(Originally posted to Let's Play Sacntuary)
#91, originally posted Jun 23 2016, 11:37 AM
I made some additions to the last post, both of them scene titles. One I just neglected to add. The other didn't show up onscreen.
Route E—Session 19, part 7: Masterminds
The four companions follow separate paths, and they end up having different conversations with two beings that have been working behind the scenes. Timelines are converging. Afterward, they all arrive at their destination: Enigma. But what should they actually do?
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
forsaken
(Another title that doesn't show up onscreen. In this case, it looks like it was about to be written, but then fails to do so once Ishtar's silhouette appears. I don't know if this is how it normally looks, since my software setup is not quite normal.)
Another series of images being flashed. Most of them we've seen, but one is new: Yumishtar gazing at a gravestone, grasping the rosary. I wonder whose grave it is.
And finally we see that Ashur is more than just a name for some scenario in Babylon. It's another AI like Marduk. But oddly, not only does he use "boku" to refer to himself, he also has Hinata's voice; why is that?
If you ask me what is wrong with what Ashur is saying... I can't say. I need to hear more.
children of the atom
(HE talks to Marduk.)
More images. A new one here is that creepy eyeless woman (Ereshkigal?), with HE laying his head on her lap, and LEM hovering nearby. There's also Mutsuki and Yayoi standing together.
Now we meet Marduk. And she sounds like Mutsuki. Well, that's less surprising, I suppose, considering Mutsuki "raised" her. But then, if these AIs adopt the voice of their "mentors", what does that say about Ashur? Is Hinata somehow involved with Ashur, in the future, or in some alternate timeline we're not aware of?
Medusoid
Ummm... In a sense, I can understand what's being said here. And in another, I'm not sure. It seems that those first four routes represent timelines that aren't necessarily consistent (?), but somehow they're going to come together and produce something that is consistent. How that will work out, I'm not sure. Are there falsehoods in here somewhere, and those will disappear? Or is it something more complicated?
Truth and Reality
(Hinata thinks about the two LEMs.)
So, I might have called it, then? Back in session 7, I said that Marduk might be behind those emails. Well, that was supposedly LEM reaching out, and now we have the idea that Marduk might actually be partially controlling LEM.
Well, we already knew that Mitsuhiko was involved with Babylon somehow, though it wasn't clear he had done something like this. Now that I think about it, I wonder if he actually knew what happened to Mutsuki. He claims he tried to find out but never could, but that might not be true. But then, what about the thing with Ashur? That was recent. If Marduk were destroyed, what would that do to Mutsuki, who is interfaced to Enigma? There is talk of waking her up, which would probably be bad for Marduk, but attacking Marduk in cyberspace is a bit different, and we've seen people suffer terrible consequences from such events (like, e.g. Sami in that one bad ending of route B). Was Mitsuhiko unaware of his daughter's state, or did he know and tried to destroy Marduk anyway?
Phase Transition
"As far as we know, no matter how much development would go into Neumann-type computers, no true artificial intelligence would ever form." Where the hell did the writers get this idea? It's perfectly possible. If nothing else, it would eventually be possible to simulate the functioning of a complex brain with sufficient accuracy that its functioning would be indistinguishable from that of a real brain. This would, in theory, develop an intelligence. With a conventional computer, the main difference would be one of efficiency, since such computers are structured very differently from brains, which have extremely high parallelism silicon circuits cannot hope to match. That does not preclude simulations; it only makes them very slow.
No doubt, they would point to quantum computers. Those, too, can be simulated. Now, I'm certainly not an expert on this. But from what I have heard, quantum systems are extremely computationally expensive. For instance, I once saw a talk someone did about a quantum field simulation of a meson, saying that it took a massive amount of computation to produce a crude approximation. Somewhere there was also a statement that the inefficiency of conventional computers at simulating such phenomena was an inspiration for the development of quantum computers in the first place, with the argument that, if conventional computers cannot simulate quantum effects efficiently, then a computer utilizing such effects may be able to do some computations much more efficiently. But again, there is nothing being computed that was previously incomputable. Even the primitive Turing machine can compute anything a modern computer can (actually more, considering it has infinite memory), but working from a tape, which has no random access, especially when it has to shuffle symbols around to get anywhere, just takes too long to achieve anything significant.
So, if quantum computers are useful for AI, by all means they should be used. They might even turn out to be indispensable for practical implementation. But they are not fundamentally required.
"We don't know the mechanism behind developing intelligence." I'm not sure this is true, either. We may not have a good understanding of the phenomenon currently. However, some things have become clear. For instance, it seems to be an emergent property of certain complex systems, such as brains. Individual neurons are very simple, and could never be called intelligent. But with enough of them working together, with the proper training, intelligent behavior tends to emerge. There have been experiments building neural networks from real neurons, essentially tiny brains grown in a lab; in one such experiment, when trained with stimulus from and output to a simulation, the brain was able to learn and improve its performance. Granted, it wasn't a true test of intelligence, but it shows some promise.
On the other hand, there has been a recent tremendous advance in image recognition, using something called convolutional neural networks. There's a bit of an explanation on Computerphile. I haven't looked into this myself, but it seems that results of about 98% accuracy have been claimed. It's still not intelligence, but I think it's a significant step in the right direction. This might be getting closer to how brains process vision.
"...we should really give more thought into circumstances brought about by miracles and/or coincidences." You better give a good, scientific definition of "miracle", though. What would that be? As for "coincidence", ask mathematicians and scientists about the nature of such things. Probability and statistics are very easy to get wrong, and many processes are popularly misunderstood. As an example, consider the "birthday paradox". If you're not familiar with this, ask yourself, if you gather people at random into a room, do at least two of them share the same birthday? What is the probability of this? Let us assume, for simplicity, that all birthdays are equally likely (ignore the edge case of February 29). Although you need 366 people to be certain, would it surprise you to learn that you need only 23 for such a thing to occur half the time? And the probability rapidly approaches near certainty well before there are 366, or even 100. And this is not just an interesting but useless fact. Some security systems that rely on hash functions have hash values that are too small and can fall prey to a "birthday attack", in which a number of guesses far fewer than naïvely expected to be necessary can be used to attack something protected by a hash value.
TERMINUS
I see the two choices are, "Is there no other plan besides substitution?" and "Is there no other way?" How unstraightforward. Does this mean that one involves waking Mutsuki, while the other considers possibilities in which Mutsuki remains in the pod?
(Another title that doesn't show up onscreen. In this case, it looks like it was about to be written, but then fails to do so once Ishtar's silhouette appears. I don't know if this is how it normally looks, since my software setup is not quite normal.)
Another series of images being flashed. Most of them we've seen, but one is new: Yumishtar gazing at a gravestone, grasping the rosary. I wonder whose grave it is.
And finally we see that Ashur is more than just a name for some scenario in Babylon. It's another AI like Marduk. But oddly, not only does he use "boku" to refer to himself, he also has Hinata's voice; why is that?
If you ask me what is wrong with what Ashur is saying... I can't say. I need to hear more.
children of the atom
(HE talks to Marduk.)
More images. A new one here is that creepy eyeless woman (Ereshkigal?), with HE laying his head on her lap, and LEM hovering nearby. There's also Mutsuki and Yayoi standing together.
Now we meet Marduk. And she sounds like Mutsuki. Well, that's less surprising, I suppose, considering Mutsuki "raised" her. But then, if these AIs adopt the voice of their "mentors", what does that say about Ashur? Is Hinata somehow involved with Ashur, in the future, or in some alternate timeline we're not aware of?
