Railgun Manga - Dream Ranker Arc Discussion / Poll

[GDB]

Originally Posted by Doom_Paperclip

Sorry for cutting out the rest of your post.

No problem, I prefer it this way so I know exactly which part you're commenting on.

I just want to point out that electromagnetism is broad. We're talking about one of the four fundamental forces which govern interactions between everything in the universe. Two of them, if you count the fact that electromagnetic forces and weak nuclear forces are both just manifestations of one electroweak force. If anything, the example which you followed up with is too narrow.

Perhaps, but I'd still say "athleticism" is a more accurate comparison point than "has hands".

[Hiss13]

Originally Posted by Doom_Paperclip

Hence my use of the word "rudimentary". It's still amazing though. Brain-brain interfaces exist and will only get better over time.

In any case, my point is that science has proven you can analyze and manipulate the brain with electromagnetism. The reason we cannot do so with a high degree of control is not because we lack the technology, but because we don't yet know how the brain works well enough. AC, on the other hand, being 20 years ahead, has obviously sorted out all those details since they were able to make something like Testament a reality.

I get that. I was in agreement with you on the part that you quoted and just putting out my two cents. (I didn't notice the word rudimentary since I was skimming and I just woke up and felt really tired).

Using EM forces and related quantities and vectors to alter the brain is definitely possible and I could definitely see Telepaths being able to do so that way thanks to Testament's existence.

[Doom_Paperclip]

Originally Posted by GDB

Perhaps, but I'd still say "athleticism" is a more accurate comparison point than "has hands".

Really? On the face of it, electromagnetism seems simple enough. There are positive and negative charges. Equal charges repel and opposite charges attract. Even a five year old can get that. However, all the phenomena that branch from this elementary principle are anything but simple.

Electromagnetic phenomena include electric currents, magnetic fields, static electricity, electromagnetic radiation (from cosmic rays to visible light and all the way to long radio waves), chemical bonds (and by extension most of chemistry) and that's just off the top of my head. You can spend your whole life studying some of these and only have cursory knowledge on the rest. The subject is so vast, it takes several very different fields to cover every aspect of it.

Electromagnetism is the reason why solid objects are solid, why DNA dissolves in water and precipitates in ethanol and why ice is less dense than in liquid form. Electron transport across protein complexes is involved cellular respiration and photosynthesis. It would be easier to list the things electromagnetism doesn't have to do with.

I do not believe that "athleticism" can compare in breadth to a category of phenomena that underpin a significant percentage of everything. Even within the limited scope of human activities, "athleticism" only comprises a small fraction of the whole.

Originally Posted by Hiss13

I get that. I was in agreement with you on the part that you quoted and just putting out my two cents. (I didn't notice the word rudimentary since I was skimming and I just woke up and felt really tired).

Using EM forces and related quantities and vectors to alter the brain is definitely possible and I could definitely see Telepaths being able to do so that way thanks to Testament's existence.

Sorry about that. I had the feeling you might have been agreeing with me, but years on the Internet have primed me to go on the offensive when in doubt.

Well, it's good that we agree. No lasting harm done, I hope.

[dniv]

Originally Posted by Doom_Paperclip

The way I see it, Mental Out and Electromaster are different applications of the same principle. Both rely on the manipulation of electromagnetic phenomena, but they make use of them for different ends. As such, their brains are highly optimized to perform their respective tasks, to the point where imitating each other would be very difficult, if not impossible.

This seems more plausible if this is what you meant. Though, I find it weird that it

1. doesn't work on animals.
2. doesn't work on the nervous system without first tampering with the brain.
3. can be used on herself, but not on OTHER Electromasters (assuming she's a level 5 esper using Electromaster type powers). You could try to argue that it works on herself because she's the one using the power, but I don't really know if I would buy that. After all, Mikoto can't willingly remove the electric interference from herself in order to approach kittens or other animals, so I would believe that a similar effect would come from Misaki. (Even in the case where her brain is structured differently, since AIM is propagated from all parts of an esper's body (something one of Aleister's AI's said in NT 5) I believe that Misaki would have similar electrical interference problems unless there were a very good reason for why this wouldn't be the case.

