The Ontology of Haruhi Suzumiya

[tehjoker]

Yuki knows.
Kyon just didn't asked her about it.

[quigonkenny]

I think this forum should be renamed "The Navel-gazing of Haruhi Suzumiya". It's degenerated from speculation upon which time travel trope the Haruhiverse uses and how it might tie in to current scientific theory (a worthy, if sometimes mind-numbingly boring subject, if you ask me) through the obligatory philosophical wankery, and finally to the tried and true "Stupidity versus smarts" debate. Actually that last one is an improvement, if you ask me... ^_^

In an effort to getthe topic back on track, I give you something I've been rolling around in my head:

Causal relation vis-a-vis time travel in the Haruhiverse seems to weigh heavily—almost entirely, in fact—on known information. If a Predetermined Event is known to be, say, "Kyon will put his wallet into that hole in the ground," then that statement will certainly eventually become true, but the specific method of its occurence is completely in flux. Kyon could trip and drop his wallet into "that hole". The new wallet Mikuru made him for his birthday could be sitting at the edge of a picnic table and his attempts to grab it could jar the table and cause the wallet to fall off and bounce into the hole. At exactly 15:52:31.5 JST, he could take his 2 year, 5 month, 14.2 day old wallet out of his back pocket with his right hand, reach down and hold it inside of "that hole" for exactly 3.26 seconds, then pull it out. All three possibilities match the known information about the Predetermined Event, but all three have very different paths of causality leading to and away from them. In the Haruhiverse, at some point they are all 100% equally likely, but as the "appointed time" (whenever that might be) approaches, various other things happen and, as someone else suggested, the causal threads find themselves subject to the "snap to grid" forces of the Haruhiverse, and whatever some present denizen of the time frame decides happens happens. Hence why Mikuru always uses Kyon as her "patsy". This may give some theoretical physicists or backyard philosophers fits, but its very convenient from the writer's point of view. "Time travelers can't affect the past, but if Kyon (or presumably Tsuruya or Imouto or Kunikida, etc., but they're not the narrators) is involved and it fits the loosest definition of what's known of the Predetermined Event, it's okay."

Originally Posted by C.A.

That's why scientists predict that cars of the future will drive people around instead of people driving them lol, like those in Minority Report.

The city's traffic regulation system will bring you anywhere you want in the shortest amount of time and without any accidents. In this case flying cars would work.

God, let's hope that never happens. As a society in general we've given up enough of our freedoms. Being able to go wherever, whenever, however, is one of those things you're going to have to pry from my cold, dead hands, thankyousoverymuch... Relying on some central planner's wet dream of a supposedly neutered "Skynet-wannabe" to get us around is just about the last thing people need to be looking forward to... Has no one else read 1984 and seen how much things are heading in that direction? This is a bad thing, people...

And I fix computers for a living. I can tell you from experience that they are not getting more reliable as time goes on. It's just getting cheaper to replace them...

On a somewhat lighter note, am I the only one who started humming this song after reading C.A.'s comment?

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

No, there are smart people and then there are stupid people.

The stupid people are the one who cause all the problems in the world, especially the stupid people in a position of power.

Actually, there are smart people, and there are dim people, and there are knowledgeable people, and there are ignorant people, and there are wise people and there are stupid people. And there are dim wise people, and smart stupid people, and wise ignorant people and stupid knowledgeable people, etc.... While it does sometimes get down to X versus everything else, life is almost never as simple as A versus B.

Although "stupid", in its various and sundry guises, does tend to be problem number one, when you get down to it...

Originally Posted by wassupimviet

I generally agree with this. The march of science and so on is the march of greater convenience. As technology advances to the point where labor becomes simplified and we are more readily able to meet the demands of the world, and considering that most practical problems go back to the issue of scarcity, I believe that we'll solve a good chunk of society's problems.

History has shown that most of society's problems boil down to the fallability of human nature. Terrorists don't blow up people because doing so will put food on their families' tables. Hitler didn't order the extermination of however many millions of Jews because it would get Germany more oil. Al Gore isn't such a douche because there's only a limited amount of money his carbon credits company can make.

Science isn't going to fix those underlying problems. Education might fix it, but only the true historical learn-from-our-mistakes "wisdom" kind of education, not the sociopolitical "intelligencia" propaganda that passes for "education" in most of our schools of "higher learning", or the "no child left behind" shuttling of ignorant, unprepared children out into the post-high school world so that the numbers look good.

