Nasuverse - Moon Cell Cosmology Re-Evaluation Part 1

[Executor_N0]

They've been invited to the thread but I believe they have been busy or perhaps not interested. @Executor_N0 @DontTalkDT

The way I see certain stuff is different (Like how to approach setting books), but they are meaningless since the Wiki already has guidelines on that.

All I can say is that if the Moon Ceel might be considered a digital world with no 1:1 effect in the physical world, it could maybe get its own "Tier 1" "inside the Moon Ceel" with something like Reality Equalization, but with no effect on the tiering outside of it.

 

[Deagonx]

All I can say is that if the Moon Ceel might be considered a digital world with no 1:1 effect in the physical world, it could maybe get its own "Tier 1" "inside the Moon Ceel" with something like Reality Equalization, but with no effect on the tiering outside of it.

Yeah the effect isn't 1:1. The Moon Cell is powerful but BB cannot affect the outside world to the same degree she can affect the worlds in the Moon Cell.

 

[DarkGrath]

I've been asked to provide input here.

To be honest, this thread is a headache to navigate. This isn't the fault of any single person, but I implore anyone intending to further discuss this topic to at least try to keep things more concise - reading a multiple page long thread on a complex topic is one thing, but when many individual posts are upwards of thousands of words long, it's past the point that this is completely unreasonable for anyone not already caught up on the thread to evaluate. That being said, here are my contentions.

My main concern is the question of how literally Rin's monologue is supposed to be interpreted. Rin's monologue acts as the supporting context for the statement about the Moon Cell having an "8th dimensional defense wall", but reading it over and over again, I don't place a high vote of confidence on the statements of higher dimensional existence in it being literal.

To quote a couple sections of the monologue to explain what I mean:

"The perception of the recorded universe is over many dimensions…think of it as a higher dimensional existence."

"From this higher dimension, the third dimension looks like a flat scroll."

"Er, if the three-dimensional world is a world drawn in a book, and then if you jumped inside the book and came out outside the book, something like that?"

For the sake of not contradicting myself regarding concision, I won't point out every example in the text, but my problem is essentially this: throughout the whole monologue, Rin speaks entirely of this "higher dimensional existence" in analogous terms. We're dodging around the fact that she never really refers in this monologue to a literal higher dimensional existence; rather, as seen above and elsewhere, she uses higher dimensional existence as an analogy to explain the function of the Moon Cell in clearer terms. What she says, for example, is that BB can see the past, present, and future in a way analogous to how a person could see all sections of a book at once. When taken with the context of the Moon Cell's capabilities to simulate possible futures and therefore analyse any point in these simulations, this makes sense, and doesn't necessarily imply anything we would consider HDE - it's just something that's easy to explain using dimensionality as a an analogy.

I'll note that this is potentially an artefact of the translation process - I cannot personally verify whether the phrasing used suggesting this is being talked of in analogous terms is a consequence of poor translation. But when dealing with higher dimensional tiering, I expect a high burden of proof. When the presence of 8 dimensions is supported by an uncontextualised one-off statement, and the closest thing we have to a reference to this dimensionality elsewhere is in the form of an analogy, I'm left looking at this and thinking that there are very different ways of interpreting this evidence. I can't say I'm convinced.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Bump.

 

[Firestorm808]

Can anyone please identify what space in the MoonCell is supposed to be 4-D?

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Right, so, since Deagon requested my input here again, I'm gonna go out a limb here and do that. Helping out a homie and all that.

He's pointed me to this specific post:

I've been asked to provide input here.

To be honest, this thread is a headache to navigate. This isn't the fault of any single person, but I implore anyone intending to further discuss this topic to at least try to keep things more concise - reading a multiple page long thread on a complex topic is one thing, but when many individual posts are upwards of thousands of words long, it's past the point that this is completely unreasonable for anyone not already caught up on the thread to evaluate. That being said, here are my contentions.

My main concern is the question of how literally Rin's monologue is supposed to be interpreted. Rin's monologue acts as the supporting context for the statement about the Moon Cell having an "8th dimensional defense wall", but reading it over and over again, I don't place a high vote of confidence on the statements of higher dimensional existence in it being literal.

