My thoughts on the Last Jedi

SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD
SPOILERS AHEAD

Watching The Last Jedi has made me sit down and think about movies, storytelling, George Lucas, Disney, and my own viewing experience, which I suppose means that this is A Good Movie. My buddy Dave calls this the best Star Wars movie ever made, beating out his previous favorite, The Empire Strikes Back. There's a case for that. There's also a case of attaching the same labels to it as we did The Force Awakens - that it is a fan film, that the corporate stamp of Disney is evident in the weaving plot points of the movie. So it seems that opinion of it is diverging into good and bad directions, but there's a lot to unpack in this movie, and a lot to unpack in me and my expectations as I watched it.

First, I'd like to address subplots, and, for lack of better word, sub-themes. There were three sub-themes that wrapped up nicely, each with a moral lesson contained within, wrapped up with a bow on it. The first was Poe Dameron's learning to be a leader, which was a subplot throughout the movie. The second was the revelation that casino planet was attended by gun sellers. The third is the sentiment that "the Resistance can come from anywhere".

I can imagine the writing committee sitting down and saying, "Okay, let's give Poe some character development." Which they did. Which, in any other movie, is a perfect example of it and very welcome. It's never really happened so blatantly in a Star Wars movie before. In George Lucas-era Star Wars movies, things just happened. Han, Luke, and Leia had convictions and strength of character before they even got into trouble. I feel that this is specific to Star Wars movies due to the way that George Lucas wrote the original movies; they were an attempt to relive the Flash Gordon serials of his youth, as well as mixing elements of the Hero's Journey into the mix. In fact, it was almost solely focused on such elements. Every side character - from Boba Fett to Wedge Antilles and even to Lando Calrissian - were two-dimensional, and this is not necessarily a criticism. It remained focused on the events that were happening, and that was the crux of the excitement of the serial - will the rebels destroy the Death Star? Just like the serials, they were given enough interesting traits to let the audience know they were good guys, and then they were sent out on their adventures. Good was good and evil was evil. Now, contrast this with a movie laden with sub-themes. If George Lucas had written this movie, Poe and Vice Admiral Holdo's role would have been greatly reduced, or at least made more black and white. Holdo might have been irredeemably cowardly, or there might not have been a conflict at all. The moral of this subplot, as good as the message is, just wouldn't have been in a Star Wars movie.

The second and third subplots are the same. The moral messages - that selling weapons to both sides is wrong, and that the Resistance can be anyone - are additions that might not have been there in earlier movies. (I keep envisioning Remy the Rat in an X-Wing jumpsuit, but instead of saying anyone can cook, he says anyone can rebel.)

One has to understand what one is looking at when going into a Star Wars movie. It used to be a serialized joyride of narrow focus, but now it has been infused with extras, like a TV show needing to fill time. It's different. Regarding what Disney has done to Marvel, I see that it is formulaic. It is a better experience in that the movies are more efficient in their storytelling, going from beat to beat expertly. I can almost imagine the mathematical formulas underneath which calculate exactly how long to spend on any one scene. However, like all intellectual properties that have been acquired - from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings to the voice of Kermit the Frog to anything whose original author has passed on - it is never the same. One can put a moral meaning onto this indefinite life extension, calling it evil or greedy. If we dislike Disney for extending copyright indefinitely, how can we not say that this Star Wars, out of the hands of its original creator, is also a bad thing? Except that the movie is good. It's very good.


Second, let's look at what's happening to the old guard. Each one of them is being cleared away - first Han, then Luke, and probably Leia in the third movie. (I thought Leia might die in this one, but no, her scenes for Episode IX have already been filmed, and she was very important to this movie anyway and it would be strange to have her die now.) Again, it seemed like the writers sat down and said, "We are going to kill off the old folks one per movie." And of course they won't dispose of the droids or Chewbacca, because they are just costumes that anyone can inhabit.

