samarishim wrote:
Yikari 1. Dinah how is its' un// operation based on UMN m t-fer wizardry, if its’ feats don’t require it to interact with the UMN at all?
A poor choice of words on my part, my bad. From what I understand, Dinah doesn't require the assistance of the existing man-made UMN infrastructure to perform a hyperspace jump, but it still uses the inherent properties of this incorporeal plane of human subconcious (the 'unus mundus' theory) to do it somehow, right?
I am hesitant to attribute this feat to the Vessel of Anima it is outfitted with. If these things are containers of chaos' power, and his own signature power is erasing things from existence irreversibly, then... how does that work? And if the E.S units can make use of that power as simply a nearly limitless power source without this erasing thing bleeding over in everything it is used for, then why only Dinah can do this unassisted hyperspace jump thing? Shion and Allen could perform said jump without having KOS-MOS onboard, but she did have to be there for the combat capabilities to be utilized in full, didn't she?
On the other hand, it didn't stop chaos from saving the party's bacon with a direct application of his powers in the ending of Ep. I. Was it an inventive use of this ultimate destruction ability to erase the heat (somehow) that threatened to kill everybody or something? Or maybe superpowered individuals can learn to do things outside of their 'specialty' with enough practice? Going incorporeal and back as needed seems like a shared ability between several characters, for example. And there is this 'Lemegeton' thing nobody aside from chaos could use in full that is supposedly a whole reality-alteration language, if side materials are to be believed.
I'm afraid I'm floundering here.
samarishim wrote:
2 How did Mary’s scattered consciousness manage to be caught besides the “explanation” of blackboxes and UMN use?
I don't remember any kind of concrete explanation for that at all.
There is this scene of KOS-MOS and Shion undergoing what appears to be a mutual flashback from the memories of two people long, long dead and then bam! The blue eyes are here to stay.
Personally, I interpet it as Kevin, Wilhelm and co artificially engineering a situation similar enough to what late Mary and her unnamed lady friend went through - KOS-MOS and Shion looking like those dead people, the medallion Kevin gifted to Shion and Shion being in mortal danger where KOS-MOS could see and potentially do something about it seem to be the key parts of that - in order to trigger a reaction from the human collective subconscious (which, at least in Xenosaga, also contains all the dissolved human minds that didn't go gnosis and all the memories they carried) that would result in Mary's consciousness pulling back into one coherent mind inside KOS-MOS' body. Somehow.
How the partial success was achieved before that (KOS-MOS did show the blue eyes and different behaviour for a brief time in Ep.I, after all) is unclear. I guess you could say that the sabotaged Archetype unit unexpectedly becoming docile when confronting Shion one-on-one and basically standing still while she lined up the shot during that flashback could be it, but thats about all I can think of besides 'Kevin did it'.
samarishim wrote:
3. Hilbert effect makes me think that the way it works requires a sufficiently human-like mind to function, would you mind quoting the source that makes you think this.
Mostly Ep.I database and personal conjecture about things seen during the game. I'll try to reproduce the thought process that led me to this conclusion.
First is the database entry on 'Penfield mapping' - one of the technobabble terms mentioned during the very beginning of the game. The direct quote would be:
XXX
A map of the brain which shows the distinct functional regions of the cerebral cortex.
The in-game reference is to the digitized procedure which links Shion's cerebral regions to their respective regions in KOS-MOS.
XXX
I don't remember there being any further explanations on the topic, but given the second sentence of that entry, this, in my opinion, implies that KOS-MOS has a reproduction (since she is stated to have no organic parts anywhere) of (at least) a part of human brain's structure in there somewhere.
('The extensive outer layer of gray matter of the cerebral hemispheres, largely responsible for higher brain functions, including sensation, voluntary muscle movement, thought, reasoning, and memory,' if the dictionary that comes up on the first page of the google search is to be believed.)
There is no mention of how that thing is used - it may be an auxillary system that KOS-MOS does not actually use to make decisions and only has it installed to allow her to connect to a human mind during an encephalon dive for all I know.
However, combined with the fact that any and all observed cases of Gilbert effect being used in the games are performed by either an overly detailed humanoid machine (that has a copy of a human brain inside, for some reason or another) or realians (with the help of 'a 15m x 15m block resembling a supercomputer' that 'weighs over 10 tons' installed on the ship they are stationed on, in case of 100-series realians that are not MOMO), it brings a question to my mind.
Why would anyone in the army (and/or fleet, however armed forces' organisation goes in there) consent to accepting aboard their ship a bunch of children clones whose only value outside of this one specific type of emergency is 'information management' and 'looking adorable'? That's a bunch of non-combatant civilian personnel whose well-being (and medical care / maintenance requiring trained professionals and equipment procured from Vector) is now on your neck (and that of your passenger/cargo capacity). That's also at least one more (however modified) human brain added to the equation where you'd really be better served by an automated system instead - the less your response time in an emergency depends on human factor, the better and more consistent results you are gonna get.
