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Namtab posted:She acknowledges them as being her, but even though those routes get results she chooses the route where she doesn't rape/torture people. Knowing beyond doubt that the option is there and that it would work, then choosing a different approach proves that she is a moral person. That's a cute idea, but it isn't how it works. She doesn't choose anything. She's taking the most direct path to her goal, and she's 100% fine with whatever that involves. It just so happens that the most direct path to her goal doesn't involve rape/torture/murder. Rather than it being that she chooses not to be a terrible person, it's that the author chooses a moral that violence is a solution but never the absolute best.
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Jul 5, 2013 17:02
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That's the most obvious thing I get from this story: It's just as much an exploration of what storytelling is as it's a rather odd science fiction mystery-fantasy-ish thing. It isn't even subtle about it, c.f. the (so far) two cases of "when does a story begin". In the end, the story we hear is the one the narrator chooses to tell. Although it worries me a bit how much we get told through exposition. At chapter 11 Gaku is explaining about what she did and what happened to her after getting into Jaunt, but none of it directly. I think that might be a sign that it isn't actually the "true canon" storyline, but rather one of the "more likely" ones. With that in mind, the way the "many years later" meeting between Gaku and Tenjou was told directly and neither of them seemed to be really affected by Marii's death. That leads me to think that that episode was in fact the best possible outcome, and is in a universe where Marii never died, possibly never went to Jaunt at all. On the other hand, for Gaku to even be able to find such a universe/world she might have needed that potential time at Jaunt we're getting told of currently. Quite likely, Alice helps Gaku figure out what is really possible for her, in some manner. The possible Gakus we have seen to far have had some level of precognition about possible outcomes, but none of them have been able to communicate back in time as that first phone call to herself warning about Marii's upcoming death.
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Jul 5, 2013 17:27
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Amazing manga but i'm kinda confused how can she contact herself in another timeline through her cellphone? Is it simply because it's a part of her? And how does that allow her to switch timelines?
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Jul 5, 2013 18:01
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CrackedWindow posted:Amazing manga but i'm kinda confused how can she contact herself in another timeline through her cellphone? Is it simply because it's a part of her? And how does that allow her to switch timelines? it's because she's a super robot
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Jul 5, 2013 18:06
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CrackedWindow posted:Amazing manga but i'm kinda confused how can she contact herself in another timeline through her cellphone? Is it simply because it's a part of her? And how does that allow her to switch timelines? Marii putting the cellphone in Gaku's hand and Tenjou's talks about qualia made her understand the concept of quantum mechanics in the macrostate. Since she can accept a world where someone can put a cellphone in her hand and she can use it as both a regular hand and a cellphone, she becomes intrinsically aware of the superposition of those two states. This expands to being aware of multiple hers when she calls herself; her trick is recognizing the superposition of every possible her at that point in time, then picking the one that gets her what she wants the fastest. If you've ever seen a replay of Super Meat Boy, she runs the level replay first and then goes back and picks which Meat Boy finishes the level best.
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Jul 5, 2013 18:12
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MadRhetoric posted:Marii putting the cellphone in Gaku's hand and Tenjou's talks about qualia made her understand the concept of quantum mechanics in the macrostate. Since she can accept a world where someone can put a cellphone in her hand and she can use it as both a regular hand and a cellphone, she becomes intrinsically aware of the superposition of those two states. This expands to being aware of multiple hers when she calls herself; her trick is recognizing the superposition of every possible her at that point in time, then picking the one that gets her what she wants the fastest. Ah ok. So does she live out each timeline one by one? Her different approaches to questioning Alice leads me to believe she can switch whenever she wants. Unless i'm missing something here.
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Jul 5, 2013 18:34
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CrackedWindow posted:Ah ok. So does she live out each timeline one by one? Her different approaches to questioning Alice leads me to believe she can switch whenever she wants. Unless i'm missing something here. No, they are all happening at the same time (if you follow the many-worlds interpretation), or are only possibilities that never actually occurred (through quantum state collapse, under the Copenhagen interpretation). The many-worlds interpretation is possibly easier to understand/explain: In that model, Gaku is able to access the memories and knowledge of all other potential outcomes of her actions, and that allows the narrating Gaku to tell the stories that never happened to her-of-that-world, as well as the one that did happen to her-of-that-world. All of them happen/could happen, but we only hear the story of some of them.