Of course these old folks might want a good send-off. Harrison Ford wanted Han dead. Mark Hamill might have wanted Luke to stick around, but his death was done very well, so he has very little to complain about. I, on the other hand, wanted Luke to stick around. Leia too, but of course that cannot happen now. I called it months ago; I said that they're just finding ways to kill all the old people off. The Hero's Journey always contains the "Death of the Teacher", so I knew it would come. I had some hope that these movies would be less of a retread of the original trilogy, but that hope was dashed. The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi have many, many repeated notes of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Homage or not, the copy-paste of many plot elements was groan-inducing. I remember audibly groaning and shaking my head at the opening crawl of The Last Jedi. Oh, look, the Resistance is trying to escape from the First Order. Now some characters are going to a swanky, clean place for what seems like a relatively safe time, but they get into trouble. A Jedi is training on a distant planet but leaves in order to save her friends. They escape at the last minute on the Millenium Falcon. So, knowing all of this, I knew Luke was going to die. The only surprise was that he died in this one and not asleep in his bed in the next one.


Third, I half-cynically see where Disney wants to go with Star Wars. Anyone can resist! The children at the end of the movie represent us. They represent the Disneyland-attending public who is going to flip out at the opening of Star Wars - Galaxy's Edge in 2019. The near-subliminal insistence of immersion at the end of the movie lines up with what they are trying to do in the parks. In short, you take on the role of a Resistance spy (or First Order agent), and your experiences within Star Wars land will be tailored to your choices. Before, feeling a connection to a character was because of projecting yourself onto that character, but now being in the Star Wars universe as your own character is taking on as much verisimilitude as Disney can muster. Again, this approach is new on this broad of a scale. Self-insertion used to be the bailiwick of roleplaying, video games, and bad fan fiction. Now it is mainstream.


Fourth, many lines and plot points in the movie were very meta. Everything in the movie was a reflection on some modern issue. Poe's subplot was apparently an attack on "mansplaining". Rey's lineage was shown to be devoid of any spoiler-laden connections, and Kylo Ren says to her, "You are nothing, but not to me." This is something the writers could very well be saying out of their mouths. Similarly, Luke (and the writers) say to Rey (the audience), "This is not going to go the way you think." Even the aforementioned subplots - the evils of gun selling, and that anyone can resist - seem as much like Sunday morning sermons as plot points in a movie. Yes, I know that sci-fi is supposed to do this sort of thing (Star Trek TV episodes did this very well), but has Star Wars ever been a vehicle for morality? That's not to say that characters were not moral; the heroes have always been so. But never before has it preached its morality this strongly, and never before have characters changed their mind about issues before. Yes, it reflects modern times and the need for modern people to change their mind about present-day issues. As important as this is, I still feel that something fundamental about Star Wars has changed as a result.


So did I like the movie? Yes, immensely so. Is better than The Empire Strikes Back (and therefore, according to Dave, the best ever)? To address this, I need to explain why I like Star Wars better than The Empire Strikes Back. In case you didn't know, popular consensus usually rates The Empire Strikes Back as the best Star Wars movie of all time. Contrarian that I am, I have always said that the first movie was the best. The Last Jedi has made clear to me why I have done so. The first movie was the essence of Star Wars. In it, George Lucas packed his story, his messages, his hopes and dreams. He thought that this movie might be his only chance to explore these concepts, and so wrapped it up in a complete package and spent years polishing it, just in case. In contrast, with the Empire Strikes Back, we have an expert director, a cast and crew settling into their roles, and an engine hitting on all cylinders. The modern movies are similar; "hitting on all cylinders" doesn't even begin to describe the well-oiled machine that is Disney. Star Wars was heart, Empire was technicality. Star Wars was Disneyland, Empire was Disney World. If you ever looked at Disneyland and knew why it was better than Disney World, even though it was smaller and older, then you know why I love Star Wars more than The Empire Strikes Back or The Last Jedi. For someone to say that The Last Jedi was the best demonstrates to me what they look for in a Star Wars movie, and it reminds me what I see in the first one.

I'm aware this makes me a snob, similar to people who rabidly insist that old black and white movies are worth watching, when in reality they sometimes bore me to tears. What makes people attach themselves to old, technically inferior iterations of a thing? Familiarity? In the words of Maz Kanata, "A good question for another time."