To quote a couple sections of the monologue to explain what I mean:

"The perception of the recorded universe is over many dimensions…think of it as a higher dimensional existence."

"From this higher dimension, the third dimension looks like a flat scroll."

"Er, if the three-dimensional world is a world drawn in a book, and then if you jumped inside the book and came out outside the book, something like that?"

For the sake of not contradicting myself regarding concision, I won't point out every example in the text, but my problem is essentially this: throughout the whole monologue, Rin speaks entirely of this "higher dimensional existence" in analogous terms. We're dodging around the fact that she never really refers in this monologue to a literal higher dimensional existence; rather, as seen above and elsewhere, she uses higher dimensional existence as an analogy to explain the function of the Moon Cell in clearer terms. What she says, for example, is that BB can see the past, present, and future in a way analogous to how a person could see all sections of a book at once. When taken with the context of the Moon Cell's capabilities to simulate possible futures and therefore analyse any point in these simulations, this makes sense, and doesn't necessarily imply anything we would consider HDE - it's just something that's easy to explain using dimensionality as a an analogy.

I'll note that this is potentially an artefact of the translation process - I cannot personally verify whether the phrasing used suggesting this is being talked of in analogous terms is a consequence of poor translation. But when dealing with higher dimensional tiering, I expect a high burden of proof. When the presence of 8 dimensions is supported by an uncontextualised one-off statement, and the closest thing we have to a reference to this dimensionality elsewhere is in the form of an analogy, I'm left looking at this and thinking that there are very different ways of interpreting this evidence. I can't say I'm convinced.

So, the bottom issue here seems to be that, even in the monologue giving exposition about higher dimensions, said higher dimensions are not used in a literal sense, but in terms of an analogy, and as such what it's describing isn't necessarily a 1:1 match with what is actually happening, but more an approximation of how it works.

Yeah, so, the thing is that this doesn't seem to be the case. Using the translation which the OP provided:

However, the laws of the Recorded Universe are different. The Recorded Universe is a higher dimensional perception... Think of it as a higher existence.

Umm, let's say that a three-dimensional world was depicted inside a book and if we were to jump, we would be able to exit from that book, right? it is as if I'm looking down at my past, present, and future like it were recorded in that book that I just jumped out of. Do you understand now? This is as known as higher-dimensional perspective. Meaning that every timeline in the book converges and becomes one.

All of this is fairly straightforward: "The Recorded Universe is a higher-dimensional perception," "This is known as a higher-dimensional perspective," and etc. Even in the other translation that the above post quoted, it is still stated that "the perception of the recorded universe is over many dimensions." None of this seems to be actually meant as an analogy, and at the very best, the analogy here would be found in the comparison between a book and its reader, which in and of itself doesn't mean the higher-dimensional statements are purely analogies.

In fact, something both translations agree on is:

It's the same as that. This is imaginary number space, a higher-dimensional information space made of light

It is the same idea here. The imaginary number space is composed of a higher plane of information made from light.

And here is another thing that's been posted up there with regards to this:

Rani :: …Indeed. We can conjecture that it is in order to prevent them from deviating from their function as observational mechanisms, but…In truth, it may have been to prevent cases like the present one from occurring. The Moon Cell is the eyes of god. The photon-based recording medium in the Core is a higher dimensional existence.

So I really struggle to see how one can take this as being just comparisons. At no point do the scans ever feature the characters going "X is like Y." No, all of them repeatedly have them go "X is Y," and then one of them gives an analogy Z to describe how Y functions. Yet because Z is an analogy, that must mean the equation to Y was an analogy as well? That's just not very sound logic at all.

To quote a part of the previous discussion that caught my eye, also:

We have two pieces of information. The first and simplest is the scan from BB where the wall guarding the Moon Cell Core is described as "cutting through eight dimensions." The second, and more complicated, is Rin's monologue. She is asked about the concept of the Observed Universe, and explains the difference between it and the Recorded Universe, how time passes linearly and irreversibly in the OU but in the RU, past present and future exist at the same time. This is referred to as a higher dimensional perspective. The ability to view time non-linearly, to flip back and forth.

