Board Thread:VS Debates/@comment-33881745-20190421194116/@comment-39801929-20190814184139

Neosonic97 wrote: Kingo the Sixth wrote: Trust me, I’m aware. I’m a pretty big Mega Man fan lol. But even if it semantics, the devil’s in the details here. What you said about Hub.BAT only strengthens the idea that their soul is code. Hub.BAT is in essence the last part of Hub’s “soul” turned into a computer file. The fact that it IS a file suggests that Hub’s soul has completely been turned into code, representing his appearance and personality down to the minute details. And I doubt Zarathos can penance stare a goddamn computer program in the end.

Not sure what there is to say about Double Soul lol, it’s just a name. The copybots only strengthen the idea that their soul are made out of data I think, considering it shows they can easily enter other programs and hijack them.

It is semantics, but I think it’s important. It probably does come down to how you want to interpret the Battle Network series though, so agree to disagree I guess? The Copybot only really has one program, that's designed specifically to work with NetNavis. It's not the first time the Mega Man series has explored non-organic life having souls either (As both X and Zero can attest to).

Also, Double Soul is explicitly achieved by the soul of a Navi communing with MegaMan's own soul. This is pretty much why the name refers to the soul in both English (Double Soul) and Japanese (Soul Unison).

But the most damning part, I think, comes from the SoulNet, the program Nergal used in Battle Network 5 to attempt to taint Humanity's souls with evil through the power of Nebula Gray. This affected both Humans and NetNavis in the same way, as well as allowing the ability to link the souls of Humans and NetNavi (In this case, Lan linking his soul to MegaMan's is what caused the Hub Form to awaken in BN5), and the souls of NetNavis together (With which the respective Team MegaMan is with, plus Roll, Gutsman and Glyde all pool their energy to MegaMan through the SoulNet).

All of this implies that the Soul of a NetNavi is in many ways similar to a Human's soul, and that MegaMan is NOT just an exception to the rule. Pretty sure unless I missed something in the Zero series, the entire point of X and Zero was that they were perfect simulations of human souls while being machines. The entire classic timeline is the gradual blurring of the line between machine and man, ultimately leading to the carbons who, while being mechanical, are essentially the new form of humanity. X and Zero demonstrate a step in that process, the idea that machine doesn’t need a soul to act like man.

But I’m not here to argue philosophy.

Again, “soul” is used a lot in fiction to refer to many different things. Double Soul is no exception. It’s a program that allows code to merge with other code, developed in a lab.

The thing about dark energy is that it’s just that, energy. In the same way electricity affects both Navis and humans, so does dark energy. This is supported by MagnoMetal being able to nullify dark energy’s effects, just like how some material can’t conduct electricity. Not a 1 to 1 comparison but close enough. While it’s true that the Navis sort of fused with their human partner, that’s just an extension of what’s already with computer programs in real life as we become more accustomed to machines improving our own body uh oh high school philosophy time. Code can affect the brain too you know.

Ultimately I’m not arguing the Navis are just completely absent of some form of a soul, I’m arguing that they don’t have a soul you can burn in the traditional sense. Rider has never displayed the ability to affect machines who DO have souls like Vision, and we can’t assume he can affect a soul that’s been transformed into code. That explain all the soul shenigans throughout the BN series. Navis have souls, but they need to interface with the real world and mixing with the tangible souls of humans leads to weird, strange effects. I just doubt Zarathos can affect that.

But anyways, like I said that mainly comes down to interpretation, and I think it’s pretty clear we’re not gonna change each other’s minds on this and it’s a complete waste of effort, so let’s just agree to disagree. Plus I’m tired of writing all this.