Remember, the five magics are a graph (at least if you don't think about it too hard).
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Consider how lostbelts work, and how the whole of the human texture will unravel if its pins are lifted.
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So the Zelretch of different worlds just keep expanding the number of timelines and regulate them as well?
I don't think that's what it said. It only said he found proof of parallel worlds existing and application of it. Recall how he defeated CM. He took magic energy from other timelines to stop the moon drop. If those parallel worlds aren't already there, he wouldn't be able to draw energy from them.
The way I see it. Parallel worlds as a system has been around for a very long long time (even back when Sefar attacked, it has already been a thing, and Sefar attacking the Moon Cell destroyed 80% of Earth's alternate possibilities. But humans aren't aware of the system, not until Zelretch proved that it is an actual thing and coined the concept, putting it to use for humanity's sakes. This is when human elements began to influence it, and Alaya having a saying in its operation.
The confusion you and others had came from believing that pruning of parallel worlds means those worlds are just gone. The system has a meta reason to exist, to my understanding. Recall the explanation about the Observed Universe (OU) and the Archived Universe (AU) in CCC.
The OU has first person viewpoint, basically you can only perceive one point of time at one moment. This means a human can only perceive the present, and thus the future is unknown to them and can be changed. This is pretty much very relevant to sorting out "possibilities we humans accept". And the pruning, quantum time locks...etc, are discussed with the context that it applies to the OU.
The AU OTOH contains EVERYTHING, since the 3 dimensional axis is viewed like you print onto a flat surface like a piece of paper, thus you can see the past, present and future all at once. This has the advantage of being able to see all possible futures, not just those relevant, which means the AU has things that have been discarded from the OU. Moon Cell core has a AU structure since it simulates parallel worlds, and thus has records of every single possibilities.
This means that events that are pruned from the OU can no longer be observed by human, as those are unnecessary to the growth of humanity, but can still be viewed in the AU. Think of those events as files you downloaded from the internet that you don't need anymore and deleted. You no longer have the files, but the internet keeps them. Beings with higher dimension viewpoints can gain access to the AU to view these "discarded" worlds like how Zepar was able to get the CCC event back despite it being already "deleted", and it is pretty much where you are most likely able to find the data of Lostbelts.
So take this example: you have a timeline where the Earth is destroyed by some crazy aliens. That timeline is "pruned" in the sense that it is no longer relevant to human history, and Alaya (as part of "the world") "prunes" it from the OU. But what really happened is that they are moved out of the OU into the AU, thus in the perspective of those in the OU that timeline is deleted, never existed, or in other words "pruned" from human history. Whatever happened after the aliens destroyed Earth in that timeline will be recorded in the AU, not the OU. So it's not that Alaya can delete timelines and affecting other planets. It's "Alaya ignoring timelines that are irrelevant to human history by removing them from the OU that concerns humanity". Those timelines that are not relevant to humanity survival will then no longer receive energy from the OU, which is probably solar system size, with concerns related to the danger of it being exploded.
It was always operated by humanity and pruned timelines were always based on humanity's death.Quote:
not until Zelretch proved that it is an actual thing and coined the concept, putting it to use for humanity's sakes. This is when human elements began to influence it, and Alaya having a saying in its operation.
LB6 was pruned because humanity died, it did happen almost after Seraph's arrival.
Same goes for LB5 which was pruned because humanity stopped to progress, long before Zelretch was ever born.
Seraph, Sephar. Anagrams.
Is the "preservation" and continuation of pruned timelines in the AU really accurate though? I don't have CCC context but that seems to go directly against Archimedes' explanation of pruning in regards to energy preservation, and how quickly the solar system would run itself out if it tried to sustain every possibility.
If they're still going on in a different level of existence, then pruning doesn't solve that problem at all
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Also what would be the need of simulating the continuation of the LBs if they're already continued in the AU? That doesn't fit either
I need to re-read CCC. It's been a while and I only read a translation on a blog. What I got from Lily's explanation is that the AU isn't part of the AoM texture, only the OU is. And the OU only involves the collective cognition of humanity. Meaning if say the DA destroyed humanity in one timeline and that world was pruned, the world of the DA will still go on in the AU but it would be dead from the perspective of humanity since as a pruned world the AoM texture isn't providing energy to it anymore.
I think that's how it goes.
It actually does not go against any of what he said. The concerns about having energy and space to sustain those "unwanted" timelines is regarding "such energy that could sustain these timelines does not exist in this dimension". He doesn't specify what he meant by "this dimension", but since the whole thing was regarding the OU, we can assume that he is talking about the OU (also know as the solar system texture). It makes perfect sense that "this dimension" cannot hold an infinite number of alt timelines, since its size remains the same unless humans start to explore new areas of the vast universe beyond the solar system. The actual universe OTOH, can just keep expanding, perhaps until the heat death of itself. So if the AU is on another dimension (which it is) and its purpose is to record all possibilities than just a few, then it should have enough space for all. Keep in mind that we have no info on how things are going on in the AU, so this is something of a guess, but the fact that it contains events that are deleted from the OU is a key difference between the two universes.
It's pretty obvious tho. When you drag something out of the AU that is already considered "dead" in the OU, and try to plant them onto a texture belongs to the OU, it just cannot register. So you have to simulate the long period between when the event is pruned to the present year like how Ophelia speculated, then output it onto the Earth's surface. In the perspective of the OU, the Lostbelts history stopped at around the time they are pruned, so you need to simulate the gap between the pruned moment to the present to "prove" its existence.Quote:
Also what would be the need of simulating the continuation of the LBs if they're already continued in the AU? That doesn't fit either
But as we all learnt, Odin knew about all this LB shenanigans already during part 1, and even managed to send CasCu straight into LB6. Why? Because his eyes are of the higher dimensional view (referred to as the view of god by Rin in CCC), he can see not only compiled event that are in the OU, but also pruned events recorded in the AU, so taking info or sending info to such timelines are within his powers.
