Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

[Inferno Vulpix]

It absolutely does. The brain is still developing, but most importantly it limits time. The time they've had to make mistakes and learn from them. The time they've had to observe people. To learn about human behavior. To build a huge mental library of what to do in X social situation that won't upset people and will work out alright.

If you really find this hard to accept, you can do some reading on child development or go interact with some teenagers yourself. They're just not able to compete with adults yet in a host of ways because they haven't finished learning stuff yet because they haven't had the time it takes. This isn't really a point of debate, it's thoroughly established fact.

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Saying that effects related to the topic at hand are established fact does not make your point ironclad. Rather, I would agree that what you said is true but that it is irrelevant in this particular case. What Naruto lacks in long-form worldly experience, he more than makes up for in sheer capability. And at the end of the day, while the average teenager will not have as much experience or capability as the average adult, the actual object-level capability of Naruto is what matters here.

 

[Sentient Tree]

[x] Action Plan: Excuse Me, What Just Happened?

If he's sane and willing, Naruto should make a bid for hokageship. Otherwise support either Tsunade (second choice) or Akimichi (third choice).

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Maybe add Asuma in here as a 4th option?

 

[eaglejarl]

Question for the room:

What do you know about Asuma's policies and how do you know it?

 

[TaliesinSkye]

Saying that effects related to the topic at hand are established fact does not make your point ironclad. Rather, I would agree that what you said is true but that it is irrelevant in this particular case. What Naruto lacks in long-form worldly experience, he more than makes up for in sheer capability. And at the end of the day, while the average teenager will not have as much experience or capability as the average adult, the actual object-level capability of Naruto is what matters here.

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Even exceptional teenagers make social mistakes that adults don't. Lots of them. Perhaps you haven't interacted with any recently? Memories of what teen years are like get glossed over, over time. Rose colored glasses and all that. It's easy to forget all the rough edges.

In any case, remember that your exceptional child isn't competing with some random average adult, they're competing with the most exceptional adult ninja leaders with decades of experience building positive character traits and building people's trust in their ability to make level-headed decisions under pressure.

Naruto might make an exceptional Hokage as an adult. He is still a child. He has much to learn, because all children still have much to learn. This is why adults don't vote for children as their leaders. Even exceptional ones.

 

[Inferno Vulpix]

Oh, also remember that Naruto can spam hundreds of Shadow Clones at a time and integrate their memories without incurring Clone Sickness. Grey matter structure and the demon in his belly aside, it's quite possible Naruto has a quantity of experience on par with people twice his age.

 

[Emstar]

It absolutely does. The brain is still developing, but most importantly it limits time. The time they've had to make mistakes and learn from them. The time they've had to observe people. To learn about human behavior. To build a huge mental library of what to do in X social situation that won't upset people and will work out alright.

If you really find this hard to accept, you can do some reading on child development or go interact with some teenagers yourself. They're just not able to compete with adults yet in a host of ways because they haven't finished learning stuff yet because they haven't had the time it takes. This isn't really a point of debate, it's thoroughly established fact.

Edit:

Even a child can keep power when they can and will murder anyone who doesn't do what they say. Yagura didn't need to have all the skills that a real leader does, which is how he got away with it. (Also, Yagura is from canon and canon laughs at the the idea of age realistic aptitudes.)

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I think you're looking at things with a strong 21st century lens here. Keep in mind that this may not be relevant in any way, and that there are outliers in the current day and age that refute this "Small age means comparatively dumb and incompetent" viewpoint youre professing. Its simply not true.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

Oh, also remember that Naruto can spam hundreds of Shadow Clones at a time and integrate their memories without incurring Clone Sickness. Grey matter structure and the demon in his belly aside, it's quite possible Naruto has a quantity of experience on par with people twice his age.

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Developing socially and developing one's sense of self doesn't lend itself well to parallel processing or trying every way of doing something. I don't think it's terribly viable to make a hundred shadow clones to have a hundred relationships, or try a conversation a hundred different ways to see what works and what doesn't.

