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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Jello_Raptor said:
Huh, I've wanted to have this argument on this thread for a while:

I tend to see nonconcentual or involuntary death (of people) as a bad thing. With the caveat that if said concent is given under duress (say depression or chronic pain) it doesn't count as concent.

I've met people who see all death of people as bad and would rather replace anyone who wants to die with the closest values-compatible version of them who doesn't.

I tend to find that latter position viscerally horrifying, even though I don't have a good argument against it.

What are the thread's thoughts? How does it change the form of uplift we're going for?
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I have an extremely difficult time seeing someone finding voluntary death to be ideal if they are not under duress of some form, so there's little meaningful difference to me between those views.
 
Jello_Raptor said:
Huh, I've wanted to have this argument on this thread for a while:

I tend to see nonconcentual or involuntary death (of people) as a bad thing. With the caveat that if said concent is given under duress (say depression or chronic pain) it doesn't count as concent.

I've met people who see all death of people as bad and would rather replace anyone who wants to die with the closest values-compatible version of them who doesn't.

I tend to find that latter position viscerally horrifying, even though I don't have a good argument against it.

What are the thread's thoughts? How does it change the form of uplift we're going for?
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I'm not entirely sure about the philosophical side of things, but I will say that if this quest ever reaches a position where we're asking this question IC with respect to tangible meaningful scenarios we've probably already won so I'll be happy.
 
Jello_Raptor said:
Huh, I've wanted to have this argument on this thread for a while:

I tend to see nonconcentual or involuntary death (of people) as a bad thing. With the caveat that if said concent is given under duress (say depression or chronic pain) it doesn't count as concent.

I've met people who see all death of people as bad and would rather replace anyone who wants to die with the closest values-compatible version of them who doesn't.

I tend to find that latter position viscerally horrifying, even though I don't have a good argument against it.

What are the thread's thoughts? How does it change the form of uplift we're going for?
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*Shrug*

An it harm no one, do as thou whilt is the whole of the law.

Functionally speaking though it runs into some problems. How sure are they that their wish for blissful oblivion isn't fundamentally circumstantial in nature? What's an ethical cut-off threshold there? Wouldn't it be better to cast them into the timeless void of a stasis chamber instead of nonexistence, on the off-chance that whatever was keeping their core desires stuck on "Don't Exist Anymore." unchangeable barring some subversion of their identity was actually just some difficult yet solvable problem?

Who knows. It's heavy stuff for sure, and I'm just a bag of electric meat that pretends to know stuff about stuff in my free time.
 
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Jello_Raptor said:
Huh, I've wanted to have this argument on this thread for a while:

I tend to see nonconcentual or involuntary death (of people) as a bad thing. With the caveat that if said concent is given under duress (say depression or chronic pain) it doesn't count as concent.

I've met people who see all death of people as bad and would rather replace anyone who wants to die with the closest values-compatible version of them who doesn't.

I tend to find that latter position viscerally horrifying, even though I don't have a good argument against it.

What are the thread's thoughts? How does it change the form of uplift we're going for?
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Getting HPMOR vibes from the question.

So you think death itself or a bad death is a major problem of the world that Uplift should solve?

You want to use Arikada's seals for good?
 
@faflec plan in case we want to make any edits
[X] Action plan: the clan strikes back

  • Investigate Mari.
    • Ask what she's been really doing. She's concealing information about her activities, executes plays of unclear purpose (Keiko). Are we even campaigning for the Hat? We need to coordinate and that means knowing what you (our best agent) are doing.
      • Be insistent: it's highly important.
    • Check-in with Keiko's fanclub. Give them some information, encourage expansion.
      • Any rumors about our clan? We heard something strange about Mari...
  • Meet with Ino:
    • Express our condolences. Reminisce about both our dads...
    • At risk of meddling: Is there anything we can do for Chouza? He must be feeling awful now.
      • Consider scheduling a wake for the fallen.
    • Ask her thoughts on politics. Any important developments we might've missed?
  • Securely ask the clan (especially Mari):
    • Update Mari on Ami. Should we:
      • Sell her any unique information for favours?
      • Spend a favour to enlist her help with the elections? "Maximize our personal influence on Leaf politics"?
    • How many Leaf jounin are left? Note their names and allegiances.
  • Background
    • Kagome: Focus on sealing.
    • You've been forgetful and absent-minded lately. Start a (OPSEC-sensitive) journal, writing activities and stream of consciousness throughout the day.
    • Review Jiraiya's political notes.
    • Coordinate with Mari to investigate Leaf's underworld.
      • Could we coordinate with Mist Yakuza to gain leverage?
    • Get details on the Hagoromo's debts.
    • Discuss adopting clanless jounin
    • Have Nakano + associates meet Kagome about sealing
 
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Jello_Raptor said:
Huh, I've wanted to have this argument on this thread for a while:

I tend to see nonconcentual or involuntary death (of people) as a bad thing. With the caveat that if said concent is given under duress (say depression or chronic pain) it doesn't count as concent.

