Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

[Kaizuki]

If you think the afterlife is better than the living world and that Sabrina has no need to prevent people from dying, why not just blow up the earth and kill everyone to get them to paradise ASAP? :/

Invoking "but the afterlife is better, so we should let them die" leads to some really dumb arguments, so can we not?

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Y'know, I'm not really invoking that? I'm just saying, the afterlife not necessarily being better is an assumption you have to make for your argument to have any ground -- there's a lot of those.

Their souls have not yet departed, and the soul is the seat of conciousness. I legitimately don't see why we should treat them as dead?

They're basically crippled and on life support - and sure, some of them would probably prefer that we "pull the plug" instead of spending time trying to "cure" them, but I don't see any reason to think that's true of all of them.

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But more to the point, I feel like you're really wearing blinders on this issue.

What is so wrong with the idea that it's moral to try to save the living, and to let the dead pass on? Why the hell does not wanting to re-embody the shades have to equate to not wanting to save the dying?

Moral absolutism - Wikipedia

Personally, I expect much of SV to look at this sort of argument and go "ewwww, wtf? Disgusting, what about in situation XYZ?" and, you know, I basically tend to agree with that. I'm very much an outcomes kind of guy most of the time. I don't really subscribe to the idea that you can have absolute morality.

But my first point here is really simple: you seem to think it's impossible to consider keeping the living alive to be moral, and also to consider letting the shades pass on without comment to be moral.

That's really, really very definitively NOT an impossible thing.

As for my second point: you've acted this entire time as though it's surely legitimate to apply the standards of the living to the dead. We know zilch about the afterlife, or even what it's like to be a shade. If you wanted to wave down a shade and ask it some questions, so to speak, I think I'd be more inclined to agree with you, but instead you've focused on this -- well, on this:

They're basically crippled and on life support - and sure, some of them would probably prefer that we "pull the plug" instead of spending time trying to "cure" them, but I don't see any reason to think that's true of all of them.

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They are emphatically not "crippled and on life support", Redshirt, they are dead. It is a different state of existence from being alive, and you haven't assigned any meaning to that! You cannot assume that the standards of the living apply. Would trying to ask one of them about that be legitimate? Yeah, I think it would. But this... this inanity that we somehow are obligated to ask as many of them as is possible whether or not they want to pass on, when we don't have the faintest idea what their state of existence is like except "they're at least semi-sapient" -- it's crazy! It's no different from Hermione Granger trying, without any thought, to apply human standards to House Elves in Harry Potter. They are dead.

Have you ever been dead in PMMM? Has Sabrina?

Moreover -- and I want to be really clear about this -- the same source we've been using for all of this, which so far has been being treated as semi-canon as far as I'm aware, has a ghost in it, which according to @AuraTwilight's reports on the matter is motivated to remain in the world by it's "unfinished business."

...

That is not congruous with an existence where the souls of the dead could be viewed as "crippled dying people on life support." Crippled dying people on life support get to die, they don't get to choose to cling to the world because they want to. Apparently in the source material, disembodied souls do get that choice, and it sounds like that choice is made only in awfully rare cases given that it's just the one ghost.

 

[Redshirt Army]

@Kaizuki

Define "dead", please.

Because I don't see how it applies as a label to the shades. I'm not being intentionally difficult or facetious or whatever, I just straight up don't think the shades are dead. Their souls are still present and they're cognizant.

And since I don't think they're dead, obviously I'm going to apply the same standards to them as to the living.

 

[Onmur]

I won't say it's an easy subject.

We need to test Riona's power. If it turns out it can revive people, with proper sciencing, I believe we have a moral imperative to develop this. It should be a nice long term project, to improve humanity as a whole. Difficult, though. No need to go into details, but death is natural, not good. It only needs to be accepted in a context in which it can't be fixed.


The shades, right now, those who are within our reach, they are people, and they are not too far gone, they're here. It doesn't matter if they were killed. They're alive now.* We shouldn't let anyone die without good reason, if we can help it.


We can have good reasons:

- Reviving them could take too much time and effort, considering everything we need to deal with.
-- Some could be too dangerous and murderous to merit these over other people.

- They could choose to stay dead.

- Riona's power might turn out to be unable to actually revive anyone without torturous side effects, even with sciencing*.

- Etc., etc., etc...


The thing is, we need to know first; and choose based on knowledge and realistic constraints. We can't just give them up wholesale without trying.


*Lots testing needed.

 

[Redshirt Army]

I won't say it's an easy subject.