I think you're looking at things with a strong 21st century lens here. Keep in mind that this may not be relevant in any way, and that there are outliers in the current day and age that refute this "Small age means comparatively dumb and incompetent" viewpoint youre professing. Its simply not true.

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If you don't want to take my word for it, go read some books on childhood development. This is very well studied and understood stuff.

It isn't just a modern idea. People didn't let children near power in the medieval period either. Child kings had regents and councilors who made the decisions, because the kids couldn't be trusted to not make mistakes on account of being children, and affairs of state are far too important to permit avoidable mistakes. Kings that took over on hitting the age of majority generally didn't do a great job either; people tended to need to be at least 30 or so to be able to hold their own in positions of high pressure responsibility with some regularity, and usually considerably older. Partly because experience helped them make better decisions, and partly because age helped them keep people from pushing them around and undercutting their authority.

I am at a loss for why people are fighting such a simple and widely accepted idea so hard. Sure, teenagers think they're just as capable as adults and resent adult supervision as unnecessary, but that's because they don't have the experience yet to see their own shortcomings and limitations. They're teenagers. I don't think you guys are teens yourselves, so I'm not sure why this is such a difficult pill to swallow? Do you really not believe you've grown a whole lot since you were 15, with a host of mistakes large and small you made then that you wouldn't make now?

 

[Evenstar]

So, uh...

Why do we believe that Akatsuki will abruptly stop working together at this point?

They are seven S-rank ninja who are used to sharing a cause and fighting beside each other. How are they NOT going to take over the world?

 

[TaliesinSkye]

So, uh...

Why do we believe that Akatsuki will abruptly stop working together at this point?

They are seven S-rank ninja who are used to sharing a cause and fighting beside each other. How are they NOT going to take over the world?

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Maybe Pein wasn't being overly optimistic about them leaving it be at his request. That said, his final request is compatible with our idea of Uplift. We could try pitching them some of our ideas and suggesting they see how far they can take stuff like till and fills and infrastructure development and all the rest of it, especially in places where we can't do it ourselves.

 

[Inferno Vulpix]

Question for the room:

What do you know about Asuma's policies and how do you know it?

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The most important thing about Asuma is that he's not Hiashi

More seriously, we don't know much about Asuma or the Sarutobi, except that Asuma's seemed pretty chill when he was on-screen and we know the Sarutobi Clan has some kind of history to it.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Asuma's policies lean more towards Hiashi than Jiraiya, but I believe he's unlikely to antagonize us to anywhere near the same degree Hiashi would if he got the hat. A traditionalist Hokage who opposes our attempts to reform Konoha is much more desireable than a traditionalist Hokage bent on wiping the Goketsu away like a filthy smudge on Konoha.

Developing socially and developing one's sense of self doesn't lend itself well to parallel processing or trying every way of doing something. I don't think it's terribly viable to make a hundred shadow clones to have a hundred relationships, or try a conversation a hundred different ways to see what works and what doesn't.


People didn't let children near power in the medieval period either. Child kings had regents and councilors who made the decisions, because the kids couldn't be trusted to not make mistakes on account of being children. Kings that took over on hitting the age of majority generally didn't do a great job either; people tended to need to be at least 30 or so to be able to hold their own in positions of high pressure responsibility with some regularity, and usually considerably older.

I am at a loss for why people are fighting such a simple and wildly accepted idea so hard. Sure, teenagers think they're just as capable as adults and resent adult supervision as unnecessary, but that's because they don't have the experience yet to see their own shortcomings and limitations. They're teenagers. I don't think you guys are teens yourselves, so I'm not sure why this is such a difficult pill to swallow? Do you really not believe you've grown a whole lot since you were 15, with a host of mistakes large and small you made then that you wouldn't make now?

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I'm going to bed now so I can't really keep up this discussion, but I'd like to say that I feel like you're ignoring our points and are coming rather close to insulting us along the way. I'm sure you mean no ill intent but if you think something is common sense and most people don't agree with you, the problem likely isn't with everyone around you not having common sense but instead with your metrics for common sense. Please keep that, as well as the fact that someone can agree with a foundational principle but disagree with its connection to a given situation, in mind as you continue to argue your point.