Only possible in-universe explanation I can see is 'because it was deemed necessary'. Ergo, it was seen as a cost-effective enough method to provide Gilbert effect for armed forces in the field. Why? All those 'EPR radars', 'DSSS cameras' and other such measures that were shown in direct combat against gnosis threats don't require having a specially made realian on hand to function, yet this one does. What is it to Glibert effect that needs specifically a realian to work?
There is no canon answer to that, as far as I am aware, but I think 'something only a (modified?) human can do' is a reasonable assumption.
samarishim wrote:
b I'd say that T-elos's powerset (could affect the material domain by directly interfering through the UMN. similar to a Testament) makes a human-like mind a prerequisite as well, why do you think this, is her powerset all the things she does in battle? she could affect the material domain by directly interfering through the UMN.
All examples of interfering with things through imaginary numbers domain (I think I've been mixing up my terms, please correct me if I get something wrong) shown beyond hyperspace jumps and communications appear to require a person with sapience and sentience to happen.
Be it Rubedo having to interface with Durandal in some way to make use of the ship's weaponry to the fullest, Godwin sisters using cybernetic implants and direct mind-to-mind connection to transfer information out of a damaged database posthaste, super mechs outfitted with Vessels of Anima or Zohar Emulators requiring to be piloted by people selected out of a narrow pool of individuals, active reality warping by testaments, Yuriev, URTV...
A whole slew of things, most of them looking to be quite suited to be hoisted off to a gadget or a computer system of some sort. And yet they are not. Why?
samarishim wrote:
c KOS-MOS having a copy of a human brain's neural structure, was this mentioned at Ep 1's start? Mary's not human but I suppose she's close enough to human for it to work out, at least for her will to be resurrected?
Well, she certainly managed to die the way a human in Xenosaga is supposed to.
samarishim wrote:
Also, we need to decide if KOS-MOS can lie. Why?
The quote you've mentioned with KOS-MOS replying to Shion in regards to shooting Luis, if I remember right. Can we take it at its face value?
KOS-MOS has showed to be able to choose rather drastic courses of action if she decided it was necessary to safeguard Shion's life. Shion demonstrates an unhealthy obsession and psychological dependency towards KOS-MOS during more or less all of Xenosaga. Would KOS-MOS notice that? If so, what would she choose to do about it? Would ommiting facts or even outright stating something she knows to be false be something KOS-MOS would do?
samarishim wrote:
4 I'm really not sure how one could have a human perspective without going through the inherent emotional roller-coaster as well. Can someone be human without experiencing emotions? In that case, wouldn't belonging to the collective human subconcious require having human emotions? same question applies here.
Why a human can't be a human without human emotions? (I'm sorry if I misunderstood the question, please correct me if I'm wrong.)
Well, as far as my amateur understanding goes, things like fear and such are integral to the way a human mind works.
How does, say, a child learn not to touch a boiling kettle lest they burn themselves? Very, very few people can take that kind of lesson to heart if they are just told so, even if they intellectually understood what was said no problem. Touching a boiling kettle for themselves even once (and getting burned while doing so), however, will likely cement this precaution for the rest of their lives in very short order. The memory of pain and the fear of further pain will ensure it. And that's how the learning from one's own mistakes method works.
Same with every other emotion - it has developed in human minds for a reason.
There is also the matter of the biochemical processes that govern our moods, all our perceptions and memories of these perceptions getting colored by them and thus affecting our judgement when we use them to make decisions and all that jazz.
(I've probably just butchered it all horribly, but that's the basic reasons for me to think that.)
samarishim wrote:
5 'human-made personality' and 'temporary personality' don't make sense to you, by temporary you mean the option of turning said personality on/off for at least the Realians?
More like 'temporary until you develop your own'.
It is hard to judge how old a character is supposed to look like at times, but realians that exhibited anything beyond politness often came off to me as behaving younger than their appearance suggested.
That got me thinking. Do they undergo accelerated growth? Are they unconscious for their development before being dumped into the world? If so, how would realians fit in with regular humans?
So that's the reason for me to think of that as a possible interpretation.
samarishim wrote:
5b Still, taking 'mock personality' as any other way but 'human-made' doesn't feel quite right to me, given all the times the actual games seem to say otherwise. Are you contradicting yourself here?
Maybe? I'm not a native speaker and like to use overconvoluted sentences besides, so it's quite possible. Let me try to untangle that.
Interpretations of the phrase 'mock personality' other than 'one made by humans', including the one canon seems to suggest and other possible meanings of the word 'mock' that I've seen being used (that also fit the context of the phrase), seem to not fit with the instances of the actual narrative apparently contradicts that statement made in the side materials, in my opinion.