We need to test Riona's power. If it turns out it can revive people, with proper sciencing, I believe we have a moral imperative to develop this. It should be a nice long term project, to improve humanity as a whole. Difficult, though. No need to go into details, but death is natural, not good. It only needs to be accepted in a context in which it can't be fixed.


The shades, right now, those who are within our reach, they are people, and they are not too far gone, they're here. It doesn't matter if they were killed. They're alive now.* We shouldn't let anyone die without good reason, if we can help it.


We can have good reasons:

- Reviving them could take too much time and effort, considering everything we need to deal with.
-- Some could be too dangerous and murderous to merit these over other people.

- They could choose to stay dead.

- Riona's power might turn out to be unable to actually revive anyone without torturous side effects, even with sciencing*.

- Etc., etc., etc...


The thing is, we need to know first; and choose based on knowledge and realistic constraints. We can't just give them up wholesale without trying.


*Lots testing needed.

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All of this.

There are reasons that Sabrina doesn't go gallivanting around Africa saving starving children, or going from hospital to hospital curing people. We have restrictions on our time, attention, social capital, and resources.

Some of those reasons may well apply to trying to save all of Rionna's shades. But we are morally obligated to make a reasonable effort to help them, just as we would be to anyone else dying in front of us.

 

[Onmur]

BTW, further thought:

We need to call Nadia, we can roast her over her lack of good information and see if she can send some good meguca to Edinburgh, ton investigate what the hell is up with the place?

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"... Sure, she was 'not likely to attack. She does not seem the type,' and I mean, you were best kind of correct there, she didn't get a chance. Anyway, do me a favour and do something about Edinburg, K? Bye!"

Beep.

"Geez..." Sabrina stretches her arms, still weary.

"Since when did Nadia have a phone?" asks Mami, wrapping a possessive arm around Sabrina's waist.

The taller girl leans into Mami, letting her head rest upon the blonde's. "I sent her one just so I could hang up on her," she mumbles, eyes closed.

Mami's frame shakes with a giggle. Her head brushes against Sabrina's as she shakes it slightly. "Oh, Sabrina..."

"You know?" Sabrina's mumbles softly, sleepily, and Mami carefully adjusts her weight to better support the taller girl, "I wonder if Riona Quest GM's is just bad, to let them try doing that... mind control attempt just to get out of Social? That's like doing a trick shot to try and turn on the air conditioner during a politics meeting... or maybe he was just tired of having an immature player base playing at 'nobody knows our pain we can take whatever we want, because...'"

A snore ends her sentence before she can finish it.

Mami blinks. And thinks. And holds Sabrina close. And shrugs -without disturbing her sleep.

"Oh, Sabrina..."

 

[Kaizuki]

@Kaizuki

Define "dead", please.

Because I don't see how it applies as a label to the shades. I'm not being intentionally difficult or facetious or whatever, I just straight up don't think the shades are dead. Their souls are still present and they're cognizant.

And since I don't think they're dead, obviously I'm going to apply the same standards to them as to the living.

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"Dead" -- the state of a soul which does not possess any physical anchor to the material world. Without a tie to the world, the dead will pass on to the afterlife. According to source material, "having a tie to the material world" may be satisfied either through sufficient desire to do so or by the effects of magic.

Basically, Redshirt, it's a state in which without outside assistance a soul will simply go to the afterlife. Is that so hard to understand?

We have no experience with that state. If you'd asked a Japanese person to guess what it would be like to have their soul be a rock, they would've had a hard time telling you. Likewise, assuming that the soul without any material form is the same as a soul with a material form is a really terrible idea.

The shades, right now, those who are within our reach, they are people, and they are not too far gone, they're here. It doesn't matter if they were killed. They're alive now.* We shouldn't let anyone die without good reason, if we can help it.

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I'm gonna point to the edits I made to my last post which were finished after you guys started posting more stuff -- sorry about that, btw.

They're basically crippled and on life support - and sure, some of them would probably prefer that we "pull the plug" instead of spending time trying to "cure" them, but I don't see any reason to think that's true of all of them.

Click to shrink...

They are emphatically not "crippled and on life support", Redshirt, they are dead. It is a different state of existence from being alive, and you haven't assigned any meaning to that! You cannot assume that the standards of the living apply. Would trying to ask one of them about that be legitimate? Yeah, I think it would. But this... this inanity that we somehow are obligated to ask as many of them as is possible whether or not they want to pass on, when we don't have the faintest idea what their state of existence is like except "they're at least semi-sapient" -- it's crazy! It's no different from Hermione Granger trying, without any thought, to apply human standards to House Elves in Harry Potter. They are dead.