It could also admittedly be explained by Misaki's own ineptitude--marking why she is level 5 instead of level 6. In QM, mastering any fundamental aspect of nature basically lets you recreate the rest of it which is why any level 5 can conceivably reach level 6.

In your favor though: a remote can somehow amplify Misaki's powers. I find it reasonable to believe that this remote works by either using electricity or magnetism. So it probably can be used to amplify her powers which she says are harder to use otherwise. Though, even if Mental_Out is conducted using Electromagnetism, we still have far too little understanding of how that is actually supposed to work. I wonder if Dream Ranker is going to shed any light into that.

On a separate note: I also wonder if the way Mental_Out is supposed to affect other people is similar to how the Misaka network manages to communicate between Sisters.

Anyway, I find your theory as plausible (because there really isn't that much more to QM than EM and the other basic forces of nature), but we still need more clarification into how it is actually supposed to work and to why the arbitrary limitations I mentioned exist.

[silverexorcist]

Originally Posted by dniv

3. can be used on herself, but not on OTHER Electromasters (assuming she's a level 5 esper using Electromaster type powers). You could try to argue that it works on herself because she's the one using the power, but I don't really know if I would buy that. After all, Mikoto can't willingly remove the electric interference from herself in order to approach kittens or other animals, so I would believe that a similar effect would come from Misaki. (Even in the case where her brain is structured differently, since AIM is propagated from all parts of an esper's body (something one of Aleister's AI's said in NT 5) I believe that Misaki would have similar electrical interference problems unless there were a very good reason for why this wouldn't be the case.

Misaka's ability to manipulate electricity isn't the problem, it's the high level electromagnetic barrier that is perpetually around her body (especially her head, specifically the brain) that prevents Shokuhou's ability from working. Even if Shokuhou's ability is electric based, it doesn't mean she has a similar barrier around her head. That said, she CAN use her ability on everyone except for Misaka, since the sisters are lower levels, and thus possess weaker barriers. Unless I'm missing something.

Originally Posted by Doom_Paperclip

Not sure what you're trying to say here. She sets boundaries for her powers because they are hard to control otherwise. People have enough problems sorting out their own minds without having to worry about those of others. This is probably doubly true for Espers, who've had their brains actively messed with.

As for the animal thing, this is because Mental Out is probably optimized for use on humans. The minds of animals are very, very different and wouldn't react in the same way to stimuli. There are Espers in AC who are specialized in interacting with animals, like that one girl in the three legged race who could manipulate hamsters, or that other girl who could extract information from cats, but they are likewise unable to manipulate humans.

It may have been hasty for me to claim we won't get more explanations on Misaki's powers, but I seriously doubt it works through any other means than electromagnetic manipulation of the brain. I'll repeat myself here, I really don't see any evidence that suggests otherwise.

My point is just that Shokuhou's ability has too many aspects left to it to say that 'there's no reason to explain more'. It would be a waste of potential if Kamachi-dono just ignored the mysteries around Shokuhou's ability, since most of what we know about telepathy is speculation. We actually speculate more about telepathy, which is somewhat reasonable, than the unreasonable 11th dimensional teleportation.

As for the specialized espers who talk to animals, that's kind of a difficult point to make. After all, supposedly Shokuhou's ability 'has such a wide application, she has to set boundaries on herself'. That's a paraphrase, but basically she's not bound by the upper limits of her powers, but her self-imposed limits she makes in order to reign her power in. Granted, it's just my assumption that she would be able to manipulate animals if it wasn't for those limits. That's why this Dreamer Arc, which shows obvious signs of revolving around Academy City technology relating to the brain, is a good chance to talk about, not only Shokuhou's specific ability, but telepathy as a whole.