Medusoid
Ummm... In a sense, I can understand what's being said here. And in another, I'm not sure. It seems that those first four routes represent timelines that aren't necessarily consistent (?), but somehow they're going to come together and produce something that is consistent. How that will work out, I'm not sure. Are there falsehoods in here somewhere, and those will disappear? Or is it something more complicated?
Truth and Reality
(Hinata thinks about the two LEMs.)
So, I might have called it, then? Back in session 7, I said that Marduk might be behind those emails. Well, that was supposedly LEM reaching out, and now we have the idea that Marduk might actually be partially controlling LEM.
Well, we already knew that Mitsuhiko was involved with Babylon somehow, though it wasn't clear he had done something like this. Now that I think about it, I wonder if he actually knew what happened to Mutsuki. He claims he tried to find out but never could, but that might not be true. But then, what about the thing with Ashur? That was recent. If Marduk were destroyed, what would that do to Mutsuki, who is interfaced to Enigma? There is talk of waking her up, which would probably be bad for Marduk, but attacking Marduk in cyberspace is a bit different, and we've seen people suffer terrible consequences from such events (like, e.g. Sami in that one bad ending of route B). Was Mitsuhiko unaware of his daughter's state, or did he know and tried to destroy Marduk anyway?
Phase Transition
"As far as we know, no matter how much development would go into Neumann-type computers, no true artificial intelligence would ever form." Where the hell did the writers get this idea? It's perfectly possible. If nothing else, it would eventually be possible to simulate the functioning of a complex brain with sufficient accuracy that its functioning would be indistinguishable from that of a real brain. This would, in theory, develop an intelligence. With a conventional computer, the main difference would be one of efficiency, since such computers are structured very differently from brains, which have extremely high parallelism silicon circuits cannot hope to match. That does not preclude simulations; it only makes them very slow.
No doubt, they would point to quantum computers. Those, too, can be simulated. Now, I'm certainly not an expert on this. But from what I have heard, quantum systems are extremely computationally expensive. For instance, I once saw a talk someone did about a quantum field simulation of a meson, saying that it took a massive amount of computation to produce a crude approximation. Somewhere there was also a statement that the inefficiency of conventional computers at simulating such phenomena was an inspiration for the development of quantum computers in the first place, with the argument that, if conventional computers cannot simulate quantum effects efficiently, then a computer utilizing such effects may be able to do some computations much more efficiently. But again, there is nothing being computed that was previously incomputable. Even the primitive Turing machine can compute anything a modern computer can (actually more, considering it has infinite memory), but working from a tape, which has no random access, especially when it has to shuffle symbols around to get anywhere, just takes too long to achieve anything significant.
So, if quantum computers are useful for AI, by all means they should be used. They might even turn out to be indispensable for practical implementation. But they are not fundamentally required.
"We don't know the mechanism behind developing intelligence." I'm not sure this is true, either. We may not have a good understanding of the phenomenon currently. However, some things have become clear. For instance, it seems to be an emergent property of certain complex systems, such as brains. Individual neurons are very simple, and could never be called intelligent. But with enough of them working together, with the proper training, intelligent behavior tends to emerge. There have been experiments building neural networks from real neurons, essentially tiny brains grown in a lab; in one such experiment, when trained with stimulus from and output to a simulation, the brain was able to learn and improve its performance. Granted, it wasn't a true test of intelligence, but it shows some promise.
On the other hand, there has been a recent tremendous advance in image recognition, using something called convolutional neural networks. There's a bit of an explanation on Computerphile. I haven't looked into this myself, but it seems that results of about 98% accuracy have been claimed. It's still not intelligence, but I think it's a significant step in the right direction. This might be getting closer to how brains process vision.
"...we should really give more thought into circumstances brought about by miracles and/or coincidences." You better give a good, scientific definition of "miracle", though. What would that be? As for "coincidence", ask mathematicians and scientists about the nature of such things. Probability and statistics are very easy to get wrong, and many processes are popularly misunderstood. As an example, consider the "birthday paradox". If you're not familiar with this, ask yourself, if you gather people at random into a room, do at least two of them share the same birthday? What is the probability of this? Let us assume, for simplicity, that all birthdays are equally likely (ignore the edge case of February 29). Although you need 366 people to be certain, would it surprise you to learn that you need only 23 for such a thing to occur half the time? And the probability rapidly approaches near certainty well before there are 366, or even 100. And this is not just an interesting but useless fact. Some security systems that rely on hash functions have hash values that are too small and can fall prey to a "birthday attack", in which a number of guesses far fewer than naïvely expected to be necessary can be used to attack something protected by a hash value.
TERMINUS
I see the two choices are, "Is there no other plan besides substitution?" and "Is there no other way?" How unstraightforward. Does this mean that one involves waking Mutsuki, while the other considers possibilities in which Mutsuki remains in the pod?
Route E—Session 19 (full)
#92, originally posted Jun 27 2016, 08:23 AM
Route E—Session 20, part 1: Password Hint
Everyone decides to shut down Marduk. But to get Mutsuki out, they need 10 passcodes. They get the first 9, but the information about the 10th is hopelessly corrupted. So, remembering what Enlil said before they parted from her, they take the only option left to them.
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
Into the trauma
The 10th passcode was apparently corrupted by the problems from the first eclipse. ...Or was it? Maybe it was deliberately corrupted? Like, maybe Mutsuki herself planned it that way to make things harder? Or Enlil scrambled it as a sort of protection.
Huh? Enigma might go haywire just by having an incorrect passcode input? What kind of security is that? I mean, normally, that would just lead to an error message. At worst, the system should act to prevent further attempts, in order to protect against cracking, though that should only be activated after several attempts; it's bad to punish innocent users for normal expected mistakes. Even worse if the whole system responds to such mistakes!
When Ishtar said there were two other Enigmas, I immediately thought of the tank in Nergal's lab. However, it seems she was referring to tanks right there in the same room as Mutsuki. What do you wanna bet the tank at Nergal's is a fourth Enigma housing the LEM user (who is probably Ereshkigal)?
This scene from the beginning of the route is replayed. It says, "'We' came from there", but who is "we"? The four protagonists? Or perhaps Mutsuki and Marduk?
The 10th passcode was apparently corrupted by the problems from the first eclipse. ...Or was it? Maybe it was deliberately corrupted? Like, maybe Mutsuki herself planned it that way to make things harder? Or Enlil scrambled it as a sort of protection.
Huh? Enigma might go haywire just by having an incorrect passcode input? What kind of security is that? I mean, normally, that would just lead to an error message. At worst, the system should act to prevent further attempts, in order to protect against cracking, though that should only be activated after several attempts; it's bad to punish innocent users for normal expected mistakes. Even worse if the whole system responds to such mistakes!
When Ishtar said there were two other Enigmas, I immediately thought of the tank in Nergal's lab. However, it seems she was referring to tanks right there in the same room as Mutsuki. What do you wanna bet the tank at Nergal's is a fourth Enigma housing the LEM user (who is probably Ereshkigal)?
This scene from the beginning of the route is replayed. It says, "'We' came from there", but who is "we"? The four protagonists? Or perhaps Mutsuki and Marduk?
#93, originally posted Jun 29 2016, 02:28 PM
Route E—Session 20, part 2: Mirrors
Upon choosing a perspective, memories are downloaded to us; we see various snippets from before. We awaken to find we seem to have what we need already. How did we obtain it, and how will we get out? Where is the beginning? Where is the end? And what is happening to time itself?