I've met people who see all death of people as bad and would rather replace anyone who wants to die with the closest values-compatible version of them who doesn't.

I tend to find that latter position viscerally horrifying, even though I don't have a good argument against it.

What are the thread's thoughts? How does it change the form of uplift we're going for?
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Personally, I care more about suffering than death. If you can kill someone without causing much/any pain or disruption to those around them, I don't really argue against it. I don't particularly like it either, but if it reduces the likelihood of suffering for themselves/others then I count it as a necessary evil.

Edit:
Admittedly my opinion is more relevant to the real world than to MfD or any kind of post scarcity world.
 
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JulieK said:
Before modern times, 50% child mortality was normal. A life expectancy of 16 probably goes for civilians as well.
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At least in real life, if you condition on [survives childhood] then life expectancy was much closer to modern rates. That doesn't really apply to ninjas, though.
 
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Ami-style training sessions
  • Informational
    • MadScientist said:
    @eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail

    If you would enjoy writing "Ami-style training" scenes and also would give additional XP for them to represent the increased training effectiveness, then making a statement confirming the XP increase would incentivise the thread to put them in plans, thereby allowing you to write them.

    (I am making this statement because I keep not getting an answer about whether or not Ami-style training actually does anything in the way of mechanical improvements. And also because QMs seemed to like the idea of writing these kinds of antics in the past.)​
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    You may conduct up to 1 Ami-style training session per IC day. This will earn you 1 bonus XP. QMs may rule a a particular session impossible to carry out due to external constraints (including, but not limited to, time and stamina), or ineffective for whatever reason (including being boring and thus not representing a sufficient improvement over standard downtime training). A failed training session will use up as much time as a successful one.
     
  • Informational
    • eaglejarl said:
    You can also sort by views, in which case we're #6. There's other things as well, but I don't find them relevant.


    Hey, I'm a mercenary. I pledge that, for the next update, I will give bonus XP of floor(unique voters /10)-1

    If I wanted to be REALLY mercenary I'd make it a Patreon reward, but I'm not quite that far gone to the dark side. :>
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    I guess I'll just put this here then

    [X] Action plan: the clan strikes back

    Until someone puts in a plan with Ami-style training.
     
    Cariyaga said:
    Does bonus XP overflow if it goes below 0?
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    In this case it is confined to natural numbers.

    Inferno Vulpix said:
    We might need to underflow 'unique voters' instead. Perhaps if we had no-one vote for a cycle but had someone vote "[x]eaglejarl" it would count as a negative vote and hit unsigned int max overall.
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    :p

    MMKII said:
    Do as thou whilt is the whole of the law.
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    No,no,no! The quote is: "An it harm no one, do as thou whilt is the whole of the law." The way you said it is very dangerous!
     
    Velorien said:
    You may conduct up to 1 Ami-style training session per IC day. This will earn you 1 bonus XP. QMs may rule a a particular session impossible to carry out due to external constraints (including, but not limited to, time and stamina), or ineffective for whatever reason (including being boring and thus not representing a sufficient improvement over standard downtime training). A failed training session will use up as much time as a successful one.
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    You have made my day.

    eaglejarl said:
    No,no,no! The quote is: "An it harm no one, do as thou whilt is the whole of the law." The way you said it is very dangerous!
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    Bah. Fair enough :p
     
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    MMKII said:
    Wouldn't do to waste a Wish on something frivolously.
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    MMKII said:
    I have some morbid curiosity regarding what we'd get out of vague open ended requests.

    "Grant me power."

    "Save us all!"

    "Work with me to save the world."

    etc
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    You know that the first Wish is always for more Wishes. :V
    eaglejarl said:
    Hey, I'm a mercenary. I pledge that, for the next update, I will give bonus XP of floor(unique voters /10)-1
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    So you would deduct XP if less than ten people vote?
    Sentient Tree said:
    PMAS is a Puella Magi Madoka Magica quest. If you haven't seen Madoka Magica, I'll try not to spoil it, but suffice to say that the quest revolves around a massively overpowered OC player character trying to fix a crapsack world (quite a bit like Uplift, actually). Due to the PC's overpoweredness, the main challenges of the quest are social in nature. The main posters spend about as much effort figuring out exactly what to say to people as the MfD hivemind spends on WMDs. It's to the point that ideas about how to use the PC's powers better in combat are frequently rebuffed by the main posters, on account of the PC being OP enough already and the belief that the thread's time would be better spent on social stuff.