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Jul 5, 2013 18:39
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Also, she never really kills off any route, unless she literally got killed off in that route. However less likely it may seem, every choice may lead to a successful resolution, revelation or contribute skills to the whole to succeed.
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Jul 5, 2013 19:26
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Kind of unrelated, but I remembered seeing this news article about NASA buying a quantum computer a few months ago, and considering the manga's plot thought people might find it interesting.quote:Unlike standard machines, the D-Wave Two processor appears to make use of an effect called quantum tunnelling. This allows it to reach solutions to certain types of mathematical problems in fractions of a second. Effectively, it can try all possible solutions at the same time and then select the best. quote:In one case it took less than half a second to do something that took conventional software 30 minutes.
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Jul 5, 2013 20:30
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Bremen posted:Kind of unrelated, but I remembered seeing this news article about NASA buying a quantum computer a few months ago, and considering the manga's plot thought people might find it interesting. Hah, that's surprisingly relevant - and makes me wonder how the hell a computer can do it without a magic cellphone to call alternate versions of itself that are doing different versions of the same problem.
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Jul 5, 2013 21:57
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Wolpertinger posted:Hah, that's surprisingly relevant - and makes me wonder how the hell a computer can do it without a magic cellphone to call alternate versions of itself that are doing different versions of the same problem. That's the thing, for really small particles, things naturally work like that. IIRC, they can interfere with their past/future selves too, though this is a bit difficult to define for things which we can't even measure directly
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Jul 5, 2013 22:35
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CrackedWindow posted:Ah ok. So does she live out each timeline one by one? Her different approaches to questioning Alice leads me to believe she can switch whenever she wants. Unless i'm missing something here. That's why set an objective for herself with such determination. Since there is an objective, she'll naturally take the best path towards it. She is not actually switching, the approaches that do not work interfere with themselves, while the right approach gets reinforced There was actually a dude in Jojo who had a very similar power, but used it in the opposite way. Mega spoiler for part7: He could interact with parallel-world versions of himself but instead of gaining knowledge from them (well, he could chat with them) he could transfer his consciousness to them and switch locations (and obviously do plenty of bizarre poo poo with this), so instead of gaining knowledge he could gain a body, and instead of taking the best path he could bring someone from a better path to the current one.
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Jul 6, 2013 02:21
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I see. Can anyone explain wave function collapse and its relation to the story in (relatively) simple terms?
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Jul 6, 2013 08:44
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Wave Function Collapse is when you actually observe something that's in a state of flux, and "Collapse" all the potentialities down into one reality. Schroedinger's Cat stops being both alive and dead, and turns out to be one or the other, so to speak. What this basically is means "Gaku is running all these possibilites through her multiple-parallel universe selves, which has infinite probabilities--and when she finds out the path that Gets What She Wants, she takes it, collapsing all of those potentials into one "Thing that is done"... Sort of, IANAQP
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Jul 6, 2013 09:35
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I just read all 11 chapters in one sitting, I really like stories like this. My only real complaint is that I felt the latest story developments were just sort of explained in the past tense instead of being shown. I mean, there is certainly a lot of stuff that happened that could be entire chapters by themselves, Gaku getting into Jaunt and confronting Alice was just a few pages.
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Jul 6, 2013 10:46
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What I really want to know is what Jaunt wanted Marii to build them. Possibly something akin to what Gaku has become. The freakiest bit of foreshadowing is how Gaku says that at this point, she had already stopped being herself, implying that her power is slowly changing her nature. She's fundamentally not far off from being Dr. Manhattan already, just not quite as immediate and obvious with the blowing poo poo up part (yet at least). The better comparison is that her ability is literally the one granted by the Spice to Mau'dib/Navigators/Leto II from Dune.