Have you ever been dead in PMMM? Has Sabrina?

Moreover -- and I want to be really clear about this -- the same source we've been using for all of this, which so far has been being treated as semi-canon as far as I'm aware, has a ghost in it, which according to @AuraTwilight's reports on the matter is motivated to remain in the world by it's "unfinished business."

...

That is not congruous with an existence where the souls of the dead could be viewed as "crippled dying people on life support." Crippled dying people on life support get to die, they don't get to choose to cling to the world because they want to. Apparently in the source material, disembodied souls do get that choice, and it sounds like that choice is made only in awfully rare cases given that it's just the one ghost.

Click to shrink...

Now, this stuff is fairly recent is my understanding, but without it we'd still be arguing over whether or not there was even an afterlife, and I'm starting to think it's a necessary core argument if you're not prepared to accept that shades count as dead people.

...

Because I don't see how it applies as a label to the shades. I'm not being intentionally difficult or facetious or whatever, I just straight up don't think the shades are dead. Their souls are still present and they're cognizant.

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I'm also more than a little interested in why you'd think that having your soul present and cognizant is somehow incongruous with being dead. That's, like, literally the definition of an undead, which is a dead thing bound to life.

 

[Onmur]

I'm also more than a little interested in why you'd think that having your soul present and cognizant is somehow incongruous with being dead. That's, like, literally the definition of an undead, which is a dead thing bound to life.

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Honestly, sounds alive to me.

If a 'dead' person is somehow put back together such that they exist as living again, basically the same as if that person simply jumped into the future, maybe slightly changed but not existing in torture or slavery due to whatever magic process ocurred? Alive. Same living rights as anyone else should have, like the right to live, and receive assistance in doing so.

We got magic. If it turns out we got magic which can change how the whole live->die->stay dead process can go?

Then the rules change. To whatever is better, nature be damned.

 

[Redshirt Army]

"Dead" -- the state of a soul which does not possess any physical anchor to the material world.

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So is an active Witch, which has no physical anchor, only grief, dead?

Basically, Redshirt, it's a state in which without outside assistance a soul will simply go to the afterlife.

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So are people on life support dead?

than a little interested in why you'd think that having your soul present and cognizant is somehow incongruous with being dead. That's, like, literally the definition of an undead, which is a dead thing bound to life.

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I don't really accept "undead" as a category in this debate - or, rather, I don't see any reason to treat sapient undead as somehow morally distinct from people who are alive.

In my eyes forcibly banishing a ghost is equivalent to killing someone, and letting a ghost fade is equivalent to letting someone die, basically.

 

[Kaizuki]

"Dead" -- the state of a soul which does not possess any physical anchor to the material world. Without a tie to the world, the dead will pass on to the afterlife. According to source material, "having a tie to the material world" may be satisfied either through sufficient desire to do so or by the effects of magic.

Basically, Redshirt, it's a state in which without outside assistance a soul will simply go to the afterlife. Is that so hard to understand?

We have no experience with that state. If you'd asked a Japanese person to guess what it would be like to have their soul be a rock, they would've had a hard time telling you. Likewise, assuming that the soul without any material form is the same as a soul with a material form is a really terrible idea.



I'm gonna point to the edits I made to my last post which were finished after you guys started posting more stuff -- sorry about that, btw.



Now, this stuff is fairly recent is my understanding, but without it we'd still be arguing over whether or not there was even an afterlife, and I'm starting to think it's a necessary core argument if you're not prepared to accept that shades count as dead people.

...



I'm also more than a little interested in why you'd think that having your soul present and cognizant is somehow incongruous with being dead. That's, like, literally the definition of an undead, which is a dead thing bound to life.

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@Kaizuki

Define "dead", please.

Because I don't see how it applies as a label to the shades. I'm not being intentionally difficult or facetious or whatever, I just straight up don't think the shades are dead. Their souls are still present and they're cognizant.

And since I don't think they're dead, obviously I'm going to apply the same standards to them as to the living.

Click to shrink...

I should clarify -- I'm stumbling a bit, right now, because this post you made is from my point of view so completely insane that I'm having a hard time working out how to respond to it. The shades are dead because they died. Souls in the afterlife are cognizant, but are dead because they died. That's my kneejerk reaction to that, but I somehow don't think it's what you wanted in a response.

I don't mean to be rude here or anything. I'm just trying to explain myself.

 

[Random832]

I'm also more than a little interested in why you'd think that having your soul present and cognizant is somehow incongruous with being dead. That's, like, literally the definition of an undead, which is a dead thing bound to life.

