Read my mind means you disagree that it is obvious. But what does solve my problems for me mean?
That if it was obvious Hazoupilot would have done it, but since it's not obvious Hazoupilot didn't do it?
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
That if it was obvious Hazoupilot would have done it, but since it's not obvious Hazoupilot didn't do it?
- Location
- Yes.
It means that, because it isn't obvious, the QMs have to work to figure out what the plan means, and also have to workshop all the potential issues that could arise as a result of the plan. Which, if they are not fixed and cause Consequences in-story, can lead to salt. Nobody wants salt.
It essentially puts all the work of planmaking onto the QMs when it should be onto the players. Since the QMs have limited spoons, this is a problem.
tl;dr Plans should be as clear/obvious as possible for the QMs, so they can spend fewer spoons on interpreting the intent of the plan and more time writing the story.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't think it went away, people still do it sporadically
If the QMs are amenable and we don't risk getting drivebys from bored mods again then sure, sounds good.
It's not the seal. It's the kunai. It's not rocket or missile shaped.
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Tagging a small number of people is fine especially if they've said they're alright with it.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
But you're not allowed to contest Notices, so they'll stay even if you can prove that. -.-'
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Idle question:
Leaf had an iron shortage. Steelback Boars that have quills that can be harvested and smelted down like iron/steel.
Aren't Steelback Boars a chakra beast native to Fire? We could suggest running a few missions to Asuma, or maybe hiring the Inuzuka to tame a breeding pair?
Leaf had an iron shortage. Steelback Boars that have quills that can be harvested and smelted down like iron/steel.
Aren't Steelback Boars a chakra beast native to Fire? We could suggest running a few missions to Asuma, or maybe hiring the Inuzuka to tame a breeding pair?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That's not how they did it, they put the quills into molten iron to make the iron better, they didn't melt the quills down
Also fire is never having an iron shortage again, even if Hazou died someone else would be ordered to learn ES and make more than Leaf ever needs
I mean they're about to be producing a ton more iron just from Hazou, but yes, it's something we should look into.
Maybe promise a huge payout if someone can develop a good technique
Maybe promise a huge payout if someone can develop a good technique
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Original
Updated values
- Orochimaru's Sealing notes #5 -> 2/day * 2 days * .5 stagnancy = 2 XP
- Orochimaru's Sealing notes #6 -> 2/day * 2 days * .5 stagnancy = 2 XP
- Orochimaru's Sealing notes #7 -> 1/day * 2 days * .5 stagnancy = 1 XP
- Orochimaru's Sealing notes #8 -> 1/day * 2 days * .5 stagnancy = 1 XP
- Sealing:
- Jiraiya's Sealing Notes: S:1500, B:0, R:0
- Oro Batch 1
- Orochimaru's Sealing notes #1: S:200, B:0, R:0
- Orochimaru's Sealing notes #2: S:200, B:0, R:0
- Oro Batch 2
- Orochimaru's Sealing notes #3: S:150, B:0, R:0
- Orochimaru's Sealing notes #4: S:72 B:78 R:0
- Orochimaru's Sealing notes #5: S:0, B:33, R:67
- Orochimaru's Sealing notes #6: S:0, B:33, R:67
- Orochimaru's Sealing notes #7: S:0, B:16.5, R:33.5
- Orochimaru's Sealing notes #8: S:0, B:1, R:49
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The way that the rules work is that they model the underlying 'reality' - that is, the QMs' vision for the world. The rules likely aren't being changed, but if they are, it's going to be a minor clarification.
I'm not going to harp on the fact that the way you read the rules often fails to take into account any broader context and will instead point out that on both this issue and the issue of Orochimaru's characterization, you have word of god telling you that you're wrong. The only rational reaction to being completely wrong twice in such a short period of time is to proportionately update the mechanisms which produced your conclusions - which, again, were conclusively and completely incorrect.
Your intuitions do not produce results which are aligned with the story/game.
