It's pretty funny/impressive on how the the thread can go from "conspiracy theories 101 and why Shika is untrustworthy" to "Shika defense 101 and why he is one of the few people who is objectively good".
That aside, I think we are jumping the gun here. There's no clear indication yet as to why Hidan smelled something in the last chapter after all.
That's just a consequence of the long-term disagreement in the thread about how likely he is to be conspiring against us. This isn't our first rodeo on the topic, and people still remained suspicious/skeptical of the suspicion, so naturally you would observe in the future arguments fervently casting doubt on his character matched with arguments fervently defending his character. If it looks like the thread as a whole is flip-flopping back and forth, that's probably just different people having more to say at different times, creating clumps of pro-Shikamaru and anti-Shikamaru discourse.
Like, I can point at the various people in this debate and recall when they held a similar position last time we had a Shikamaru debate, and I can look to myself and notice that I've held a pretty consistent opinion over these debates, and the only thing I struggle to recall is anyone with strong opinions on one side shifting to strong opinions on the other side, which I wouldn't really expect to happen anyways because we haven't gotten much new information on the matter to properly change anyone's minds with.
I've pretty consistently been in both camps at once. I think it's very likely Shika was involved in Akane's murder, and fairly likely Asuma was involved. But I find Shikamaru's hypothetical reasoning very hard to form a principled objection to.
I really don't know how to handle this, and am invested in finding a satisfactory solution to this toy-problem version before I next need to make a similar choice in my life.
And if the Nara collectively decide to commit suicide, it would also plausibly result in human extinction. Yes, risk exist, behaving like a sociopath and assassinating fellow human that believe in not destroying humanity is not a solution.
Again, this is literally the same reasoning of the Hidden Villages, burning pragmatic and possible ways to improve the world in exchange for the fixiation on a theoretical risks, it's a mathematician way of seeing the world that just ends in a lot of people ready to stab each other in the back like now.
At the end of the day, you cannot play "what better option is there", if the option chosen does not have a good outcome.
You outright said, twice, that there were better options.
Tell me what they are.
Remember that "don't kill anyone, ever, including Isan" results in the word ending in EM nukes.
And if you can't think of a better outcome, blaming Shika for picking the least-bad outcome seems extremely dishonest.
Absolutely, cuz killing Akane would get his ass fried when it inevitably comes out.
As to your second point. Knowing Akane's personality, as Shika does. I wouldn't have advocated for her death if she wasn't family.
Which is to say, you're completely wrong about killing Akane having been the right move in some sense.
(Non-central, but I want to clarify that Akane having a breakdown and choseing to mass-murder(mostly) isn't what I'm worried about, it's if she gets captured and interrogated.)
Thanks for the reasonable objection.
It motivated me to run a few sets of Fermi estimates. I still think Shika might have made the right play if he was gurranteed to get away with it.
"This was a bad choice only because Goketsu Hazou is a world-changing agent, and it's vital that he be able to cooperate with the Nara, or at least not go to war with Leaf" makes a lot of sense. You may have convinced me.
I suspect his plausible worst-case outcome is commitimg suicide and letting Kei take over the Nara. I also assume he's at least modestly confident he thinks he can stop things from going that far. This seems like it *might* make the risk of angering Hazou acceptable to him.
Thank you.
