He will, under all circumstances, take the most profitable option. Inevitably, it will be more profitable to betray us for energy than to continue working with us.
You may very well be correct, but we don't know enough about Kyuubey to know for sure whether he would value truth or energy more. That's why we need more info.
Sayaka wouldn't be able to do much more than inconvenience the incubators. He mentions potential, and that people would be capable of certain wishes. Sayaka's potential is way too low to do something on that scale.
I'm not sure what potential means when it comes to wishes (and I suspect that incubators don't know either). Earlier in the series, Kyuubey says that Sayaka and Madoka could ask for just about
anything. But later he says that Madoka has more options (she can turn into a kami, for instance). But if Sayaka's lack of potential means that her wish is limited, that just means that she needs to be
creative. For instance, she could wish for the ability to see the connections between souls and bodies and we could use that to find and destroy Kyuubey's true self.
Fantastic, I was hoping there was a 4th option. I really wasn't happy with familiar farming as a solution. Solid creativity there boonerunner.
It's actually an idea that had been kicking around in my head for a while because a similar arrangement would be the only way to morally justify continuing to use grief seeds to cleanse people once we have the ability to convert seeds back into meguca. If witches can be hunted efficiently enough that they don't have time to kill anyone (and the original body is recovered or identically reproduced), then a witchout would not be that much worse than voluntary stasis. The emotional trauma would still be pretty bad, but ordinary humans do deal with emotional trauma on a regular basis.
I can't quote long posts from my phone, but you missed the point yet again
@boonerunner . I am saying that as a guideline, pursuing as many witchouts as possible over the short term IS a productive long term strategy. I am not comparing anomalous scenarios, I am stating that Kyubey's strategy in non-anomalous scenarios is perfectly logical.
The original discussion was on whether Kyubey was greedy to look for short term gain when it potentially destroys long term, using non-hypothetical examples. I am asserting that seeking maximum short term gain is a strategy that accounts for imperfect information and can be universally applied regardless of circumstances, and which in most cases produces near optimal energy yield. We have ample proof that Kyubey operates on imperfect information all the time. So maximum perfect efficieny is demonstrably not possible, and therefore operating under guidelines or procedures is sensible for it.
There are two different questions here that I think are getting conflated and are confusing our discussion.
1. Does Kyuubey prefer guaranteed returns or does he prefer risky ventures with higher potential payouts?
2. Does Kyuubey prefer short term gains even when they mean that the longer term gain is lower?
When it comes to the first question, the evidence of Rebellion strongly indicates that Kyuubey is willing to take risks when the payout is higher. His methods for farming Puella Magi (and Madoka in particular) reinforce this. (Honestly: he's farming reality warpers for energy, knowing full well that many of those reality warpers will hate him when they find out what he has been doing. Risky doesn't
begin to cover it.)
When it comes to the second question, the evidence is unclear. Kyuubey does makes a number of decisions that turn out
poorly for him in the long term. But those can be explained by lack of information or a mistake in calculations rather than because he overvalues short term payoffs. My hypothetical example was not intended to be evidence, but rather a situation which (if we knew how Kyuubey would react to it) would demonstrate the answer to the second question.
Secondly, most conflicts end in witchout, not soul gem destruction. If canon materials don't prove it to you, in this very quest the Sendai war would have had 4 mg deaths and 9 mg witchouts. Keeping in mind that conflict between humans will not end if magic/grief was not scarce, the assertion that gem destruction is lessened if lifespan increases is also not necessarily true.
This is a valid point. The clear seed cleansing plan definitely does not
guarantee a better payoff for Kyuubey in the long term. But his past behavior indicates that he's quite willing to try experimental procedures on the off chance that they
might have a better payoff. So we
might be able to convince him to go along with it. But that's pure conjecture at this point: the primary takeaway is that we need more information before we can make any concrete long-term plans.
Though the vote held in abeyance does mention sections that we would not use if Oriko came, so it might be a way to get