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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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Going to read in depth later, but frankly that falls apart with one word- Rebellion.

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1. Kyubey's behavior has consistently been one of greed, across the series. Presented with even the possibility of a large payoff, he will take it over a working system or smaller, more reliable rewards, every single time.

2. Kyubey has no investment whatsoever in the survival of humanity, regardless of what it tells Madoka. It can and does write off the survival of the human race without a second thought, stating that it has no responsibility to help them survive against the Witch it created from Madoka in multiple timelines. Human suffering isn't just minimized, it's absolutely irrelevant to it except as a means of a payoff.

The logical implication from his words and actions is that Kyubey's emotions are either absent or so stunted as to not affect its decision making. The only times there might be exceptions to this are when Madoka herself contracts and when Homulucifer ascends.

By Homura's words and its own statements, Incubators are incapable of curiosity for its own sake and that idea of Kyubey possessing curiosity rather than being goal-driven has been canonically shot down. Your theory isn't just fanon, it's flat out denied by canon.

Wrong. The Grief cube system was perfectly functional as shown in the ending, Kyubey simply got greedy.

Kyubey not APPARENTLY recruiting Madoka means that the circumstances aren't favorable for it to be seen doing so, instead of making things worse less directly. Just look at Different Story for an example of Kyubey using this approach. If he's "backed off", it's either because he's playing the waiting game or he's working against the obstacles to a Madocontract more directly- we're playing the Kyoko/Mami this time around while Oriko, Ono, and maybe Sayaka are standing in for the Sayaka- a lever he can use to break the functional group to make a situation where Madoka contracts.

In short, I disagree completely with your analysis of Kyubey's behavior. It wants us dead and has no redeeming personality traits that might be useful for us- it's just getting smarter about hiding it while it works on killing us.

Any "friendliness" has a) consistently been relatively useless in terms of stopping it from killing us off, b)is not contradictory to it working to kill us behind the scenes as it did and IS STILL DOING.

Your post reads as working backwards from a conclusion and grasping at straws to justify it when the role Kyubey played in canon and is still playing here is that of a murderous manipulator. I disagree that its behavior is any different from the way it approached Kyoko and Homura in canon- the difference of course, being that we're stupid enough to fall for it.

Kyubey is not a human being and treating it as one will end very badly. Which is what that analysis does- treats it as something that can be reasoned with and that we can trust to a degree.

Frankly, this is deluded.

It is and ALWAYS will be our "enemy" except under two circumstances.
a)We manage to provide an instant, reliable payoff greater than that of Madoka witching out and do so in such a way that it can't have its cake and eat it too.
b)We help it make a Madoka contract.

I don't think either of those are things the majority of PMAS would want to or be able to do. :)
 
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Always Happening said:
The most common expression of this is harm necessary to collect energy, e.g. engineering events to cause a girl to contract or witch out.
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Note that (in most cases), girls will witch out if given enough time, so Kyuubey is primarily concerned with administering contracts.

Madoka's power is T², and everyone else's power is unchanged. Yes, Madoka's potential logically isn't twice as high as it was in canon, it's squared. Twice from "total destruction of the Earth" and once from "literally becoming a god and retroactively rewriting the entire universe according to your will". Despite the fact that Madoka has unholy fuckballs of Karmic Potential in T, Kyuubey has been extremely passive about trying to contract her, unlike T-1. Why would Kyuubey suddenly slam the brakes on getting something he can justify obtaining by virtually any means necessary?
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Note that (as far as we know) Madoka's immense potential has not been noticed by anyone. Based on Mami's and Kyuubey's interactions and Sabrina's own senses, Madoka appears to be a magical girl candidate with a normal power level. The only people who note that Madoka is special are Sabrina, Oriko, and Homura; and in each of these cases, the specialness is primarily because of Homura's devotion rather than because of Madoka's potential. It's definitely possible that Madoka's potential simply hasn't been mentioned by anyone, but it's also possible that Madoka's immense potential has either been hidden or taken by someone else (i.e. Sabrina/Homucifer/Madokami).
 