She uses an analogy of a three-dimensional world as a book that you come outside of and then you can view past and present simultaneously, because the Moon Cell follows the laws of a Recorded Universe, it's a concurrent world simulator. This is crucial. Ask yourself why BB can view the past and present of the Moon Cell simultaneously. Is it because she is a four dimensional or eight dimensional being? No, it is because she became the computer that is processing the timelines of the moon cell as data.

This line of logic has much of the same issues I've talked about in here before. Namely the fact that it basically goes "There are two pieces of information, X and Y, leading to a result Z. We know that X holds, and as such Y is really just a way of describing X, and not to be taken literally."

Translating that into more concrete terms, it basically goes: "We know that the Moon Cell stores the information of all its worlds as accessible data, allowing it to look at their past, present and future as one simultaneous structure. We also know that the Moon Cell's existence and perspective is described as a higher-dimensional one, which allows it to look down on the timeline and its past and future. However, given what we already know about it, surely those statements are simply referring to the data factor, and not to actual higher dimensionality."

As I said.prior, this is a bit of a weird point because it starts off with the notion that the "Moon Cell has access to the data of its worlds and as such to their pasts and futures" overrides "The Moon Cell is a higher-dimensional existence, looking down at past, present and future as part of one continuous object, instead of as a process" due to some posited fundamental incompatibility between the two.

The idea that there is such an incompatibility, to begin with, seems to be based on the argument that, since spatiality is a physical attribute, and the Moon Cell is non-physical, then the Moon Cell's worlds can't have true dimensionality, but given the very matter-of-fact tone in which the higher dimensions in question are ascribed to the Moon Cell, I'd say that this should be just be taken as evidence that the Moon Cell's worlds do, in fact, have some manner of spatiality to them after all.

Trying to recontextualize those statements to say they actually meant something other than what the the text hints at is pretty disingenuous in the face of that. We don't even treat a lack of materiality as being necessarily something that prevents higher-dimensional spaces from getting high tiers, at least not if superiority over physical worlds is demonstrated by them.

We know souls are not higher infinities not because of other people's abilities to interact with them, rather, the concrete level of power that souls have in the verse. One of the early events in Unlimited Blade Works is Rin discovered the magic circles Shinji and his servant placed to harvest the souls of the students in the high school for magic energy. These servants are tiered around 6-B.

If what you claim about "higher dimensions" is true, each individual human soul can be said to have a higher infinity over a 3-D universe, rendering them 3-A at the absolute lowest. This is directly disproven by the fact that 6-B servants often harvest hundreds of souls at once. By the fact that souls can be captured and imprisoned by beings far far weaker than that. There is nothing in the entire franchise to suggest souls wield such incredible power. Everything we know about them proves the exact opposite of that. So by what measure are they "higher dimensional?" They certainly don't have an additional spatial dimension, they lack any spatial dimensions.

Oh right, they're a spiritual phenomenon that is independent of the time axis. This is one of two, possibly three instances in the verse where "higher dimensional" can be concrete disproven to refer to spatiality nor a higher infinity.

No, that's not my argument. I'm not denying that they are higher dimensional, I am contesting your interpretation of what that means. Namely that it refers to an additional geometric dimension and that it confers a higher infinity. In the case of souls, I have proven this to be false. For heroic spirits likewise, this can also be proven false. Heroic spirits and the Throne do not have spatial dimensions, they are a spiritual existence independent of the axis of time, so we know definitively that this is not referring to geometric dimensions. Moreover, we know that they are not a higher infinity either. Even though they are much more powerful than their servant versions and earth magicians, their level of power is simply not that high.

Same as above. The whole "I claim X and Y are fundamentally incompatible pieces of information, so I'm going to say Y doesn't actually mean what it means and was really just a way of talking about X" is something that doesn't convince me in the slightest. That said: If absorption of higher-dimensional constructs (That you claim would hold the same relationship over the timeline that BB does) seemingly only confers a finite power boost in-verse, that's a good deal more concrete as counterevidence. I'll wait for any responses from supporters on that matter before I proceed, especially given Paul claiming they have infinite power and whatnot.

The Heroic Spirits thing I'm not as interested in, since I recall talk from the supporters of the verse saying that they do, in fact, scale to Tier 1 even if their regular Servant counterparts don't, but I welcome elaboration on that too, I suppose. You haven't posted any material that would serve as counterweight to the claim that they do scale to Tier 1 (And largely only based that point of yours on something I've already said doesn't convince me at all, from what I can tell), so, if there is such material to post, now is the time.

