i solved chainsaw man

I have never watched Chainsaw Man — or, no, that's not quite right, I think I’ve seen like, the first episode. It’s like super gory or whatever and I don’t know if I could stomach it. Part of the issue is like, I could sort of half-watch Invincible by hanging out in the living room when Celene was watching it for example, but I can’t do this with anime, becaus I have to read the subtitles.

Roofon and one¹¹ It might be everyone in this apartment except me idk. of our roommates are big Chainsaw Man fan though! So I have learned a few things about it through osmosis.

Apparently a big problem in the Chainsaw Man Universe is the world being overrun by devils. I think this is the key conflict in the show. There’s too many devils around and they keep like killing people or something. So the protagonist, who I will call the Chainsaw Man because I have no idea what his name is²² I accidentally learned his name is Denji while checking my claim that Chainsaw Man is shōnen. Oops., like, merges with this chainsaw animal thing and runs around having a chainsaw for a head and fighting devils. Or something like that. I think Chainsaw Man is shōnen probably.

So the thing about these devils is that each devil corresponds to a particular fear or phobia or whatever. So there's like a spider devil that corresponds to the fear of spiders and a public speaking devil that corresponds to the fear of public speaking³³ I looked this one up to fact check and Gemini told me “the concept is a popular running joke and theoretical topic within the fan community”, so I guess actually there isn’t one. and a devil devil⁴⁴ I’m like 90% sure I asked about this immediately upon the concept of a Chainsaw Man devil being explained to me and was told yes there is one. that corresponds to the fear of devils and a devil devil devil⁵⁵ I also don’t think I’m making this one up but I’m less sure. that corresponds to the fear of the devil devil and so on.

Anyways, what exact devils exist isn't important here. The crux of my plan is this: the power of the devils in Chainsaw Man grows proportionately to the amount and intensity of the corresponding fear. So super common fears, like the fear of death or probably the fear of devils or whatever, correspond to really powerful devils, whereas niche phobias like hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia probably correspond to pretty weak devils.

This suggests that it might be possible to solve the devil epidemic by intervening on the presence of fears, rather than by getting the Chainsaw Man to switch into Chainsaw Mode and chainsaw the devils all over the place. Or whatever happens most of the time in Chainsaw Man. Maybe they're going around trying to cheer up scared children all the time in the show, I’m not sure.

But even if so, they’re definitely not trying my plan, which is to simply

Give Everyone an Appendectomy

Famed writing contest participant and secular sermoner Daniel Böttger has recently been advocating for more widespread adoption of appendectomies, after he received one himself to treat his brain cancer. He says:

Even with the regrettable hippocampal damage, I judge the consequences of my amygdalectomy overall a big bonus on top of my surviving the cancer.

Now, I am not sure that I agree we ought to give people amygdalectomies all the time. It's certainly an interesting idea and perhaps deserves serious consideration, but I'm not yet entirely sold.

What are the benefits of the procedure? Well, Böttger says:

The only time I have felt any fear in the past two years was one brief moment, when I was practicing walking the streets of Leipzig with newly purchased 40 inch stilts strapped to my shins. I lost my balance, started to fall towards the stone pavement, and felt an instant of aversion.

So while I’m unsure about the tradeoff in the real world, I think there is quite a lot more going for it in the world of Chainsaw Man.

When asked about the logistics, Claude says:

Rough answer: a determined, well-funded global effort could plausibly get most of the rich and middle-income world done in about 1–2 years and something like 80–90% of humanity in about 3–5 years. The last few percent (remote, conflict-zone, and hard-to-reach populations) would take much longer. The binding constraints are trained hands, geography, and the death toll, not the operation itself.

So like probably this does a huge dent in the Chainsaw Man devil problem. I think the Chainsaw Man should try it.