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They have some aspects of being alive and some aspects of being dead. The question in front of us is whether they belong in the same category as living people or as the "actually, really, no technicalities about it, dead" with respect to whether they're worth saving.

A question which we have, incidentally, already chosen how to answer for witches (more to the point, for grief seeds).

 

[Redshirt Army]

I should clarify -- I'm stumbling a bit, right now, because this post you made is from my point of view so completely insane that I'm having a hard time working out how to respond to it. The shades are dead because the died. Souls in the afterlife are cognizant, but are dead because they died. That's my kneejerk reaction to that, but I somehow don't think it's what you wanted in a response.

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People clinically die all the time, but we don't treat them any differently from a moral standpoint in the few cases where they end up being revived.

If there was a magical girl who resurrected people to the fullest possible extent, should the resurecctees be treated differently from a moral standpoint afterwards? And if not, then why should lacking a physical body change their moral standing?

 

[AuraTwilight]

For the record, between Kyubey's implying that a dead Homura would bear all her curses forever, plus Magireco depicting the afterlife as basically a plane of self-aware memories, like...

The implication is that dead souls in PMMM don't really change; they're what they are, forever, for good or for ill, able to gather new memories but not really growing. Dat buddhist shit; the Angels of the Law of Cycles are implicitly different in that they bodily vanish and are still learning and growing.

So, I guess as long as we're interviewing a Shade, we figure out if it's capable of experiencing meaningful personal growth. I don't know how you'd evaluate that in a timely manner, and Rionna's implied that they don't have this quality, but she also doesn't think they're sentient at all so fuck her input, but it's there.

So, if they can still grow and change as people, they're alive and we should try to help them. If they're effectively shades in the Greek Mythological sense, let them pass on. Does that seem fair to everybody?

 

[Torgamous]

Likewise, assuming that the soul without any material form is the same as a soul with a material form is a really terrible idea.

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More terrible than assuming that leaving your body makes you immediately stop caring about your life and start wanting something that you'd spent your entire existence up to that point desperately trying to avoid?

"The dead want to pass on" is an awful assumption to make because 1. if you act on it and you're wrong you just fucked a lot of people, whereas if we try to save people from death and then it turns out they didn't want saving we can always kill them later, and 2. it asserts that a state we have yet to observe is fundamentally different from the states that we have observed.

If you asked a random Japanese person what it's like to be a rock they wouldn't have a good answer, but if you asked a meguca what it's like to be a rock the correct answer is that it's really not as different as you'd expect.

That's, like, literally the definition of an undead, which is a dead thing bound to life.

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Meguca are undead and they're generally shown to be deeply opposed to going all the way.

 

[Kaizuki]

People clinically die all the time, but we don't treat them any differently from a moral standpoint in the few cases where they end up being revived.

If there was a magical girl who resurrected people to the fullest possible extent, should the resurecctees be treated differently from a moral standpoint afterwards? And if not, then why should lacking a physical body change their moral standing?

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When did moral standing get into this?

You're arguing that we should ask all the shades (or not all of them) whether they want to be re-embodied.

I'm arguing that you are overlooking the basic possibility that it may be that none of them want to be re-embodied, all of them want to pass on, any one of them could tell us as much, and any of the ones who did want to stick around and maybe be re-embodied could choose to stick around as ghosts.

I'll use the house elf metaphor again. We know the shades are capable of problem-solving and etcetera. We do not know anything more in particular about them. Assuming that they operate on the same ideas as the living is foolishness.

If you wanted to interview one of them initially, I could understand that!

I cannot and will not agree with your assuming we should initially plan to speak with all of them (or, as it may be, not all of them). That's insane.

E: deleted and reposted so this would come after Torg, because it's as much a reply to him as it is to anyone else.

 

[Kaizuki]

Meguca are undead

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I'll disagree with that.

 

[angelofwhim]

Meguca is for saving

err on side of caution

 

[Redshirt Army]

For the record, between Kyubey's implying that a dead Homura would bear all her curses forever, plus Magireco depicting the afterlife as basically a plane of self-aware memories, like...

The implication is that dead souls in PMMM don't really change; they're what they are, forever, for good or for ill, able to gather new memories but not really growing. Dat buddhist shit; the Angels of the Law of Cycles are implicitly different in that they bodily vanish and are still learning and growing.

So, I guess as long as we're interviewing a Shade, we figure out if it's capable of experiencing meaningful personal growth. I don't know how you'd evaluate that in a timely manner, and Rionna's implied that they don't have this quality, but she also doesn't think they're sentient at all so fuck her input, but it's there.

