How nice. Still bullshit.
We have no evidence that they do lie, and asserting that they totally could do when it can't be independently verified is bullshit with no purpose other than to back up the "Kyubey is totes untrustworthy!" position.
I'm deeply uninterested in reopening this argument, so all I'll say is that you've failed to convince me that cooperating with the Incubator is viable, given the lack of even a single canonical example of that cooperation having a positive outcome. This is a democracy, and until I'm convinced that Sabrina is actually an exception, and that's not just pride talking, I will vote against any cooperation attempts.
I'm deeply uninterested in reopening this argument, so all I'll say is that you've failed to convince me that cooperating with the Incubator is viable, given the lack of even a single canonical example of that cooperation having a positive outcome. This is a democracy, and until I'm convinced that Sabrina is actually an exception, and that's not just pride talking, I will vote against any cooperation attempts.
Mami did quite well, for one. But that's perfectly fair. I'm not voting to cooperate without some thorough information gathering, myself. And I can't imagine a good point for said information gathering happening in the next couple in-quest days.
Inventing "but you can't prove he didn't"s to make Kyubey seem less trustworthy is what I had an issue with. He manages that perfectly well on his own, there's no need to make shit up.
I won't even consider interacting until more information is gathered*, and will voice my oppinion if someone wish to do that. For the moment, cooperation enters under the "only in case of inminent failure" slot.
*Interacting with the intent to obtain information or kicking it out I agree with, as long as it's done carefully.
The issue with that is that gathering information requires interaction. The only person who can tell us about how Kyubey works is Kyubey.
Otherwise we're stuck with just our knowledge from canon, and if that were enough we wouldn't need to go information gathering.
The issue with that is that gathering information requires interaction. The only person who can tell us about how Kyubey works is Kyubey.
Otherwise we're stuck with just our knowledge from canon, and if that were enough we wouldn't need to go information gathering.
The grief books have been proven to work. They were specifically noted to provide information we did not know until we read it. That's exactly what we designed them to do. Saying they don't work because they aren't omnipotent is like complaining that your screwdriver doesn't work because it can't backup hard-disks.
Silly kitten, hugs don't reject. They change, becoming the antithesis of their precious being.Where there was love, only holding is left. Where there was warmth there is only pressure. The hug is then a grapple, and its only used as a tool of destruction.
Silly kitten, hugs don't reject. They change, becoming the antithesis of their precious being.Where there was love, only holding is left. Where there was warmth there is only pressure. The hug is then a grapple, and its only used as a tool of destruction.
I was in a D&D campaign this one time... one of the players (a very good friend of mine) got ahold of an artifact sword that gave stupid grapple bonuses. We ended up fighting a Shivan Dragon (because yes, crosses) that the DM had really intended for us to run the fuck away from, and, well...
Mr. Ragedragon got a nice hug. For five rounds straight. And the rest of the party made attacks.
No she doesn't, Aunt Gina could be a Nun from the school that is helping Homura have a place to stay while she is treated at the hospital so she doesn't have to be an in-patient!
As to Kyuubey's inability/ability to lie there are two distinct possibilities:
One Kyuubey cannot utter a direct falsehood. We assume he can't and mine him for information.
Two Kyuubey can utter a direct falsehood. We assume he can and mine him for information, which then screws us over!
I would consider it practical to assume Kyuubey can utter a false statement. Not for the purpose of bashing him, just to not get screwed over by false assumptions!
After all, even if Kyuubey is mentally incapable of uttering a thing that is not true, his species should at least be able to make it appear as if one of their species is voicing a programmed statement that they wish to use to deceive someone!
I was in a D&D campaign this one time... one of the players (a very good friend of mine) got ahold of an artifact sword that gave stupid grapple bonuses. We ended up fighting a Shivan Dragon (because yes, crosses) that the DM had really intended for us to run the fuck away from, and, well...
Mr. Ragedragon got a nice hug. For five rounds straight. And the rest of the party made attacks.
