Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
He's supposed to be.
But then comes Rebellion where he stuffs Homura into a Lotus-Eater Machine in order to lure out Madoka and bind her in order to bring the old system back, despite the fact that he was getting what he wanted with the new one.
That tossed any ambiguity out the window.
And I said he'd do exactly that if he got the chance, but you guys were all jokey about it.
Well, WHO'S LAUGHING NOW?!!!!!
One Strip! One Strip!
Ah, there it is. The Less Wrong line of thinking. I knew it was in there somewhere.
See, that's the thing real people don't do. They don't obsessively analyze every aspect of every situation. Even if they try to, they won't necessarily think of all the right things to probe into. In real life, people get distracted, forget things, jump to conclusions, lack sufficient imagination or experience, or just don't have enough time to process something. And so, mistakes happen, often big ones.
An emotionless supercomputer wouldn't make those sorts of errors, but that's not what humans are. That's what Kyubey is. And even he manages to screw up, because he's not omniscient, and is dealing with forces that are fundamentally irrational. And because he's so analytical and careful, he had to get those crazy humans to come up with a solution to the entropy thing, because there was no safe and straightforward way to do it. Overanalyzing can get you stuck.
Have you really never done something that went wrong, then looked back on it and thought "wow, I should have seen that coming"? I'm pretty sure that's a universal human experience...
Thank you!
Formerly G.G.
It is true.
"We are just like Irregular Data. And that applies to you too, Ri CO. And as for you, Player... your job is to correct Irregular Data."
There are the mistakes people make and there are the mistakes that are there because the plot needs them. Not only the girls are kind of dumb, but Kyubey is really dumb. "Fundamentally irrational"? How dumb. You don't get confused by reality and say that reality has a problem. If magic exist then it is rational to believe it exist. That actually just makes it worst. Kyubey saw a species that can break what to their knowledge is a fundamental law of physics with what they call a mental illness and they provoke it. Really Madoka's wish wouldn't have happen if Kyubey had done what he had done the whole time and kept his mouth shut.
He told Madoka she could become god and didn't expect her to do just that. He told her the past could be changed by telling her about Homura's time traveling. He told her the history of magical girls. And then Kyubey in the new timeline after learning a magical girl did that decides to try to imprison her and provoke another. That is not rationality. That is what you teach your enemies so they willingly cut their heads off.
When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.
Kyubey is effectively a middle-level businessman. He only cares about his quota. Other problems are for higher ups.
Kyubey was expecting Madoka (wanting Madoka even) to become godlike in power as that would be his quota fulfilled forever. What he didn't anticipate was her breaking the system.
Also, Incubators seem to have a code of conduct (what it exactly is is uncertain and unimportant for this discussion). They see nothing wrong with manipulation and misleading statements, but in return, they have to answer direct questions and cannot give outright false statements. For Kyubey to behave the way in which you refer to, he'd have to be a psychopath by Incubator standards and as such, would not be assigned to Earth as the Incubators wouldn't want their pet project being interfered with by someone who was insane.
edited 7th Feb '15 7:10:15 AM by Sereg
How exactly would refraining from poking cthulhu be insane even in the eyes of their utility function? Even for the great gain Kyubey gains from Madoka's god like power there is such of thing as too much risk. And there is not much evidence to say Kyubey has a rule against lying as oppose to him believing it not to be in his best interested. After all he likes to use the claim that he didn't "lie" to blame his victims.
Madoka Magica is a white vs blue conflict, but really both sides could use an upgrade as neither is anywhere near the intelligence of a real human. Humans make mistake trying to do the right thing, but make mistakes like forgetting things, being distracted, subject to bias or working on bad hardware in general. Kyubey is like one of those Fist of the North Star villains that attacks Kenshiro even though they saw him walk through a building and make their buddies heads explode.
Kyubey almost seems to be trying to shoot himself. If they want to make the story more believable then the viewer should be presented with information such that the viewer could in the same place honestly make the same mistake. No plans that require more than three things to happen. No characters holding the idiot ball people don't have idiot balls. There is no plot for people to become idiots for the sake of. And then knowing how they would really act build the plot around it.
When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.
People are dumb. In both reality and fiction people are very dumb. It's real easy to see and call out on that when you're on the outside with a larger perspective as to what's happening, but these things are not so clear when you actually have to make these decisions with all the stress and worry that accompanies them.