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
MATRYOSHKA
So... now we've looped back to the starting point... sort of? Or rather... recursing?
But then we sort of fast-forward through those events. But we're observing ourselves.
Huh... this extra stuff now shows up before Hinata awakens in bed. Did it belong there in the first place?
Hmm. A familiar sensation, associated with this last bit (back to when I made the "looking down" choice, probably, or maybe it's talking specifically about the thing with talking to Mutsuki we just saw a few seconds before). Flashes about "AIO" (not sure what flashing the words like that is supposed to represent... something barely remembered, maybe?). If that's what that was, then... we're having memories "downloaded" again. What are the implications? We're syncing with a Shadow, clearly. But is that all? I still believe there's the possibility of such memories being manipulated so as to cause problems for the user, or worse. In such a case, we can't trust those memories. But on the other hand, we don't know for sure such a thing is happening.
And then here's this little movie suggesting we're leaving a virtual world (now an image on a computer screen), only to find the current one is also virtual, so we leave it too, etc.
Hmm. Can remember some things, but can't remember others? This doesn't feel right.
End of the future connected to the start of the past. A loop. A bubble? Quantum bubble, as it was called? Disconnected from "normal" time.
In order to awaken Mutsuki, the dream must end. But to end the dream, Mutsuki must awaken. A chicken-and-egg problem. An ontological paradox, but without the paradoxical existence. Events, objects, and pieces of information that seem to cause their own existence via time travel are a staple of time travel stories, including in Nakazawa's stories. They cannot be logically explained, because they break the normal law of cause-and-effect. But what about here, where one is needed but doesn't seem to exist?
I/O
Hmm. An apparent infinite recursion. No apparent way to reach Mutsuki. (But there's a memory of it. Where does that come from?)
Here's a thought: perhaps this recursion is key to breaking the loop, assuming that's what we need to do.
Regarding mirrors: it's a common misconception that mirrors horizontally reverse images. Perhaps I should say it is a misperception. Think about it this way: when you look at your reflection in a mirror, what you see certainly is the horizontal opposite of how others see your face. But the real reason is because you are the only one seeing things in the same horizontal order as they exist on your face. If you could make a frozen copy, or snapshot, of your body as it looks at the mirror, then step out and look at it, what would that mean? When you do so, you are rotating your body about a vertical axis. Thus, you are reversing your own self left-for-right with respect to the mirror plane. As you look at the copy of your body, you see its right side to your left, and vice versa.
Another thought experiment: suppose you take a chunk of some material, and carve solid letters out of it, spelling out a word or phrase (or it could just be paper that you cut). It should be constructed so it can be seen from either side. Hold it up, so that you can read it normally (i.e. it's not backward). Hold it up this way in front of you, as you stand before a large mirror. What do you see in the mirror? Does the word or phrase appear normal or reversed?
If you understand the above, you should understand that horizontal reversal is not what really happens. The fact that we believe it is due to the way we normally move. If we normally turned around by flipping our bodies vertically (so our heads and feet trade places), then we might believe that mirrors flip things vertically.
So, what do mirrors actually reverse? Depth. What moves toward the mirror is reflected as moving out of the mirror, and vice versa. If one were to impose a Cartesian coordinate system, with one axis pointing perpendicular to the mirror, then a mirror image has the same coordinate system but with that perpendicular axis pointing in the opposite direction. If one is right-handed, the other is left-handed; the two cannot be rotated into each other. Of course, the handedness is the same as the case with a horizontal reversal, but the orientations are different.
Perhaps this is difficult to visualize. So, I found a video explanation that says essentially the same things.
Anyway... No apparent end to the recursion, and no apparent beginning to the returning from the recursion. And yet here we are, having apparently obtained the passcode from nowhere. Is this supposed to be a miracle, then? Or perhaps it's just an illusion or something. I don't know. But it certainly seems as if this cannot end until we literally get to the bottom of this.
COGITO ERGO SUM
So, it might not be an infinite recursion. Which is definitely good, or there probably would be no hope. The analogy of the parallel mirrors makes sense; every reflection diminishes the amount of light being reflected, and because energy is quantized, the reflections cannot go on forever. Of course, that doesn't guarantee there is an end that we can see.
So... now we've looped back to the starting point... sort of? Or rather... recursing?
But then we sort of fast-forward through those events. But we're observing ourselves.
Huh... this extra stuff now shows up before Hinata awakens in bed. Did it belong there in the first place?
Hmm. A familiar sensation, associated with this last bit (back to when I made the "looking down" choice, probably, or maybe it's talking specifically about the thing with talking to Mutsuki we just saw a few seconds before). Flashes about "AIO" (not sure what flashing the words like that is supposed to represent... something barely remembered, maybe?). If that's what that was, then... we're having memories "downloaded" again. What are the implications? We're syncing with a Shadow, clearly. But is that all? I still believe there's the possibility of such memories being manipulated so as to cause problems for the user, or worse. In such a case, we can't trust those memories. But on the other hand, we don't know for sure such a thing is happening.
And then here's this little movie suggesting we're leaving a virtual world (now an image on a computer screen), only to find the current one is also virtual, so we leave it too, etc.
Hmm. Can remember some things, but can't remember others? This doesn't feel right.
End of the future connected to the start of the past. A loop. A bubble? Quantum bubble, as it was called? Disconnected from "normal" time.
In order to awaken Mutsuki, the dream must end. But to end the dream, Mutsuki must awaken. A chicken-and-egg problem. An ontological paradox, but without the paradoxical existence. Events, objects, and pieces of information that seem to cause their own existence via time travel are a staple of time travel stories, including in Nakazawa's stories. They cannot be logically explained, because they break the normal law of cause-and-effect. But what about here, where one is needed but doesn't seem to exist?
I/O
Hmm. An apparent infinite recursion. No apparent way to reach Mutsuki. (But there's a memory of it. Where does that come from?)
Here's a thought: perhaps this recursion is key to breaking the loop, assuming that's what we need to do.
Regarding mirrors: it's a common misconception that mirrors horizontally reverse images. Perhaps I should say it is a misperception. Think about it this way: when you look at your reflection in a mirror, what you see certainly is the horizontal opposite of how others see your face. But the real reason is because you are the only one seeing things in the same horizontal order as they exist on your face. If you could make a frozen copy, or snapshot, of your body as it looks at the mirror, then step out and look at it, what would that mean? When you do so, you are rotating your body about a vertical axis. Thus, you are reversing your own self left-for-right with respect to the mirror plane. As you look at the copy of your body, you see its right side to your left, and vice versa.
Another thought experiment: suppose you take a chunk of some material, and carve solid letters out of it, spelling out a word or phrase (or it could just be paper that you cut). It should be constructed so it can be seen from either side. Hold it up, so that you can read it normally (i.e. it's not backward). Hold it up this way in front of you, as you stand before a large mirror. What do you see in the mirror? Does the word or phrase appear normal or reversed?
If you understand the above, you should understand that horizontal reversal is not what really happens. The fact that we believe it is due to the way we normally move. If we normally turned around by flipping our bodies vertically (so our heads and feet trade places), then we might believe that mirrors flip things vertically.
So, what do mirrors actually reverse? Depth. What moves toward the mirror is reflected as moving out of the mirror, and vice versa. If one were to impose a Cartesian coordinate system, with one axis pointing perpendicular to the mirror, then a mirror image has the same coordinate system but with that perpendicular axis pointing in the opposite direction. If one is right-handed, the other is left-handed; the two cannot be rotated into each other. Of course, the handedness is the same as the case with a horizontal reversal, but the orientations are different.
