Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

Kai Merah · Apr 10, 2015

From my understanding, we're trying to convert grief seeds back to soul gems as part of the de-witching process, yes? So we have a clear seed. It gives grief to normal grief seeds like it's a soul gem. But when we put a soul gem near it, it takes grief from the soul gem.

Have we tested to see what happens when we put two soul gems near each other? One soul gem with more grief than the other? Does the grief even out, or (more likely) does the grief in each soul gem stay where it is?

If the grief in each soul gem stays where it is, why? Is that a quality intrinsic to soul gems? That they only generate grief, but cannot absorb grief by themselves? Why can soul gems only generate grief, but not absorb it? Is it because of the active, but not hungry witch inside a soul gem? For lack of a better word, I am going to call the active but not hungry witch the soul. Souls generate a certain amount of grief, but do not absorb any from outside sources.

Clear seeds do not generate grief. It is like... half a soul? Like a soul gem, it does not cling to its grief, but unlike a soul gem, is still absorbs grief from its surroundings, and does not generate its own grief.

Query: If a soul gem is removed from its body, does it still generate grief? Apparently not, since that girl (Ayase I think?) is apparently carrying around a sack full of them without any of the gems turning into a witch.

Maybe we should check if soul gems disconnected from their bodies absorb grief? Or if any grief in such soul gems will get sucked away by a clear seed?

boonerunner · Apr 10, 2015

landcollector said:
You missed the "for now" I think.

Yes, "for now". Our ability to help people is limited until we do enough tests that clear seeds are certified as safe for general consumption. Therefore I think that we should do those tests as soon as possible.

Kai Merah said:
From my understanding, we're trying to convert grief seeds back to soul gems as part of the de-witching process, yes? So we have a clear seed. It gives grief to normal grief seeds like it's a soul gem. But when we put a soul gem near it, it takes grief from the soul gem.

Have we tested to see what happens when we put two soul gems near each other? One soul gem with more grief than the other? Does the grief even out, or (more likely) does the grief in each soul gem stay where it is?

We have not yet tested this. It's on my list of things to do.

Maybe we should check if soul gems disconnected from their bodies absorb grief? Or if any grief in such soul gems will get sucked away by a clear seed?

These sound like good tests.

Torgamous · Apr 10, 2015

boonerunner said:
Right now, I am the only one with any suggestions about how we can perform further experiments to verify the safety of clear seeds.

No, you're not. Your proposed failure states can be resolved the same way the known failure state can be. If you want to make using them safer you need an idea that'll change how we handle them.

I wasn't talking about studying their safety anyway. Linkhyrule's post didn't look to me like he was asking why we aren't distributing them.

FlatlineAskari · Apr 10, 2015

boonerunner said:
Yes, "for now". Our ability to help people is limited until we do enough tests that clear seeds are certified as safe for general consumption. Therefore I think that we should do these tests as soon as possible.

But your tests can't do that. You're trying to extrapolate from tests that're only vaguely related to the purpose we intend for them.
The best test is the actual use-case, and Oriko is using one. A couple of days from now, if nothing catches fire? Mami and Homura get one apiece. Maybe a week from now, again if no problems appear? Roll 'em out citywide. If those don't play up, we can go further.

Kai Merah · Apr 10, 2015

boonerunner said:
These sound like good tests.

Thanks. I was thinking that if disconnected soul gems do absorb grief from connected soul gems, it is possible that we are nearer to de-witchification than we thought, and the only difference between clear seeds and soul gems is that soul gems are connected to a body.

If disconnected soul gems don't absorb grief though, this suggests that there is some intrinsic part of the soul which somehow... forms a barrier to grief absorption. Some quality of the entity in a soul gem being more 'awake' than the entity in a clear seed perhaps? In which case, our next attempts would be to form said barrier ourselves in a clear seed, or attempt to 'wake' the entity in a clear seed enough for it to be a 'soul' without going full out 'witch'.

Suggestions for 'waking' said 'entity'.
1) Maybe we really do just need a body? Can we go to the hospital and touch the clear seed to a coma patient maybe?
2) More dangerously, what happens if we put a clear seed to the body of a disconnected magical girl?
3) Do we know anyone who can do magic blasts? What happens if we just blast a clear seed with pure magic?
4) What if we ask Mami to enchant a clear seed?

Aaand... That's about all the ideas I have for 'waking' up a clear seed so it becomes a soul gem instead of a witch.

boonerunner · Apr 10, 2015

Torgamous said:
No, you're not. Your proposed failure states can be resolved the same way the known failure state can be. If you want to make using them safer you need an idea that'll change how we handle them.

FlatlineAskari said:
But your tests can't do that. You're trying to extrapolate from tests that're only vaguely related to the purpose we intend for them.

We have one known failure state (partially filled clear seed + normal grief seed). My vote is that we analyze variations on this state to figure out what other conditions cause this same danger (2 partially filled clear seeds, 2 normal grief seeds, 1 empty clear seed + normal grief seed, 1 full clear seed + normal grief seed). Understanding the danger that we know about and mapping the failure states is important.