 

[Sentient Tree]

She even defended them when Hyūga Hiashi insisted that they were too dangerous to be allowed to roam free.

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In case this hasn't been brought to everyone's attention yet, this will be a huge political boon if we can find out about it. Hiashi said that Naruto should not be allowed to roam free. He wanted to keep a hero of the village, whom basically everyone loves, locked up, possibly for the rest of his life. If this gets out I think even some of the clan heads will be very upset with him.

 

[Emstar]

Developing socially and developing one's sense of self doesn't lend itself well to parallel processing or trying every way of doing something. I don't think it's terribly viable to make a hundred shadow clones to have a hundred relationships, or try a conversation a hundred different ways to see what works and what doesn't.


If you don't want to take my word for it, go read some books on childhood development. This is very well studied and understood stuff.

It isn't just a modern idea. People didn't let children near power in the medieval period either. Child kings had regents and councilors who made the decisions, because the kids couldn't be trusted to not make mistakes on account of being children, and affairs of state are far too important to permit avoidable mistakes. Kings that took over on hitting the age of majority generally didn't do a great job either; people tended to need to be at least 30 or so to be able to hold their own in positions of high pressure responsibility with some regularity, and usually considerably older. Partly because experience helped them make better decisions, and partly because age helped them keep people from pushing them around and undercutting their authority.

I am at a loss for why people are fighting such a simple and wildly accepted idea so hard. Sure, teenagers think they're just as capable as adults and resent adult supervision as unnecessary, but that's because they don't have the experience yet to see their own shortcomings and limitations. They're teenagers. I don't think you guys are teens yourselves, so I'm not sure why this is such a difficult pill to swallow? Do you really not believe you've grown a whole lot since you were 15, with a host of mistakes large and small you made then that you wouldn't make now?

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I'm 25.

The relative delta of my mental capacity from age 15 to age 25 is irrelevant. If I can run circles around most adults at age 15 then I will obviously be able to do so at age 25, except better because thats how growth works.

You may argue that in the average case, most average teenagers cannot outwit most adults.

Sure, this is not in dispute. I'd accept this readily without justification, even though as a rationalist and a scientist I really should require a moderately airtight argument there to be convinced.

Naruto is obviously not the average case in setting. Hell, Hazou is like 1-2 standard deviations from average and he doesn't have a lifetime of god tier tutoring and an Infinite Capacity Magic Battery stuck in his stomache.

There is literally no reason why "On average, teenagers are comparatively dumb and incompetent" applies in this scenario, since we have every reason to expect that it is not the case.

...

If we're going off of "Commonly known facts as understood by the general public" then I should probably inform you that I'm a Maths PhD student. By my understanding and my personal statistical experience, this elevates my opinion from "Some guy said X" to "He is literally a sorcerer. Whatever he said must be correct because he is The Smart." Therefore I am right.

(You would be correct in calling me out for a stupid bullshit argument there, by the way. Also, there is no way of telling if I wasn't making literally all this up and was actually 15.)

 

[eaglejarl]

I think you're looking at things with a strong 21st century lens here. Keep in mind that this may not be relevant in any way, and that there are outliers in the current day and age that refute this "Small age means comparatively dumb and incompetent" viewpoint youre professing. Its simply not true.

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My understanding of @TaliesinSkye 's argument does not speak to the question of intelligence, it speaks to experience. Syllogistically, I think it would go:

1. As a rule of thumb, it takes about 10,000 hours to become expert at a skill.
2. Social interactions is a skill.
3. Therefore, it takes about 10,000 hours to become expert at social interactions.

The same would apply to politics, and those hours would have a partial but not complete overlap with general social skills.

Teenagers, especially ones who have spent the large majority of their hours learning combat skills and chakra use, have not had enough hours to master the social and political skills. They definitely have not had the same number of hours as a 50-year-old adult who has been a Clan Head for 20 years.

To preemptively respond to a few points:

Q: A teenager can be very smart, even smarter than an adult, and that will help them learn faster.