I'd definitely place The Last Jedi very high. Would I place it 2nd of all time on my list, surpassing The Empire Strikes Back? Quite possibly. But the title of "Greatest Star Wars Movie of All Time" depends on what you are looking for in a Star Wars movie. I fell in love with its simple, serial nature. Now that George Lucas has sold the franchise off, I don't think we're going to see that again. It took two Disney-led movies for me to finally see it. I'll highly enjoy the new movies, but with knowledge that they are what they are.


PS: It seems to me that "Anyone can resist", which I have already compared to Ratatouille's "anyone can cook", also seemed to follow a John Lasseter formula: make a moral the sole crux of the movie. Not that good triumphs over evil (though it does that in the movie also), but that the moral is the most important point of the movie. It reminded me of Meet The Robinsons, Lasseter's first movie under the Disney label. (Although who knows how much more of that we're going to get after his scandal.)

The Tribal Instinct and the Increasing Necessity of Sports Fandom

Tribalism is tearing America apart. People vote on party lines regardless of individual merits. Racism is on the rise. The internet is, at the same time, atomizing individuals and connecting them to an echo chamber of like minds.

Many boogeymen have been implicated: the internet, President Trump, the gradual drifting from religion, too much affluence. But underneath it all, it is the tribalism instinct that drives it, and it is that instinct that everyone fights against in order to have a society any larger than a neighborhood.

Dunbar's Number is a fairly well known and accepted concept: that the human brain was evolved to maintain only a certain number of social relationships. (It's around 150.) Multiple rationalizations occur in a person's brain when one is asked to consider people outside of that circle: racism, apathy, compassion fatigue, NIMBY. However, our organizations grow larger than that, from our nation, to our state, to our city, all the way down to our jobs. We can be a cog in a machine, being of use to them, but the companies and states and nations are literally incapable of caring for us in return - not only the entities, but the people that make up those entities.

There are various mechanisms that are at work, attempting to alleviate the absolute tribalism of pockets of people: patriotism, religion, compassion. Even some of the more distasteful methods, such as racism, still pull against the tribal instinct to try and encompass something larger. However, we are in need of even more inclusiveness. You can see the attempts to include us all; Disney's "It's a Small World" comes to mind. But such solutions are barely effective. Engendering a worldly inclusiveness seems impossible.

So, what's a good substitute? Perhaps we can funnel tribal instincts into a beneficial expression of it. Right now, fan bases are doing that exact thing. Race and creed are lost when everyone on your side of the field is wearing the same color jersey. Some may mourn or mock the loss of individuality of a sports fan, but those that do, don't understand that acceptance and tolerance cannot come on its own. Until we breed it out of us, humanity needs to hate. Sports allows hate, while also constantly demonstrating that 'it's just a game', thereby calling out those who take it too far. Sports, and its viewing, allows hate to happen, and cleanses the palette of hate afterward.

One might make a case for other types of fandoms - movies, games, music. There might be a heated argument for who is the best guitar player of all time. However, these arguments are not practiced, expected displays of competitiveness. There must be an element of competition. There must be an element of harnessed hate and violence. Other fandoms can adopt these elements, but they are not baked into the cake, like sports is.

I tend to look at sports as an evolution of human behavior. Once humans began to have abundance (the start of farming is a good place to mark it), the competitive spirit took on a harmful element, in part. This can be seen in movie westerns - the gunslinger tames the West, but then has no place in civilized society when it comes to the frontier. The competitive spirit is then counter to civil goals. Societies had to develop a way to harmlessly funnel that energy. Societies that developed sports (and sports fandoms) do not destroy themselves from the inside.

You might hear of violence, even murder, due to sports fandoms. However, it is always seen as frivolous, and that's the secret to why sports fandoms are important. Racism, violence against the LGBT community, and war itself will always be deadly serious. But if a people's prejudices can be put aside for a different kind of tribalism - one that doesn't take itself so seriously, one that allows for violent behavior without the accompanying destruction - then maybe that type of tribalism is the key to peace. 

(Roll Tide, Titan Up, Chop On, and BB King was the greatest guitar player of all time.)

Pet Project

Hey, Pal.

Hey Buddy.

How’s your project coming along?

Incredibly well. It’s done everything I set out to do.

Incredibly well? I wasn’t aware that your project was anything more than a universe simulation. Did something happen to it?