[Doom_Paperclip]

Originally Posted by dniv

This seems more plausible if this is what you meant. Though, I find it weird that it

1. doesn't work on animals.

Espers don't just snap their fingers and make stuff happen (though it may look that way to an external observer). They have to calculate the ins and outs of every single action they perform in real time. For Misaki, this means decoding and rewriting the information from the roughly 86 billion neurons in a human brain. Even a generous estimate of the processing power she would need in order to do that put most computers in real life to shame.

Is it really so hard to believe that, having completely mastered all the nuances of the human mind, she is tapped to the point where she doesn't have the spare resources necessary to master animal minds on top of that? I mean, they have different brain structures, neuron and synapse count, mental structures and so on and so forth. You can't treat them the same way as human minds and expect the same results. In computer terms, it's like dealing with a wildly different operating system.

2. doesn't work on the nervous system without first tampering with the brain.

If I get what you're saying, you believe that Misaki should be able to hijack a target's body directly by interfering with their motor neurons, bypassing their central nervous system entirely? That could work in principle, but there are a few points you have to remember:

1) The research leading into Mental Out's, and eventually Exterior's, development was a successor to Clone Dolly Project. The original goal was to mass produce geniuses, but they later concluded it was easier to brainwash already existing geniuses instead. Only, the value of a genius lies in their mind, not their body. The scientists in charge of the project wouldn't waste their time developing an ability that could control the latter but not the former. Controlling the mind lets you control the body anyhow, so it's obvious which ability would be better.

2) Getting an individual muscle to flex or relax is simple enough. Getting all the muscles in one's body to work in concert to perform complex movements is not. The calculations required to do this would be very complex. Again, I don't believe there is room in Misaki's brain for that type of manipulation which would, again, be redundant given the power she already has. Also, controlling an Esper's body alone does not let you control their power, further decreasing the usefulness of this manipulation.

3. can be used on herself, but not on OTHER Electromasters (assuming she's a level 5 esper using Electromaster type powers). You could try to argue that it works on herself because she's the one using the power, but I don't really know if I would buy that. After all, Mikoto can't willingly remove the electric interference from herself in order to approach kittens or other animals, so I would believe that a similar effect would come from Misaki. (Even in the case where her brain is structured differently, since AIM is propagated from all parts of an esper's body (something one of Aleister's AI's said in NT 5) I believe that Misaki would have similar electrical interference problems unless there were a very good reason for why this wouldn't be the case.

Misaka has a max output of about 200 billion volts. Misaki works with human brains, where the difference between a resting neuron and a firing neuron is 100 thousandths of a volt. We're talking 12 orders of magnitude's difference, so I believe it's safe to assume that Misaka's AIM has a much higher voltage than Misaki's.

It could also admittedly be explained by Misaki's own ineptitude--marking why she is level 5 instead of level 6. In QM, mastering any fundamental aspect of nature basically lets you recreate the rest of it which is why any level 5 can conceivably reach level 6.

If by ineptitude you mean she cannot make as many calculations as Tree Diagram, then yes, Misaki, who probably has more calculating power than anyone who has ever lived in real life, is hopelessly inept. Try simulating an entire neural network on a cellular scale in your mind and see how that works out for you.

In your favor though: a remote can somehow amplify Misaki's powers. I find it reasonable to believe that this remote works by either using electricity or magnetism. So it probably can be used to amplify her powers which she says are harder to use otherwise. Though, even if Mental_Out is conducted using Electromagnetism, we still have far too little understanding of how that is actually supposed to work. I wonder if Dream Ranker is going to shed any light into that.

The remote is actually a mental focus, a form of auto-hypnosis. She's trained herself to release her powers in preset ways at the push of a button so that she doesn't lose control of them, but the remotes themselves are mundane and may not, in fact, have any batteries in them or even be functional at all. Another example of this in the Raildexverse is how Musujime Awaki uses her flashlight to aim her Move Point power.

