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To the Stars (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)

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Jimmy C said:
Who are "the collective" and who are "the exception", the Incubators or those who found/created them for the former; humans, Thinkers or Incubators for the latter? And more importantly what is "the exception"?

The passage suggests "the collective" is looking for the exception to this. Is "the exception" never making the connection? Or is it coming to "the capacity to explicitly reason about its needs and wants" without making the connection? The latter feels more radical and more likely to be something worth seeking.

With that in mind, humans seem to be a "typical" example of developing the neural connection between fundamental needs and higher-level objectives, and Thinkers too. That leads me to think we're looking at the species that found the Incubators and put them to use. The Incubators certainly seem to be a species that developed higher-level thinking without integrating their emotional thought routines.

OTOH, if integrating emotions into higher-level thinking is so common to life, why did the Incubators find only humans to have emotions?
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The collective are the Incubators' species. Thinkers are a typical example of sapients evolving to throw away emotions, "granting the species the capacity to explicitly reason about its needs and wants" (pref-specs). The exception are the humans, who keep their emotions despite their sapience, making magic possible.
Noninterference was the highest of values, save for only one: survival. And survival was now in question.
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They're talking about the heat death of the universe, and the necessity of magic in combating it.
No, I wasn't reading your mind, Kyubey thought.
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It was writing to her mind.
 
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So, a theory I've always had related to Incubators and lying:

The Incubators appear to never lie... so when they do lie, no one doubts them.

This was my first thought when Kyubey was asked if he can read Ryouko's mind.

The fact Clarisse believes the dream is like the visions makes me think it's not something Kyubey wanted her to see, rather it was a vision she was given, but something about it trigged an investigation by Kyubey, evidenced by him saying that he is seeing more of this recently.
 
Those of you who are long-time readers of this discussion know that I have opinions on human mind-transfer in TTS. Specifically, that it should be within the capabilities of human technology already. With the opening blurb of this chapter, Hiero kicked it down the road instead.

Well, whatever.

You know, even Governance is willing to acknowledge the existence of the soul, it would get people to more readily accept their prohibition against duplication and restoration. They just have to point out that the core of a person is the soul and even for magical girls, it is impossible to duplicate the soul and without that, true resurrection remain impossible.
 
Jimmy C said:
They just have to point out that the core of a person is the soul and even for magical girls, it is impossible to duplicate the soul and without that, true resurrection remain impossible
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But how does the soul manifest itself? IIRC it is undetectable for non-magical people, and therefore not applicable when deciding if duplication is moral. For them, duplication simply means clones.

I think Governance would have to explain that it's the soul gem that enforces the perfect restoration of the previous body. Even if they could backup and restore a Version Two Tactical Computer like Tac!Clarisse, the neural tissue would be slightly different.
 
creaothceann said:
But how does the soul manifest itself? IIRC it is undetectable for non-magical people,
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Even though the soul remains undetectable by nonmagical means. Magical girls started as humans and magical girls undeniably have souls. This is proof that humans in general have souls.

creaothceann said:
I think Governance would have to explain that it's the soul gem that enforces the perfect restoration of the previous body.
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Yes, and if they did, it would go a long way towards explaining to the public why perfect resurrection remains far from their reach.
 
I mean, not necessarily. For all they know souls are something that are created by the contract. It would be kind of weird as a way for a universe to be, but I don't think they have enough evidence to rule it out.
 
Jimmy C said:
Those of you who are long-time readers of this discussion know that I have opinions on human mind-transfer in TTS. Specifically, that it should be within the capabilities of human technology already. With the opening blurb of this chapter, Hiero kicked it down the road instead.

Well, whatever.