This is basically incoherent word soup. I will remark again that we have objective evidence that your priors are bad and that arguments based on your priors are thus poisoned.
When I discuss Occam's Razor, I mean to say that explanations which minimize complexity should be preferred. Complexity is both the number and the probability.
Your assumptions are fairly uniformly low-probability. I agree that many high-probability assumptions are probably less complex than one low-probability assumption, but this doesn't apply to you.
You're using the term 'null hypothesis' incorrectly. Specifically, the null hypothesis is that what is being observed is not statistically significant; it is being caused by overlapping random factors.
If you want to say 'hey, I think that there are a bunch of other explanations here which, collectively, are more likely than what you're proposing', say that. You don't say that. You propose a single alternative and defend it past reason.
'This doesn't sound likely - it could be theory A, theory B, or theory C.' Literally just that with brief discussions of the individual theories, which you don't then defend in depth because they're just examples.
This is also faulty reasoning because an infinite number of infinitely improbable explanations aren't collectively likely. The individual probabilities being near-zero eliminates them from consideration.
Again, this doesn't apply.
We have empirical evidence that your theories are incorrect more often than not. You don't get to claim that you're acting rationally if you're not admitting you're wrong and then clearly updating your thinking over time. You're not, to an extent that makes it extremely unpleasant to interact with you.
On this basis, I'm going to stop, but I'm begging on my knees, please take this seriously. My vague intiuition is that you've had an interesting idea or two, and you've been participating long enough that you could theoretically improve our collective memory. But because of how you conduct yourself, engaging with you has a negative return on investment, even in the best-case scenario that what you were saying was useful or interesting. This is not something inherently true of you as a person, but it is (IMO) true of who you are now.
Last edited:
Just stick a dedicated multidisciplinary team on it.
Since you said you are going to stop, the following is addressed to the general thread.
And other times it's due to other types of misunderstandings. But I can't find an example of that in the Oro conversation so I'll skip the misunderstanding point for now.
Actually updating on that is tricky. The things I've been wrong about are diverse. I need to find the commonalities. This is why I prefer to wait until the evidence has amassed enough to clearly point in the direction of updating before taking the effort to update. But because this is the topic of conversation and introspection is an interest of mine I did try to find the commonalities. I don't think the root cause is due to overcomplicated arguments. I think it's partially as you said wrong priors and partly that I should rely on unconscious intuition more over pure logic. However figuring out which priors are the cause and how much to update them is difficult. And separating out helpful intuition from unhelpful biases is difficult. So in the end, I didn't really find a direction to update except some other suspicions I have that. But I'm not confident enough in those suspicions to act on them yet.
Again, my rocket boots theory was predicated on the assumption that the rules would remain the same. The written rules, not what you call the QM's vision of the world. So the rocket boots theory was not wrong.
No its not.
I thought it was the default hypothesis. But since it's not an important point I'll take your word for it instead of researching the definition.
It's implied. I can be more explicit about it in the short term since you requested it. But over the long term when I'm saying that a default hypothesis has issues and give an example of an alternative, it might be more efficient if you just don't assume that I am comparing the singular alternative I stated to the default hypothesis.
I think some of the times I just disagree with you of the plausibilities. Like tsunade not thinking to ask Shika for more money.
And other times it's due to other types of misunderstandings. But I can't find an example of that in the Oro conversation so I'll skip the misunderstanding point for now.
Coming up with 3 alternative theories is more work. I'd prefer to not give an alternative at all sometimes, but having at least one example helps give people an idea so sometimes I give one example.
I'm not sure what you are saying but the infinite number of possibilities have a finite probability and I never said that was false.
I've been wrong before. I was wrong about orochimaru, neck, and a lot of things I'm forgetting about. If someone provides a list, I can state which things I agree I was wrong about.
