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Puella Magi Imperatrix Mundi, or: Wherein Half Of Japan Tries To Kill You

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Echo said:
Of course, the really :facepalm: part is that offering "wishes" they exert no control over is practically an OCP assembly line. Seriously, what did they think was going to happen?
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The Incubators have never had to engage in risk aversion before. Every failure of their plans was merely a minor setback. That cases evolution to promote risk-taking. I don't thin they're even capable of avoiding risk anymore.
 
Sereg said:
The Incubators have never had to engage in risk aversion before. Every failure of their plans was merely a minor setback. That cases evolution to promote risk-taking. I don't thin they're even capable of avoiding risk anymore.
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They couldn't have evolved to the point they're at like that, though, so that means Incubators have been around for a ridiculously long time.
 
Sereg said:
The Incubators have never had to engage in risk aversion before. Every failure of their plans was merely a minor setback. That cases evolution to promote risk-taking. I don't thin they're even capable of avoiding risk anymore.
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Well... kind of. If you're talking genetics, what matters is the ability to produce a large amount of offspring during a creature's lifetime. Risk-taking behaviours tied to a genotype will be selected for if on average they tend to produce more offspring over their lifetime than risk-averse strategies.

So in this case you'd have to argue that any remaining risks to the Incubators were relatively small compared to their payoff throughout their evolutionary history, so risk-taking was overwhelmingly favoured.

This seems unlikely to me. I find it hard to reconcile this with the idea of a race that values rationality above all else and thinks emotion is a mental illness. I'm more inclined to think any risk-taking is a more recent cultural development.

LostDeviljho said:
They couldn't have evolved to the point they're at like that, though, so that means Incubators have been around for a ridiculously long time.
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Well, if you consider my above comments, they could have. I'm more inclined to think this is a recent cultural development, however - think the colonial period.
 
[X] Muramasa

Echo said:
Of course, the really :facepalm: part is that offering "wishes" they exert no control over is practically an OCP assembly line. Seriously, what did they think was going to happen?
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It was safe within the normal thresholds. The average girl only has enough power to affect a very small area, acceptable losses made up by playing conservatively for a few generations at worst. Even the most powerful ones don't hit more than a continent.


But with post turboloop Madoka, she had enough potential to rewrite the universe. Thats enough power harvested during her wish to truly FIX Entropy, properly applied.

There was some risk, but Madoka's personality profile made it safe enough to preclude a destructive wish.
The3rdCorinthian said:
The fact that he was trying to get the witch system back up and running in Rebellion springs to mind?

Also, Madoka was basically taking away the only way his race knew of how to counter entropy. Wraiths didn't exist pre Madokami, so from what Kyubey knew, Madoka was basically deconstructing the entire system his race had been building up. So I'd wager that Kyubey viewed the loss of witches as a Bad Thing.
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Note you don't have Incubator continuity between universes/loops/paradoxes.

Loop 1 QB - Made a small energy profit, destroyed the MGs of Mitakihara and claimed Walpurgisnacht's grief seeds. Observed curious phenomenon of one Homura Akemi paradoxed from existence

Loop Gretchen QB - Anomalous magical girl observed. Anomalous Madoka potential observed. Collected very large cash out of energy at negligible investment, planet Earth likely ripe for harvesting colonists as breeding base for future magic research if desired

Loop Madokami QB - Ridiculously massive energy payout, Entropy solved for the foreseeable future. Megawitch self terminated by paradox. Planet Earth remains. Homura Akemi and Kaname Madoka no longer in existence.

Loop Rebellion QB - Magical girl system efficacy poor. Anomaly Homura Akemi describes efficient system suspended by artificial physical law. Test hypothesis. Oh Madokami Why.

Basically from the perspective of each timeline, they won big, and left the mess for future loop QB. Until post-Rebellion, where QB doesn't even know why, because knowledge of the underlying metaphysics was only available in the previous universe
 
SystemicHatter said:
Well... kind of. If you're talking genetics, what matters is the ability to produce a large amount of offspring during a creature's lifetime. Risk-taking behaviours tied to a genotype will be selected for if on average they tend to produce more offspring over their lifetime than risk-averse strategies.