So I've been lurking on this thread for a while now, and I decided it was time I made an account and tried contributing.
I've been digging the hell out of this story (I just reread it from the beginning again a couple weeks ago), and the discussions in the thread are a lot of fun, even if I had to skip a couple thousand pages in the middle to get caught up in a reasonable amount of time.
I was in a D&D campaign this one time... one of the players (a very good friend of mine) got ahold of an artifact sword that gave stupid grapple bonuses. We ended up fighting a Shivan Dragon (because yes, crosses) that the DM had really intended for us to run the fuck away from, and, well...
Mr. Ragedragon got a nice hug. For five rounds straight. And the rest of the party made attacks.
Okay, that's pretty funny. I currently play in a Pathfinder campaign where I play a Halfling that likes to grapple things way bigger than he is, so this feels like the kind of thing I would pull. (Grapple bonuses... on a weapon that's impossible to use in a grapple. Why does that even exist?)
The discussion of Kyubey seems to have tapered off during the night while I was deciding to post, but I've been itching to say something about the Incubators for a while now, so I'm just gonna go ahead and say it. Feel free to skip if you're not interested:
I'm inclined to agree with Godwinson: just because the characters never catch Kyubey in a lie doesn't mean that he can't lie. Especially since he makes quite a few statements that I find extremely dubious. (Like telling Madoka that humans and Incubators have a mutually beneficial relationship, that humans will someday venture into space to join them and that in the long run this will benefit humanity... while trying to create a witch that will destroy the entire planet and render humanity extinct. Saying that Incubators care for humans like humans care for livestock, while telling Homura that the destruction of Earth in ten days is "humanity's problem, now." Or his claim that he doesn't understand the concept of deception... in the same episode where he all but admits to having deliberately mislead Kyouko with the intent of getting her killed.) Ultimately, whether or not Kyubey can lie in this quest is solely at the discretion of the QM, but even if he can't tell literal lies, he's demonstrated an ability to give non-answers so misleading that they might as well be lies. So any information he provides should be considered highly suspect.
Kyubey also demonstrates a willingness to throw away what could potentially be eons of reliable (and ever-increasing) returns from humanity for a single immediate payout, which is surprisingly impatient for ostensibly immortal beings concerning themselves with a problem that's still 10100 years away from coming to fruition. Even if provided a sustainable alternative, they might throw it away for a quick buck like a guy who blows his lottery winnings on meth.
Frankly, I have serious doubts that their intent really is to stave off the heat-death of the universe, for a number of reasons. Not the least of which being that his explanation of why humans subvert entropy to Madoka is either pure bullshit or demonstrates a lack of understanding of both biology and thermodynamics on par with... well, the average television writer, frankly. ("The amount of emotion in each generation is greater than in the previous generation." And if humanity were a closed system and children powered by their parents' emotions, that would mean something! But we're not closed systems or powered by love. We obtain chemical energy from food.) Or why, if they're so concerned about the universe's energy running out, they aren't putting a Dyson Sphere of solar collectors around every unused star so that they can make use of the absurd amount of energy that each one wastes by radiating light into deep space. Or how the energy payouts on witchouts could possibly be of a scale that would make a dent in entropy without releasing Tsar Bomba levels of energy.
I could probably go into more detail on the subject, but I should have been in bed an hour ago, so I'm gonna call it here.
Honestly I find it to be completely irrelevant whether or not QB can directly lie. If we honestly think we can social a meaningfully informative statement out of him, it might then become relevant. But...
"It has been said that..."
Five words. Preface any piece of straight up bullshit with those five words, and... Yeah.
You'd have to hold him down and try to get him to give yes/no answers for the "can QB lie" debate to become relevant. In normal conversation, if we ask poorly worded questions we'll get bad or no info. If we ask well-worded questions QB can choose to give us helpful, useless, and/or potentially misleading answers. Or, he can choose to not answer at all if he feels that answering would be detrimental to his activities. QB to the best of our knowledge is not compelled to answer our questions.