Ugolino said:
Wrong. The Grief cube system was perfectly functional as shown in the ending, Kyubey simply got greedy.
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no it wasn't. you missed the part where only the incubators know what the balance of N and E are. Just because it looks functional from our end, doesn't mean it's sufficient.
Ugolino said:
Kyubey is not a human being and treating it as one will end very badly. Which is what that analysis does- treats it as something that can be reasoned with and that we can trust to a degree.
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no, it treats it as the logical being it is stated to be.
Ugolino said:
Frankly, this is deluded.
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honestly, this seems to apply more to your statements than his.
 
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I'm often curious as to how discussions here, about a forum game based on a work of fiction, manage to be orders of magnitude more hostile than a lot of political discussions over actual controversies.
 
LostDeviljho said:
no it wasn't. you missed the part where only the incubators know what the balance of N and E are. Just because it looks functional from our end, doesn't mean it's sufficient.
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It's clearly sufficient for the universe to exist which is the only goal that SHOULD matter.

We have the Incubator's word alone that they're working for the good of the universe and their perspective is demonstrably warped from that of humans.
 
Always Happening said:
SURPRISE IT'S NOT A GOOGLE DOC because i was requested not to post it as such and also people are more likely to actually read it if it's not a link
Huge thanks to @DeepWaters for editing and parsing this from a bullet-point list into something actually readable by human beings.

On Coob Morality and Jolly Cooperation(?)
Herein, I'm going to try to lay out, as logically as possible (because Kyuubey identifies itself as an incorrigibly logical entity), Kyuubey's thought processes, and why those processes mean that Kyuubey can be, but is not necessarily by default our enemy, using canon facts and precedent and without relying on conjecture inasmuch as possible.

Buckle in, this is going to get wordy.

Kyuubey's stated Prime Directive is to prevent the heat death of the universe by forestalling or reversing entropy. What does this entail? In simple terms, entropy is the loss of usable energy in the universe due, primarily, to waste heat generated by every physical action and reaction. Eventually, everyone runs out of hydrogen, fusion of new stars ceases, and everything slowly grinds to a halt. Life ceases to exist. However, the Incubators possess the technology and methodology to generate negentropic energy which violates the laws of thermodynamics and can be used to replace energy lost to entropy.

>For the purposes of this discussion, the rate at which entropy leeches usable energy from the universe over a given period of time is equal to E.
>The rate of accumulation of negentropic energy will equal N.
>In order to forestall the heat death of the universe, N must always ≥ E.
>As long as N < E, the universe is progressing towards heat death (growing older), and as long as N > E, the universe is (or can be made to be) moving away from it (growing younger).

N≥E is not and cannot be a set or finite quota because the universe continually consumes energy and therefore Kyuubey must continually and perpetually replace it. Because N and E are both in constant flux, prudence obligates Kyuubey to ensure that N is greater than E by an acceptable margin of error in order to build up a surplus/absorb shortfalls. Only the Incubators know what the exact or approximate values of N, E, or the exact balance of N and E relative to initial capital (the metaphorical age of the universe) are.
Negentropic energy is harvested from the despair/emotional flux of sentient beings via the mechanism of the Magical Girl life cycle. While there are no clear logical reasons for Kyuubey not to go full Matrix on humanity, this seems to have been ruled out by some factor other than logic or sadism. The simplest answer (that's not baseless conjecture) is the one he already provided: Alien Ethics.

This is demonstrated by the fact that the system uses Magical Girls, as, demographically, teenage girls have the highest capacity for generating negentropic energy-- this enables Kyuubey to maximize energy output while minimizing the number of humans harvested. This is also demonstrated by Kyuubey's willingness to compromise energy efficiency for the sake of Magical Girls' general comfort and wellbeing-- Kyuubey has already compromised with us twice in staying away from our friends and agreeing not to mindwipe people they care about. Thus, we can reasonably extrapolate Kyuubey's second law to read "Respect the agency of sentient beings by not causing them unnecessary harm".