So in this case you'd have to argue that any remaining risks to the Incubators were relatively small compared to their payoff throughout their evolutionary history, so risk-taking was overwhelmingly favoured.

This seems unlikely to me. I find it hard to reconcile this with the idea of a race that values rationality above all else and thinks emotion is a mental illness. I'm more inclined to think any risk-taking is a more recent cultural development.
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I disagree for the following reason:

Absolutely nothing prior to Madokami is capable of shortening an incubator's lifespan at all. That means that taking a risk would have never, under any circumstance, have ever reduced the amount of offspring they could produce in their lifetime. It could only do the opposite. As such, selection favours risk-taking as much as it is possible for selection to favour a trait.
 
Sereg said:
I disagree for the following reason:

Absolutely nothing prior to Madokami is capable of shortening an incubator's lifespan at all. That means that taking a risk would have never, under any circumstance, have ever reduced the amount of offspring they could produce in their lifetime. It could only do the opposite. As such, selection favours risk-taking as much as it is possible for selection to favour a trait.
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By the time we actually hit Madokami, the Incubators have a ridiculous level of technology, which naturally has an effect on both survival and behaviour. Look at what the introduction of medicine does to, say, how you would react upon getting a cut. Pre-disinfectant and in poor hygiene conditions you've got a good chance of getting a nasty infection, so if you aren't careful about it, it could be very bad. Modern day? You clean it and disinfect it and basically forget about it. (If you're in a First World country, that is).

I'd agree that the stuff with the redundant bodies would encourage risk-taking behaviour, but I'm not convinced that's a product of evolution rather than technology. That kind of thing would be seriously costly resource-wise for minimal benefit.
 
Vebyast said:
This dog is quite annoying. Wouldn't even be a question about waking her up if we didn't have to worry about it hurting itself trying to attack us or getting sad and making her sad.
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What kind of QM would I be if I gave you easy choices? :V

redzonejoe said:
You know, you don't actually have to give her back the gem to wake her up?

Like, at no point do we need to completely release the gem and stand back 5 meters or something silly like that.

Gem in hand, we approach. Lean down, place the gem up against her body. Maybe watch what happens with our magic sense.

She's awake? Good. Stand up, gem still in hand, take a step back (or even help her to stand?), begin talking.
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This is possible, BTW, in case that needs clarification. Especially with Yui's magic sense telling her when the connection is formed.

SystemicHatter said:
So in this case you'd have to argue that any remaining risks to the Incubators were relatively small compared to their payoff throughout their evolutionary history, so risk-taking was overwhelmingly favoured.
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I've always liked the theory that the incubators are an artificial species, not one that evolved naturally, either as the result of extreme self-modification on the part of a natural species or as a wholly artificial construct that some unknown species created as a tool to deal with entropy.

veekie said:
There was some risk, but Madoka's personality profile made it safe enough to preclude a destructive wish.
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A minuscule chance of an infinitely bad outcome has an infinitely bad expected value, no matter how likely and how large the good outcomes are. There's really no excuse for the incubators offering a wish to someone with the potential to permanently and retroactively screw them over.
 
I've always just gone with the interpretation that Incubators are not especially innovative. I mean, the meguca system has been in place for thousands of years at the very least, and in that time it doesn't look like they've been racing to find a more ethical outcome.

So it's less 'Incubators are smart!' and more 'Incubators are unknowable to mere mortals'
 
Incidentally, for those of you reading the PMAS discussion, most of what I've said there as my interpretation of Kyubey can be assumed to hold true in this Quest, in case that wasn't obvious.