Cthulhu cannot hurt the Incubators. Something capable of leveling 99% of the universe in a single blast probably can't hurt the Incubators. The Incubators do not reduce risk because they have never experienced risk before. They do not feel fear or pain and have never experienced death. Nothing in the Universe has ever come even remotely close to being a threat to them. Ever. Planet destruction doesn't get them to bat an eyelid. You are being influenced by your own experiences which are completely irrelevant to an Incubator.
This is partially true, but Kyubey does act as though some options are limited to him by his own code of conduct. He even says that they give the girls a choice, and he is correct that they technically don't have to. Kyubey is not meant to be indiscriminately persuing his goals. He is meant to act in a way that we can only understand academically due to his values being so far out of humanity's.
I disagree on both these points, but whatever. In any event, I can easily imagine myself making the same mistakes and I am not below average intelligence.
Really? Explain to me how Kyubey is like that? Where does he ever do anything remotely similar to that? If Madoka's wish was worded slightly differently, he would have won, no matter how huge her power was. Part of the reason for her enormous power was the wording of the wish itself, which he didn't predict. He never sees any other character ever do anything he couldn't easily deal with before that point. He has no reason to fear a being capable of vaporising a galactic supercluster with a thought.
I could. As I said. I admit it.
Why not? Planning more than three steps ahead is normal. Chess players plan twenty steps ahead normally.
Where did this happen? You keep claiming it did, but give no example.
I can't parse this.
There's a difference between a plan that needs 3 things to happen and a plan with 3 steps. The former is 3 things outside of your control going one specific way, or the plan doesn't work.
A better phrasing would have been "no plans that built on more than three assumed out comes".
Every plan requires thousands of assumptions. We take them for granted because our experiences tell us that it's safe to make those assumptions. We assume that the place we're going to isn't going to be hit by a meteor, for example. All the characters made plans based on their own experiences. Show me a case where they made a plan requiring them to make assumptions that didn't make sense based on their own experiences.
There are more ways for Madoka's wish to hurt the incubators then it could possible help their cause. I mean what would happen if she had erase them from existence? Or got rid of magic? Or reveal the whole thing and start a war against them? Or became a witch that after killing off humanity went after them? So many things have to go right for it to work in their favor.
Real humans are capable of being dumb I never denied that. People are dumb in the process of trying to make the right choice. A misstep. We are told they are doing this but it fails to show. Homura is doing nothing but throwing more weapons at the problem and never tries to improve her social skills to avoid making enemies out of her best allies. Sayaka pretty much never tries to understand Kyouko and Homura's motives and stops at the first possible sounding answer. She doesn't do what is best and does whatever she feels like as she escalates her conflict with Kyouko in to attempted murder.
Madoka stops thinking about her dream after the first episode even though both Kyubey and Homura were in it and she meant them that very day. She suspect Sayaka and Mami were wrong about Homura but doesn't do much about it.
Frankly the witches are the most intelligent people in this show.
When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.
The Incubators don't seem to need much.
They eat their own corpses.
The first thing capable of hurting them is Devil Homura.
Kyubey life may not be at stake given his remote controlled bodies but his cause is. Devil Homura is the first person to try. And given Kyubey's stupidity he should have fail awhile ago. I mean Homura can't be the first person who turn back time to save someone she loves.
When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
.....
You may have a point there.
If they've done this one multiple planets, someone else had to have tried turning back time for one reason or another (or gotten time manipulation powers out of their wish like Homura did).
In fact, for all we know, something similar did happen previously.
One Strip! One Strip!
Okay. This made me actually laugh. Incubator's have had technology far beyond anything we're capable of since prehistory. They had intersteller flight and were travelling the universe since before humans left caves and are incredibly greedy and innovative, always improving their technology to the point that they pursued the plan in Rebellion and accomplished it in less than a few Earth years. They have also studied humans for this entire time. Therefore, they have all our technology in addition to their own which is so advanced we're effectively insects to them. Any idea considered by an Incubator is instantly spread through the hive mind, meaning that no innovative ideas are lost. They have traveled the Universe, meaning that they have bodies everywhere. Losing a body means as little to them as shedding a hair means to a human. Killing all but one of them (of which the number would probably be in the quadrillions at a minimum) does not affect their race at all as each is linked to the hive mind and is fully capable of replacing the others instantly using the energy of the ones that killed them as fuel. The Incubators outclass us in every way to such a huge extent, attempting to kill them is like trying to destroy the concept of matter.
They can read minds. They know her personality. She isn't vengeful enough and they have never encountered a girl capable of that before, so fearing it doesn't come naturally to them.