The First Law automatically supersedes the Second Law where necessary; as such, harm to sentient beings that does not help ensure that N>E is considered unnecessary harm, while harm that does help to ensure that N>E is necessary harm. The most common expression of this is harm necessary to collect energy, e.g. engineering events to cause a girl to contract or witch out.

While Kyuubey is willing to compromise in support of the Second Law, he cannot compromise if it would upset N>E. Respecting humans' agency means that Kyuubey cannot directly contradict or otherwise directly influence the expression of said agency; i.e. Kyuubey isn't allowed to go full Gilgamesh on humanity either. This means that the girl must be willing; Kyuubey cannot force a contract, directly influence the choice of Wish, or refuse to grant a Wish, even if it goes against his interests- Wishes cannot violate the First Law unless explicitly worded to do so because a Wish always generates more energy than what is invested to grant it.

Kyuubey also cannot lie directly, but has no compunctions about lying by omission or dealing with people in bad faith-- it can be easily inferred that informed consent is a casualty of 'necessary harm', as the number of girls willing to form contracts with informed consent would be insufficient to ensure N>E.

In summary, imagine the classic train dilemma: six million cute girls in frilly dresses are on the side track, while a functionally infinite number of people, present and future, sit on the main track. Having no emotional attachment to either party, Kyuubey does the greater good for the greater number of people and pulls the switch.
or, Local Homerun Ruins Everything

For the purpose of this discussion, the current timeline is T, the canon and not-quite-canon timelines immediately before it are T-1, and the Kriemhild Gretchen timeline is T-2.

Due to replacing herself at the beginning of each timeline, Homura scales linearly across timelines as she gains materiel and physical/magical prowess through experience. When Homura reaches her peak physical and magical ability at some point before T-2, her power plateaus. However, the enfolding of the Karmic Destinies of every previous Madoka into the current Madoka causes her to scale exponentially across timelines. This is supported by the fact that Madoka's power does not increase significantly across the first three timelines, while in T-2, she's able to 1-shot WPN before immediately witching out; in T-1, she's able to become a god and rewrite the universe. (This also implies that, at T-1, Madoka's power level has only begun its explosion into the dizzying heights of scientific notation.)

At the end of T-2, Kyuubey states that Kreimhild Gretchen is likely to destroy the Earth within ten days, but is able to flippantly write off the rest of humanity in the face of this lump sum. Within the frame of reference of Kyuubey's morality, taking a lump sum in lieu of continuing to harvest humanity for the rest of its existence only makes sense if the energy generated from Kriemhild Gretchen is equal to or greater than the combined energy it can expect to harvest from the rest of humanity for the rest of its projected lifespan. In addition, letting Kriemhild Gretchen destroy Earth and everyone on it now rather than allowing humanity continue to persist until it finally goes extinct centuries or millenia later actually reduces the sum total of human suffering, according to a purely utilitarian perspective. Given these conditions, there is extremely little that Kyuubey cannot justify as necessary harm in order to secure the Madocontract. (Remember that this the context for of all of Kyuubey's interactions with the canon cast in the latest three timelines.)

Walpurgisnacht is also central, if secondary, to Homura's loop. While it shitstomps everyone in the beginning, Madoka is able to defeat it with greater or lesser degrees of difficulty (and assistance) across the timelines, before WPN falls off hard in T-2 and T-1. Homura, meanwhile, is singularly unable to not only defeat it, but to even appreciably inconvenience it in the later timelines. It can be reasonably posited that WPN has a much higher initial power level than everyone else, and also scales linearly across timelines. Other magical girls do not appear to scale across timelines at all, however. As such, defeating WPN even with a team becomes increasingly implausible for Homura with each successive loop; after "nearly 100" loops, it is highly unlikely that Homura would have been able to significantly damage WPN during T-1 even with the assistance of Mami and Sayaka, much less Kyouko alone.