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Something like that yeah. But keep in mind that we know nothing of how managing the timelines actually work in the AU cuz by far it is treated like this secret library of worlds that some entities can pull info from. But just regarding the question about pruning, then it is only a thing to manage the OU.
While "attestation" doesn't at all inherently imply an "invention", but just a "proof" (just like how if you attested that santa claus exists now, that doesn't necessarily mean he magically started existing at the same time, just that you couldn't prove it was really him before that), a big reason of those mats that make this take difficult to reconcile is the fact that Zelretch via the second magic's attestation of parallel worlds saved the world from a slow end. If they always existed, just not in the purview of mankind (such as in the AU) then there wouldn't be that end. That only works if you consider that it's supposed to perhaps mean the "end of mankind" but that's not what was said. It talks about history failing, but also about the "world" and the planet itself.
To me, it also lines up well with a certain twitter crack on how the true magics relate to concept of entropy (or heat quantity, rather).
Isn' the heat thing from Mahoyo? Something about Aoko's action caused universe's heat being transferred to the future could cause unbalance for its indefinite growth, and making a heat death scenario possible. So before that, the universe was safe from that dead end?
So Zelretch's Magic caused the singular timeline to start branching out, with the first divide became the origin of Fate and Tsuki routes with Zelretch vs CM as the starting point, and the branches kept multiplying from then on? If so, that's really fascinating.
I'm guessing the world wasn't aware of that potential and so resigned to its fate, but Zelretch's feat proved otherwise thus the world began to utilize the parallel timelines to prolong its lifespan.
You have to sort of understand this in the scenario it's presented and the world it is a part off.
Ultimately, this is what Nasu's thoughts surrounding humanity's progress is about. It's about reaching the end of the universe. If, like the Atlas Institute, you want to delay the end for as long as possible, you'd rather reject this kind of 'consumption' that Aoko's Magic represents, because it advances progress.Quote:
Originally Posted by MBBAN
I do find it interesting how much the physical laws of thermodynamics seem to be rooted in his thinking. Seeing the world as a system of potential change instead of something 'that just is' is very much in line with this. That said, the Magics are clearly more about human progress than anything else.Quote:
Originally Posted by fumei
Wait, if that's the case, shouldn't some of the pruned worlds are better fit to preserve universe's existence? If evolving means shortening the lifespan, then timelines where humanity stagnates should guarantee its continued lifespan, like Chinese Lostbelt for example. Why would that be pruned?
What kind of universe needs to preserve energy?
Besides, what the pruning does isn't about preserving the lifespan of the universe, it's about finding possibilities with the most promise. Remember, even ideal worlds, perhaps ones that could live on in perpetuity, get pruned if the possibility they contain is limited to one. That is 'requirement' of pruning. What it ultimately does, is try to find thing with the most possibilities. As the EXTRA mats puts it: "the world keeps expanding for the sake of a future which nobody can know, and not even higher-dimensional lifeforms can predict."
And here I thought I was on crack for thinking the Fifth Magic was closely related to entropy, consumption of heat and denying the Carnot Cycle, I guess not.
Elaborating a bit, to me the description of Aoko being perfect for the Fifth because she's good for nothing except pumping out heat bullets, and Goetia using energy (heat) to time travel, made me think they were messing with Thermodynamics. Specially when Aoko undid Soujuurou's death and sent it "far to the future", if you were to reverse the entropy of a broken cup, you would put it back together perfectly, effectively retracing time, but to reverse entropy in a system you need to give an equal or bigger number to the universe at large (sending it to the future).
All this was because my professor in thermodynamics made a comment about time travel violating 2nd law and all I could think of "oh is that what Aoko is doing?"
Also, if all Magics are related to Thermodynamics, the Third can easily be seen as making a perpetual motion machine.
The world/universe in these contexts are meant to refer to the human world, and the planet.
https://i.imgur.com/HfIo5TS.png
So yes Zelretch helped prolong the existence of Earth by finding out parallel worlds - alternate possibilities of mankind. He also used it to gather magic energy to stop CM's moon drop, which ended up seemingly became a QTL as well. But all this is still limited to just the OU. The concerns about all this future stuffs only is an issue in the OU because of the fluctuation that the future can have due to the actions of someone standing in the "present", hence why there has to be the QTL to lock the past from being changed as well as reducing the future possibilities. None of that matters in the AU where you can be at ALL points in time at once, since time in the AU isn't in the shape of a tree, but a flat sheet of paper where you print the whole forest. The past, present and the future can literally be merged into one in the AU. That is how BB can be at both the beginning of CCC while she already reached her end goal in the future at the same time.
If it is about the actual vast universe beyond Earth and human's observable universe, you would see an image of a bunch of galaxies not just the Earth in that page, and nofurigana shenanigans involved.worlduniverse
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Like I said earlier, the system has a meta reason to exist, that reason is root in Nasu as a writer, like there is a talk about it in the film making FGO event. Stories that have very little paths to go are not good. A story (timeline) where humanity achieved immortality have little room to write anything interesting about for the writer. A story where humanity and everything died out also has little room to write interesting things about. However timelines where there are so many things that is unclear, indecisive and can go so many different ways, is a writer's gold mine.
The whole system exist to justify Nasu dropping story ideas and not revisiting finished storylines for the 10th sequel.