Lying or not is irrelevant. The relevant part is whether we have some way to incentivize him to work with / aid us. That's it. If he feels it's in his interest to help us, he will. If he feels we're just another meguca / obstacle to madoka contracting, he will not help us. We have no way to compel him to help us, or to answer questions in a useful manner.
Helping with Oriko? In his interest. She can't witch if she gets her soul screwed up. I think.
No, I think a much more useful stratagem would be to experiment on QBs in timestop. Can we create grief tools to jack into its cognitive functions? Can we find the means by which it maintains the telepathy net? Can we detect its means of communication? Can we devise a way to intercept those communications?
This species feels no emotion. It is driven by cold logic and will not hesitate to ally with a former enemy if it views such an alliance as beneficial. If in the course of experimenting on QBs we find a way to cooperate beneficially with them, so as to generate an energy yield superior to their current methods without subjecting humans to the meguca system, we can "peace out" with the QBs at the drop of a hat. If we find that such a setup cannot exist, we would have had to aggress them eventually anyway. If we find that everything QB has lead us to believe is a lie, then we've gained something. And in any case, I truly believe that we're looking at a choice between trying to discern truths by ourselves, or asking hostile fucking aliens to be nice to us.
No. Just no. When it comes to the Hostile E.T., you do not "ask nicely."
I'm inclined to agree with Godwinson: just because the characters never catch Kyubey in a lie doesn't mean that he can't lie. Especially since he makes quite a few statements that I find extremely dubious. (Like telling Madoka that humans and Incubators have a mutually beneficial relationship, that humans will someday venture into space to join them and that in the long run this will benefit humanity... while trying to create a witch that will destroy the entire planet and render humanity extinct. Saying that Incubators care for humans like humans care for livestock, while telling Homura that the destruction of Earth in ten days is "humanity's problem, now." Or his claim that he doesn't understand the concept of deception... in the same episode where he all but admits to having deliberately mislead Kyouko with the intent of getting her killed.) Ultimately, whether or not Kyubey can lie in this quest is solely at the discretion of the QM, but even if he can't tell literal lies, he's demonstrated an ability to give non-answers so misleading that they might as well be lies. So any information he provides should be considered highly suspect.
Kyubey also demonstrates a willingness to throw away what could potentially be eons of reliable (and ever-increasing) returns from humanity for a single immediate payout, which is surprisingly impatient for ostensibly immortal beings concerning themselves with a problem that's still 10100 years away from coming to fruition. Even if provided a sustainable alternative, they might throw it away for a quick buck like a guy who blows his lottery winnings on meth.
Frankly, I have serious doubts that their intent really is to stave off the heat-death of the universe, for a number of reasons. Not the least of which being that his explanation of why humans subvert entropy to Madoka is either pure bullshit or demonstrates a lack of understanding of both biology and thermodynamics on par with... well, the average television writer, frankly. ("The amount of emotion in each generation is greater than in the previous generation." And if humanity were a closed system and children powered by their parents' emotions, that would mean something! But we're not closed systems or powered by love. We obtain chemical energy from food.) Or why, if they're so concerned about the universe's energy running out, they aren't putting a Dyson Sphere of solar collectors around every unused star so that they can make use of the absurd amount of energy that each one wastes by radiating light into deep space. Or how the energy payouts on witchouts could possibly be of a scale that would make a dent in entropy without releasing Tsar Bomba levels of energy.
There are some good points in there. However, I feel like you're missing something important: you ask how can witchouts release cosmic scales of energy without devastating explosions? It's magic. Quite literally magic. Why does it not behave like physics says it should? Because, say it with me,
Also, think of all the HomuPoints we'd get for telling Homura that we want to hunt down QBs and perform potentially lethal experiments on them.
We'd eventually have to justify it to Mami, though... If we kept it nonlethal that'd help... Or if we asked for consent... No, that's an awful idea.
...
No in this case I think perhaps we would need to just keep quiet. Some alternatives potentially exist depending on Mumi's eventual reaction to the witchbomb.