A: Absolutely agreed. However, Naruto is going to be competing against people who are as smart or smarter than he is.

Q: Well, Naruto has Shadow Clones and doesn't get Clone Sickness. His prime body may be only 15, but he's had the opportunity to acquire decades worth of experience via his clones.

A: Are you sure he doesn't get Clone Sickness? How many clones can he make, for how long, and how often? Is learning via Shadow Clones a linear process or does the marginal value of a clone decrease as the numbers go up? What are you basing these beliefs on?



TaliesinSkye, have I accurately stated your view?

 

[TaliesinSkye]

My understanding of @TaliesinSkye 's argument does not speak to the question of intelligence, it speaks to experience. Syllogistically, I think it would go:

1. As a rule of thumb, it takes about 10,000 hours to become expert at a skill.
2. Social interactions is a skill.
3. Therefore, it takes about 10,000 hours to become expert at social interactions.

The same would apply to politics, and those hours would have a partial but not complete overlap with general social skills.

Teenagers, especially ones who have spent the large majority of their hours learning combat skills and chakra use, have not had enough hours to master the social and political skills. They definitely have not had the same number of hours as a 50-year-old adult who has been a Clan Head for 20 years.

To preemptively respond to a few points:

Q: A teenager can be very smart, even smarter than an adult, and that will help them learn faster.

A: Absolutely agreed. However, Naruto is going to be competing against people who are as smart or smarter than he is.

Q: Well, Naruto has Shadow Clones and doesn't get Clone Sickness. His prime body may be only 15, but he's had the opportunity to acquire decades worth of experience via his clones.

A: Are you sure he doesn't get Clone Sickness? How many clones can he make, for how long, and how often? Is learning via Shadow Clones a linear process or does the marginal value of a clone decrease as the numbers go up? What are you basing these beliefs on?



TaliesinSkye, have I accurately stated your view?

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Thank you. There were sub-points and counterpoints in all the verbosity, but that's a good summary of the core point. People need time to make mistakes and learn in order to master social skills to the highest levels, much like any other skill. Children just haven't had the time yet to compete with people, some of whom may be just as talented, who have been working on those skills for decades longer.

There are other reasons too why societies haven't really ever empowered children as heads of state, like old people having far longer to build up networks of political supporters to support their bids for leadership, but capability is a fundamental issue.

 

[Evenstar]

Maybe Pein wasn't being overly optimistic about them leaving it be at his request. That said, his final request is compatible with our idea of Uplift. We could try pitching them some of our ideas and suggesting they see how far they can take stuff like till and fills and infrastructure development and all the rest of it, especially in places where we can't do it ourselves.

Click to shrink...

Akatsuki just took on the combined might of the Elemental Nations and... I'm gonna call it "won." More of them survived than everybody else.

The number one priority we have has got to be getting Akatsuki on side. They have seven S-rankers. The Elemental Nations as a whole have Tsunade, plus a bunch of very badly traumatized juuchinriki.

If Akatsuki holds together, they win ninja politics. If they don't, whoever gets the majority of them wins.

We need to get every fucking thing we know about Akatsuki. Shikamaru is head of the Nara now, so Keiko needs to talk to him and get his intel. Jaraiya will have accesses to the ANBU records: we need them as well, BEFORE HAYASHI GETS TO THEM.

Information is goddamn near everything in ninja politics, and we don't have it. If there was ever a time when we need to know every fucking resource available to us, it's now. That means we need Black Plus Clearance. As of this instant, WE ARE THE ANBU. Because all the actual ANBU are dead.

Dear god, who knows what black sites are currently without their handlers???

 

[Evenstar]

JARAIYA HAD A BIOSEALING LAB

ALMOST GODDAMN GUARANTEED HE HAD A BIOSEALING LAB

AND WE DON'T KNOW WHERE IT IS OR WHAT'S IN IT

*SCREAMING IN KAGOME*

 

[MrCogmor]

JARAIYA HAD A BIOSEALING LAB

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Do you mean Orichimaru? If Jiraiya's secret resources are most likely listed in the notes he gave us for in the event of his death.