Therefore, in T, Homura's power has long since peaked, WPN's power is T+1, Madoka's power is T², and everyone else's power is unchanged. Yes, Madoka's potential logically isn't twice as high as it was in canon, it's squared. Twice from "total destruction of the Earth" and once from "literally becoming a god and retroactively rewriting the entire universe according to your will". Despite the fact that Madoka has unholy fuckballs of Karmic Potential in T, Kyuubey has been extremely passive about trying to contract her, unlike T-1. Why would Kyuubey suddenly slam the brakes on getting something he can justify obtaining by virtually any means necessary?
When Sabrina first encountered Kyuubey, after her first awakening, the situation was normal, with Kyuubey attempting to use her anomalous presence and condition as a hook to get Madoka to cave to contracting. This is because, despite Sabrina's inordinately large amount of Karmic Destiny, it's still virtually guaranteed to be a pale shadow of Madoka². However, the situation from Kyuubey's perspective changed very quickly when Sabrina not only decided to contract herself, but made a unique and extremely specific Wish that expressed an anomalous amount of foreknowledge and insight into the negentropic energy generation system.

Being close to perfectly logical, Kyuubey is neither stupid nor pointlessly antagonistic. While Kyuubey claims that experiencing emotion is a mental disorder for Incubators, note that Kyuubey does not say that Incubators are inherently emotionless, nor does he imply that mental disorders among Incubators are rare; he merely states that emotion is considered dysfunctional for his species. Kyuubey himself does not have a perfectly clean bill of mental health, either; he has, multiple times, been documented as having a weakness to Curiosity. Curiosity is arguably necessary for Kyuubey to continue innovating energy collection methods to balance N>E, as he freely admits that the Incubators as a whole have no fundamental understanding of magic, and merely manipulate the observed phenomena indirectly to generate energy. This is why, when post-T-1 Homura tells him about the Witch collection paradigm, he immediately sets about researching the Law of Cycles and a way to harness or circumvent it.

It can also be inferred from this that Madokami's Wraith Cube collection paradigm, while able to significantly extend the lifespan of the universe, was unable to completely balance N≥E, necessitating the reintroduction of the Witch Paradigm. This is because, were it able to balance N>E within acceptable margins, Kyuubey would have no logical or ethical reason to inflict unnecessary additional suffering on humans. It can also be logically inferred, due to the Witch collection paradigm remaining essentially unchanged for thousands of years, that Kyuubey has hit a wall regarding further improvements and optimizations to the system; barring outside interference, this is the best he can make it. However, it is not necessarily the best that Sabrina can make it.

Due to her anomalous nature and unique wish-- to directly manipulate one of the building blocks of the negentropic energy creation process-- Sabrina is an unsolved variable in Kyuubey's cost/benefit analysis, a phenomenon that would certainly pique his interest. Kyuubey has been demonstrated to be ready and willing to compromise with Sabrina in order to satisfy this curiosity, backing off from her inner circle of friends and agreeing to cease editing the memories of their friends and families when requested, leaving her alone when asked, and only popping up when summoned, when Sabrina does something that interests him, or, recently, when he appears to be able to offer insight into one of her problems. In addition, note the damage to Mami had already been done before Sabrina arrived on the scene, and Kyuubey was more interested in Sabrina's uncanny acting ability than upset at her permanently tanking his relationship with Mami, his primary recruiter in the area.

As for possible hostilities, Sabrina's stated intention to 'break the system', as let slip to Sayaka, is meaningless to Kyuubey in a vacuum. While Kyuubey has attempted to poison the well with Magical Girls Sabrina hasn't yet encountered, this can be reasonably explained as a limiting action to delay her base of influence becoming too large before Kyuubey can determine whether her powers are helpful or detrimental to him; certainly, there are no other logical benefits to it that also match up with the fact that Kyuubey has not yet attempted to actively sabotage any of our major endeavors.