Can anyone please identify what space in the MoonCell is supposed to be 4-D?

How does this matter for the current discussion?

 

[Deagonx]

In fact, something both translations agree on is:

It's the same as that. This is imaginary number space, a higher-dimensional information space made of light

It is the same idea here. The imaginary number space is composed of a higher plane of information made from light.

I'd actually say this is a pretty big disagreement, no? A higher plane, and a "higher-dimensional space" are quite different things. Higher planes can be non-dimensional, non-higher infinities. That's sort of a big point of contention here. Even if they could be the same thing, it doesn't mean they are.

The idea that there is such an incompatibility, to begin with, seems to be based on the argument that, since spatiality is a physical attribute, and the Moon Cell is non-physical, then the Moon Cell's worlds can't have true dimensionality, but given the very matter-of-fact tone in which the higher dimensions in question are ascribed to the Moon Cell, I'd say that this should be just be taken as evidence that the Moon Cell's worlds do, in fact, have some manner of spatiality to them after all.

Trying to recontextualize those statements to say they actually meant something other than what the the text hints at is pretty disingenuous in the face of that.

I think an aspersion of being disingenuous is an overreaction here. I have the opposite approach. If we know, concretely, that the Moon Cell's worlds lack dimensionality, and as DarkGrath said above, it is entirely feasible to see this as an analogy, it seems more prudent to take the stance that doesn't contradict a large amount of very concrete information about the Moon Cell which contradicts spatiality.

We don't even treat a lack of materiality as being necessarily something that prevents higher-dimensional spaces from getting high tiers, at least not if superiority over physical worlds is demonstrated by them.

I agree, but that's not really my point. It's not that a lack of materiality or spatiality should prevent higher tiers. It is that higher tiers are being given on the basis that the best interpretation is spatial. I think there is good reason to doubt that.

That said: If absorption of higher-dimensional constructs (That you claim would hold the same relationship over the timeline that BB does) seemingly only confers a finite power boost in-verse, that's a good deal more concrete as counterevidence. I'll wait for any responses from supporters on that matter before I proceed, especially given Paul claiming they have infinite power and whatnot.

The Heroic Spirits thing I'm not as interested in, since I recall talk from the supporters of the verse saying that they do, in fact, scale to Tier 1 even if their regular Servant counterparts don't, but I welcome elaboration on that too, I suppose. You haven't posted any material that would serve as counterweight to the claim that they do scale to Tier 1

There is a lot of counter-evidence, I'll try to make my chain of logic fairly straightforward, and then provide the scans/quotes/evidence beneath each part.

Souls

1. Souls are a higher-dimensional existence. They are said to be a great information medium, and are used for super computers on Earth that can interact with the Moon Cell. Pseudo-Spiritrons also exist within the Moon Cell. Thus, it is highly likely that the notion of "higher-dimensional existence" is comparable between souls and the Moon Cell.

Pseudo-Spiritron Computer
This is a super computer that was created using spiritrons made based on the Magic Theory of Pseudo-Spiritrons.
It is a machine that uses spiritrons created from a soul defined as a machine. The use of spiritrons makes high speed computation possible.
The Pseudo-Spiritron Computer is a parallel computation device that uses the soul (which resides in a higher dimension) as its axis to activate a “something” which lies in a parallel world.
The first version of the Pseudo-Spiritron Computer was completed in 1980.
Its processing power was so great that it even surpassed the expected processing power of a quantum computer that would finish being developed and built in 2030.
(Quantum computer development was frozen by the West Europe Plutocracy in 1999)
The United Nations led investigation unit first managed to infiltrate the Moon with the assistance of this Pseudo-Spiritron Computer.

2. Servants are materialized souls. So even the Servant Counterparts are the materialization of a higher dimensional existence.

"W-Wait...! So the Third Sorcery is the materialization of the soul!? But Servants are materialized souls too...!"

3. Absorption of souls is something many servants do on a large scale, but it only confers them limited energy. Heroic spirits are said to be worth a few hundred thousand souls. Gathering many human souls is a strategy of masters and servants to give them more magic power.