Does that make more sense?
samarishim wrote:
In this way, information can be retrieved precisely because it is being retained somewhere, similar to Mary's will?
Well, that's what I think is happening, yes. Although I'm not sure how anyone's 'core' could remain whole enough to be 'recycled' if the way death is described says that any and all self of a person is dissolved.
So Shion, in my opinion at least, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the dead girl from Mary's memories beyond similar looks and her pendant. If people's minds' are formed out of this cosmic goop of memories of a bunch of former people, wouldn't she inherit a whole slew of different things from numerous dead people instead of this exactly one self that gets reborn again and again the way resurrection cycles are usually depicted?
Canaan, being a realian, could conceivably get his brain and stuff actually replanted from his predecessor's body (and thus get the other person's memories the way KOS-MOS did), but Shion wouldn't get even that opportunity.
samarishim wrote:
7 On Mary's body I think it was because he couldn't get to her body at first was the reason KOS-MOS was built. T-elos was built soon after presumably gaining access to that body, to serve as the better/cleaner vessel for Mary's will because being in KOS-MOS could have changed her will to something not of their liking.
But the first time we see 'T-elos' namedropped is way back in Ep.I during the section Rubedo is introduced in as a playable character. Sure, the picture is a part of an earlier concept art of KOS-MOS that was also printed in the side materials for Ep.I, but 'T-elos' is very much legible.
http://xenosaga.wikia.com/wiki/File:Telos1.png
(I apparently completely fail at stealing other people's images via the IMG tag, so have a link instead.)
Did Wilhelm and co. already have access to the coffin at that time?
samarishim wrote:
T-elos is similar to Kahran Ramsus in a way if she was made from cloned material in that said cloned material would have the same powers as the original flesh donor. With chaos sensing a similar presence when she first showed up makes the cloning thing suspect, because we don't know if clones can have the same presence as the original.
I've always wondered if that means the Emperor is a Thing as well. Or if Ramsus was developed to mimic function, not form and doesn't actually look anything like him.
samarishim wrote:
8 Mythical creatures such as fairies and the like, which were said to be existences of the imagination, are thought to have possibly been these Gnosis. What do you think of this statement?
You mean if what people perceived as poltergeists, mermaids, gremlins and such were actually manifestations or a side effect of Gnosis being nearby?
I don't see why that couldn't happen. Nephilim is already functionally a ghost (although it's debatable if she died to get in the state she currently is in or not), so why not?
I think that the common Gnosis forms getting assigned the names they did get is a military designation thing, though. G-type threat was supposed to be kept secret for quite awhile, yes? Only during the gap between Ep.II and III did the information get completely into the open access.
samarishim wrote:
How do things disappear in the imaginary domain, does it mean subsumed by the CU?
I really don't know.
Supposedly, all contact with Ariadne - an example of this, if I understand correctly - was lost after U-TIC done goofed with the Zohar Emulator they were attempting to apply SCIENCE to there and then we see that Gnosis can somehow spread their gnosis-ness to things that aren't people as well, somehow. And start moving the planet about with them, for some reason.
Seeing how mass transfer in hyperspace jumps, teleporting munitions and matter phase shifts like the stealth-in-space thing Song of Nephilim did, Shion's official explanation for not dying to the first explosion and that chunk of France floating around (nowhere nearby the corner of space Earth was supposed to be in either) are supposedly all a particular case of such a phenomenon but usually don't come out looking all gnosis-like, there is basically no established guideline to this kind of incidents.
samarishim wrote:
80% of the Galactic Federation's worlds disappeared what happened to those worlds that did so?
No official information. At all.
My personal headcanon is that Xenosaga loves its Worf Barrages (if you'll forgive me for using tvtropes speak) way too much for its own good (exploding Old Miltia wholesale at the end of Ep.II for no reason when there were still unresolved things left there to explore in Ep. III is a prime example) and there would be no way for that sensor station to know that this was happening anyway beyond a simple 'we've lost contact', so I'd say that ~80% of Galactic Federation's worlds'
UMN collapsed instead.
That would mean hyperspace travel and communications going down for an indeterminable amount of time (thus economical breakdown, panic, war, colonies that are usually dependant on import for their food and/or other essentials left for dead, etc), potentially irrecoverable loss of databases that were stored in the imaginary numbers domain, a whole bunch of people that were in-transit in hyperspace and encephalon dives getting screwed in new and exciting ways (chances are, Nephilim would get lotsa new people to talk with out there in-between dimensions), worlds that were left untouched suddenly deciding they don't want to be in the Federation anymore, etc, etc.
In other words, a scenario quite destructive enough to fit the needs of a civilization-wide collapse but still not quite destructive enough as 'those ~80% of the planets and all that was nearby them suddenly stopped existing'.
Or, at least, that's what I think.