Actually updating on that is tricky. The things I've been wrong about are diverse. I need to find the commonalities. This is why I prefer to wait until the evidence has amassed enough to clearly point in the direction of updating before taking the effort to update. But because this is the topic of conversation and introspection is an interest of mine I did try to find the commonalities. I don't think the root cause is due to overcomplicated arguments. I think it's partially as you said wrong priors and partly that I should rely on unconscious intuition more over pure logic. However figuring out which priors are the cause and how much to update them is difficult. And separating out helpful intuition from unhelpful biases is difficult. So in the end, I didn't really find a direction to update except some other suspicions I have that. But I'm not confident enough in those suspicions to act on them yet.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
I like to think of the null hypothesis as the absence of a conclusion. When observing a possible phenomenon, your default opinion is not "there is a thing here" or "there is not a thing here" but instead "I do not know whether or not there is a thing here". If you can reject the null hypothesis, you can move to "there is a thing here" or "there is not a thing here" depending on what you found. If you can't reject the null hypothesis, you're stuck saying "I do not know whether or not there is a thing here".
Building on what FS said, the formal usage of the null hypothesis is in determining correlation between datasets: if the correlation that does exist between the datasets is small enough that it could be explained by random noise, you say that they're not correlated, the null hypothesis. While this certainly sounds like a confident answer of "there's nothing there", it's more saying "we have no reason to believe there's anything there", and it's only ever pointing at the specific interaction between two datasets, and only with the current quantity of data you have. The null hypothesis will never say "X is true", it will only say "X and Y have nothing to do with each other, as far as we currently know".
Colloquially though, you do see the term used to describe someone's priors. Someone proposes an idea that runs contrary to what someone else believes, and that other person might talk about how the null hypothesis favours their stance instead. It's easy to see how this might parse if you untangle it: "Given my priors, I would need substantial evidence to update sufficiently far away from them to agree with you. Your data is not sufficiently convincing (perhaps it could be explained by coincidence and noise) so I do not feel any need to update away from my current beliefs". This isn't wrong per se, but it's not the null hypothesis in and of itself. It's the null hypothesis grafted onto extant beliefs: "Because you have not convinced me that your data is meaningful, I remain firm in my previous beliefs".
Hence a saying I've heard once or twice: "the sovereign is he who sets the null hypothesis". If you can frame a discussion like your position is the default one and in the absence of compelling external evidence everyone else should believe it, you hold an intrinsic advantage over everyone else. In such a situation, by abusing the colloquial idea of the null hypothesis you can falsely argue "I'm not convinced by your position, so my position is therefore right". By this point we're already a couple degrees removed from what the null hypothesis is actually about, but the notion here does drive home the need to be careful at what ideas people take for granted. It's epistemically virtuous to notice when an idea is being held up as the default without proper justification and, if not call it out, at least seek out further clarity. Who knows, you may even spark a useful conversation about people's underlying beliefs that further inform the shape of the main topic, allowing everyone to reach a clearer and more definite resolution.
But in the end, the null hypothesis is when you look at two datasets and say "they aren't correlated". Maybe more data would find a correlation, maybe a lack of a correlation isn't particularly useful unless you already expect a certain world-state for other reasons, but that's what it is. And I like to think of it as the absence of a conclusion because when it's being used in daily life, paired with extant expectations, it's a useful way to frame the idea that the null hypothesis doesn't prove anything, it just weighs in on the worth of specific pieces of evidence. The null hypothesis (as applied to an object-level question about <thing>, using data X as evidence) does not say whether <thing> is true or not, but if you can refute the null hypothesis then your data X is compelling enough to reach a conclusion about <thing>. If you can't refute the null hypothesis, your data X does not affect your object-level question at all and you're right back where you started, not knowing if <thing> is true or not. In essence, failing to refute the null hypothesis puts you in a position of the absence of a conclusion, provided the topic in question is already inconclusive and the data X isn't literally the only thing that could affect whether <thing> is true or not, which is true for most practical scenarios.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
For the love of anything and everything good in this world, can we please drop this and move on to a different topic?
New update today. Giant underground cave system.
I wonder if our Strobelights or Banshees will be more effective here, than in other places?
New update today. Giant underground cave system.