    Interestingly, while in MfD most salt is almost exclusively between the players and the QMs (it seems to rarely be player vs player), in PMAS salt flows freely between players but never touches the QM (the players frequently have flamewars between each other, but almost never say anything bad about the QM).

    PMAS goes slowly. VERY slowly. As in, after several years, they are still in the second week of the quest in character.
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    It goes very slowly because there are no timeskips. At all. Everything is described in quest and voted for.
    PMAS is also infamous for its extreme levels of bleedover. To the point that it has (or had at some point?) a separate discussion thread. Or so I've heard, anyway.
    Jello_Raptor said:
    Huh, I've wanted to have this argument on this thread for a while:

    I tend to see nonconcentual or involuntary death (of people) as a bad thing. With the caveat that if said concent is given under duress (say depression or chronic pain) it doesn't count as concent.

    I've met people who see all death of people as bad and would rather replace anyone who wants to die with the closest values-compatible version of them who doesn't.

    I tend to find that latter position viscerally horrifying, even though I don't have a good argument against it.

    What are the thread's thoughts? How does it change the form of uplift we're going for?
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    Click to shrink...
    I mean, technically, a person being replaced by another person counts as ego death. Or do you mean that you find the almost-the-same-person aspect horrifying, not the death prevention?
    Oneiros said:
    Ask what she's been really doing. She's concealing information about her activities, executes plays of unclear purpose (Keiko).
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    Mari was doing exactly what instructed: protecting the clan. Keiko herself said that her decision harms the clan economically, so Mari tried to manipulate her to prevent that. I'm not sure what Hazou was expecting when he gave the go-ahead or what you thought happened, but I thought that this was obvious.
     
    So, training ideas.
    Jump rope, but on the ceiling/walls.

    Meditation while Lee is being his most YOUTHFUL in your general vicinity. (Should probably be done after offering our condolences, and probably after telling him about the training plan)

    Meditation while chakra-adhering to Lee as he runs around Leaf (or while he does The Floor Is Larva for extra challenge).

    Substitution tag. No one can move in any way except by substitution.

    Mental fortitude training. Ask Keiko to hit us with her fear aura while we hang upside down from a tree branch over a lake/river. Try not to get wet.

    Deception training. Disguise yourself as well as you can (which is to say, very poorly), and convince people that you are *person you are disguised as* pretending to be Hazō, pretending to be *person you are disguised as*.

    Constitution/empathy training. Eat a meal at that place you sent Keiko/Shikamaru to. Eat the whole thing, and think about just how much suffering you caused them.

    Juggle chakra oranges. Without wearing protective gloves.

    Draw (but don't infuse, you're not that dumb) explosive seals with one hand while sparring with the other.

    Spar while singing "I am the very model of a modern ANBU general."
     
    Velorien said:
    Ami always kept her promises, even ones made at the age of seven
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    I see where this is going. Soon enough it will turn out that Hazou and Ami stumbled upon each other, sometime in distant childhood, so distant neither of them properly remembers it... and they made a promise of a certain kind.

    [х] Make Ami marry Hazou based on this absolutely viable sequence of events
    Everything was going in accordance with one of Ami's most likely scenarios: Utakata had returned alive but traumatised, the Mizukage having won his absolute loyalty, but too busy to build on it due to the aftermath of the battle. Utakata now found himself alone and without friends, in a village that still remembered him as a hated missing-nin. Granted a pardon, but with no future beyond it except the nebulous concept of one day saving the village.
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    Ha, called it!
    In this case, that would translate to "my favour is for you to owe me more favours".

    Are you sure you want to proceed? YES/NO
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    @Vecht had suggested that we request Ami to maximize the amount of hours Shikamaru owes us, then tell Shikamaru to spend them on maximizing the amount of favours Ami owes us, then use these favours to get her to make Shikamaru owe us even more hours, and so on ad infinitum until we own all of Shikamaru's time and have more of Ami's abstract currency than Ami herself.

    But I fear this won't work because Shikamaru isn't powerful enough yet. What do you think?
    Jello_Raptor said:
    "Help us achieve our coherent extrapolated volition."
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    I already suggested "modify your utility function to be as close to mine as this favour's worth allows", but people said we'll need so many favours to see any effect that it'd be worthless.
     
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    Training idea:
    Have Keiko throw pointy things at you, while you balance a bowl of hot soup on your head.

    Edit:
    Thumb wrestle with Lee, while both of you are being tickled by Noburi.
     
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    Non-Ami training idea: train with Lee. He's a good match for Hazou physically, and if we're not offering him adoption, we should at least be friendly.
     
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