saying a lot of what people in the thread were thinking, and, as some people have said, "growing a spine". It's pretty much the same thing that Noburi did in another ill-fated timeline.
 
Velorien said:
Also, please don't ask for 247 back. From where I'm standing, it seems like its main draw (writing quality aside) is that it has Hazō solving the players' relationship problems for them.
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I did note that, but I'm not sure how it's a problem. Hazou has a personality and an agency independent of the players'. Sometimes he uses said agency to create problems for us, sometimes to solve. The quest is simulationist; as long as Hazou's behaviour is internally consistent, is there an issue?
 
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I think it's more that strong emotional reactions can be very useful in situations like these, and are largely unavailable to us as a tool. By necessity, everything we have Hazou do is more considered and planned in advance. We can't really tell him to "get angry at Keiko for being so irrational", or at least I doubt the results would be good, as what he did this aborted chapter was also very situational. We're not good at situational, there are simply too many possibilities to fit in a plan.

So, it's less Hazou solving problems for us, and more that he solved it very effectively in a way that we can't replicate.
 
Noumero said:
I did note that, but I'm not sure how it's a problem. Hazou has a personality and an agency independent of the players'. Sometimes he uses said agency to create problems for us, sometimes to solve. The quest is simulationist; as long as Hazou's behaviour is internally consistent, is there an issue?
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The way I see it is that the players were having a passionate debate over the right way to interpret Keiko's behaviour, and the right way to respond to it. It would have been a waste to short-circuit that by having the QMs choose one of the sides and then carry out its implicit wishes in a way that demanded no actual action from the players.

Roomba said:
I think it's more that strong emotional reactions can be very useful in situations like these, and are largely unavailable to us as a tool. By necessity, everything we have Hazou do is more considered and planned in advance. We can't really tell him to "get angry at Keiko for being so irrational", or at least I doubt the results would be good, as what he did this aborted chapter was also very situational. We're not good at situational, there are simply too many possibilities to fit in a plan.

So, it's less Hazou solving problems for us, and more that he solved it very effectively in a way that we can't replicate.
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I would disagree. Yes, it would come across as disingenuous to plan a spontaneous reaction, but there is nothing to stop you from presenting Hazō's thoughts on a problem, and the feelings which would naturally result from such thoughts. Something very similar was done for Chapter 129: Kagome on Trial, and Chapter 226: Redefining Relationships, and it worked perfectly.

MadScientist said:
I was under the impression that this was already the state of affairs. IIRC, QMs have made comments in the past saying that omakes and information Hazou couldn't know do not show up in his thoughts, while other posting does.
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The main issue here, to my mind, is that there was no consensus. Perspectives ranged from "we should care about Keiko's feelings and accept limitations on our actions for her benefit" to "Keiko is dumb and needs to get over herself while we go do things that matter".

More generally, there is no set pattern according to which posting shows up in Hazō's subconscious. There are dozens of different voices here, all whispering different and sometimes contradictory things.

Cariyaga said:
Didn't we request that as a precedent, unless we're both talking past each other?
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If we're thinking of the same precedent, its original purpose was for Hazō to correct for inevitable gaps in player knowledge of the setting. That gradually expanded to "Hazō's characterisation may override player plans where the two conflict", and thence "Hazō's characterisation may lead to him taking actions which weren't in the plan". But the plan, player agency, is always the part that precedes Hazō's agency as a character.
 
Velorien said:
The main issue here, to my mind, is that there was no consensus. Perspectives ranged from "we should care about Keiko's feelings and accept limitations on our actions for her benefit" to "Keiko is dumb and needs to get over herself while we go do things that matter".
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While those perspectives ranged, of course, I do believe that most (all?) of us consider Keiko's self-deprecation to be, at best, not reflective of reality, and that seemed to me the core of Hazou's thrust in that speech. Certainly, I would not have gone with that approach to expressing that myself, nor supported it in voting without some convincing, but I would not object nearly so strongly to it as to "Keiko is dumb and needs to get over herself." This isn't, to be clear, an effort to reinstate 247 or anything -- just sharing my views on this.
 
I recall, during our journey to Mist I did have a plan that had Hazou admit to Keiko what he really thought about Ami's treatment of her, but it was sabotaged by @Velorien:

Velorien said:
Is this in reference to Keiko's reaction to the "Hazō proposes to irradiate Keiko with the Power of Love" plan or the "Hazō proposes to verbally abuse Keiko's beloved sister" plan?
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Anyone want to go back to that? I doubt we can make her a lot more angry at us, and this is a topic that should naturally bring out Hazou's spine.
 
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