Perhaps this is difficult to visualize. So, I found a video explanation that says essentially the same things.
Anyway... No apparent end to the recursion, and no apparent beginning to the returning from the recursion. And yet here we are, having apparently obtained the passcode from nowhere. Is this supposed to be a miracle, then? Or perhaps it's just an illusion or something. I don't know. But it certainly seems as if this cannot end until we literally get to the bottom of this.
COGITO ERGO SUM
So, it might not be an infinite recursion. Which is definitely good, or there probably would be no hope. The analogy of the parallel mirrors makes sense; every reflection diminishes the amount of light being reflected, and because energy is quantized, the reflections cannot go on forever. Of course, that doesn't guarantee there is an end that we can see.
#94, originally posted Jul 2 2016, 02:57 PM
Route E—Session 20, part 3: Soul
Yumi briefly remembers an incident from her days in Criminal, when a program seemed to misbehave. Then she has a conversation with LEM about the location of the soul. She has a strange encounter with mirrors. The four protagonists meet as separate entities and discuss their situation. Hinata and Yumi find themselves in an elevator hall and meet something unexpected.
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
COGITO ERGO SUM
Yumi thinks of programs as lifeforms, huh?
So, LEM is saying that she and Mutsuki should not have worried about all of this "where is the soul?" stuff so much. Mutsuki wouldn't have run away to plug herself into a dream machine. And Ereshkigal (I'm assuming that's who this is) wouldn't have... um, done whatever it is she did.
Hmm. The past, present, and future "me"s I understand. The "true" me, somewhat. I'm not sure about the "other" me, though. Maybe it's Ishtar's Shadow? I notice it doesn't have the glasses, which was true of the real Ishtar.
Multilayer World Hypothesis
The "someone" that Yumi is referring to. Is that anything like
They talk about being able to see things in 2 dimensions. In my opinion, that would also be impossible, because it has no depth. (Never mind that the concept violates the known laws of physics—nothing is truly 2-dimensional, though some extremely thin systems could be said to come close.)
I tried to read up on advanced waves. They are definitely a thing in theoretical physics (not necessarily experimentally), and they do indeed go from future to past. That's about all I could understand.
Anyway, as I was saying in the video, this reminds me of things like the double-slit experiment. You've most likely heard of it. But to summarize: if you have a point source of light, possibly light diffracted through a single slit, passed through two slits side-by-side, and finally projected on a surface, the projection shows an interference pattern, demonstrating that the light acts as though it is made of waves.
Interestingly enough, there's also an experiment where light (or other types of radiation) can be sent through a similar apparatus, but as single particles widely spaced in time. One might imagine that each particle that makes it through simply goes through one slit or the other, resulting in two smooth spotlight patterns added together. But no. Even in this experiment, the interference patterns show up. This has very bizarre implications for the propagation of particles. One way to think of it is that the particle somehow travels all possible trajectories, interfering with itself, but only one trajectory happens, with a probability distribution derived from said interference. Are these advanced waves involved in the process at all?
So, Hinata meets HINATA. We don't see a Shadow of Yumi; obviously, things must be different for her. The other Shadow left behind in a similar way to HINATA would be SAKUYA. I wonder what happened to her.
Yumi thinks of programs as lifeforms, huh?
So, LEM is saying that she and Mutsuki should not have worried about all of this "where is the soul?" stuff so much. Mutsuki wouldn't have run away to plug herself into a dream machine. And Ereshkigal (I'm assuming that's who this is) wouldn't have... um, done whatever it is she did.
Hmm. The past, present, and future "me"s I understand. The "true" me, somewhat. I'm not sure about the "other" me, though. Maybe it's Ishtar's Shadow? I notice it doesn't have the glasses, which was true of the real Ishtar.
Multilayer World Hypothesis
The "someone" that Yumi is referring to. Is that anything like
Spoiler for other VNs
Blick Winkel from Ever17 or the 0-dimensional being from Remember11?
They talk about being able to see things in 2 dimensions. In my opinion, that would also be impossible, because it has no depth. (Never mind that the concept violates the known laws of physics—nothing is truly 2-dimensional, though some extremely thin systems could be said to come close.)
I tried to read up on advanced waves. They are definitely a thing in theoretical physics (not necessarily experimentally), and they do indeed go from future to past. That's about all I could understand.
Anyway, as I was saying in the video, this reminds me of things like the double-slit experiment. You've most likely heard of it. But to summarize: if you have a point source of light, possibly light diffracted through a single slit, passed through two slits side-by-side, and finally projected on a surface, the projection shows an interference pattern, demonstrating that the light acts as though it is made of waves.
Interestingly enough, there's also an experiment where light (or other types of radiation) can be sent through a similar apparatus, but as single particles widely spaced in time. One might imagine that each particle that makes it through simply goes through one slit or the other, resulting in two smooth spotlight patterns added together. But no. Even in this experiment, the interference patterns show up. This has very bizarre implications for the propagation of particles. One way to think of it is that the particle somehow travels all possible trajectories, interfering with itself, but only one trajectory happens, with a probability distribution derived from said interference. Are these advanced waves involved in the process at all?
So, Hinata meets HINATA. We don't see a Shadow of Yumi; obviously, things must be different for her. The other Shadow left behind in a similar way to HINATA would be SAKUYA. I wonder what happened to her.
#95, originally posted Jul 6 2016, 02:20 PM
Route E—Session 20, part 4: Strange Loop?
The four theorize about what caused everything to go haywire in the first place, and how cyberspace and Mutsuki's dreams seem to be connected.
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
Multilayer World Hypothesis
Dreams as a form of virtual world. Although I feel the overall thinking here is a little too mystical, I do like this particular idea. A virtual world is a simulation. It does not have a direct physical correspondence to the outer world in which the simulation runs, but nevertheless exists in some sense (and with virtual reality, there is some interface that allows one to interact with that world). A dream is very much like that, albeit a lot less coherent than anything found in most any computer-based virtual world I know of, real or fictional.
BTW, I'd like to note that, although the idea of worlds within worlds, ad infinitum, is a fascinating one, it's not really possible. To simulate any world, you need resources within the outer world, and it probably requires more matter and energy than you're simulating, unless you're already inside a virtual world, and the hardware assists such nesting. To understand this, let's think about operating system virtualization. This is a way in which an application (program), which runs under an operating system (which has its own file systems, device drivers, applications, etc.), can run a whole other operating system, with its own file systems, device drivers, applications, etc. For instance, you might be running a copy of some version of Windows. And you have an application (I won't use any specific names for that; just look up "virtualization" if you're interested) that runs a copy of Mac OS X. Everything in that Mac OS X is contained within the resources controlled by the application and generally cannot interact with anything in the Windows, except in ways the application allows (for instance, it emulates hardware for graphics and sound, as well as keyboard and mouse input, and storage devices like a hard drive).
The traditional way to do this was through software emulation, i.e. code that simulates all hardware, even the processor(s), at a low enough level as to be indistinguishable to the software running in the virtual machine. But this takes a lot more processing power than the real hardware does. However, in the last few years, some processors have had capabilities called hardware-assisted virtualization, allowing virtualized software to run as native code, just with a few changes to their environment. Well-known examples include Intel VT-x and AMD-V, for Intel and AMD processors respectively. So, now imagine that a virtual reality were running on hardware that provided for a sort of VR virtualization. That could really help do something like this efficiently... assuming anyone would really want to do such a thing.