In addition, the fact that that Kyuubey has apparently backed off almost completely from trying to recruit Madoka seems to indicate that Kyuubey believes that Sabrina's powers could, hypothetically, be more beneficial to his energy collection efforts than a lump sum collection from Ultimate Kriemhild Gretchen². While it is possible that Kyuubey is biding his functionally unlimited time and waiting for Sabrina to witch out (since Sabrina possesses the second-most powerful witch in the world, whom only Madoka herself is capable of defeating- Delodere is stated to be an ontological threat whereas WPN is not), this does not seem consistent with Kyuubey's previous track record of non-interference and active interest in Sabrina's powers; certainly he was a lot more eager and willing to put on the pressure in canon, and the only other obvious reason for it is not particularly likely-- I don't think anyone would say that Kyuubey might be feeling threatened. (This is not to say that witch-outs aren't part of his design at all, of course; certainly it would make for a decent back-up plan.)

TL;DR: Kyuubey is logically and morally unable to refuse a method of energy collection that is both more efficient and causes less human suffering than his own, and he shows all indications of believing that Sabrina might be able to offer one up or give him the insight necessary to improve the current one, where he has been thus far singularly unable to.
ED: moved the TL;DR out of the last spoiler
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Nice analysis for a start. A few assumptions, but it's not bad for a starting point. The only thing that I outright disagree with is the Walpurgisnacht's power scaling across timelines theory, but that's because of me just not believing it in general. There's no way to prove or disprove it, since the show never really states why Homura can't beat it in general.

Some people believe that it's because Walpurgis is just physically tanky and resistant against explosion based attacks due to it having fire related abilities (aka, the Pokemon type explanation). Connecting to the first part, it is also believed that since Madoka was the only one whose attacks were magically based, that she was more likely to have a better time against it, which was why after she was able to finish it off by herself in Timeline 0. It could make sense because at that point, Madoka has been training with Mami for about 1.5 months, and has possibly improved more than in any other timeline due to having to pick up the slack as they were the only two Magical Girls in Mitakihara. Then again, there's really no way to prove this theory either.

According to the PSP Game, there is technically a timeline where Homura does defeat Walpurgis by herself, tells Madoka explicitly not to contract as she's dying from after the battle, and then somehow dies. She doesn't Witch or have her Soul Gem shattered, she just dies. This shouldn't be possible considering Magical Girls aren't supposed to be able to die naturally.
 
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Always Happening said:
TL;DR: Kyuubey is logically and morally unable to refuse a method of energy collection that is both more efficient and causes less human suffering than his own, and he shows all indications of believing that Sabrina might be able to offer one up or give him the insight necessary to improve the current one, where he has been thus far singularly unable to.
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Unable to refuse as in ignore, yes. However, you're stacking a lot of assumptions here.
If we come up with something entirely dependent on us, we don't change anything in the long term, and in the proximate sense our continued existence as a free sophont is suddenly at grave risk.
If we come up with something that isn't dependent on us but doesn't actively preclude the current system, it is 'logically and morally' unable to discard either. Business as usual as far as everything we care about, except that our use has reached an end and we're suddenly most valuable as fuel.
If we are seen to explore our options and come up short, again, we (and by extension our planet) are more valuable dead than alive.
Our best option would appear to be to impair data gathering, obfuscate, play Scheherazade as long as we possibly can.
 
Always Happening said:
In addition, the fact that that Kyuubey has apparently backed off almost completely from trying to recruit Madoka seems to indicate that Kyuubey believes that Sabrina's powers could, hypothetically, be more beneficial to his energy collection efforts than a lump sum collection from Ultimate Kriemhild Gretchen².
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I find this rather suspect. You don't exactly have a lot of data to make this assumption, and I don't think Sabrina's powers have more potential than UKG, not even in the same ballpark really.
 