So, if they can still grow and change as people, they're alive and we should try to help them. If they're effectively shades in the Greek Mythological sense, let them pass on. Does that seem fair to everybody?

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That's pretty reasonable, yeah. If any of them want to keep existing (which implicitly requires them to be able to have desires) then I might want to maintain it even if it can't really develop as a person anymore, but really I'd prefer to at least try interacting with the shades before making any judgements.

I cannot and will not agree with your assuming we should initially plan to speak with all of them (or, as it may be, not all of them). That's insane."

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What's insane about it? If the shades are self-aware enough to make decisions, then it should be their own choice if they want to continue being a shade or pass on.

 

[AuraTwilight]

If Sayaka copies Rionna's power, use her magic to call all the Shades, ever. "Alright, raise your ghost hand if you want to go to the afterlife. Okay, now raise your ghost hand if you want a new body."

 

[Kaizuki]

That's pretty reasonable, yeah. If any of them want to keep existing (which implicitly requires them to be able to have desires) then I might want to maintain it even if it can't really develop as a person anymore, but really I'd prefer to at least try interacting with the shades before making any judgements.

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What's insane about it? If the shades are self-aware enough to make decisions, then it should be their own choice if they want to continue being a shade or pass on.

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Initially planning to ask one shade whether it's even plausible that a shade would want to be re-embodied is something I am A-O-K with. If the response was something supportive of your side of things that could very well sway me. But there is enough literature around to suggest that that may well simply not be the case that I am 100% not okay with initially planning to ask every shade (or not every shade) whether it would want to be re-embodied is not something I am ok with given that there is A) zero reason to not ask the first shade we find basic questions like "do you think any shade would want to be re-embodied", B) source material for ghosts in cases where souls really want to stick around, C) large bodies of popular literature which suggest the possibility that the response to "do you think any shade would want to be re-embodied" could very well be "no."

 

[blast flame]

For the record, between Kyubey's implying that a dead Homura would bear all her curses forever, plus Magireco depicting the afterlife as basically a plane of self-aware memories, like...

The implication is that dead souls in PMMM don't really change; they're what they are, forever, for good or for ill, able to gather new memories but not really growing. Dat buddhist shit; the Angels of the Law of Cycles are implicitly different in that they bodily vanish and are still learning and growing.

So, I guess as long as we're interviewing a Shade, we figure out if it's capable of experiencing meaningful personal growth. I don't know how you'd evaluate that in a timely manner, and Rionna's implied that they don't have this quality, but she also doesn't think they're sentient at all so fuck her input, but it's there.

So, if they can still grow and change as people, they're alive and we should try to help them. If they're effectively shades in the Greek Mythological sense, let them pass on. Does that seem fair to everybody?

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Not really. If they exist we should try to save them. If we encounter dead souls/ghosts we should investigate turning them back into living people too.

Of course maybe it's just not possible but we should give it the good ol college try.

 

[Redshirt Army]

If Sayaka copies Rionna's power, use her magic to call all the Shades, ever. "Alright, raise your ghost hand if you want to go to the afterlife. Okay, now raise your ghost hand if you want a new body."

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I'd be 100% down for that... but I kind of doubt copying Rionna's power will give Sayaka de-facto control over all of Rionna's shades, sadly.

 

[Torgamous]

If you wanted to interview one of them initially, I could understand that!

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That's seriously all this was about?

Sure, I guess I can stop campaigning for Firn to write a massive, novel-length update in which we interview every single shade regardless of what we learn from the first few. I'm willing to settle for approaching this in the way the format literally requires us to.

 

[Kaizuki]

That's seriously all this was about?

Sure, I guess I can stop campaigning for Firn to write a massive, novel-length update in which we interview every single shade regardless of what we learn from the first few. I'm willing to settle for approaching this in the way the format literally requires us to.

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If you'd do that, it would make me very happy. So, please?

It is, in fact, that simple.

 

[Godwinson]

Look, this isn't Timestop Necromancer Pokemon Quest. We're not going to spend the next several IRL years indulging this crap. PMAS isn't that story.

 

[Redshirt Army]

If you'd do that, it would make me very happy. So, please?

Click to shrink...

I dunno, we can make chibis, and with our multitasking, talking to a bunch of shades at once would save time...


(this is, in fact, a joke)

Look, this isn't Timestop Necromancer Pokemon Quest. We're not going to spend the next several IRL years indulging this crap. PMAS isn't that story.

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And now we see the Stage Constructing Witch inherent in the system.