I wonder if our Strobelights or Banshees will be more effective here, than in other places?
- Location
- Yes.
Banshees, maybe, since it is a cave system. But there's unnatural darkness here and that may affect the Strobelights somewhat.
- Location
- United States
To be clear, I broadly agree with the logic, I'm saying I disagree with it being logical from the perspective of the characters.
No rational ninja goes "I think I've hit a wall with developing my taijutsu, let me go fight something dangerous unnecessarily to get me out of this rut."
In canon, that sounds more like Sasuke "I must get stronger at all costs to defeat my brother!" - not exactly a rational character when it came to anything Itachi related.
An in-character logic here may be "we want to clear this cave more quickly so that we can go do other things with our time, and the time spent on the risk given our various safe retreat options makes it worthwhile, let's go." While that may work here in-character, it simply doesn't for many other particular instances of trying to resolve a stagnation.
In a world where martial might is king, it kinda makes sense to accept some risk so you don't fall behind, especially if all your disciplines (not just martial might) are affected by the block. If the challenge can be done in a somewhat controlled environment (eg, with allies available to come to your help) then it's all the more fine. Why wait for a potentially disastrous challenge when you can manufacture a less risky one?
I think we disagree about this. It's my recollection that they do basically say that.
- Location
- United States
They're not aware of XP in that sense, stagnancy is something they experience as a sense of being rusty. Being rusty at taijutsu is not a logical barrier to not being able to develop their ninjutsu and there's no in-world experience that implies that, at least we haven't seen in-story an all-encompassing malaise if they're feeling rusty?
Fair enough! If so then I agree it's consistently logical for them to do so. But I think we'd need a QM to tell us for sure.
Interlude: Shed Skins
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Yo."
Gōketsu Shinji jumped back into the doorway, crouching down as he rubbed his eyes open. After he took a look at the room, he straightened up.
"You're still awake?" Shinji asked.
Gōketsu Kazushi shrugged. "Lantern seals. Have you seen these?"
Shinji paced over and bent down to inspect the kitchen table. Kazushi always liked to work in the kitchen when possible. Shinji knew better than to ask, but given what he knew – that Kazushi had joined the Gōketsu estate in the aftermath of the skywalker sealing failure and never left – Shinji suspected that the younger boy had lost his entire (probably big) civilian family in the incident. Despite the distractions, Shinji imagined that the younger boy cherished the activity and clamor that came from working in a space with a dozen ninja trying to go about their daily business.
Still it was nighttime now, and after a moment of quiet inspection, Shinji recoiled back. "These are Lord Orochimaru's notes?"
Kazushi nodded. "Yep."
"Take it easy on the papers, kid," Shinji said nervously. "Hazō's gonna hang you by the balls from the Second's pointy nose if you screw up a Sannin's legacy."
Kazushi nodded as he reached out with his chopsticks and grabbed another clump of plain white rice. Kazushi's working habits were eccentric. He'd torn pages out of his copy of Jiraiya's sealing textbook to rearrange them freely, and he'd done the same to Orochimaru's notes, loosening the clips binding them and spreading them all over the kitchen table. Kazushi didn't sit normally to study – he knelt on a stool in order to loom over the table, as if he could somehow absorb more information by cramming his entire visual field full of pages (Shinji had checked – Kazushi's peripheral vision was not good enough for this to make sense). Still, Kazushi probably had the most natural affinity for sealing of any of Kagome-sensei's students not named Gōketsu Hazō, so he got a pass to act weird while studying.
"Don't worry, I remember the order they're supposed to go in. These are from a bunch of different projects of Lord Orochimaru's."
Shinji raised an eyebrow. "Shouldn't you be focusing on studying Lord Jiraiya's textbook? I already asked Kagome-sensei and he said that we should work through that before even thinking of looking at these."
"Eh. Finished all the basic exercises there and there's no time to do real sealing research."
"Ugh, tell me about it," Shinji said, pacing over and grabbing the midnight snack he'd been craving when he came downstairs – some of that Mist-style spicy dried squid. "I mean, not that I want to do sealing research, but keeping up with demand at the seal bank is brutal."
