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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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Karnewarrior said:
So, assuming hostility here, I've come up with a way that Kyuubey wins no matter what we choose.
2: We do not refuse the offer
Kyuubey gets what he wants when we fail to do the ribbon science. It's entirely possible this ribbon science will be necessary when we're in Asunaro or at some other point later on in the chapter.
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This is a mistake. Do not assume that Kyubey is automatically hostile. If anything, Kyubey has been fairly cooperative throughout the quest. The only time thus far that he's seemed to have acted against us is possibly misinforming Ono about what went down in Sendai, but that could be just as much Ono jumping to conclusions herself rather than Kyubey deliberately manipulating her. It'd fit with Ono's personality.

Also, it would be ridiculous to assume that we'd somehow need ribbon science TODAY. I cannot conceive of any scenario in which this could be the case.

I say we take Kyubey up on his offer. We should ask him about the time-frame of it, though: let's get in contact with this MG now, make sure that she's alright and offer to cleanse her Soul Gem and Grief Seeds if she needs it, but ask for the enchantment help tomorrow, or something.

Kyubey is giving us an olive branch here, guys. We should definitely take it. There is no point in needlessly antagonizing Kyubey, especially when he could make things very difficult for us if he wants to. By being at least somewhat cooperative, it becomes in his interests to either help us out or at least not hinder us. And besides, even if we plan on shafting the Incubators at some point way down the line, there's no reason to not cooperate for mutual benefit in the mean time. If anything, that helps us pull it off down the line, since he wont' suspect anything.

As for the concern of going behind Mami's back: we don't need to worry. Just tell her that Kyubey offered to put us in touch with a stealth MG with enchantment experience, and we accepted the offer--having another MG contact couldn't hurt, and having a stealth enchantment would definitely be useful.

Dirtnap said:
Because Sabrina has very very fine detection skill in a 100m radius. Unless stealthguca is a dedicated long range fighter, Sabrina would know where she is.
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200 meters. Her detection range is twice her control range, IIRC.

[X] Onmur

It's not perfect, but I'm leaving for the day, and this vote carries the critical stuff.
 
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Firnagzen said:
You can't help the guilty squirm that's always at the back of your mind, that Mami isn't really fully well and you don't want to take advantage of her for your own selfish reasons, but... you've gone over that already with yourself, around and around and still-
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I'm not sure whether someone has brought this up yet, but have we thought about bringing this up with Mami herself? Maybe bring it up with some of her apprentices to see if it's a good idea?
 
Firnagzen said:
"I would like to introduce you to a puella magi versed in stealth," Kyuubey says, tail flicking slowly as it hops up on an air conditioning vent so that it's nearly eye level with you. "And I'd like you to acquire a stealth enchantment from her. This benefits both of us."

"Sayaka has stealth, too," you point out, staring at Kyuubey. That's... well, it could be trying to backstab you, but this is explicitly an offer for you.

"She needs to go to school," Kyuubey says. "Additionally, she's inexperienced with enchantment, and won't be able to make you a stealth device."

"Uh... huh," you say. "Or I could ask Yuko, over in Sendai."

"She has not experimented with enchantment," Kyuubey answers, pausing for a second. "This is to our mutual benefit."
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We should ask if the predicted beneficial effects to either of us would counteract each other.
 
One of the ideas for finding Kuroki that we didn't act on before (because it would mean talking to Kyubey) was to ask Kyubey to connect us to her.

This seems like a perfect opportunity to do so.

(What happened to there being a twelve hour waiting period before voting opened?)
 
Subrosian_Smithy said:
Mmm. I don't see how you could possibly know this.

Yes, if I woke up tomorrow and I discovered that my mind was ontologically basic as you say, then I would try politely asking the universe (which is already paying attention to my consciousness) if I could meet with the local system admin and talk about what was going on. That would just reek of, say, a rescue simulation scenario, or some other form of uploading.

But that's only because I have all of this experience of living in a universe which doesn't pay special attention to my consciousness. When I think about possible alternate universes, and sets of universes, I can only think about what it would take to instantiate them within the computational structure of our own universe - even with arbitrarily high amounts of computing power, it should still be easier to simulate a universe with low-level basic laws than it is to simulate a universe with high-level laws stapled over the lower-level laws.

From beyond a metaphorical "original position", I have no clue what kinds of universes are more likely than others. If our universe is "real", and not a simulation, I have no way of knowing what kinds of processes give rise to universes, and what kinds of laws of physics are more likely than others. Even if our universe is a simulation within a higher-level universe, I have no way of knowing for sure what kind of laws the higher-level universe obeys, and I have no way of knowing if that higher-level universe is "real" or itself a simulation, and so on and so forth.