You know, even Governance is willing to acknowledge the existence of the soul, it would get people to more readily accept their prohibition against duplication and restoration. They just have to point out that the core of a person is the soul and even for magical girls, it is impossible to duplicate the soul and without that, true resurrection remain impossible.
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Your take on the matter is...odd, given that it goes against the canon of the story pretty explicitly. Duplication is a real ethical and moral problem, so is banned. Restoration is common practice where possible, so there's no prohibition against it to begin with. As for duplicating the soul, the implication is that if you were to create two copies, you'd get two souls. True ressurection is already a reality with backups and restoration, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Anyway, a fantastic chapter. Thoroughly fascinating to see more of the Thinkers and their culture and society, and Ryouko getting to interact with them on a more informal level was quite fun and interesting. Also great to see Ryouko find something of a counterpart among the Thinkers. Can't wait to see what Thinkers make of experiencing emotions themselves.

The segment with Abe was gripping, but curious. I'm not sure what relevance it has to the overall plot, but I guess we'll see as time goes on.
 
Didn't we have some well known general die, may or may not have ended with with significant brain damage, when we had mention in story of mind upload not being possible?

IIRC resolution of brain scan and later printing of brain tissue were said to not be precise enough to make a copy.
 
So, is Ryouko picking up a new sister in each of her adventures a thing now, 'cause I think her mother would want to be warned first. :V

The moment with the children was super sweet, for all their differences in... well, everything, kids remains kids, completely honest and blunt, whether they are Human or Thinker.


SaltyWaffles said:
Also great to see Ryouko find something of a counterpart among the Thinkers. Can't wait to see what Thinkers make of experiencing emotions themselves.
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Ryouko needs to tell Perspective‐pursuer that if she starts seeing a weird quadrupedal white alien talking about contracts, she drops everything she's doing and contact her ASAP.
 
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It would be hilarious if Perspective-persuer becomes a magical girl, leaving Ryouko wondering how she wound up in the position of teaching the basics of being a magical girl to anyone else, let alone an alien in another galaxy.
 
I expect the squirl girl mirroring Ryoko's neural pathways to somehow become a magical girl. Would be fun.
 
It would raise the question of logistics, though. Where would they get wraiths to hunt if only one Thinker in the region experiences emotions?
 
I didn't notice I got quoted so didn't reply until now.

SaltyWaffles said:
As for duplicating the soul, the implication is that if you were to create two copies, you'd get two souls. True ressurection is already a reality with backups and restoration, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.
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The issue is, regardless of the label you put on it, is the method you're thinking of "resurrection" or "duplication" in actuality? The significance of the difference can be seen in examining these two questions.

One, does the method allow more than one of "you" to be "alive" at the same time?

Two, if the "you" reading this post died and had to be "restored" using this method, would it be "you" or just someone else with "your" memories?

If the answer is "yes" to the first, then the answer to the second is always "someone else", and the method is duplication not resurrection. Duplication does not bring "you" back from the dead, cannot bring "you" back from the dead. For humans, if the method cannot say "the soul of this person is now in that body" then it isn't resurrection and not helpful at all.

Even for magical girls, termination of body function is referred to as "bodyloss" it's something that can be reversed. Destruction of the Soul Gem is still irreversible death.
 
Jimmy C said:
The issue is, regardless of the label you put on it, is the method you're thinking of "resurrection" or "duplication" in actuality? The significance of the difference can be seen in examining these two questions.
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Madoka (who's the "expert on such things" by TacClarisse's own words) said that a soul automatically transfer to a "perfect copy" of the body, implying that it's the only mean to have a "true" resurrection.
Now of course the question is what does count as. "perfect copy", and what happen if it and the original body are active at the same time, but I think that we'll get the answer in a future chapter.
 
ElMariachi said:
Now of course the question is what does count as. "perfect copy",
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We know Soul Gems hold the record to create a perfect copy and the means to reproduce it as necessary. Other than that, it's beyond human technology at present.
There's also the problem that a perfect copy should also be complete enough that it would have its own soul and therefore not capable of hosting another soul that had lost its original body earlier. Soul Gems are capable of working around this but, again, it's beyond human technology.
If anything, Soul Gems are capable of attaching a soul to an imperfect copy of MG's body. Remember, the MSY used to have adjustment problems when they used cadavers as replacement bodies for bodylossed girls. But that's technology working against the limits of nature.
 
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