Like Kaisos suggested, "stupid" is the problem. Science, at best, just makes the things we already do easier. It doesn't really fix anything.

[xris]

While there is going to be some off-topic comments and posts in any thread, I fail to see how the last (now deleted) 70 odd posts on topics such as washing clothes, indestructible flying cars, stupidity, wolves and corrupt politicians have anything to do with Suzumiya Haruhi.

Please keep the thread on-topic, anyone who replies to anything vaguely off-topic is going do receive an Infraction. And replying to this post will be considered off-topic as well.

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by quigonkenny

Causal relation vis-a-vis time travel in the Haruhiverse seems to weigh heavily—almost entirely, in fact—on known information. If a Predetermined Event is known to be, say, "Kyon will put his wallet into that hole in the ground," then that statement will certainly eventually become true, but the specific method of its occurence is completely in flux. Kyon could trip and drop his wallet into "that hole". The new wallet Mikuru made him for his birthday could be sitting at the edge of a picnic table and his attempts to grab it could jar the table and cause the wallet to fall off and bounce into the hole. At exactly 15:52:31.5 JST, he could take his 2 year, 5 month, 14.2 day old wallet out of his back pocket with his right hand, reach down and hold it inside of "that hole" for exactly 3.26 seconds, then pull it out. All three possibilities match the known information about the Predetermined Event, but all three have very different paths of causality leading to and away from them. In the Haruhiverse, at some point they are all 100% equally likely, but as the "appointed time" (whenever that might be) approaches, various other things happen and, as someone else suggested, the causal threads find themselves subject to the "snap to grid" forces of the Haruhiverse, and whatever some present denizen of the time frame decides happens happens. Hence why Mikuru always uses Kyon as her "patsy". This may give some theoretical physicists or backyard philosophers fits, but its very convenient from the writer's point of view. "Time travelers can't affect the past, but if Kyon (or presumably Tsuruya or Imouto or Kunikida, etc., but they're not the narrators) is involved and it fits the loosest definition of what's known of the Predetermined Event, it's okay."

See, the problem with opening a discussion with this is that it's a statement we can immediately accept as true.

There's nothing to discuss.

The rest of your post made me laugh though.

[OkamiNoKaze]

In the opening credits, there's a part where Haruhi is writing something, what is she writing?

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by OkamiNoKaze

In the opening credits, there's a part where Haruhi is writing something, what is she writing?

You might want to look up "ontology" and re-ask that question in the Q&A section of the Haruhi subforum. Also be sure and read the forum rules for maximum survivability

[CrowKenobi]

Or even just read the first post from this very thread!

[M.Marangio]

The new OP has also some interesting texts, but I'm not sure if all of them are correct:

Haruhi
Closed space, Shinjin, leader of the Brigade, director, ponytail, excellent school record (?), shameless (?), information Br... (?)

Kyon
John Smith, key for everything, wallet of the brigade, mere member, ordinary, troublesome for anything, taktless (?)

Mikuru
fighting waitress, adult, TPDD, mega-bust, pretty, crybaby, secretary (?)

Yuki
expressionless, unemotional, complicated explanation, the Data Integrated Tought Entity (?), (Interf)ace for contacing with Organic...

Itsuki
cards, chess, gobang, ...sive knowledge, part-time job, shining red ball, smiling politely (?)

first running sequence
mostly from the Standard Model:
photon, up/down/top/bottom/charm/strange quark, electron, neutino, tau neutrino, electron neutrino, muon, tauon, gluon and many formulas...

second running sequence
Millennium Prize Problems:
* P is not NP
* Hodge conjecture
* Riemann hypothesis
* Yang–Mills existence and mass gap
* Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness

Some other juicy keywords:
* M-theory
* supersymmetric GUT
* Gott ist tot (no, she isn't).
* (D'où venons-nous ? Que s)ommes-nous ? Où allons-nous ?
* Tsuchinoko

and some others:
alien, infinity, timeless, out of place artifacts, innovation, aggressive, adventure, extrasensory perception, paranormal, telekinesis, invention, unidentified flying object, flying humanoid, possibility, pioneer, surprise, positiveness, as well as some units...

[Tyabann]

The only one that I think has any real plot relevance is Kyon's "key to everything".

And maybe "Gott ist tot", heh.