These quotes are longer, but are crucial for the point of understanding that souls deliver finite energy to servants

Is she still not satisfied after consuming a heroic spirit with energy worth a few hundred thousand souls?

If you want to keep Saber, all you need to do is feed her souls."

"...So, you are saying there is a Servant that did not disappear?
...
"Saber disappeared by her own will, but if a Servant wished to stay, then the answer is simple.
He must have acquired the magical energy he needed by feeding on souls and lived these past ten years."

There are boundary fields that drain physical and mental strength from people within them.
But the boundary field laid out over this school is on a completely different level.
This is a soul-eater. It is a Bloodfort that dissolves people within it and claims the souls that seep out.

"...It is as you suspect. I told you we are basically spirits. Therefore, our meals consist of souls and mental constituents.
As you subsist on meat, we subsist on souls and minds.
Our basic abilities do not change from such nourishment, but we do become tougher. In other words, our magical energy capacity increases."

"So the magical energy the Master provides isn't enough?"
"It's not that, but it doesn't hurt to have more. In war, if you lack strength, you make up for it with supplies, right?
It's a basic tactic for a Master to steal energy from the people around them. In that regard, this boundary field is very efficient."

"Of course. The Holy Grail merely summons these Servants, and it is the role of the Master to maintain them after that.
But that is possible only because the Holy Grail is aiding the Master. The magical energy of a magus is not enough to maintain a Servant. If one does not have a donor called the Holy Grail, their Servant will disappear."

"...I thought so. Then..."
"No. If you do not have enough, all you need do is compensate for that.
For Servants, furnishing magical energy is only an act of compensation. It is their true nature to consume souls. If their existence starts to fade, it can be replenished using other souls."

"Wha――"
Does that mean attacking random people like Shinji did?

"Exactly. Usually, they replenish enough magical energy from their Master.
But it's obvious that one gets more magical energy from many people rather than just one person, right?
To put it bluntly, a weak Master makes his Servant eat humans."
"――――"

"Servants transform human emotions and souls into magical energy.
That is the most efficient way to make your Servant more powerful. There are many Masters who kill humans as sacrifices for their Servant."

4. The soul is directly said to be not of the physical world, but of the astral world, which is something of a higher order.

In that case―――what do you think records my body and gives it form?"
It is obvious. The soul.
It is not the law of the physical world, but something of the higher order, the record of all the bodies within the concept of the astral world.

Conclusion: Souls, of a higher dimensional existence that is non-physical and is used in computers like the Moon Cell, give finite quantities of energy that allow the subsistence of servants who are consistently around island level.

Heroic Spirits


1. Heroic Spirits are explicitly said to be an existence of a higher order, separate from the time axis, that transcends time and views past and present simultaneously (like in Rin's monologue.)

Heroic Spirits are a spiritual phenomenon of a higher order, and the Throne of Heroic Spirits exists in a dimension above this dimension.
They are an existence that transcend time.

Those who have become Heroic Sｐirits are freed from the constraints of time and are moved to the Throne of Heroes, existing to the outside of the World.

2. Sakura Matou, with the Black Shadow (antagonist of the Heaven's Feel route of Fate/stay night), was said to be on the level of pure Heroic Spirits, not just servants.

She's covering her body with her own dark magical energy.
―――The amount and the presence of her magical energy is beyond human capabilities.
She's at the same level as pure heroic spirits, the Counter Guardians.

Is she still not satisfied after consuming a heroic spirit with energy worth a few hundred thousand souls? (This was after she absorbed Gilgamesh)

3. Counter Guardians (of the Counter Force) are actual bonafide Heroic Spirits, summoned by the World.

What can be thought of as a heroic spirit’s “main body” resides in the Throne of Heroes, and can only be summoned by the World. A Servant is merely an “emanation” or pseudo-copy of a heroic spirit’s main body, summoned by ritual.

4. During this time, she was said to have 100,000,000 magical energy to Rin's 300. This was because she had access to the Holy Grail.

Sakura's magical energy is infinite.
Her capacity reaches a hundred million.
To Rin, whose capacity is a mere three hundred, Sakura is a monster.

5. This 100,000,000 pool of magical energy was based on collecting the magical energy from six Servants that were summoned. So the energy level that was said to be equal to a true Heroic Spirit was only a few times higher than a Servant.