However, no amount of hardware assist can mitigate resource limitations enough to allow for unlimited nesting like this, because there must always be some way to keep track of where one is within the structure, meaning at least a little extra memory is required for each layer.
"[E]xerting a mutual multilayered world effect on each other"? What the heck does that mean? Could that really be called "vertical"? Though this does remind me of the concept of strange loops, discussed by Douglas Hofstadter. A hierarchical system that has been twisted in such a way that going up or down can bring one back to one's starting point. Is that what is being implied here? But if so, I don't know how it's supposed to be working, other than by some mystical process. And similarly for the idea of the uppermost world having superpositions affected by lower worlds. I think that this whole thing is not entirely compatible with my more scientific mindset.
I guess they're going for a very thorough exploration of a scientific explanation of stimuli. The part about light is fairly straightforward (even if quantum physics is required for a deep understanding). The psychology part less so, and that's surely down to the sheer complexity of the brain and associated bits of biology.
"However, we can't know if everyone who perceives those wavelengths assigns them the feelings associated with 'redness' and 'blueness'." True enough, although there's a problem even before the stimuli get to the brain. As I mentioned before, not everyone even has the same color receptors in their eyes. Not everyone even has the same number of distinct receptors. Most have 3, but some have fewer (colorblindness), while some have 4 (tetrachromacy). So, we can't even agree on what stimuli the brain is receiving to assign feelings to.
"'...{Marduk} sees countless dreams in parallel.'" "Which explains the observed multilayer structure." It does? Explain, please. I'm not saying that can't be right, it's just not clear why.
"A system anomaly"... Would that be Ashur, by any chance? I wonder what those "two related dreams" were. That's definitely intriguing.
"...entangling Mutsuki's very consciousness." That could be a serious problem. Would there be some way of undoing the entanglement. If this is anything like real quantum entanglement, such a thing might be possible, by transferring certain Bell states, known as quantum teleportation. That's about all I know, though.
I have to disagree with something Hinata says about setting the state. He uses Schrödinger's cat to illustrate, saying, "The cat inside the box can't set its own fate." I said this in the video, but I think this argument is flawed. The cat might be able to do so. Just thinking about the way the thought experiment is constructed, with its radioactive source, Geiger counter, and mechanism that releases poison gas, couldn't the cat just dismantle the apparatus? (Yeah, it's a cat, and cats aren't as dexterous as humans and all, but never mind that.) Either blocking the detection of particles or disconnecting the Geiger counter from the poison gas mechanism should work (I think the latter is more reliable). Obviously, this dream situation is different. But the principle should be the same. In other words, those inside may, in fact, be able to influence the state. Besides, these are humans, much more intelligent than a cat that is almost certainly ignorant of the danger it might be in while inside a box.
Dreams as a form of virtual world. Although I feel the overall thinking here is a little too mystical, I do like this particular idea. A virtual world is a simulation. It does not have a direct physical correspondence to the outer world in which the simulation runs, but nevertheless exists in some sense (and with virtual reality, there is some interface that allows one to interact with that world). A dream is very much like that, albeit a lot less coherent than anything found in most any computer-based virtual world I know of, real or fictional.
BTW, I'd like to note that, although the idea of worlds within worlds, ad infinitum, is a fascinating one, it's not really possible. To simulate any world, you need resources within the outer world, and it probably requires more matter and energy than you're simulating, unless you're already inside a virtual world, and the hardware assists such nesting. To understand this, let's think about operating system virtualization. This is a way in which an application (program), which runs under an operating system (which has its own file systems, device drivers, applications, etc.), can run a whole other operating system, with its own file systems, device drivers, applications, etc. For instance, you might be running a copy of some version of Windows. And you have an application (I won't use any specific names for that; just look up "virtualization" if you're interested) that runs a copy of Mac OS X. Everything in that Mac OS X is contained within the resources controlled by the application and generally cannot interact with anything in the Windows, except in ways the application allows (for instance, it emulates hardware for graphics and sound, as well as keyboard and mouse input, and storage devices like a hard drive).
The traditional way to do this was through software emulation, i.e. code that simulates all hardware, even the processor(s), at a low enough level as to be indistinguishable to the software running in the virtual machine. But this takes a lot more processing power than the real hardware does. However, in the last few years, some processors have had capabilities called hardware-assisted virtualization, allowing virtualized software to run as native code, just with a few changes to their environment. Well-known examples include Intel VT-x and AMD-V, for Intel and AMD processors respectively. So, now imagine that a virtual reality were running on hardware that provided for a sort of VR virtualization. That could really help do something like this efficiently... assuming anyone would really want to do such a thing.
However, no amount of hardware assist can mitigate resource limitations enough to allow for unlimited nesting like this, because there must always be some way to keep track of where one is within the structure, meaning at least a little extra memory is required for each layer.
"[E]xerting a mutual multilayered world effect on each other"? What the heck does that mean? Could that really be called "vertical"? Though this does remind me of the concept of strange loops, discussed by Douglas Hofstadter. A hierarchical system that has been twisted in such a way that going up or down can bring one back to one's starting point. Is that what is being implied here? But if so, I don't know how it's supposed to be working, other than by some mystical process. And similarly for the idea of the uppermost world having superpositions affected by lower worlds. I think that this whole thing is not entirely compatible with my more scientific mindset.
I guess they're going for a very thorough exploration of a scientific explanation of stimuli. The part about light is fairly straightforward (even if quantum physics is required for a deep understanding). The psychology part less so, and that's surely down to the sheer complexity of the brain and associated bits of biology.
"However, we can't know if everyone who perceives those wavelengths assigns them the feelings associated with 'redness' and 'blueness'." True enough, although there's a problem even before the stimuli get to the brain. As I mentioned before, not everyone even has the same color receptors in their eyes. Not everyone even has the same number of distinct receptors. Most have 3, but some have fewer (colorblindness), while some have 4 (tetrachromacy). So, we can't even agree on what stimuli the brain is receiving to assign feelings to.
"'...{Marduk} sees countless dreams in parallel.'" "Which explains the observed multilayer structure." It does? Explain, please. I'm not saying that can't be right, it's just not clear why.
"A system anomaly"... Would that be Ashur, by any chance? I wonder what those "two related dreams" were. That's definitely intriguing.
"...entangling Mutsuki's very consciousness." That could be a serious problem. Would there be some way of undoing the entanglement. If this is anything like real quantum entanglement, such a thing might be possible, by transferring certain Bell states, known as quantum teleportation. That's about all I know, though.
I have to disagree with something Hinata says about setting the state. He uses Schrödinger's cat to illustrate, saying, "The cat inside the box can't set its own fate." I said this in the video, but I think this argument is flawed. The cat might be able to do so. Just thinking about the way the thought experiment is constructed, with its radioactive source, Geiger counter, and mechanism that releases poison gas, couldn't the cat just dismantle the apparatus? (Yeah, it's a cat, and cats aren't as dexterous as humans and all, but never mind that.) Either blocking the detection of particles or disconnecting the Geiger counter from the poison gas mechanism should work (I think the latter is more reliable). Obviously, this dream situation is different. But the principle should be the same. In other words, those inside may, in fact, be able to influence the state. Besides, these are humans, much more intelligent than a cat that is almost certainly ignorant of the danger it might be in while inside a box.
#96, originally posted Jul 11 2016, 02:32 PM
Route E—Session 20, part 5: Where is "Here"?