"It's life-saving work," Kazushi said absent-mindedly without looking Shinji's way. Another of the younger boy's flaws – he seemed to avoid eye-contact whenever possible and stared at the object of his study instead.
"Yeah," Shinji said. "Which is why I haven't said anything to Hazō about it. I'm making seals in the hope that it saves some poor clanless genin that could have been me if I'd been just a little less lucky with my sensei." He didn't bother mentioning his little brother. Ninja didn't need to talk about that.
"Mhm," Kazushi said. "Still wish we had Shadow Clone."
"You and me both, buddy," Shinji said with a sigh. "I signed up to make free seals for the clan, not the whole damn village."
"Life-saving?"
"I'm just venting."
"Mm. So yes, take a look at these. I grabbed all of Lord Orochimaru's papers that Lord Hazō put up for grabs. There's a lot there. General medicine, medical ninjutsu, design of new medical ninjutsu, design of medical bioseals, conventional seals, the works."
Shinji thought for a second as he chewed on the dried squid. Kazushi went for another bite of rice and pinched it too hard mid-transit, causing a smaller clump to fall onto one of the sheets.
"Hey, careful!"
Kazushi quickly scooped it up and shot a bashful look at Shinji. "My bad. It's just rice, so it's fine, right?"
Shinji shook his head. "Just be careful with them. So why do you have all of Lord Orochimaru's notes? It sounds mostly irrelevant to you."
"Yeah," Kazushi said without a hint of irony. "It's ninety-nine percent useless. The last one percent is priceless, of course, but yeah. I just grabbed one of the sealing projects to study from at first, but I started reading it and realized there were conversations and notes in the margins that revealed things about Lord Orochimaru. I asked Lord Hazō and he said it was fine for me to try to collate all the information and put it together for him. So I took everything."
Shinji raised an eyebrow. "And what did you find?"
"A story," Kazushi said. "I think it's real. There's no actually useful seals or techniques in here, just intermediary steps in progressions that he would already have finished. My guess is that he took anything important decades ago to keep researching it, maybe when he went missing. Everything else was trash to him. And now it shows what happened to him when he was a real Leaf ninja."
Kazushi gestured to the top corner of the spread, the starting point of a winding line that threaded its way across the table, and Shinji started to read.
o-o-o
Thanks for sending this my way for review. First question: what the hell? This seal seems completely pointless. Why would you ever need to specifically align someone's lymph nodes and chakra system nodes? Does this even do anything? Please do not continue this project without my sign-off.
It does not do anything in general, no. However, Patient Otomatsu will die without this specific intervention within the next week, and I can see no other way to effectively repair his immune system. Please restrict your comments to the object-level qualities of the seal.
Right, so this still seems pointless.
[a few pages later]
I see that you're continuing to prepare for infusion. Objectively, the bioseal is terrible, and the design is fragile. Sealing failure seems highly likely. Moreover, it continues to be pointless. He's just a random career chūnin. You can't save every one of them.
The seal design is fragile because it only needs to be infused once ever. I can rely on particulars of the patient's chakra system or astrological artifacts that will never occur again. My skill is sufficient to sustain the infusion.
Regarding your other point, his is a life that I could save, that absent my intervention would end. What else does the Will of Fire mean if it does not mean to do this?
Provide substantive feedback on how to improve the seal or refrain from comment.
Right. In my capacity as senior sealmaster, I'm shutting this project down. If you roll the dice enough times, it'll come up snake eyes. You're no use to Leaf when you're dead. There are larger problems than Otomatsu's immune system failure. Just remember, Oro, you can't tear out your own heart just to give it to someone else. You need to have limits if you want to actually help people.
o-o-o
Three more patients have died of the whiterot. I am increasingly convinced our highest leverage pathway will be to leave treatment to the other doctors and focus on finding the cure. We cannot both treat and do research, and given reinfection rates, the cure is far more important if we want to save anyone.