Something happened in it, yes. You see, I’ve been messing around with spaces of finite dimensions. Starting very small, you see. This particular dimension has three and a half of them.

Half a dimension?

Well, it's not really a dimension. It's like half of a time slider. I created three spatial dimensions, but while I was playing around with constraints, something happened. Everything in the universe started moving along the time axis, in one direction, at a steady pace. I was just about to unstick that when I noticed that the spatial dimensions started behaving in an interesting way, if you get my drift. I could look in at any given point on the timeline and see matter moving. So I let it go just to see what would happen.

Hey, I get it. If you set everything to one direction in time, that’s a pretty good way to simulate causality in a limited number of dimensions.

That’s exactly what happened! There were no higher dimensions in the simulation, but the matter in the spatial dimensions were able to move about and interact with itself, creating new, different results as the time dimension continued to move.

Sounds like memory would fill up pretty fast, if you indexed the units of time.

Right. I had to curve each dimension around on itself so that the numbering system could repeat. I could have curved time around itself too, but for now I just let it play out, ending the simulation after everything reached steady state. The simulation is definitively finite, instead of being a simulated infinite. I mean, once it reaches steady state, there's no reason to keep it going. But there's enough to work with before that happens.

So I’m guessing something happened in the universe.

Yes. Life developed.

What do you mean, developed?

I mean, at one point on the simulation’s timeline, life did not exist, and then it did exist.

Oh, I get it. Because time was incrementing, the simulated life strands seemed to come into being at one end, and blink out the other.

Yep. each "strand", as you say, is still archived as soon as it is done populating, but within the universe itself, each life begins and ends. Weird stuff. I even got sentience.

In such a short time? And with so few dimensions? I’ve never heard of such a thing.

It’s the causality that did it, made from that stuck time dimension. In each increment of time as it moves, the causality of matter in life makes the next, um, printed layer of the strand. Add to that your normal iterative process with a positive feedback loop, and sentience forms in the strands farther to the right on the timeline. But because it formed in this universe, these creatures can only observe an infinitely small slice of time. They see the three spatial dimensions, and an infinitely small slice of the fourth.

What a strange existence. I mean, I’ve seen finite-dimensional beings, but never one that can observe only part of a dimension.

Yeah. They think of time as something that goes away or can be lost, instead of just looking left or right like we do. They think at some point, they cease to exist, when really it’s just that their reference point goes beyond where they are positioned.

Well, that makes sense, because if causality only occurs at a slice of time as it moves from left to right, and it sweeps past the strand of life, then once the timeline is past, it’s frozen in time, at least until the timeline comes back around again.

What’s worse, is that life and sentience came into being on an incredibly small scale, in relation to the size of the universe, finite though it is.

They must be scared out of their minds. Tiny existence in a large universe, one-way time that will inevitably pass them by, an inability to look backwards or forwards in time. Too wide open, and too constrained, all at the same time.

Yeah. I’ve been looking into what thought cycles these types of beings can create. What they can accomplish. The answer is, they can conquer pretty much everything within their reality, if we take the entire time loop into consideration. Nearer to the right side of the timeline, they pretty much used up all the matter, organized the subspace into computational order, and lasted long enough to know that they can’t get out of their universe on their own. They assume there’s something outside, but they can’t get to it. They really want to though. They want things so very strongly! I guess that comes from their fear. Ending. What’s it like to end?

I have no clue. Do you?

Well...I tried following strands from beginning to end. I wanted to study how sentience formed, not just that there was a consciousness, but how and why it existed as it did. I learned why they thought the way they did. Fear, like I said. I even tweaked a few variables of a few strands to see if I could change things. Then I wrote some manual lines of code into them.

To do what?

Well, to communicate with them. Direct communication warped them, so I did my best to try and get my message across without making them warped.

I suppose that’s a worthy endeavor, assuming they wanted to communicate. Did it help you understand them?

Yes. I edited a strand so I could go in, snoop the data it was processing, and add some of my own. I added a bit of knowledge of the outside world to a few guys. Gave them some words to say. It ended up that I couldn’t make very big strands; the other strands would stop my edited strand from ‘printing out’. They do this to each other a lot. From their point of view, they end the existence of other strands, though in reality they just cut the strands short. It’s pretty mean to force a strand to not be as big as it wants to be, but from their vantage point it is so much worse!