Also, the cycling of grief into and out of a seed is a valuable stress test. Knowing whether or not this would cause a failure state is important.

The best test is the actual use-case, and Oriko is using one. A couple of days from now, if nothing catches fire? Mami and Homura get one apiece. Maybe a week from now, again if no problems appear? Roll 'em out citywide. If those don't play up, we can go further.

I quite agree that the Oriko test is the most important safety test. But we should do as much other safety testing as we can in addition to it.

Muramasa · Apr 10, 2015

SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
- Grief seeds can be active or inactive. A Witch drops an active seed, which is vicious and hungry. Draining an active seed of grief at some point breaks it and the thing inside goes inactive. Refilling an inactive seed fully does not reactivate it.

I do not believe we've actually determined this. The rest of your analysis is really good though.

boonerunner · Apr 10, 2015

Muramasa said:
I do not believe we've actually determined this.

So you do think that this is something that we should test? Why not test it now?

Muramasa · Apr 10, 2015

boonerunner said:
So you do think that this is something that we should test? Why not test it now?

Because what information we gain from it is IMO pretty minor/ isn't really a high priority and certainly not worth tampering Mumi's seeds over.

If this experiment is done, it'll be done with our own seeds when we get them whenever.

Torgamous · Apr 10, 2015

boonerunner said:
Also, the cycling of grief into and out of a seed is a valuable stress test. Knowing whether or not this would cause a failure state is also important.

We can sense the structure of grief seeds. If damage occurred we'd know.

Also, we're the only one that can cycle grief out of a seed, so there's no way for this to become a problem when we aren't around.

boonerunner said:
2 partially filled clear seeds

Unless someone manages to get two of them 50% full this isn't actually dangerous to learn about in the wild.

boonerunner said:
2 normal grief seeds

This experiment is being run by like every magical girl ever. If it was a problem we'd know, and it doesn't relate to clear seed safety anyway.

boonerunner said:
1 empty clear seed + normal grief seed

Grief flows from clear seed to dark seed. Probably no problem, but we're still telling everyone not to leave clear seeds alone with dark seeds. Flat rules are easier to follow than conditionals.

boonerunner said:
1 full clear seed + normal grief seed

We already know not to put clear seeds near dark seeds. Worst case scenario is we don't change how we handle them.

One thing that might be good is seeing if the distance we need to separate clear seeds from dark seeds increases as the clear seed fills.

Ugolino · Apr 10, 2015

On a mostly unrelated note to the boone shadowruns, if we can't revert grief seeds, I'd definitely settle for "Breaking" them and getting the soul out somehow. Euthanasia's still preferable to the alternative of just letting them sit in misery forever if we can't fix them.

defenestrator · Apr 10, 2015

Ugolino said:
On a mostly unrelated note to the boone shadowruns, if we can't revert grief seeds, I'd definitely settle for "Breaking" them and getting the soul out somehow. Euthanasia's still preferable to the alternative of just letting them sit in misery forever if we can't fix them.

Actively breaking seeds might get an Incubator supervisor's attention, though.

Ugolino · Apr 10, 2015

defenestrator said:
Actively breaking seeds might get an Incubator supervisor's attention, though.

Eh, that doesn't really seem like a reason not to do something and definitely doesn't outweigh the need to do something about the seeds, be it reverting them or freeing the souls.

Kai Merah · Apr 10, 2015

By the way, just a quick check, but once we get those disconnected soul gems off Ayase and Luca, how opposed is the forum to doing experiments on the disconnected soul gems? Mainly in the form of comparing them to clear seeds, and the other experiments I mentioned earlier on this page.

For that matter, I wonder what would happen if you touched a disconnected soul gem to a coma patient? Or a corpse?

Ugolino · Apr 10, 2015

Kai Merah said:
By the way, just a quick check, but once we get those disconnected soul gems off Ayase and Luca, how opposed is the forum to doing experiments on the disconnected soul gems? Mainly in the form of comparing them to clear seeds, and the other experiments I mentioned earlier on this page.

For that matter, I wonder what would happen if you touched a disconnected soul gem to a coma patient? Or a corpse?

I'd really, really rather not experiment on them except beyond what's necessary to get them bodies back and is minimally risky to the souls. "I accidentally a soul gem" is not a good result.

defenestrator · Apr 10, 2015

Ugolino said:
Eh, that doesn't really seem like a reason not to do something and definitely doesn't outweigh the need to do something about the seeds, be it reverting them or freeing the souls.

Yeah, I agree with reverting a seed back to a gem isn't anything worth bothering about, because that's still grief being actively produced.

A destroyed gem/seed though means all that potential grief just went down the drain.

And by 'attention', I meant something like the Incubators' military arm or something. That won't happen right now, but if we reached the point wherein we're operating on a global scale, and we decided to destroy a quarter of all existing irreversible grief seeds, since we've already supplied all meguca with clear seeds...

Ugolino · Apr 10, 2015

The Incubators don't really have a military arm that we know of, and given Kyubey's already here and probably making reports back home...

Kai Merah · Apr 10, 2015

defenestrator said:
Yeah, I agree with reverting a seed back to a gem isn't anything worth bothering about, because that's still grief being actively produced.