Don't be a fucking pussy. Skip some sleep and do both.
At the end of every shift, I am chakra exhausted and psychically exhausted – I cannot take on more Shadow Clone hours. I am confident my memory is degrading, and I find myself substantially more irritated than normal at the other doctors' incompetence. Given some ultimately recoverable errors in a recent surgery, I suspect some level of mild visual hallucination. Further sleep deprivation will save no one.
You're also fucking wordy, huh? Fine, my regen's still better than yours. How about I take twenty hours from you?
It would be appreciated. Thank you.
o-o-o
I think we should stop this line of research for now. The only purpose for a seal like this would be betraying our allies, and that would be against the Will of Fire.
Regrettable. I am forced to agree, however. Would that reality permitted the more flexible designs to be at an actually feasible level of difficulty. Instead, we ended up with a useless line and a pointless prototype.
Aside: Why is it against the Will of Fire? We betray our allies in many contexts. In fact, aren't you working on a seal to foil the Hyūga?
That's different.
So right and wrong are a matter of circumstance, rather than objective?
Right and wrong are objective, and the objective right answer depends on the circumstances. Finding the right thing to do is hard – that's why we have the Will of Fire to guide us.
Ah, I remember little Jiraiya. How rebellious you were. Now you're sounding like Sensei.
You know, other cultures have strong norms that they are very convinced are correct – therefore, conviction is not sufficient for correctness. What differentiates us from them?
The Will of Fire does. They're wrong, and we're right.
o-o-o
Note: Symptoms exacerbated by advanced age. I have written this too many times to not notice the trend. Can aging itself be cured?
What is this supposed to mean? Aging isn't a disease, you can't cure it.
Aging is a disease, comorbid with approximately everything. I diagnose every one of the ten million people on this Path with it. The prognosis is terminal.
Old age is the goal, you twat. We cure people so that they can grow old and fat and happy.
Would both those quantities not be improved if their joints could handle more fatness and their minds could handle more memory of happiness? Everyone ages, and shows similar symptoms as they age. That suggests to me that there must be similar causes behind aging. Address the cause, prevent the disease.
Aging isn't a disease. It's just the way that humans are, that reality is. We're trying to fix things that are wrong. There's nothing wrong with someone that's growing older since that's exactly what's supposed to happen. Focus on curing this guy's pox.
Patient has already been cured.
o-o-o
Uh-oh. Everything alright? Looks like the experimental log here ended early. I thought you were going to use the Sand ninja to test your new method to accelerate recovery from chakra overdraw?
Apologies. I had a personal failing of character during the vivisection and prematurely terminated the subject. I have identified the problem and will do better in the future.
Be nice to him, Jiraiya. A live vivisection is really tough the first few times. Oro: you'll get used to it. Remember you can always step away and they'll still be there. Better to take your time than waste limited subjects.
o-o-o
The surgery was a partial success after a severe error on my part. Be aware: while continuing treatment will likely save the patient's life, due to my mistake, the patient will likely experience severe pain for the remainder of their existence.
Obviously I saved them. If they're alive, they can come to terms with the pain and find meaning in life. If they're dead, there's no chance for that. And things could always get better.
Note (previous conversation was four months ago): patient committed suicide today.
o-o-o
To terminate this line of research would be a violation of the Will of Fire – I would be letting allies die in ways that I could prevent. Yet, to continue it would be a violation of the Will of Fire as well. Without any more patients with the relevant parasite in Leaf (and of course the difficulty of sourcing patients from outside it), the only way to continue the research would be to infect volunteers with the parasite. While I have no doubt that our fame would earn us volunteers, my intuition is that such experimentation would be a gross violation of the Will of Fire. What am I to do, then?
Ugh, yeah, this is a tough one. It sucks to have to wait until the next outbreak among our ninja to make any progress on the research, but that may be what we have to do.
Likely more people will die as a result of delaying the development of a cure.
Yeah.