The3rdCorinthian said:
I've always just gone with the interpretation that Incubators are not especially innovative. I mean, the meguca system has been in place for thousands of years at the very least, and in that time it doesn't look like they've been racing to find a more ethical outcome.
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Fun fact: In this Quest, the incubators have occasionally experimented with modifications to the system, and the most recent such attempt even involved creating a meguca that won't witch out! The whole thing was also probably even more ethically horrifying than the usual approach, kinda blew up in their expressionless little faces, and the resulting mess may or may not have been cleaned up yet...
 
Echo said:
Fun fact: In this Quest, the incubators have occasionally experimented with modifications to the system, and the most recent such attempt even involved creating a meguca that won't witch out! The whole thing was also probably even more ethically horrifying than the usual approach, kinda blew up in their expressionless little faces, and the resulting mess may or may not have been cleaned up yet...
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It makes sense that the Incubators would look for a way to make the system ethical, if only so they don't have to deal with confusing and illogical human reactions that jeopardise the entire thing. :p
 
SystemicHatter said:
It makes sense that the Incubators would look for a way to make the system ethical, if only so they don't have to deal with confusing and illogical human reactions that jeopardise the entire thing. :p
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I'm not sure they know what human ethics are. Not to mention that they've been around for all of human history and have probably seen a huge range of mutually inconsistent ethical standards. Wake ga wakaranai yo...
 
Echo said:
A minuscule chance of an infinitely bad outcome has an infinitely bad expected value, no matter how likely and how large the good outcomes are. There's really no excuse for the incubators offering a wish to someone with the potential to permanently and retroactively screw them over.
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From what I see of them, while claiming not to understand humanity, their actions demonstrate extremely good knowledge of human psychology. Madoka would never wish for something harmful to them after the speech they gave.

...wait a minute, rewatching the whole datadump speech they made.

Were they trying to get Madoka to wish away Entropy?
 
Echo said:
That would be hilarious. :V

I'm not sure what that would even do, though. Entropy as a logical concept is pretty fundamental...
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Direct result of information theory, yes, so kind of hard to actually get rid of. Maybe it'd have gone on the intent and produced magical sources and sinks to provide an information gradient to drive everything?
 
Create a closed universe?

I'm a bit rusty, but I think there were 3 possibilities, for an open, flat, or closed universe. Closed ends with a 'big crunch' while the other two expand infinitely.

Then again, a 'big crunch' would suck too.

If they could perfectly balance gravity and expansion, somehow causing all matter to remain equidistant forever... That would probably prolong things somewhat? And prolonging things seems to be the only thing you could do.

Edit: keep in mind I'm totally not educated in this subject, unless you count casually scrolling Wikipedia and a single YouTube lecture by Lawrence Krauss.
 
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Vebyast said:
Direct result of information theory, yes, so kind of hard to actually get rid of. Maybe it'd have gone on the intent and produced magical sources and sinks to provide an information gradient to drive everything?
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Something like that, perhaps? I'm not sure how much understanding of the situation would be required on Madoka's part for that to work.

It would make for a very... interesting cosmology, at any rate.

redzonejoe said:
I'm a bit rusty, but I think there were 3 possibilities, for an open, flat, or closed universe. Closed ends with a 'big crunch' while the other two expand infinitely.
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That has to do with the global curvature of space and the density of the universe. If you assume that the terminal singularity at both ends of time is a minimal-entropy state then... maybe? But I don't see where that assumption comes from or how that would even work. I believe black holes are maximum-entropy objects for the volume of space contained in their event horizon, so it's not like gravitational collapse destroys entropy...

veekie said:
But wish magic can transcend logic, if you truly wish for something to happen.
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The real problem is that it could still work, logically. Given that entropy is also a measure of information, a universe entirely without entropy would necessarily have no information content, i.e. it could be fully described in zero bits of information. It would be a universe that simply exists, nothing else.
 
Echo said:
The real problem is that it could still work, logically. Given that entropy is also a measure of information, a universe entirely without entropy would necessarily have no information content, i.e. it could be fully described in zero bits of information. It would be a universe that simply exists, nothing else.
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I mean, wishes do follow intent, and Madoka's intent would be "everything mostly like it is, except less suffering"
 
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