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Jul 6, 2013 11:57
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Yeah, keep in mind that basically everything we perceive and interpret is filtered through our past experiences and memories. What we have experienced is who we are. A substantial part of a person's character is every single thing they have seen or done, or rather, how they remember it. Now keep in mind how much (and what) Manabu has, by now, "experienced". She explicitly says that she "gains" all those memories, including things like having tortured, killed, whatever. It's not even "slowly" changing her, due to the nature of her ability and the irrelevance of time, it has basically instantly changed her very being completely. She's not an ordinary human anymore and the pure wealth of what she's done kind of makes her a monster at this point.
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Jul 6, 2013 17:58
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Hodgepodge posted:The better comparison is that her ability is literally the one granted by the Spice to Mau'dib/Navigators/Leto II from Dune. Hah, drat, I knew the whole 'seeing all the alternate futures and picking the best one' thing sounds familiar.
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Jul 6, 2013 19:06
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Sakurazuka posted:Hah, drat, I knew the whole 'seeing all the alternate futures and picking the best one' thing sounds familiar. Here I was thinking more like Coil from Worm myself. Didn't even think about Dune till Hodgepodge brought it up. veekie fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Jul 6, 2013 |
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Jul 6, 2013 20:10
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Hodgepodge posted:What I really want to know is what Jaunt wanted Marii to build them. Possibly something akin to what Gaku has become. Holy crap, I literally feel like I missed the whole forest by staring at one single tree. That's seriously one of my all-time favorite books and the way that Paul's prescience works is really similar to how Gaku is using that phone, i.e. Private Reflections on Muad'Dib by the Princess Irulan posted:How can they be put to the test in the face of the unanswered questions? Consider: How much is actual prediction of the "wave form" (as Muad'Dib referred to his vision-image) and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy? What of the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy? Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife? e: I wonder if Gaku can be interfered with by another person who can do something similar to her? I wonder if she will be. a kitten fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Jul 6, 2013 |
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Jul 6, 2013 21:06
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I have never been this happy to suspend my disbelief since the Matrix. I see lot of people here are knowledgeable about that stuff in various degrees, but if anyone wants a pop-sci book on the subject, I highly suggest Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos. The Many World interpretation is mentioned between other amazing things about Quantum Mechanics (No, Mass Effect 2, Quantum Entanglement does not work that way), and has a lot of things about Relativity because that poo poo it tight and also Superstring Theory because Greene is a huge string nerd, but it gives a solid primer for understanding these things. After that, if you want your mind completely blown off to another dimension, also read The Hidden Reality by the same author. It explores various alternate universe theories that emerge from our current understanding of how the universe works, and one of them is of course the Many Worlds approach. I wouldn't be surprised if the author of Qualia has also read this book, it's the exact balance of grounded science and sci-fi fascination that can inspire such a story.
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Jul 10, 2013 12:25
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As much as I love the sudden shift into parallel worlds and Quantum physics, I really wish we got a few more chapters of Marii being silly and fixing people/robots.
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Jul 11, 2013 02:40
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Wandering Knitter posted:As much as I love the sudden shift into parallel worlds and Quantum physics, I really wish we got a few more chapters of Marii being silly and fixing people/robots. Everyone else in the story is a robot. Her vision is completely accurate and she really is the only human. She can fix people with spare parts because they actually are machines. People with special powers like the math girl are just super robots like she said near the beginning. Gaku has the power of adaptability and is simply running complex simulations to allow her to choose the best course of action in any situation.
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Jul 11, 2013 05:35
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Not quite. Yukari can either see into an alternate universe where people are robots instead of people, or when she observes someone they actually do turn into a robot(but no one else can see or interact with it). Not sure how controlling model robots fits into this. Maybe it also goes the other way around, and when she observes robots they turn into people?
RatHat fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Jul 11, 2013 |
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Jul 11, 2013 08:18
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RatHat posted:Not quite. Yukari can either see into an alternate universe where people are robots instead of people, or when she observes someone they actually do turn into a robot(but no one else can see or interact with it). Not sure how controlling model robots fits into this. Maybe it also goes the other way around, and when she observes robots they turn into people? Yeah, and in addition, people work like people except when Yukari does robotic things to them. I believe she also sees herself as a robot, and still needs to eat and drink, so both states are true, except Yukari can selectively choose which one she interacts with.