Yumi and Hinata get advice from various Shadows, variously challenging their beliefs or encouraging them. As they once again descend the stairs, thinking they might be in an infinite loop, Yumi remembers something from her past, and realizes it's not infinite. Then, they find themselves in the Enigma room again. When they move to try to wake Mutsuki for the nth time, Marduk attacks. HE can only hold it off for a limited time. Will they make it?
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
Multilayer World Hypothesis
When Hinata is talking to SAKUYA, there are two lines where the UI background color changes to blue, then it goes back to gray. Strange.
"None of us are not mistaken." That's almost certainly a mistake (ironically enough); that shouldn't be a double negative.
Huh. It's interesting that Yumi got tripped up with something like a shortest-path finder. The shortest-path problem is a classic in computer science, and there are well-established algorithms. If Yumi just needs it for practical purposes, it's simple enough to apply one of those. Well, everyone makes mistakes, though.
It's also oddly heartwarming to hear Yumi's reason for using it. She liked being with her friends, and didn't want to waste time on inefficient routes.
So basically, is Yumi saying their consciousnesses are experiencing every possibility that the quantum computer is calculating? Ugh. I can't imagine how frustrating that would be.
So, this is all happening at 4:01. I wrote this in a YouTube comment, but at the veeeery beginning of this VN, when whoever it is is walking down the stairs, the time shown on the Moon's Age was 4:02. So, that was slightly later than all of this. But a lot is happening in this minute or so. When the four went down the stairs earlier and saw their reflections, I thought that was the same as the opening sequence. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
And lastly, to the big decision. At least, that's what it seems like. I can't really be sure, but I think Marduk is just trying to cause confusion. There are quite a few clues that say Mutsuki does want to wake up. Her calls to Hinata to save her, for instance. She also said at one point that if she didn't wake up, it would be bad. Her repeated insistence that "I am here!" was not something we could understand before. We recently learned that it's most likely the basis for the final password. But more than that, the fact that there are two overlapping voices, one of which is essentially saying, "I don't want to wake up", and the other one saying, "I am here!", tells me two things: (1) the latter utterance corresponds to "I want to wake up", and therefore (2) Mutsuki has apparently been saying, many times, that she wants to wake up. Why couldn't she say it directly? Because Marduk is always aware of her actions. Her message had to be in code. Now that Marduk has confused the issue, we have the information we need to make the correct choice.
Of course, the whole thing could just be Ashur's doing, tricking everyone into waking Mutsuki so he can take over. But in any case, it doesn't really matter whether I'm correct or not. If I make the wrong choice, it will most likely be apparent pretty quickly with a bad ending. I'm trying to find those anyway. I wanted to try to reason this out, though, before proceeding. Let's see how close I am.
I'm still wondering what they're going to do about Marduk herself. Apparently, she can't survive without someone in Enigma. Do they have the right to effectively kill her? Will someone really take Mutsuki's place? The problem is, if Hinata does, he'll still be separated from his sister he wanted to be reunited with so badly, before even getting to talk to her. If Yumi goes, she'll be separated from Hinata.
BTW, I'm also thinking this might be where we "set" the state of the world. The overlapping voices are "superposed", so whichever one we choose would become the truth. I guess. It might also set the truth of the matter for just what LEM is. Maybe. I realize this seems to contradict what I was saying above, because this is essentially saying, "there is no one truth", whereas what I said earlier amounts to, "there is one truth, and we just have to find it". But again, it doesn't really matter. We'll find out once I make a choice.
When Hinata is talking to SAKUYA, there are two lines where the UI background color changes to blue, then it goes back to gray. Strange.
"None of us are not mistaken." That's almost certainly a mistake (ironically enough); that shouldn't be a double negative.
Huh. It's interesting that Yumi got tripped up with something like a shortest-path finder. The shortest-path problem is a classic in computer science, and there are well-established algorithms. If Yumi just needs it for practical purposes, it's simple enough to apply one of those. Well, everyone makes mistakes, though.
It's also oddly heartwarming to hear Yumi's reason for using it. She liked being with her friends, and didn't want to waste time on inefficient routes.
So basically, is Yumi saying their consciousnesses are experiencing every possibility that the quantum computer is calculating? Ugh. I can't imagine how frustrating that would be.
So, this is all happening at 4:01. I wrote this in a YouTube comment, but at the veeeery beginning of this VN, when whoever it is is walking down the stairs, the time shown on the Moon's Age was 4:02. So, that was slightly later than all of this. But a lot is happening in this minute or so. When the four went down the stairs earlier and saw their reflections, I thought that was the same as the opening sequence. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
And lastly, to the big decision. At least, that's what it seems like. I can't really be sure, but I think Marduk is just trying to cause confusion. There are quite a few clues that say Mutsuki does want to wake up. Her calls to Hinata to save her, for instance. She also said at one point that if she didn't wake up, it would be bad. Her repeated insistence that "I am here!" was not something we could understand before. We recently learned that it's most likely the basis for the final password. But more than that, the fact that there are two overlapping voices, one of which is essentially saying, "I don't want to wake up", and the other one saying, "I am here!", tells me two things: (1) the latter utterance corresponds to "I want to wake up", and therefore (2) Mutsuki has apparently been saying, many times, that she wants to wake up. Why couldn't she say it directly? Because Marduk is always aware of her actions. Her message had to be in code. Now that Marduk has confused the issue, we have the information we need to make the correct choice.
Of course, the whole thing could just be Ashur's doing, tricking everyone into waking Mutsuki so he can take over. But in any case, it doesn't really matter whether I'm correct or not. If I make the wrong choice, it will most likely be apparent pretty quickly with a bad ending. I'm trying to find those anyway. I wanted to try to reason this out, though, before proceeding. Let's see how close I am.
I'm still wondering what they're going to do about Marduk herself. Apparently, she can't survive without someone in Enigma. Do they have the right to effectively kill her? Will someone really take Mutsuki's place? The problem is, if Hinata does, he'll still be separated from his sister he wanted to be reunited with so badly, before even getting to talk to her. If Yumi goes, she'll be separated from Hinata.
BTW, I'm also thinking this might be where we "set" the state of the world. The overlapping voices are "superposed", so whichever one we choose would become the truth. I guess. It might also set the truth of the matter for just what LEM is. Maybe. I realize this seems to contradict what I was saying above, because this is essentially saying, "there is no one truth", whereas what I said earlier amounts to, "there is one truth, and we just have to find it". But again, it doesn't really matter. We'll find out once I make a choice.
Route E—Session 20 (full)
#97, originally posted Jul 15 2016, 08:14 AM
Route E—Session 21, part 1: Survival
Does Mutsuki want to wake up? Where are we? In any case, it's a desperate struggle to fend off endless waves of Codebreaker attacks until Ishtar can enter all the codes.
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
Multilayer World Hypothesis
(Yup, still in this scene. It's one of the longer ones.)
(Choosing what I believed to be the wrong answer: "Wants to remain asleep")
(And then, once again: "Somewhere not here...?")
A clover! With this, I knew immediately where we would end up, though not fully why.
Clover = "promise"? If you say so...
Ah, finally 4:02. That had to have been the longest minute ever. :)
I'll say something about the aforementioned choices in the next part. There's more involved, and I don't want to spoil, for those seeing this stuff for the first time.
(Yup, still in this scene. It's one of the longer ones.)
(Choosing what I believed to be the wrong answer: "Wants to remain asleep")
(And then, once again: "Somewhere not here...?")
A clover! With this, I knew immediately where we would end up, though not fully why.