Anyway, I find your theory as plausible (because there really isn't that much more to QM than EM and the other basic forces of nature), but we still need more clarification into how it is actually supposed to work and to why the arbitrary limitations I mentioned exist.

Honestly, you say we understand too little, but I really don't see what you're talking about. We have solid reasons to believe she uses EM to manipulate brains. Any limitations on the ability are due to a lack of the proper calculations. What more do you need? Please help me to understand, because I truly honestly do not understand what you're trying to say.

Originally Posted by silverexorcist

That's why this Dreamer Arc, which shows obvious signs of revolving around Academy City technology relating to the brain, is a good chance to talk about, not only Shokuhou's specific ability, but telepathy as a whole.

I sort of argued against most of your points in my response to dniv, so I'm going to point out that an awful lot of arcs revolve around Academy City technology relating to the brain. The very first arc in Railgun, for instance. I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you.

Also, you speak as if there were only one kind of telepathy, but that needn't be the case. Keep in mind that there was one telepathic girl in Misaki's clique, Kobayashi Shimanaka, who could communicate telepathically with Misaka, indicating that her telepathy is an entirely different thing. In Index Volume 6, one variant of telepathy shows up that actually consists in transferring sounds to targets through invisible vibrating tubes of air. There is no proof that Mental Out is representative of all mental powers in AC, or even most of them.

[dniv]

Spoiler for response to Doom_Paperclip:

Originally Posted by Doom_Paperclip

Espers don't just snap their fingers and make stuff happen (though it may look that way to an external observer). They have to calculate the ins and outs of every single action they perform in real time. For Misaki, this means decoding and rewriting the information from the roughly 86 billion neurons in a human brain. Even a generous estimate of the processing power she would need in order to do that put most computers in real life to shame.

Is it really so hard to believe that, having completely mastered all the nuances of the human mind, she is tapped to the point where she doesn't have the spare resources necessary to master animal minds on top of that? I mean, they have different brain structures, neuron and synapse count, mental structures and so on and so forth. You can't treat them the same way as human minds and expect the same results. In computer terms, it's like dealing with a wildly different operating system.



If I get what you're saying, you believe that Misaki should be able to hijack a target's body directly by interfering with their motor neurons, bypassing their central nervous system entirely? That could work in principle, but there are a few points you have to remember:

1) The research leading into Mental Out's, and eventually Exterior's, development was a successor to Clone Dolly Project. The original goal was to mass produce geniuses, but they later concluded it was easier to brainwash already existing geniuses instead. Only, the value of a genius lies in their mind, not their body. The scientists in charge of the project wouldn't waste their time developing an ability that could control the latter but not the former. Controlling the mind lets you control the body anyhow, so it's obvious which ability would be better.

2) Getting an individual muscle to flex or relax is simple enough. Getting all the muscles in one's body to work in concert to perform complex movements is not. The calculations required to do this would be very complex. Again, I don't believe there is room in Misaki's brain for that type of manipulation which would, again, be redundant given the power she already has. Also, controlling an Esper's body alone does not let you control their power, further decreasing the usefulness of this manipulation.



Misaka has a max output of about 200 billion volts. Misaki works with human brains, where the difference between a resting neuron and a firing neuron is 100 thousandths of a volt. We're talking 12 orders of magnitude's difference, so I believe it's safe to assume that Misaka's AIM has a much higher voltage than Misaki's.



If by ineptitude you mean she cannot make as many calculations as Tree Diagram, then yes, Misaki, who probably has more calculating power than anyone who has ever lived in real life, is hopelessly inept. Try simulating an entire neural network on a cellular scale in your mind and see how that works out for you.



The remote is actually a mental focus, a form of auto-hypnosis. She's trained herself to release her powers in preset ways at the push of a button so that she doesn't lose control of them, but the remotes themselves are mundane and may not, in fact, have any batteries in them or even be functional at all. Another example of this in the Raildexverse is how Musujime Awaki uses her flashlight to aim her Move Point power.