So - outside of the domain of our universe - I don't see any reason why a universe with low-level basic laws and high-level emergent complexity is any more "likely" than a universe with high-level abstract laws, or a universe where every individual particle runs on its own individual laws subjugated to meta-laws, or a universe which is embedded in a game of Nomic, and so on and so forth.
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My reasoning on the simplicity of reductionist universes is based mostly on the unlikelihood of discovering a universe with ontologically basic cognitive laws by iterating Solomonoff inference. (Unless you have a TM that is truly weird.) (I'm assuming the Kyubes are familiar with the concept.) Practically, if you're actually iterating universes Solomonoff style, given that the PMMM universe is "real" you'd expect to find it by searching through a simple but computationally powerful reality whose lifeforms are running storybook simulations of some kind. But I don't think that the Kyubes can locate this theory because they a) don't have the computational capacity to actually run the inference to that depth, and b) don't have the imagination to generate the scenario as a high-level theory. So they're stuck using reductionist partial explanations, because that's what their inference engine spits out.
Subrosian_Smithy said:
Again, I don't know for sure that we have to postulate an intelligence at work; I don't even know if it's sensible to try.

We don't know for sure what kinds of processes can give rise to universes, and shape the laws of a universe. So arguing either way seems like trying to argue for intelligent design and irreducible complexity (or arguing for evolution and natural selection) in biology, when you've only ever seen one example of a living organism, never observed the process of reproduction, and never seen a new organism come into being.

For that matter, even if we could determine that some kinds of universes are more likely than others to form, and we could know for sure that the PMAS universe is "unlikely", I don't think we can draw conclusions from that. Asking "why am I in this universe, when a simpler universe is more likely?" seems very much like asking "why am I alive, when the conditions necessary to support life are so rare in this universe?" or "why am I me in particular, when I could have been born as someone else?" or so on.
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No matter how unlikely the universe you are in, a simpler (likelier) theory that explains the same facts is always preferable.
(I do have a very amusing argument for "God" on probabilistic grounds, but it's not very relevant to this quest.)
 
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FeepingCreature said:
No matter how unlikely the universe you are in, a simpler theory that explains the same facts is always preferable.
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Preferable, perhaps...reductionism is imminently practical for explaining phenomena.

More probable? I'd call that a stretch. Especially when you might be dealing with a system that operates on different logic than you're used to.
 
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[X] Agree to contact her later this week as long as KB helps you with some things. Ask for:
-[X] Detail on Grief Seed situation and contact information re: stealthguca, Kuroki Matsuko, other nearby meguca in need of Seeds.
-[X] Help with your SCIENCE session. As a carrot: You'll work on making your grief invisible while traveling.

[X] Once at Warehouse-kun, quickly test whether your Grief needs to be within 100m of your Gem, body, or both. Ask KB for info and help while you work.

[X] Try dispersing your Grief into particles smaller than the wavelength of visible light, and/or otherwise making it invisible.
-[X] Try and use Grief to feel your surroundings, hoping to be able to keep up a Grief cloud to know everything around you at all times, without problems

[X] Additional testing: Ribbons!
-[X] Cut pieces of Mami's ribbon to test:
-[X] Channeling for Control Magic through Ribbon.
-[X] Channeling Grief Control through Ribbon. Attempt to use Ribbon to extend your range.

Just a few edits.
 
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So... I'm expecting vote refinement to happen. Meanwhile, added Kuroki to the 'bring KB along for science' vote.

[X] Grab Kyuubey (with Grief) and fly to Warehouse-kun while you talk.
[X] Agree as long as KB helps you with some things. Ask for:
-[X] Details, including Grief Seed situation and contact information, about stealthguca, any nearby meguca in need of Seeds, and any nearby meguca capable of making Teleportation enchantments.
-[X] Information about Kuroki.
-[X] Help with your SCIENCE session.
[X] Once at Warehouse-kun, quickly test whether your Grief needs to be within 100m of your Gem, body, or both. Ask KB for info and help while you work.
-[X] Cut pieces of Mami's ribbon to test:
-[X] Channeling for Control Magic through Ribbon.
-[X] Channeling Grief Control through Ribbon. Attempt to use Ribbon to extend your range.
[X] Try and use Grief to feel your surroundings, hoping to be able to keep up a Grief cloud to know everything around you at all times, without problems.
 
I wonder how small we can make particles of Grief. Subatomic? Down in quantum realms? Could we saturate not just the air around us but also everything else, just fill space with grief WIMPs or neutrinos?
 
Vebyast said:
I wonder how small we can make particles of Grief. Subatomic? Down in quantum realms? Could we saturate not just the air around us but also everything else, just fill space with grief WIMPs or neutrinos?
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... we need to use grief in a particle accelerator

QUICKLY TO CERN.
 
I doubt that grief particles will act like neutrinos unless we deliberately will them to. That would require grief to have a neutral charge, and grief strikes me as being pretty...

*puts on sunglasses*

...negative. :cool:

 
If the idea of the vote doesn't change drastically... this will mark a huge turning point in PMAS history!

It will be the time we don't kick KB away first thing, and hell, actually seek information from it once more!

Mami must never find out.
 
Onmur said:
If the idea of the vote doesn't change drastically... this will mark a huge turning point in PMAS history!

It will be the time we don't kick KB away first thing, and hell, actually seek information from it once more!

Mami must never find out.
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I'd wait for @Godwinson to tell us how we're being stupid and dumb before saying something like that.
 
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