 

[TaliesinSkye]

Akatsuki just took on the combined might of the Elemental Nations and... I'm gonna call it "won." More of them survived than everybody else.

The number one priority we have has got to be getting Akatsuki on side. They have seven S-rankers. The Elemental Nations as a whole have Tsunade, plus a bunch of very badly traumatized juuchinriki.

If Akatsuki holds together, they win ninja politics. If they don't, whoever gets the majority of them wins.

We need to get every fucking thing we know about Akatsuki. Shikamaru is head of the Nara now, so Keiko needs to talk to him and get his intel. Jaraiya will have accesses to the ANBU records: we need them as well, BEFORE HAYASHI GETS TO THEM.

Information is goddamn near everything in ninja politics, and we don't have it. If there was ever a time when we need to know every fucking resource available to us, it's now. That means we need Black Plus Clearance. As of this instant, WE ARE THE ANBU. Because all the actual ANBU are dead.

Dear god, who knows what black sites are currently without their handlers???

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Should we suggest a plan edit to go get all the secret information we can from the tower ASAP before it can get locked down? I don't know if we have access, or could talk our way in given the crisis, or what. Tasking Keiko with going through everything as fast as she can might be a good idea if we can get in. She'll be able to prioritize intelligently and see connections and possibilities. If we're lucky we'll be able to get secrets we can use as political leverage and exploitable resources.

...there isn't a way we could walk in and make copies of everything very quickly to take with us to peruse at our leisure, is there?

 

[Evenstar]

Do you mean Orichimaru? If Jiraiya's secret resources are most likely listed in the notes he gave us for in the event of his death.

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I mean yes, probably, but what about all the Leaf Black Sites? What about the deep dark hole Arikada got shoved into?

... God, I hate to say it, but if Arikada is still at all functional, we might actually need her.

 

[Orisha91]

Another thing to consider.
Missing-nin, spies, and traitors have never been more dangerous than they are right now.

 

[Kiba]

Does anyone feel like we have a long slog ahead of us? I feel like for every step we took, we took three steps backward. It's one crisis after another and everything seems so damn difficult.

 

[Emstar]

My understanding of @TaliesinSkye 's argument does not speak to the question of intelligence, it speaks to experience. Syllogistically, I think it would go:

1. As a rule of thumb, it takes about 10,000 hours to become expert at a skill.
2. Social interactions is a skill.
3. Therefore, it takes about 10,000 hours to become expert at social interactions.

The same would apply to politics, and those hours would have a partial but not complete overlap with general social skills.

Teenagers, especially ones who have spent the large majority of their hours learning combat skills and chakra use, have not had enough hours to master the social and political skills. They definitely have not had the same number of hours as a 50-year-old adult who has been a Clan Head for 20 years.

To preemptively respond to a few points:

Q: A teenager can be very smart, even smarter than an adult, and that will help them learn faster.

A: Absolutely agreed. However, Naruto is going to be competing against people who are as smart or smarter than he is.

Q: Well, Naruto has Shadow Clones and doesn't get Clone Sickness. His prime body may be only 15, but he's had the opportunity to acquire decades worth of experience via his clones.

A: Are you sure he doesn't get Clone Sickness? How many clones can he make, for how long, and how often? Is learning via Shadow Clones a linear process or does the marginal value of a clone decrease as the numbers go up? What are you basing these beliefs on?



TaliesinSkye, have I accurately stated your view?

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I buy the farm here and the reframing for the most part.

Inasmuch as the question "Is kid good enough or not" is concerned, his age is only as relevant as we expect for the situation. In my opinion: not very. We've seen teenage prodigies that are at least in the same tier at politics as 40-50 something year old
J man, who himself was a prodigy. Who's to say that's not the case here? (Perhaps he's not AmiSuperSmart, or at least not gifted to that extent, but given a lifetime of tutoring by all of the experts and Sarutobi, well, that certainly could split the difference in my opinion.)