I disagree with this. To me, reverting a seed back into a soul gem is the first step to the de-witchification process. Generating grief is a problem? I think that's an integral part of life. It's called 'feeling emotion'. I'm sorry, but to me, this is like saying 'oh, it's better to kill the coma patient rather than waking them back up, because if we wake them back up, they'll start feeling things like 'sadness' again.'

Besides, we do seem to have some evidence that disconnected soul gems don't generate grief by themselves. Ayase and Luca are carrying a bunch of them around without worrying they'll hatch into witches.

defenestrator · Apr 10, 2015

Kai Merah said:
I disagree with this. To me, reverting a seed back into a soul gem is the first step to the de-witchification process. Generating grief is a problem? I think that's an integral part of life. It's called 'feeling emotion'. I'm sorry, but to me, this is like saying 'oh, it's better to kill the coma patient rather than waking them back up, because if we wake them back up, they'll start feeling things like 'sadness' again.'

Besides, we do seem to have some evidence that disconnected soul gems don't generate grief by themselves. Ayase and Luca are carrying a bunch of them around without worrying they'll hatch into witches.

Er, what I actually meant was the incubators won't bother us about reversing seeds. Sorry.

Though saying it like that seems to be a naive assumption.

cmwatford · Apr 10, 2015

I feel like we should try to ping Hildegard now that she's empty. Should wait till Homus with us though.

Kai Merah · Apr 10, 2015

defenestrator said:
Er, what I actually meant was the incubators won't bother us about reversing seeds. Sorry.

Though saying it like that seems to be a naive assumption.

Ah, my apologies, I misunderstood your initial comment. Yes, reverting a grief seed does seem less likely to invite overt Incubator attention compared to destroying a grief seed utterly. I won't say no attention, because yeah, that does seem a bit naiive, but so long as we're still generating grief, I think the Incubators will refrain from doing anything too obvious.

boonerunner · Apr 10, 2015

Ugolino said:
The Incubators don't really have a military arm that we know of, and given Kyubey's already here and probably making reports back home...

Incubators are a hyper-advanced race of aliens who are capable of bullshit things like telepathy, memory modification, soul extraction, grief-to-energy conversion, and probably a host of other abilities that we don't know about. The only reason I can think of for them not to have a military arm is if each individual incubator is so hilariously overpowered (compared to the other races they've met) that there has never been a need for one.

Either way, it's not safe to ignore the possibility of direct retaliation if we push Kyuubey too far.

justinkal · Apr 10, 2015

As an experiment into spacial expansion, I think something that should be added to the science list at a lowish priority is (when nobody is there to get freaked out by witchiness) creating a fictional object that's designed to be able to freely change size. Earlier I suggested Graf Eisen because its a German-speaking, magic-enhancing hammer that fits that can change both its size and shape at will.

Firnagzen · Apr 10, 2015

Apologies, but I won't be updating tonight.

defenestrator · Apr 10, 2015

Have a tally:

Vote tally:
##### 3.19
[x]Morning routine.
[x]Wake up calls for all of your friends. Including Sayaka.
-[x]Mention to Sayaka that we might try and finish off Kyosuke's healing during the day. Does she want us to hold off until everyone can go as a group again?
[x]Call Ono. Ask how she's doing, if she's used the seed, and where she wants to meet up today. Bring up telepathy.
-[x]Like this.
[x]Walk with Mami and friends to school.
[x]Go visit warehouse-kun.
-[x]How are the Sendai groups doing?
-[x]Pick up science where we left off.
No. of votes: 8
Ugolino, Jackercracks, Muramasa, AnonymousRabbit, landcollector, EtchedSteel, Gadjo, MrLZRS

[x]Morning routine.
[x] Wake up calls for all of your friends. Including Sayaka.
-[x] Mention to Sayaka that we might try and finish off Kyosuke's healing during the day. Does she want us to wait for everyone to go as a group again?
[x] How are the Sendai groups doing?
[x] Call Ono. Ask how she's doing, if she's used the seed, and where she wants to meet up today. Bring up telepathy.
-[x] Like this.
[x] Walk with Mami and friends to school.
-[x] Ask Mami if you can borrow two seeds to do some experiments on. You'll bring them back at lunch.
[x] Go visit warehouse-kun. Pick up science where we left off.
No. of votes: 1
boonerunner

[X] Other Sayaka
No. of votes: 1
aeqnai

[X] seyiku
No. of votes: 1
Krecart

[X]Morning routine.
[X] Wake up calls for all of your friends. Including Sayaka.
-[X] Mention to Sayaka that we might try and finish off Kyosuke's healing during the day. Does she want us to wait for everyone to go as a group again?
[X] Call Ono. Ask how she's doing, if she's used the seed, and where she wants to meet up today. Bring up telepathy.
-[X] Like this.
[X] Walk with Mami and friends to school.
[X] Go visit warehouse-kun.
-[X] How are the Sendai groups doing?
-[X] Pick up science where we left off.
No. of votes: 2
noahgab1133, Sereg

Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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