"You should not be surprised. The Holy Grail is a filtration device that turns the soul into pure magical energy.
Yes, it should let you grant any wish. It contains more magical energy than a magus could ever use within his lifetime.
That is why it is better with more sacrifices. It should be omnipotent with six Servants as sacrifices.
Five Servants have filled the Holy Grail. Only one more is needed for the omnipotent grail they sought."

"―――Then... Then only the Masters can handle the Holy Grail. If it is a repository of pure magical energy, only magi can use it.
...Yes. If the Master is an excellent magus, it――――"

Notably, Sakura's power was said to be higher-dimensional in nature, using the same type of power as the Imaginary Number Space:

Rin realizes that the attacks are not from the black shadow, but a magic Sakura possesses.
That magic of Matou is to bind others.
But Sakura is originally from the Tohsaka family―――a shadow-user with an origin of the imaginary element, the imaginary number.
Matou Sakura is able to embody the black shadow to that degree because she has both of those attributes――――!

Conclusion: Heroic Spirits, where are of a higher order of existence that transcends time and views it the same way BB does, are equal to about seven island level servants, and can be roughly mapped out to the souls of a few million people.

TL;DR: Souls that are higher dimensional, from the astral world, grant finite quantities of power to servants. Servants themselves are materialized souls. They nourish themselves by eating human souls. Gilgamesh is worth a few hundred thousand human souls, and is considered one of the very strongest servants. The holy grail which represented the collective power of seven servants was about 100,000,000 and was said to be equal to a true heroic spirit, which are beings of a higher order that transcend time. Sakura's power was the holy grail, and she also had the power of the imaginary number space.

These very same higher dimensional souls are the basis for spiritron computers that both Earth's nations and the Moon Cell use. The same souls which, in relatively large quantities of human souls, would be equal to a heroic spirit that transcends time. Seven servants, all who are consistently about island level, have the equivalent magic power of such a being.

It is clear to me, at least, that these higher dimensional existences are not higher infinities of power, and they decided are not spatial, as there are multiple statements of them being non-physical, and astral.

 

[Deagonx]

@Qawsedf234 @Theglassman12 the above post has all the relevant counter-evidence about heroic spirits and souls and I believe will be persuasive to you. It's a bit dense but I tried to present it in a way that was straightforward and easy to follow, starting at the bold text that reads "Souls."

 

[Executor_N0]

I'd actually say this is a pretty big disagreement, no? A higher plane, and a "higher-dimensional space" are quite different things. Higher planes can be non-dimensional, non-higher infinities. That's sort of a big point of contention here. Even if they could be the same thing, it doesn't mean they are.

When translated, it's often that "higher dimension" will also be translated as "higher plane" when it comes from Japanese (Recently there was a thread on SS revision exactly because the original text was Ko Jigen and was translated as Higher Plane, when it being Higher Dimension is a more literal translation of it from our proposes). Getting the raws would be useful, but from what I get from the ones I have seen, they all have the term "Ko Jigen", which is Higher Dimension.

 

[Firestorm808]

How does this matter for the current discussion?

As you know, everyone is traveling toward the Core of the MoonCell. The characters start in the 3-D realm of the school simulation.

You currently mention that Imaginary Number Space is a higher dimension. With this in mind, what characteristics demonstrate X levels of infinity over 3-D?

If we are to take Rin's book analogy and INS perspective is able to oversee the past, present and future, INS would only be demonstrating 4-D characteristics. From Rin's words, the MoonCell's Core shares the same space and perspective as INS.

Do we have demonstrable characteristics in the MoonCell of infinitely greater dimensionality above 4-D?

 

[God243]

Bump

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Bump.

 

[Firestorm808]

To be honest, this thread is a headache to navigate. This isn't the fault of any single person, but I implore anyone intending to further discuss this topic to at least try to keep things more concise - reading a multiple page long thread on a complex topic is one thing, but when many individual posts are upwards of thousands of words long, it's past the point that this is completely unreasonable for anyone not already caught up on the thread to evaluate.

Perhaps it is best to reboot this topic in a new thread. Preferably, we can have a cleaner discussion on the MoonCell structure starting from the bottom 3-D locations and moving our way up one step at a time.