What might be the motivation of an alien race so infinitely more advanced than humanity that what they think of as simplistic applications of the laws of physics looks to us for all intents and purposes like magic? What could they possibly need, and why would that need involve interacting with a race such as humanity, which must be to them what bacteria are to us?
>>43981323
We're cute pets.
>>43981323
Noblesse Oblige
>>43981323
Curiosity. We don't exactly understand how bacteria work either.
>>43981323
both apropos of nothing and entirely appropriate to the conversation:
>>43981339
>>43981374
I love the stuff Ume Sensei can come up with on those rare moments she manages to pull her head out of the lesbian gutter.
>>43981323
It's their Magical Realm
>>43981323
In one battle 7,000+ years hence, the combined might of man will make for a good distraction for their actual enemies.
>>43981323
Stealing our dank fucking memes.
>>43981323
Fear of death
video semi related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ridEK4z1Vqc
>>43981323
To spread their ideology. To be proven right.
>>43981323
We're an ant farm to them. They keep us around because we're interesting to watch scurry around.
We are them from the past, they influence us to change their history.
>>43981323
They wouldn't.
>>43981323
I don't know. The alien mind is strange and mysterious.
>>43981323
I think you're underestimating humans a bit. We wouldn't be like bacteria compared to them. Assuming they evolved like us, we're both multicellular organisms that follow the same rules of logic, mathematics, and the laws of physics.
I think we'd be treated like stupid apes or dogs at worst.
So yea, we're still useful as cute companion pets, maybe even hunting partners.
They might just have fun fucking with us with their "magic".
Is this knowledge and technology just much more advanced than ours or is it entirely out of our league?
EI, could we be taught some of their science or are our brains not capable of processing it?
>>43981323
What could they need?
Ground to stand on. Air to breathe. Food to eat.
Raw materials are abundant, but finite within a given volume of space.
This isn't even assuming an antagonistic role for the aliens.
>>43981323
They only sent one asshole to oversee Earth. All that asshole does is collect human entertainment and beam it up to his superiors.
>>43983764
What do you want?
>>43981323
What MIGHT it be?
I'm pretty sure the answer is "Just about anything."
But if I were one of them?
I don't know, entertainment? Maybe the humans could come up with interesting stories or do interesting things I hadn't seen before or something.
Just a reminder that even our post-human and machine-god successors will be the backwards, isolated, laughing stock and joke of the universe at large.
>>43985671
Just a reminder that in the context of "fictitious facts I just made up off the top of my head" your statement has no more validity or significance than my rejoinder of "nuh uh!"
>>43985671
>>43985627
Who are you?
>>43981323
This has been done before by Robert A. Heinlein. "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag"
>>43985671
The universe is homogenous on large scales, dipshit. We're not any more or less likely to be backwards and isolated than anyone else.
>>43981323
I like the idea of it being something really mundane.
"Greetings Humans! Let me use your bathroom real quick?"
"Hey Human, does this make my butt look fat?"
"Human. Heeey, human. You wanna play video games? I'm bored over here."
"Human, can you get me some toilet paper? My roommate used it all 'cause he's a giant asshole."
I mean yeah obviously this wouldn't be the case with incubators, but yanno. Maybe they're lazy and using magic is still more troublesome than asking someone else to do it.
>>43985834
Wasn't the Incubators' deal that they need other species to harvest emotional energy from since they themselves have no emotions? (however little sense that makes)
>>43985892
So they're just Vampire Vulcans?
>>43985961
No, they don't want the emotions for themselves. They think emotions are a terrible mental illness and would never want to actually experience them. They just found out that using their "magic", they can use emotions to break the second law of thermodynamics. As it happens, sadness is the most powerful emotion. They've thus created systems within systems in order to inflict the maximum amount of sadness upon the most emotional people in order to prolong the lifespan of the universe by reversing entropy.
>>43986010
>tmy realize the Incubators are a metaphor for Urobochi himself, who must harvest his own characters' suffering in order to prolong the lifespan of the franchise because for all his creative powers he has no emotions of his own
>>43986010
>As it happens, sadness is the most powerful emotion.
No, the energy came from the transition between extremes of emotion, similar to electrical potential difference.
It's just much easier to make people move very quickly from joy to despair than it is to cause the reverse.
>>43987255
I've always wondered why they don't let them turn from witches back into mahous to harvest even more energy.
>>43987405
Seems like it's more efficient from their point of view to look for more Mahous.
>>43987405
Witches are necessary because they make magical girls necessary.
Allowing witches to turn back would mess with the population dynamics.
>>43987405
Not Cost efficient probably. I mean once you turn into a witch you start killing folks, be they mundane humans or other magical girls. Anyone with a shred of morals is gonna hate themselves if they ever become self aware of their condition, especially if they turn back into a human. It's basically the old werewolf principle, "Oh god I turned into a monster and killed people I don't deserve life, ect ect."
It's a lot easier to dupe a fresh girl into selling their soul into lichood than trying to fix one who is already fucked up by becoming a witch, especially when you consider the repercussions of such an act. She might tell others, who tell others, who tell others. Even if you wipe her memories to prevent it that's spending more energy on top of turning her back into a human.
>>43981323
Have you considered playing my quest where we drag humanity into a total war against the Incubators?
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/legend-of-the-illuminatist-madoka-the-revolutionary-human-incubator-war-quest-pmmm.22145/
>>43987405
Because joy of a wish has to be ballanced with equal amount of suffering.
Guys, try thinking of it like this: what would we do if we encountered a fully sentient alien species whose technology was still iron age level? Why all these assumptions that the aliens are so different than us that the discovery of a sentient alien species isn't incredible regardless of tech level?