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Jul 11, 2013 08:28
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veekie posted:Yeah, and in addition, people work like people except when Yukari does robotic things to them. I believe she also sees herself as a robot, and still needs to eat and drink, so both states are true, except Yukari can selectively choose which one she interacts with. It's said in chapter 1 or 2 that Yukari sees herself as a human. That's why she got so nervous about swimming because she couldn't see her robot parts to tell if she was waterproof.
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Jul 11, 2013 08:33
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So yeah, I guess what's going to happen is that she'll realise that her true goal was to never lose her friend in the first place, which means making her true goal not telling her to try out JAUNT instead of saying maybe she should give it a go, basically resetting the timeline at that point. I'm liking what I'm reading so far. It can be a tad dry, but it's presented well enough. I do like that last line before TO BE CONTINUED.
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Jul 11, 2013 13:05
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This manga is amazing. Unlimited Self Works is the best thing.
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Jul 11, 2013 15:06
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New chapter time! http://www.batoto.net/read/_/182102/qualia-the-purple_ch12_by_tenko While still a bit exposition-y for my tastes, there was at least less than the previous few chapters, and it looks like next chapter could have even better balance. Some interesting developments this time to be sure, and the 'solution' so far seems to mesh with people's speculation here, though I doubt there won't be more curve-balls thrown in the future.
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Jul 12, 2013 13:25
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I suppose learning you're a potential deviant would be pretty disturbing.
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Jul 12, 2013 13:39
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veekie posted:I suppose learning you're a potential deviant would be pretty disturbing. The fact that she seemed so focused on the gender rather than, you know, little kid aspect (even if her Alice was an outlier maturity-wise) was kind of weird. I just chalked it up to  .I'm happy it continued the trend of ominous/badass ending pages though!
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Jul 12, 2013 13:42
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Well, there's an answer to the "Gaku is a monster because of what she did in alternate timelines" argument; while she knows what the other hers have done and has their memories, she doesn't necessarily agree with them or even consider the other instances of herself to be the same as who she herself is. Sort of. It's complicated. Anyway, I figured this would happen, but I am surprised it happened so fast. Wasn't expecting it for... I dunno, could have waited until the resolution even. It does throw off my speculation, but on the other hand it means that I'm not waiting for something I know (or think I know) is going to happen anyway, so that's going to be fun.
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Jul 12, 2013 13:47
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I just noticed we switched path when the call was interrupted. The Gaku musing after Alice wakes up is the 'deviant'.
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Jul 12, 2013 13:56
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Yep, just like I thought it would happen. Gaku realized the objective was saving Yukari so she consciously collapsed all realities after the "branching" point. Which is where she decided to tell Yukari about joining Jaunt. It happened way earlier than I would expect though. It also brings back trigger that caused all of this to happened in the first place, which was her first call. Im expecting some time fuckery here with some sort of stable time loop poo poo to happen in regards to that call. veekie posted:I just noticed we switched path when the call was interrupted. The Gaku musing after Alice wakes up is the 'deviant'. Cao Ni Ma fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Jul 12, 2013 |
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Jul 12, 2013 13:56
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Insurrectionist posted:The fact that she seemed so focused on the gender rather than, you know, little kid aspect (even if her Alice was an outlier maturity-wise) was kind of weird. I just chalked it up to Future spoilers: You will not like chapter 15 then.
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Jul 12, 2013 14:05
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Man, the mood whiplash on this was at full this chapter. Started funny, then serious, then heartwarming and finally ominous. 
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Jul 12, 2013 16:10
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Hatou is turning into a TARDIS
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Jul 12, 2013 16:31
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Raenir Salazar posted:Hatou is turning into a TARDIS She's honestly pretty drat horrifying at this point. I assume we'll wind up with a universe where she behaves normally again, but there's going to be some kind of repercussions from all this.
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Jul 12, 2013 16:42
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Last two pages look like the biggest stretches might be costing her something
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Jul 12, 2013 16:43
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Raenir Salazar posted:Hatou is turning into a TARDIS Haha, it made me think more of reverse Terminator. With her power she could beat even Arnold. "Where is she? I must
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Jul 12, 2013 16:45
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