Fine. Still, in general, how can one resolve contradictions in the Will of Fire? Sometimes it is common sense: one may break an unimportant law in order to save a life. Other times, like here, there is no clear answer. Obviously, I already tried asking the Hagoromo and got nothing but mealy-mouthed hogwash with no real prescriptions.
I think it's just a really hard question to answer, Oro. I asked Sensei. He is the Hokage, the embodiment of the Will of Fire. Who else would know?
Jiraiya. You and I have known Sensei both before and after he was Hokage. That he has matured under the Hat is beyond question. That he has seen and ordered unspeakable things: beyond question. But I can see what is plainly before my eyes. He is still the same man. Changed by his experiences, but the same man at his core. Unless he has hidden his revelation with great effort, he has received no religious guidance or otherworldly wisdom. His wisdom is the same one that you and I know, the one forged in decades of battle and leadership. A wisdom that is tested, true, and freakishly sharp, but a mundane wisdom nonetheless.
This isn't right, Oro. He's the Hokage. If he doesn't know the Will of Fire, who does?
I don't know.
o-o-o
We cured the whiterot. It took three years. The hospitals are still full. What's the point of it all?
Don't let it get to you, Oro. Eradicating a disease is no mean feat. No one will have to deal with it ever again.
It is not eradicated. Anyone who sees a medic-nin will be cured, but they will still fall ill in their rural villages.
Progress counts, Oro. People were saved. Don't discount that.
I simply cannot help but wonder if there is a more efficient way of achieving our goals. For instance, disease spreads from person to person, either via physical means or via various spirits. Can we harness those means to spread a cure? Or perhaps even spread a property that makes infection outright impossible…
These big ideas matter too. We should try to figure out if something like this is possible.
Attached is an initial plan of attack. I will likely focus on this for the next month.
The schedule indicates you won't spend any time at the hospital at all. Are you sure? Research is great and all, but I think it's important to stay grounded in the mundane joy of helping people. Reminds me why I keep going.
I don't feel that sensation.
Oh, Oro, I'm sorry. Yes, take a break and come back to it once you're no longer burned out. The war's over now. We have time.
I don't know if I ever felt joy at saving people. Satisfaction, perhaps, that my duty was done correctly.
Then it's all the more impressive that you've saved so many, and that you're still dreaming bigger.
o-o-o
With two years of data now, the conclusion is inevitable. Prayer is ineffective at altering the outcome of essentially any event.
Bit of a disturbing thing to be experimenting with, no?
What part of personal notes do you not understand? When I am a better sealmaster than you, I will devise a locking seal you cannot bypass, then lock your eyes and mouth shut so you may no longer gawk at my affairs with unwelcome comments.
What were you praying for?
o-o-o
Patient is terminal. Biosealing procedure R-13-Green will not help, but could make progress towards a greater understanding (perhaps eventually a cure) for pox. Patient understands he will die, wants to do something meaningful before death. Thoughts?
Mmm. Yeah, seems reasonable, and I don't see any way out for him. Let the guy contribute to Leaf's knowledge before he goes. Let's commemorate his sacrifice somehow.
Given our goals, sparing time for sentimentality seems more of a disgrace to sacrifice than otherwise.
o-o-o
Do infection spirits exist? Proposal: run an ablation study over various interventions for infection. Determine whether spirit-targeted appeasements actually affect patient outcomes.
Won't this mean that some people get intentionally substandard treatment?
Only if disease spirits exist and our current methods actually interact with them. Are you not curious at the claim that there are intangible spirits affecting the function of our bodies in ways that ninjutsu and sealing appear incapable of interacting with? Developing a greater understanding of their operation would be massively impactful for medicine (and of course could help develop better treatments), along with basically anything else attributed to the kami.
Ah, that makes sense. When you frame it that way (the intangible, uninteractible thing), I see where you're coming from in terms of doubting their existence.
Correct.
[several pages later]
Data indicates that infection spirits exist – though I suspect their effect is weaker than most believe, and most of our interventions are ineffective at targeting them. More study is required.