Again, that analysis seems to be working backwards from the desired conclusion and makes far too many assumptions not based on canon or quest actions by QB to be considered accurate.
 
IT BEGINS
had to switch to a comp without a mouse and posts are rolling in too quickly, so I'll start replying to people in somewhere around an hour
all I'll say for the moment is that I regret removing the tl;dr from the spoiler and @DeepWaters I told you so
 
I'm going to have to agree and point out the strong likelihood that Walpurgisnacht isn't growing in power over the loops, but is just no-selling Homura due to incompatibility concerns.

Ugolino said:
1. Kyubey's behavior has consistently been one of greed, across the series. Presented with even the possibility of a large payoff, he will take it over a working system or smaller, more reliable rewards, every single time.
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The problem here is that we do not know if Kyubey was actually making his quotas in the Wraith System. He was getting energy, sure, but was it actually trumping Entropy? There's a difference between "Quintuples the universe's lifespan" and "Immortalizes the universe", and that's Always Happening's point of contention, here.

2. Kyubey has no investment whatsoever in the survival of humanity, regardless of what it tells Madoka. It can and does write off the survival of the human race without a second thought, stating that it has no responsibility to help them survive against the Witch it created from Madoka in multiple timelines. Human suffering isn't just minimized, it's absolutely irrelevant to it except as a means of a payoff.
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True. This does not negate AH's point about Acceptable/Unacceptable Harm regarding Stupid Alien Ethics, however. His train track analogy was particularly apt.

By Homura's words and its own statements, Incubators are incapable of curiosity for its own sake and that idea of Kyubey possessing curiosity rather than being goal-driven has been canonically shot down. Your theory isn't just fanon, it's flat out denied by canon.
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Agreed. There still remains, however, the possibility that Kyubey has a goal-oriented curiosity in Sabrina that has him forestall murdering us and our friends. We're lacking information.

Wrong. The Grief cube system was perfectly functional as shown in the ending, Kyubey simply got greedy.
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This is an assumption.

Kyubey not APPARENTLY recruiting Madoka means that the circumstances aren't favorable for it to be seen doing so, instead of making things worse less directly. Just look at Different Story for an example of Kyubey using this approach. If he's "backed off", it's either because he's playing the waiting game or he's working against the obstacles to a Madocontract more directly- we're playing the Kyoko/Mami this time around while Oriko, Ono, and maybe Sayaka are standing in for the Sayaka- a lever he can use to break the functional group to make a situation where Madoka contracts.
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I for one am strongly in the camp that Kyubey is playing the waiting game with both Madoka and Sabrina. It's also possible that Madoka's potential was fucked with, but I am not so optimistic as to think she's Normal Girl levels because she totally channeled Madokami in the first post of the quest and seems to continue to do so in a very subtle way.

It is and ALWAYS will be our "enemy" except under two circumstances.
a)We manage to provide an instant, reliable payoff greater than that of Madoka witching out and do so in such a way that it can't have its cake and eat it too.
b)We help it make a Madoka contract.
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Honestly, we can probably do A without witching out in the far future of the quest, if only because the only alternative is to go have an interstellar war with Kyubey and that got a thread locked, apparently.
 
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AuraTwilight said:
I'm going to have to agree and point out the strong likelihood that Walpurgisnacht isn't growing in power over the loops, but is just no-selling Homura due to incompatibility concerns.



The problem here is that we do not know if Kyubey was actually making his quotas in the Wraith System. He was getting energy, sure, but was it actually trumping Entropy? There's a difference between "Quintuples the universe's lifespan" and "Immortalizes the universe", and that's Always Happening's point of contention, here.



True. This does not negate AH's point about Acceptable/Unacceptable Harm regarding Stupid Alien Ethics, however. His train track analogy was particularly apt.