No witch created by Madoka would be powerful enough unless she included a paradox in her wish (which was totally unexpected by them). The previous timeline's Gretchen was a planet killer. That was far more than Kyubey predicted and he wasn't afraid of it. Planet killing is nothing compared to the power they have available. (A human vaporising solar systems. How primitive.)
Homura explicitely attempted multiple strategies. None worked. She tried social attempts. And realised that she sucked at it. If the show had gone for another two hundred million loops, she would have tried every other possible social interaction. But she tries what she's good at first, like a normal person.
Sayaka did come to understand Kyouko's motives. She just disagreed with them. That was the point of episode 7.
Which is what her own experiences supported and she never gets evidence that she is wrong. Again. Normal. First impressions count and all.
Her conflict with Kyouko escalates for the same reason that I would have attempted to kill Kyouko in the same circumstances. Kyouko is an active threat to Sayaka's goals. As far as Sayaka is concerned, letting Kyouko live is actively placing innocent people in danger.
She comments on it then. ie. She's thinking about it. She has no reason to discuss it afterwards. That doesn't mean that she isn't thinking about it. Nothing in it is relevant until late series from her perspective anyway.
She tried. That's all to do with her personality and nothing to do with her intelligence.
Or you're completely ignoring the character's internal motivations, values and personalities in order to claim intellectual superiority to them
EDIT:
Homura took roughly 100 loops. It's a miracle she didn't witch out before she got it right. Even on the previous loop, Madoka was only a planet killer. As such, significantly less loops would not have been enough.
edited 7th Feb '15 2:44:48 PM by Sereg
World's Cutest Direwolf
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Why would you kill Kyouko? Because she is neglecting the familiars? Maybe if she was feeding people to them, but she wasn't. She dominated Sayaka a little bit and Sayaka escalated a battle she couldn't possibly win. And if she killed Kyouko that is more people being killed by witches.
And Kyubey can be killed. His bodies are remote controlled by a single mind. Kill it all the bodies mean nothing. The incubators existence as a alien species that made it to the stars is a paradox. Something so stupid could never had made it that far. Show, don't tell.
If you think what actual people would do, you realize the plot as it stands doesn't work. It couldn't even begin. It is easy to make your characters stupid and justify it afterwards but how you decided their actions is what counts.
When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.
World's Cutest Direwolf
Further, why should this "god," even if she does display an intelligence, be assumed to respond to experimentation with hostility? If she exists, she has evidently spent the history of the universe thus far without making hostile actions towards coobkind. Evidently, whatever hypothetical mad intelligence might drive her does not dispose her to be antagonistic towards the incubator mission.
Further, why should this "god," even if she does display an intelligence, be assumed to respond to experimentation with hostility? If she exists, she has evidently spent the history of the universe thus far without making hostile actions towards coobkind. Evidently, whatever hypothetical mad intelligence might drive her does not dispose her to be antagonistic towards the incubator mission.
World's Cutest Direwolf
If the coob council had listened to naysaying like this, it would never have started using insane alien children to counteract entropy in the first place, and heat death would occur X amount of time earlier.
Oh, c'mon. Now you're just moving goalposts.
Let's try something bigger: I majored in a physical science. It took me years to realize that I completely hated it, couldn't deal with the stress, and got no sense of achievement from it whatsoever. I really should have changed majors, or picked something I actually enjoyed from the start. But I didn't, because I thought it was normal to hate school, and had a very limited understanding of what liking things was like. But there were some classes, in and out of the major, I didn't completely hate; and the degree itself is valuable, since it's from a famous-ish university. So I'm still unsure whether it was all a giant waste of time and money or not.
That's what real life problems are like. They're not straightforward, and you may not recognize that there even is a problem until it's too late, because hindsight is 20/20. In the same way, puella magi often have nasty, brutish, and/or short lives, but they do get what they wished for (even if it wasn't quite what they wanted) and get to make an impact on the world.
...I gotta say, though, from reading your other posts, it's getting really hard to resist using the P-word.
edited 7th Feb '15 5:43:28 PM by Kotomikun
I've watched the original anime but haven't seen Rebellion yet. Should I watch Beginings and Eternal 1st or can I skip those?
don’t call me nerdy [url=http://dragcave.net/view/lgru9][img][/img
Kyubey seems morally ambiguous to me. She/he/they has good intentions but cruel methods.
don’t call me nerdy [url=http://dragcave.net/view/lgru9][img][/img