[Kitsu]

What's up with "Gott ist tot"
First she isn't second she isn't and why using german? Does my language get popular all of sudden or what...als...this line is stolen! I protest with that line against my ethic and religion teacher back then in 6th grade, the poor chalkboard and walls

[Jintor]

Probably because it was said first by Nietzsche, who happened to be German? : |

[Kitsu]

Yes! but why use german which no a** understands and not the translated one?

[Jintor]

Because it's the original, and anybody overanalysing the OP is a genius anyway.

Quite frankly if you know "God is Dead" in more than just a passing sense then you would probably know the original German for it. It's not that hard to know/remember anyway - Gott ist is already pretty easy.

[Kitsu]

Okay that's an argument...seriously I woud never actually looked at all those formulas...I always thought that was random background filling (in the case of the first op) and I bet with my lacking of math and physic knowledge wouldn't recognize them anyway

[dragon4dudes]

Would John Smith be relatively important to the plot?

[Tyabann]

Originally Posted by dragon4dudes

Would John Smith be relatively important to the plot?

Gah, that was there? I didn't notice.

Well, that's a subset of "Key to everything" anyway, so...

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Kitsu

Yes! but why use german which no a** understands and not the translated one?

That's almost like asking why they're using the original physics equations instead of 'happy fun easy' grade school versions...

It isn't like German has anything to do with rocket science.... o.. wait. ( )

[quigonkenny]

Originally Posted by Kaisos Erranon

FFFFFFFF I DIDN'T NOTICE THAT

What... what does that mean!?

I won't go into any detail (that would be better left for the Ontology thread) but if you assume that Haruhi's powers are limited to Earth (which makes sense when you bring the Data Overmind into the mix), then its relationship to other celestial bodies (like Mars) would remain as they should be if there were nothing odd about the last 594 years. In other words, the position of Mars in the night sky would move forward 14 days each time they do the stargazing (assuming they do it the same night each time). The real mindfuck is that due to Haruhi's memory machinations, no one will find this odd, and due to the necessarily precise records that astronomers (and astrologers, for that matter) keep, there's only one way for her to do this. While Haruhi can't change the positions of the heavenly bodies during each repeat, she can change the entirety of recorded astronomical history.

But it's just a theory... ^_^

[C.A.]

Originally Posted by quigonkenny

I won't go into any detail (that would be better left for the Ontology thread) but if you assume that Haruhi's powers are limited to Earth (which makes sense when you bring the Data Overmind into the mix), then its relationship to other celestial bodies (like Mars) would remain as they should be if there were nothing odd about the last 594 years. In other words, the position of Mars in the night sky would move forward 14 days each time they do the stargazing (assuming they do it the same night each time). The real mindfuck is that due to Haruhi's memory machinations, no one will find this odd, and due to the necessarily precise records that astronomers (and astrologers, for that matter) keep, there's only one way for her to do this. While Haruhi can't change the positions of the heavenly bodies during each repeat, she can change the entirety of recorded astronomical history.

But it's just a theory... ^_^

I'm quite sure Haruhi resets the entire universe, if she doesn't, the Earth is going to be hit by a meteor or comet during one of the resets. Staying in the same region of space for hundreds of years would mean waiting for a space collision.

One thing we don't know about the rooftop scenes is what time they're watching Mars. They could very well be watching Mars at 2 different times on the 2 resets shown. Seeing that the 1st Endless Eight we were not shown Haruhi and Mikuru sleeping, we can assume its earlier in the evening and they're not as tired as the 2nd Endless Eight, which could be later in the evening, close to midnight even.

The difference in time could mean that Mars could have a good time to travel across the sky and thus appear in different angles of the horizon.

[Roger Rambo]

Originally Posted by quigonkenny

*snip*

You don't quite comprehend how broken this is, do you. I shall have Atomic Robo give you a better sense of scale here.




If Haruhi sends the Earth back in time to it's original position every 20 days for over 500 years, the effect won't just be earth being in a funky orbital position in our solar system. The Earth will soon NOT be in the Solar system. It may not even be in the Orion arm. It probably won't even be in the milky way galaxy anymore. Changing the recorded history and memory of astronomy won't change the fact that everyone is freezing to death due to there being no nearby heat source to keep us alive.


Coincidentally, this is why time travel is useless without instantaneous infinite ranged FTL.