Agreed. There still remains, however, the possibility that Kyubey has a goal-oriented curiosity in Sabrina that has him forestall murdering us and our friends. We're lacking information.



This is an assumption.



I for one am strongly in the camp that Kyubey is playing the waiting game with both Madoka and Sabrina. It's also possible that Madoka's potential was fucked with, but I am not so optimistic as to think she's Normal Girl levels because she totally channeled Madokami in the first post of the quest and seems to continue to do so in a very subtle way.



Honestly, we can probably do A without witching out in the far future of the quest, if only because the only alternative is to go have an interstellar war with Kyubey and that got a thread locked, apparently.
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If the universe was working- as in still there- then by definition it was functional for our needs. Kyubey's greed shouldn't matter to us in the slightest.

As long as we're an obstacle to its well established need to kill late-timeline Madoka for her contract energy, we are going to need to die or otherwise have our situation made negative to the point where Madoka contracts.

If it was okay with witching out Madoka and killing the planet, then it's safe to say it HAS no definition of unacceptable harm that matters to us. Even the idea that it has ETHICS is fanon- for all we know, it could just have learned the passive route is much more effective.

Kyubey is playing the same game it was in TDS- don't attack Madoka directly for fear of scaring off the prize, just make everything go to hell for the stable group of girls deterring her from contracting, preferably while not alienating them in the process until it's far too late.

tldr: It wants us dead and is working towards that, it's just not being blatantly evil about it in the hopes of fooling gullible white haired idiots.
 
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Ugolino said:
If the universe was working- as in still there- then by definition it was functional for our needs. Kyubey's greed shouldn't matter to us in the slightest.
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our needs.
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There's your problem. It may have been functional enough for human needs, but we don't know if it was functional enough for the Incubators' needs or goals. Incubators are obviously going to put their needs and goals over humans, because their goals encompass a larger scale than human goals and is ultimately more important to the survival of the universe. That's how their logic works.

Yes, you aren't inclined to give a care about Kyubey's goal, but Kyubey is inclined to care about his own goals. Of course he's going to try to do something when he sees something that'll help with his goals. He's not gonna go, "Oh, people don't like what I'm doing for saving the universe in the long-term. I guess I better just stop." That'd be incredibly dumb.
 
If the universe was working- as in still there- then by definition it was functional for our needs. Kyubey's greed shouldn't matter to us in the slightest.
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The assumption here is that Kyubey's system is required for the universe to have lasted as long as 2011 by the human calender. This is unfounded. It's entirely possible the universe's natural lifespan runs out in the far future; this doesn't change that Kyubey's actions effect human lives. As long as Kyubey's greed causes him to fuck with humanity, Kyubey's greed is our concern as far as our having to pacify or neutralize it or him eventually.

As long as we're an obstacle to its well established need to kill late-timeline Madoka for her contract energy, we are going to need to die or otherwise have our situation made negative to the point where Madoka contracts.
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Dedolere is a bigger witch than Gretchen, apparently. That right there is a pretty good explanation if his priorities have changed. If each witch effectively destroys Earth, then that means he can only have one.

If it was okay with witching out Madoka and killing the planet, then it's safe to say it HAS no definition of unacceptable harm that matters to us. Even the idea that it has ETHICS is fanon- for all we know, it could just have learned the passive route is much more effective.
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Madocontract screws with his scenario pretty hard. I'm assuming AH means that for the standard Magical Girl, he's not gonna fucking, I don't know, murder Sayaka's mom or something.

His Ethics canonically exist; he's mentioned them himself in that he does seem to atleast value the illusions of honesty, politeness, and treating humans as individuals with some form of diplomatic rights. We're not being farmed like cattle, afterall.