Clover = "promise"? If you say so...
Ah, finally 4:02. That had to have been the longest minute ever. :)
I'll say something about the aforementioned choices in the next part. There's more involved, and I don't want to spoil, for those seeing this stuff for the first time.
#98, originally posted Jul 17 2016, 08:28 AM
Route E—Session 21, part 2: Escape
Marduk locks the heroes in the staircase. With the eclipse about to end, they must resort to a brute-force search to find the way out. But this is a quantum computer, so it can do it extremely quickly. The two see fragments of their former lives. HE hears the voices of people calling out to him, guiding him back. Will they be able to escape the dream and wake up the real Mutsuki?
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
Multilayer World Hypothesis
They're saying recursive calls are time-consuming, though it may not be for the reason they're talking about. There are plenty of theoretically efficient, recursive algorithms. The main problem with recursion is the overhead involved in function calls. A number of things need to happen every time a call is made, as well as every time one returns. This includes saving processor registers that need to be maintained, putting any function arguments (if that is the calling convention) and the return address on the stack, reserving space for local variables, and possibly other things. In addition, calls can disrupt all sorts of optimizing mechanisms such as memory caches, pipelines, etc., depending on circumstances. Actually, some of these are not as bad with direct recursion, as the same code is being executed. In any case, recursion is only somewhat slower than an equivalent implementation that avoids function calls.
Like I said before, a quantum computer is only more efficient at a task if it can execute a quantum algorithm, one that manipulates quantum phenomena in ways a conventional computer cannot. Is there such an algorithm for the shortest-path problem (which I assume is what they face in this situation, especially in light of Yumi's flashback)? Will one be developed? I'm not sure we should presume this will happen.
"All of them are real"? Well, okay. But, it's not like they're going to feel as if all of them are happening... right?
Ah, I see. Their own future selves are the mysterious eye. Or rather, eyes. Still doesn't explain why only Hinata (and HE) seemed to notice in their own routes. Hmm. Maybe Yumi would have noticed if she hadn't run off.
That insert movie makes for a nice climax. Now I feel kind of bad for presenting it with that anticlimactic bad ending.
So, this is one of those things where you need to make several choices in a row, and if you do it right, you can get to the good ending. Sometimes, all must be correct; sometimes, it's lenient. Which is this one? I do recall, there was already at least one case where you had to get two of them wrong to get the bad ending, so there could be something like that. But this case may be more complicated. First, there are three choices, so it might be okay to miss one of them (probably not the last, though). Second, I've missed two bad endings; maybe you get those for previous choices, but maybe you can get one or both here, or maybe they're not accessible yet. (I think, most likely this has nothing to do with those bad endings, but I do plan to check.)
One strange thing I'd like to point out: it seems that choosing both "Mutsuki doesn't want to wake up" and "Somewhere not here" forces the choice of "That one" (for which world is real). By contraposition, then, "All of them" (worlds) implies either "Mutsuki wants to wake up" or "Here". I'm thinking the "Here"/"Somewhere not here" choice is the relevant one, but I can't ignore the Mutsuki one either. I want to explore the different combinations of these choices to see what the possible outcomes are and how the choices affect them.
This bit after the last choice. Is it Mutsuki saying this? No surprise if she experienced everything in these four's perspectives (and likely many others', as well).
Awakening
I really like the melody of this ending song, "Lead Out". The only slightly bad thing about the song is that it's a bit more repetitive than I prefer.
Well, this confirms what I was thinking about some of the voices. Not really unusual for voice acting in VNs. It looks like most of the cast did multiple voices in this, in fact. But several of the above characters (but not all) sounded very similar, suggesting strong connections.
They're saying recursive calls are time-consuming, though it may not be for the reason they're talking about. There are plenty of theoretically efficient, recursive algorithms. The main problem with recursion is the overhead involved in function calls. A number of things need to happen every time a call is made, as well as every time one returns. This includes saving processor registers that need to be maintained, putting any function arguments (if that is the calling convention) and the return address on the stack, reserving space for local variables, and possibly other things. In addition, calls can disrupt all sorts of optimizing mechanisms such as memory caches, pipelines, etc., depending on circumstances. Actually, some of these are not as bad with direct recursion, as the same code is being executed. In any case, recursion is only somewhat slower than an equivalent implementation that avoids function calls.
Like I said before, a quantum computer is only more efficient at a task if it can execute a quantum algorithm, one that manipulates quantum phenomena in ways a conventional computer cannot. Is there such an algorithm for the shortest-path problem (which I assume is what they face in this situation, especially in light of Yumi's flashback)? Will one be developed? I'm not sure we should presume this will happen.
"All of them are real"? Well, okay. But, it's not like they're going to feel as if all of them are happening... right?
Ah, I see. Their own future selves are the mysterious eye. Or rather, eyes. Still doesn't explain why only Hinata (and HE) seemed to notice in their own routes. Hmm. Maybe Yumi would have noticed if she hadn't run off.
That insert movie makes for a nice climax. Now I feel kind of bad for presenting it with that anticlimactic bad ending.
So, this is one of those things where you need to make several choices in a row, and if you do it right, you can get to the good ending. Sometimes, all must be correct; sometimes, it's lenient. Which is this one? I do recall, there was already at least one case where you had to get two of them wrong to get the bad ending, so there could be something like that. But this case may be more complicated. First, there are three choices, so it might be okay to miss one of them (probably not the last, though). Second, I've missed two bad endings; maybe you get those for previous choices, but maybe you can get one or both here, or maybe they're not accessible yet. (I think, most likely this has nothing to do with those bad endings, but I do plan to check.)
One strange thing I'd like to point out: it seems that choosing both "Mutsuki doesn't want to wake up" and "Somewhere not here" forces the choice of "That one" (for which world is real). By contraposition, then, "All of them" (worlds) implies either "Mutsuki wants to wake up" or "Here". I'm thinking the "Here"/"Somewhere not here" choice is the relevant one, but I can't ignore the Mutsuki one either. I want to explore the different combinations of these choices to see what the possible outcomes are and how the choices affect them.
This bit after the last choice. Is it Mutsuki saying this? No surprise if she experienced everything in these four's perspectives (and likely many others', as well).
Awakening
I really like the melody of this ending song, "Lead Out". The only slightly bad thing about the song is that it's a bit more repetitive than I prefer.
Quote:Aoi Hinata: Hagi Michihiko
HE: Hagi Michihiko
Dilmun: Hagi Michihiko
Ashur: Hagi Mcihihiko
Quote:Aoi Mutsuki: Nagata Kayo
LEM: Nagata Kayo
Ereshkigal: Nagata Kayo
Marduk: Nagata Kayo
Well, this confirms what I was thinking about some of the voices. Not really unusual for voice acting in VNs. It looks like most of the cast did multiple voices in this, in fact. But several of the above characters (but not all) sounded very similar, suggesting strong connections.
#99, originally posted Jul 21 2016, 09:15 AM
Route E—Session 21, part 3: Distant Finale
Standing by the river a year after Mutsuki's rescue, Hinata thinks over the aftermath of the incident.
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
welcome back home
This title, and the background of the riverside made me think of Sakuya. After all, with the danger seemingly gone, they could meet up again, right? Oh, wait. She's Nabu's daughter. We still don't know just what's up with him, but apparently it's not good.
HE disappeared during the third eclipse, huh? I wonder why. No explanation given, though.