Honestly, you say we understand too little, but I really don't see what you're talking about. We have solid reasons to believe she uses EM to manipulate brains. Any limitations on the ability are due to a lack of the proper calculations. What more do you need? Please help me to understand, because I truly honestly do not understand what you're trying to say.



I sort of argued against most of your points in my response to dniv, so I'm going to point out that an awful lot of arcs revolve around Academy City technology relating to the brain. The very first arc in Railgun, for instance. I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you.

Also, you speak as if there were only one kind of telepathy, but that needn't be the case. Keep in mind that there was one telepathic girl in Misaki's clique, Kobayashi Shimanaka, who could communicate telepathically with Misaka, indicating that her telepathy is an entirely different thing. In Index Volume 6, one variant of telepathy shows up that actually consists in transferring sounds to targets through invisible vibrating tubes of air. There is no proof that Mental Out is representative of all mental powers in AC, or even most of them.

To be honest, I was agreeing with you, but expressing a few doubts that I still had. I was just saying that even if we know that Mental_Out works by tampering with EM stuff, it still doesn't explain how it actually goes about suppressing memories, changing memories (and putting in Qualia), controlling what people do (how much detail it needs to provide in getting a target to perform some action; is manipulating their goals enough or would you have to specify methodology as well), influences people's perceptions, and so on. I would like more specifics about how it actually works. It isn't as hard to visualize how Mikoto could make her powers "work," but it's harder for me to figure out HOW in the heck Misaki understands how human synapses work and still is "as dumb as" she is (given the fact that if she were able to have this microscopic level of control she would have to understand how thought systems actually work).

I concede immediately the point about the electricity output generated by Misaki. You're totally right. I wasn't thinking clearly.

The reason I say that Misaki is inept is because I don't actually believe that Misaki actually memorizes all of the configurations within the human brain. That would be a rather hard to believe. Similarly, there is no way that Accelerator and Mikoto are aware of all of the QM processes going on in using their esper abilities. I'm just assuming that the way esper powers work is that the espers in question develop intuitions for how to make AIM work in certain ways. Then the AIM fields surrounding these espers basically have extra information programmed into them which allow these individuals more subconscious/automatic processing resources in order to form intuitions which allow them to develop their supernatural powers. I don't really think the espers themselves store that much information in their brains. That would honestly be ridiculous--as you said. This (I believe) is why Misaki uses Remotes to help her select which subconscious intuition to use in the moment. These remotes help her basically change the configuration of her mental out powers to match what type of person or brain manipulation she wants to accomplish. (I don't otherwise understand why she would carry around so many of them with her in her hand-bag.) She uses information stored elsewhere which interacts with the AIM fields surrounding her in order to make her powers affect people. She doesn't have most of the information stored within herself, but uses external information to perform her calculations. I said she was "inept" as a level 5 because any complete understanding of how thought structure works would likely equal a theory of everything.

While I understand your point about why the researchers creating the clone dolly project wouldn't want to allow her to affect a target's limbic system without first going through a target's central nervous system because they were trying to capture the ideas behind genius, I still don't understand why Misaki couldn't get someone to create a remote that allowed her to store information for mind-controlling animals with certain varying dispositions. Why doesn't she copy Kihara Nokan and get herself some external arithmetic circuits?

[Chosen_Hero]

Please use the spoilers tag, the posts are getting bigger by the page.

[Doom_Paperclip]

Spoiler for response to dniv:

@dniv, I believe you have some fundamental misunderstandings about how Misaki's power works and Esper powers in general. First things first, Misaki's remotes are just props. There is absolutely nothing special about them. They weren't made just for her, she just arbitrarily took some TV remotes and decided she would focus her powers through them. When Rensa #28 tried using Mental Out, she was literally going to use a random remote she found in a dumpster.