 

[Evenstar]

Another thing to consider.
Missing-nin, spies, and traitors have never been more dangerous than they are right now.

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Or more important. Sure, everyone says they don't accept missing-nin back into their villages, but in this kind of situation, where one village has only a single goddamn Jonin left - do you really expect tradition to win out over practicality?

 

[TaliesinSkye]

I buy the farm here and the reframing for the most part.

Inasmuch as the question "Is kid good enough or not" is concerned, his age is only as relevant as we expect for the situation. In my opinion: not very. We've seen teenage prodigies that are at least in the same tier at politics as 40-50 something year old
J man, who himself was a prodigy. Who's to say that's not the case here? (Perhaps he's not AmiSuperSmart, or at least not gifted to that extent, but given a lifetime of tutoring by all of the experts and Sarutobi, well, that certainly could split the difference in my opinion.)

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I think you may want Naruto to be Hokage so badly you're trying really hard to find a justification for it. Motivated reasoning like that isn't good practice, it sort of blinds you from weighing every argument and coming to the correct result, rather than the result you want.

A talented person with X years of experience is not better than a talented person with X+30 years of experience.

And even if Naruto was somehow some sort of super prodigy that never made a social faux pas because he could reason out and predict human minds without having to learn from experience like normal humans, it still wouldn't matter, for two reasons.

One, because adults don't cede power to children willingly. A fifty something used to being in charge will not accept orders from a child. They'll just balk. Even if it's irrational. Furthermore, people do not choose children to lead because they expect that older people know what they're doing and children don't. This is a very strong cognitive bias.

Two, because the way people get power is only marginally connected to merit in many cases. It's mostly about entrenched support, networks that people in positions of authority build over decades. It's not fair, but people are social creatures that prefer to work with people they know and have worked with before.

All this stuff is why you don't see countries electing precocious 15 year olds to positions of high office. It just doesn't happen. They're not capable yet, and even if they were the entrenched biases against children being capable are so strong they never have a chance.

 

[Lailoken]

Point of order: Naruto can claim to be heir to Clan Senju, meaning that Tsunade can serve as regent until he gets his feet under him if he is elected Hokage, which will make both of them much happier than either being elected alone.


I reiterate that a major concern is that Cloud is likely to kick off WWIV in less than a month. If Leaf wants to maintain the Mist alliance it will probably have to join in, which puts it much more on the front lines than either Mist or Sand and practically guarantees that Rock will jump in and start grabbing pieces. Leaf could ignore Mist and sit things out, but that's really, really bad for Goketsu in internal politics and the philosophy of Uplift in general. Hiashi will no doubt push for suspicion and isolationism.

I'm not comfortable with calling attention to our giving Kagome's seals away, especially in a manner ambiguous about the earlier betrayal. Everybody who knows about them is dead, and I'm 90% sure that he's going to decide that Jiraiya wasn't a stinker after all after this. Working him up more is the last thing we want to do at this point.

Mari needs a suicide watch. Possibly a professional one in T&I. That's not an exaggeration. The world just crashed down around her head and she lost what was the only person she could both trust and really believe was close enough to her level to be immune to what concerns her while being thrust back into a position of responsibility.

Might not have been clear enough, but my reasoning is to use Akatsuki as the fall guy to keep the world from devolving into a ninja world war. We don't have to hunt too hard for them, just to get the world to push its collective resources into fighting Akatsuki instead of fighting each other.

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Step one: figure out how to get Cloud reliable trade rights through Hotsprings while somehow tying it to Cloud not just annexing everything it wants outright despite Hazou having no international authority.

Not sure that Minami would be a hard Hyuga supporter if Hiashi vs Tsunade. Minami hates Gotseku, we don't know about Tsunade.

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The Minami have very bad blood with the Hyuuga. The Hyuuga tried to genocide them as disgraceful mutants and it was only the intervention of the Third which saved them.

I'll refer you to the numerous biologists and adjacent specialists in thread. They can perhaps answer your questions on this matter.

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Proteins can be converted into amides, which can be converted into nitrates, which make Kagome happy.