>>43987714
Well, the civilization in question from OP's pic is already incomprehensibly advanced. It's implied that they're already in contact with countless other sentient species across the galaxy/universe. That's more or less the level we're talking about here.
>>43987714
The difference between a Kardeshev IV civilization like the Incubators and modern day humanity is infinitely larger than between humanity and some iron age culture.
>>43987864
Yeah, but for reasonable numbers in the drake equation you get about 3 to 7 sentient races in the galaxy at any time. That means that even for an incredibly advanced race a brand new species is an incredible find
>>43987970
Actually, given their observed ability to effortlessly manipulate time, change the past and create entire universes for the purpose of experimentation, I'd say the Incubators might be a type 5 (theoretical) civilization on the Kardashev scale. Same level as scary shit like the Time Lords or the Photino Birds. The kind of civilization who looks at the Vorlons and the Forerunners and snickers at the chimpanzees.
>>43988024
To drive the point home: time/space manipulation is so utterly trivial to these guys they can afford to give away what is essentially a miniature TARDIS (with added time stopping, slowing and acceleration powers) to what at the moment didn't seem to them anything more than a regular girl who had something they mildly wanted.
If you could unite all of humanity into a single empire to fight the Incubators, exploiting their hubris, would you?
Have some Incubator killing music at that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxozwqNMbq0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvJWJHXdQoo
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/legend-of-the-illuminatist-madoka-the-revolutionary-human-incubator-war-quest-pmmm.22145/
>>43988102
Please, please no. Cosmic horror is better off without Humanity Fuck You thrown in it. This is how you end up with CthulhuTech.
>>43987983
If that's true I can only assume that their reach goes beyond what I guessed before. Since their goal is to stave off the long term heat death of the universe, that should be telling of what kind of civilization they must have.
To the OP's question, I think I can imagine such a species conducting some kind of vain experiment on humanity to try and prove a point about life itself.
>>43988153
>CthulhuTech
So you'd rather sink and wallow in despair rather than overcome and seize the universe for humanity?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfj71kgq7aU
>>43988256
I'd rather sink and wallow in despair than play CTech, in any case.
>>43988276
Why are you engaging in Lèse majesté against Kaiserin Kriemhild Gretchen?
>>43987405
Because then they wouldn't get a net increase in energy, because making people happy takes a lot more juice than making them miserable.
The whole point of giving them a wish at all is to spike their happiness up above the baseline in order to create a steeper drop into despair afterwards. If you have to boost them up out of total misery before dropping them again, you're not going to profit from the interaction. It's like trying to get infinite power from a flat battery. It's much better to just grab a fresh cell and overvolt it until it explodes.
A bacterium can do things that a human can't. We're constantly fucking with the genes of microorganisms to suit our needs. Perhaps we can produce something they need, or kill something that they can't.
>>43988235
I mean, alright. I just think it's kind of an unrealistic idea. I mean, it's a magical girl anime, so of course, but still, having infinite knowledge of physics and the only thing you can do to stave off the heat death of the universe is by making little girls sad
>>43988631
That's because sad little girls are an energy source that violates the laws of physics, it might not be the only option but it's the best one the incubators had.
>>43988256
The Incubator problem is already under control, thanks to our lord and savior.
Why can't Incubator cunts just leave humanity alone and just accept that Poincare's recurrence theorem will one day revive the universe from heat death?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe#Time_frame_for_heat_death
>>43988631
The lore explanation is just that the energy they get out of emotions is an odd exception that doesn't obey conservation of energy. It might make sense that they don't understand it considering they don't have any emotions themselves.
The writing explanation is that entropy was meant to be a symbolic idea. The writer has referenced it before and he seems to have written the show as kind of a "final answer" for some of his personal struggles.
>>43988876
>Backstabbing Madoka, the only true goddess and savior
I want all the Homus to leave. Heretics.
>>43985239
You I like. Did you see the movie?
>>43981323
Do they have empathy? A desire to interact socially? Hunger? Drives?
To quote Dutch from Asphalt Jungle "What kind of man are you, huh, what keeps you alive?". The don't really provide enough information to give a meaningful answer.
>>43981323
>Which must be to them what bacteria are to us?
Do you have any idea how interesting, critical, and deadly bacteria are to higher organisms?
For all we know we're the critical gut fauna of a being whose insides are time and space. Without us we would die like how we would die without certain colonies of bacteria in our intestines.
Maybe we're a virulent strain of black death. Maybe we're medicinal, injected into this universe in a desperate attempt to save it.
Do you know how many "superior" organisms die in the end and become the chow of bacteria?
Size is not everything and power is relativistic. Your mother should have taught you better OP. 0/10 see me after class.
>>43989566
Seen the movie, read the book, played the games, gonna run the Finnish RPG cause I would suck the dick of this setting
>>43989791
And to think I found a gentleman of such distinction in a Madoka thread!
>>43989390
Why would you write a sequel to your "final answer" that undid everything nice about it?
Yes I'm still mad.
>>43989969
Me too anon, me too.
>>43989829
Compliment accepted, but don't hate on Madoka broski, that shits one of a few acceptable Norwegian cartoon etchings.
>>43990050
Eh, I just couldn't get into it. There's a lot of "yeah, but..." issues with the plot. And it gets kind of schmaltzy. But to each their own.
I did like the "turning into liches then witches" aspect of the show. I think it should have stopped there.
>>43990087
Fair enough. I watched it for a class (go fucking figure) and I enjoyed it. It at least has some though going into it, reminds me of Paranoia agent in that aspect.
>>43985239
Also, to expand for purposes of discussion:
"A picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. Cars drive off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around... Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind... And of course, the usual mess—apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody’s handkerchief, somebody’s penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow."
Aliens wouldn't give a flying fuck about us.