It doesn't matter what sort of remote you give her, it won't expand her powers in any way. Arithmetic circuits might power up her abilities, but they wouldn't broaden them, much like Exterior. Besides, I have the feeling that technology is either very expensive, secret, requires special conditions to be used or a combination of all three, because otherwise every Esper in AC would be using them instead of going through the grueling Power Development Program.

Second, while the AIM certainly does have a large role in controlling Esper powers, as proven by the fact that AIM stalker can manipulate powers through their AIM fields, there is no doubt that Espers have to consciously do a lot of calculations with their actual brains. The first step in becoming an Esper is having your brain tampered with. There's also the fact that Accelerator cannot use his powers on his own due to brain damage removing his calculation ability, despite the fact that his Personal Reality, and therefore AIM field, was intact.

Perhaps the most important piece of evidence comes from Light Novel version of Kongou Mitsuko's introduction (you know, the scene where later Misaka fires the railgun into the swimming pool, shocking everyone but Kuroko):

Originally Posted by Volume 8

“Back to the original topic; the limitation of your ability is probably that you tried to calculate the space that you didn’t have to handle in the first place. It might be better for you if you streamline your calculations.”

“…Thanks for your concern, but the manipulation of three dimensions is different from that of eleven.”

This little tidbit tells us two things:

1) Espers carry out calculations consciously. They can choose how they carry out said calculations.

2) An important aspect of Esper abilities is cutting down on excess calculations. In other words, to make the most of the processing power they already have.

This leads me to speculate that while Espers do have consciously calculate everything they do, they take lots of shortcuts and make lots of approximations. As such, they don't have to fully understand the systems they manipulate, they just have to understand enough to get the job done.

Scientists also make use of lots of shortcuts. The general formula for gravitational attraction is F = G(m₁m₂/r²), but if you're just measuring the gravity felt by an object on the surface of the Earth, you can just use the specific formula F = mg and get virtually the same result in a fraction of the time. Relativity tells us that as you move faster, time slows down and space compresses, but below a significant fraction of the speed of light, these effects are so small you can safely ignore them. I expect Espers do all this and more.

Misaki likely makes use of thousands of specific case formulas and approximations, but those calculations are only valid when dealing with human brains. Outside that context, they would just return incomprehensible values, thus limiting her to humans. Does that sound plausible to you?

On a final note, maybe we should move this discussion to the Abilities thread on the Index Light Novel section. We're getting somewhat off-topic.

[rladls2121]

To think that this series continues after the festival arc.
I'm quite surprised.

Mikoto, of course why would she do something beneficial to Misaki after all the humliation she has given to Mikoto?
And Gekota, Mikoto really loves it doesn't she?

Mikoto and Misaki, it seems like they are going to interact in many ways in the future, whether in dream or reality.
I'm thinking they would be thanking each other someday if they have no "tsun" anymore.
But really, this is what is going on between those two while Touma is fighting enemies to more stronger enemies in the future.

I'm really looking forward to Railgun's future arc during God Right Seats arcs.

[Pablete]

New chapter spoilers:

> Misaki appears, talking with Mikoto.
> Aogami surrounded by a group of thugs attacking him.

[ACertainStark]

Aogami? hoho

[Ravagerblade]

Maybe Aogami's a sponge of bad luck? He's taking Touma's misfortune for a bit.?

[ACertainStark]

We all know why Aogami is appearing so much.

Kill Point!?

[Pablete]

Later he appears unscathed.

[ACertainStark]

"...I'm glad with just sharing the happiness inside my dream with everyone"

It was Aogami's dream? apparently? lol

[Kwikk]

Originally Posted by Pablete

> Aogami surrounded by a group of thugs attacking him.

It will be interesting, I still think Aogami is #6.

[rladls2121]

Makes me think Aogami is from the Science Side.

[ACertainStark]

I'd remove those since you can get banned. Apparently.

[Wandering Soul]

We already knew Aogami was a delinquent like Touma so it's not that surprising that he is surrounded by thugs.