…Oro, I just found this. It's from months ago. Did you tell anyone that most of the things they're doing to stop infections are ineffective? That seems really important for the hospital, for Tsunade to know.
Apologies, I've done so now. Please stop looking through my old research notes.
o-o-o
Ugh. I've forgotten everything about this project. I'm going to need a couple days to remember where we were. Note to self: enhance memory.
Tough deployment?
Easy, obviously. That I am an efficient killer is not in doubt. It's just a waste of time. I kill their men, they kill our men, and then we go home and drink.
Wow, someone's feeling edgy. I know you can't get drunk anymore after those liver modifications you made. You don't need to fucking pretend around me. What's up? Finally found love in the field only to have it yanked away?
I am not pretending. The vast majority of endeavors in the ninja world are fundamentally pointless. Children wrestling over a ball. In the words of a Nara book I read: zero-sum. Or negative-sum, even. The one thing that actually has a lasting purpose is the pursuit of knowledge. Once acquired, knowledge cannot be lost, only refined and advanced. What other way is there to build something lasting in this world?
I would hardly say that defending Leaf from foreign attacks is fucking pointless, Oro.
Engage with my point, Tsunade. Leaf and Lightning are children playing tug-of-war – they pull both sides of the rope and the rope stays in the same place. They could save the effort and let the rope rest in the sand for all it matters.
Except the bastards are going to pull the rope no matter what we do and we need to stop them from dropping us in the ravine.
I was not claiming that we had an easy option to escape the wasteful equilibrium. Merely commenting that it was wasteful. Regardless, let's focus on the object level matter here. Do we have more vivisection subjects for the Lava Element ready to use? When will you be available to begin?
o-o-o
Wow, Oro, you're turning into quite the tank. Regeneration of at least half of Tsunade's rate, subdermal mesh armor, sonic resistance, poison resistance… What's the occasion?
I can hardly continue my research if I'm dead.
Ah, my young protege, you've finally discovered the true motivations of a researcher. But still, these seem like a very targeted set of augments. You'll be tougher than an Akimichi soon enough!
Indeed. This is partly from reflecting on certain thoughts I had previously – the Akimichi have ninjutsu that greatly enhance resilience along multiple axes, including in medically-relevant ways. At the time, it bothered me that they kept such ninjutsu as a secret rather than sharing them when they would likely save high double-digit numbers of Leaf-ninja lives per year. I was naive.
Speaking of which, with your sonic resistance enhancement, there's a target I've been eyeing: the Sōon Clan – they'd be a tough raid to pull off, but with targeted research and prep work, I think we could take them down.
I will consider it. However, the augments were designed with other targets in mind. You were right, of course, that the best secrets are stored in the depth of clan coffers. I regret that I was late to realize it.
…Oro, rereading this conversation, you're not planning on targeting any Leaf clan secrets, are you?
Such a thing would be obviously impossible without destroying my reputation and future in Leaf. Despite the depths of squandered value that Leaf clans are sitting on, I do have some self-control.
o-o-o
Oro… What's the meaning of this?
The test result was negative. That means we learned that something didn't work.
Thanks Oro, I need it spelled out to me because I can't fucking read. No, idiot, I was talking about the patient. It sounded like she was only in stage two of the shimmering panic. That's something I could have saved her from.
Is that so? It is too late, now that I've ended up running the test on her.
Oro, you can't just take a patient that I could have saved and turn her into a test subject. We agreed: only terminal patients can be used for testing.
Why does it matter? She was a civilian. Death visits them at every turn. Whether it be a season or a decade, she would have died anyway. What we learned about the shimmering panic cannot be taken from us.
Don't fucking do that. If they can be saved, it's our duty to save them.
Of course, Tsunade. Understood.
Last edited:
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This was fucking chilling to read. Hats off, @Paperclipped. I'll post a screenshot of what it did to my pulse in Discord or something.
Tsunade's text appears to be white, which makes it a little hard to read. Xenforo strikes again.