Whether those Ethics are more than a steaming pile of bullshit, however? That's another story. But since Kyubey exists as a critique of Utilitarianism, it's entirely possible that Kyubey in theory gives moral value to the rights of sentient individuals and shit, but prioritizes the wellbeing of life in the greater universe, and is like "Well something's gotta give, and it's better for most life to exist forever for the discomfort of a minority of life."

Kyubey is playing the same game it was in TDS- don't attack Madoka directly for fear of scaring off the prize, just make everything go to hell for the stable group of girls deterring her from contracting, preferably while not alienating them in the process until it's far too late.

tldr: It wants us dead and is working towards that, it's just not being blatantly evil about it in the hopes of fooling gullible white haired idiots.
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No argument here.
 
And it's that time of the year again. Considering how hot these debates tend to get, have a cute picture to keep everyones' heads cool.
 
AuraTwilight said:
Dedolere is a bigger witch than Gretchen, apparently.
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I'm of the idea UG is bigger than Dedolere, by far, but... I can't really know.

We know Dedolere would be on par with UG, Madokami and Homucifer due to her Wish powers (the 'rather hilarious boostrap process'). So, because she's Grief, controls Grief, generates Grief, and her power scales with her Grief... she could grow exponentially and consume the everything.

UG is powerful enough to expand and consume all the everything, as are mom and mom.

... Is there a meaningful difference here, actually? Is any of these beings 'bigger' or 'stronger' than the others in any meaningful way?

Personally, I'd say Homucifer>Madokami; Madokami>Dedolere & Gretchen; Dedolere>Gretchen, but it's more a 'Conceptual Rock, Paper, Scissors', than a matter of raw power...
 
Ugolino said:
Going to read in depth later, but frankly that falls apart with one word- Rebellion...
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To address the main thrusts of this argument: While the idea that Kyuubey is greedy rather than afflicted with goal-driven curiosity is certainly a possible interpretation, it contradicts the assertion that it has no emotions that could affect its decision-making. Similarly, while the idea that Kyuubey not having any investment whatsoever in the survival of humanity is also a valid interpretation, it completely disregards the utilitarian perspective that it displays (which at its most extreme would indeed state that the extinction of mankind would be preferable to its continued survival, should its total suffering ultimately outweigh its total happiness). Everything else is also a valid interpretation, if not one that I agree with and which I believe entirely misses the point of attempting to explain and work with the Incubators' Blue-and-Orange Morality (according to our perspective, mostly because it is not humanocentric).

The simple fact of the matter is that, despite all of Madoka's potential power, Kyuubey is never once threatened by her. If Madoka can't threaten the Incubators, Sabrina certainly can't. Since the Incubators cannot be removed from the equation, any permanent change to the system inherently requires the Incubators' cooperation. Even if Sabrina does somehow figure out a way to remove the entirety of Earth from the Incubators' grasp and manages to pull it off without breaking the entirely wrong systems (namely gravity, the solar cycle, and so on), it would only be a matter of time before the Incubators found it again and reinstituted the system... if the universe hadn't already died by then, of course, if we assume the Incubators are telling the truth about that. There certainly is no reason to believe otherwise aside from pathological distrust, and in that case why believe any of the Incubators' assertions at all? Everything it does and says is tinged by ulterior motives, since logically there is no reason to act if an action does not work towards your end goal.

In any case, whether Kyuubey wants Sabrina dead or not is irrelevant. If it does want Sabrina dead and will never cooperate with her toward a system where magical girls don't have to become witches for the Incubators to achieve N > E, breaking the system is inherently impossible with any and all knowledge and abilities that Sabrina could ever have access to (without going into deus ex machina scenarios, impossible to predict as they are), and thus is about as practical to consider as the "brain in a jar" thought experiment.

Hannz said:
And it's that time of the year again. Considering how hot these debates tend to get, have a cute picture to keep everyones' heads cool.
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I'll try to keep things from getting too far out of control on this end, though of course I can't promise anything. There's a reason why I haven't contributed to the thread much (if at all) before. <.<
 
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