Huh. A "certain incident" (which, of course, we're not being told about) occured half a year ago (that would be about the time of the third eclipse, I'm noticing) and caused Code and even the mighty eXarch to dissolve, and may also have caused HE to disappear. That must have been one hell of an upheaval. I hope we learn more about this event... uh, event-ually.
Oh, so Yayoi is now either engaged or married, it seems. Given those brief scenes of her from a certain person's perspective, I have a pretty good idea to whom. That might be one of those "connections" mentioned.
Hmm. Hinata is still living with that identity that Cyberforce gave him. That's a little sad, although with his disposition it probably doesn't affect him as much as it would a lot of other people. (Then again, there isn't all that much for him to return to to which an altered identity is a hindrance.) Still, I'm thinking it'd be nice if his original identity could be restored somehow.
A blimp, huh? I had an uneasy feeling when this first came up. But I'll follow that up in the next part or two.
This title, and the background of the riverside made me think of Sakuya. After all, with the danger seemingly gone, they could meet up again, right? Oh, wait. She's Nabu's daughter. We still don't know just what's up with him, but apparently it's not good.
HE disappeared during the third eclipse, huh? I wonder why. No explanation given, though.
Huh. A "certain incident" (which, of course, we're not being told about) occured half a year ago (that would be about the time of the third eclipse, I'm noticing) and caused Code and even the mighty eXarch to dissolve, and may also have caused HE to disappear. That must have been one hell of an upheaval. I hope we learn more about this event... uh, event-ually.
Oh, so Yayoi is now either engaged or married, it seems. Given those brief scenes of her from a certain person's perspective, I have a pretty good idea to whom. That might be one of those "connections" mentioned.
Hmm. Hinata is still living with that identity that Cyberforce gave him. That's a little sad, although with his disposition it probably doesn't affect him as much as it would a lot of other people. (Then again, there isn't all that much for him to return to to which an altered identity is a hindrance.) Still, I'm thinking it'd be nice if his original identity could be restored somehow.
A blimp, huh? I had an uneasy feeling when this first came up. But I'll follow that up in the next part or two.
#100, originally posted Jul 26 2016, 01:53 PM
Route E—Session 21, part 4: Hundredth Part
Yumi reads Ea's writings about the Multilayer World Hypothesis. Mutsuki practices going out in realspace, while philosophizing about mutual understanding.
Yes, this is the 100th part (in the abridged version).
Notes:
Spoiler: click to toggle
welcome back home
"lend its body to the whims of the wind". A bit of a misconception. Unlike hot-air balloons, blimps and other airships have direct control of their course. In fact, a common synonym for airship is "dirigible", which literally means "steerable". They're sort of like airplanes, just a lot slower and relying on buoyancy instead of an airfoil for lift.
Hmm. Yumi is using a handheld computer. Does that mean she doesn't use a biocomputer anymore? Nah, that can't be it. We just found out that she still goes to Nergal for maintenance. There's some other reason.
"Deviant opinions". Is "deviant" the right word? Presumably the word being translated here is "hentai", which can mean several things. The one most are familiar with (変態) does mean "abnormality", "perversion", etc.; also "transformation". But there's also a homophone (変体) that means "variant", and is used in e.g. the term "hentaigana" for hiragana that differ from the standard ones. I'm wondering if this was the word, and the translator got it mixed up.
For anyone interested: Jacques Lacan
Interesting. Talking about World A and World A'.
"while society may adhere to common sense, to me, it's not more than one of many ways to perceive things." Well, common sense is called "common sense" because it's supposedly common, after all. But common isn't necessarily true or correct. I don't know much at all about philosophy, but I do know that in science, common sense is often wrong. No more so than in the quantum physics whose name has been thrown around a lot. You've probably never heard anyone ever say the notion that a particle can act as if it follows two paths at once and experiences wave interference with itself is common sense. But even in more "mundane" fields, people have misconceptions as part of common sense.
"...found to believe geocentrism. Can this be explained solely by a lack of education?" I wonder. There are people even these days who stubbornly believe the earth is flat, and that we're all being lied to. They even have elaborate theories to try to explain how it would work. Do they lack the proper education, or have they just fallen prey to a natural human tendency? Maybe a little of both.
Once it started talking about not denying the virtual nor the real, I began to realize this must have been written by Ea. Of course, the very next screen makes that explicit.
So, reading this stuff, she doesn't seem all that different from her Shadow. The Shadow seems to have the same beliefs. It's just that she has been twisted by some influence. At least, that's how it seems to me. Was it Marduk, or someone else?
What Mutsuki is describing—two people meeting and repeatedly moving the same direction to try to allow each other to pass—I've seen informally described as an instance of livelock. I've never seen, much less experienced, as severe a case as this, though. :D Not even close, in fact. Who ever has thoughts that synchronized? Maybe it's a change that's come about by the 2030s? Or maybe Japanese people suffer from it more?
"lend its body to the whims of the wind". A bit of a misconception. Unlike hot-air balloons, blimps and other airships have direct control of their course. In fact, a common synonym for airship is "dirigible", which literally means "steerable". They're sort of like airplanes, just a lot slower and relying on buoyancy instead of an airfoil for lift.
Hmm. Yumi is using a handheld computer. Does that mean she doesn't use a biocomputer anymore? Nah, that can't be it. We just found out that she still goes to Nergal for maintenance. There's some other reason.
"Deviant opinions". Is "deviant" the right word? Presumably the word being translated here is "hentai", which can mean several things. The one most are familiar with (変態) does mean "abnormality", "perversion", etc.; also "transformation". But there's also a homophone (変体) that means "variant", and is used in e.g. the term "hentaigana" for hiragana that differ from the standard ones. I'm wondering if this was the word, and the translator got it mixed up.
For anyone interested: Jacques Lacan
Interesting. Talking about World A and World A'.
Spoiler for after this route
Is that a little foreshadowing? I'm not so unspoiled about what's coming up that I don't know what that might be hinting at. Which is to say, I know there are more routes, named the same as the first five, but with the prime sign added. Talking about worlds affecting higher and lower worlds. So, the prime routes will be something along those lines, then?
"while society may adhere to common sense, to me, it's not more than one of many ways to perceive things." Well, common sense is called "common sense" because it's supposedly common, after all. But common isn't necessarily true or correct. I don't know much at all about philosophy, but I do know that in science, common sense is often wrong. No more so than in the quantum physics whose name has been thrown around a lot. You've probably never heard anyone ever say the notion that a particle can act as if it follows two paths at once and experiences wave interference with itself is common sense. But even in more "mundane" fields, people have misconceptions as part of common sense.
"...found to believe geocentrism. Can this be explained solely by a lack of education?" I wonder. There are people even these days who stubbornly believe the earth is flat, and that we're all being lied to. They even have elaborate theories to try to explain how it would work. Do they lack the proper education, or have they just fallen prey to a natural human tendency? Maybe a little of both.
Once it started talking about not denying the virtual nor the real, I began to realize this must have been written by Ea. Of course, the very next screen makes that explicit.
So, reading this stuff, she doesn't seem all that different from her Shadow. The Shadow seems to have the same beliefs. It's just that she has been twisted by some influence. At least, that's how it seems to me. Was it Marduk, or someone else?
What Mutsuki is describing—two people meeting and repeatedly moving the same direction to try to allow each other to pass—I've seen informally described as an instance of livelock. I've never seen, much less experienced, as severe a case as this, though. :D Not even close, in fact. Who ever has thoughts that synchronized? Maybe it's a change that's come about by the 2030s? Or maybe Japanese people suffer from it more?
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