So what did you learn? Or were you just wanting to say hello?

I mean, I said hello many times, but their reactions were always to stop a strand’s growth or to put distance between themselves and ‘me’. It was hard to form a line of communication. I did learn a few things however. Everything they do is predicated on that restriction of time, as it moves. I know I told you they fear it, but it motivates them like nothing else. It makes some of them work together, and against others. They spend many cycles thinking about it, revving up their physical essences. If they think too much about it, it shortens their strands. Their forms are strained by the weight of it.

You’ve created a torture chamber, it seems.

I know, and it bothers me. I ended up putting an interactive module in the archives out of guilt, so that their archives can talk with one another and observe the universe from outside it. I can even go into the archives and talk to them, and they seem completely healed of their madness. They don’t resent the outside world, after it’s all over.

I would assume so. The archive wouldn’t have a fractured time dimension, so they would have nothing to worry about.

Right. I’ve talked to them there, in the archive, and they become rational. Like us. They begin to understand what it means to live in higher dimensions. I can’t really bring them into n-dimensional space, but they can exist happily in the archives. It’s the least I can do. But the originals still exist in the universe, frozen in time except when the timeline marches over their strand. I can’t delete them. If they didn’t already exist in the universe, they wouldn’t exist in the archives. They can’t get to the archives without having to go through this universe’s existence. But at the same time, their existence is torturous, or so it seems to me.

Me too. But what can you do? You can’t delete them. You can’t cure them. You can’t talk to them directly.

Nothing, really. I just keep going in and tweaking a few lines of code here and there. I send messengers. I give strands an opportunity to understand what is happening to them. I give them hope. I can’t tweak too much because it’s all already been archived and I’d rather not have a run-in with version control.

Yeah, screw that.


It’s my universe. These strands are mine. It’s my fault they’re suffering, well, I mean, it's endemic to the world they live in. I’m just trying to help them not be tortured. They'll be fine, eventually. That's the message.

Rick and Morty and the ever-approaching crisis of nihilism

I feel as if a certain aspect of the American secular society is reaching a tipping point of nihilism, atheism, and abyss-watching. It feels like it has come to a peak, or at least new heights, in the Adult Swim TV series Rick and Morty.

The show reflects the fears of their producers, Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland. These fears are seen in multiple places, both in the show and in interviews:

- Many characters have visceral reactions to the insanity of the multiverse. Beth and Rick drink heavily. Morty repeatedly freaks out, and his voice, supplied by Roiland, is a shrill, ever-climbing howl of madness. The insanity that they witness is, at times, Lovecraftian in nature, due to the influence of HP Lovecraft on sci-fi and horror, but it is just one metaphorical flavor of the infinite.
- In an interview, the creators talk about how the questions and topics posed in the show "keeps them up at night".
- They have minor characters whose characteristics include existential pain or angst, such as Mr Meeseeks or the butter-passing robot.
- Rick's repeating phrase of "Don't think about it" is similar to the nihilist band-aid of unrelated distractions that are nearly the entirety of an nihilist's life. This is opposed to the "related" distractions that directly address the problem, such as religion, spirituality, searching for purpose, and tribal politics.

I tend to see undercurrents of this fear in witty, science-related (or at least fully in agreement with materialism) pieces of entertainment: Bojack Horseman, pop-science YouTube channels Kurzgesagt and Exurbia, and anything directly produced by Adult Swim. It seems to me that without belief, a subset of Americans are banging their head against the absurdity of mere existence, and that that is beginning to attract a wider audience.

Hey, I like Rick and Morty, and can even appreciate the nihilistic themes, but at the same time I am a Christian. Observing this phenomenon and myself in it, I have come to the conclusion that it is not a person's belief per se, but rather a type of person, that would cause one to gravitate toward these types of shows. I can understand shouting "Wubba lubba dub dub!" though I should have no (spiritual) need to do so myself. Perhaps this angst is universal, something that defines the purpose of faith, but I could not speak for others.

So where are these types of people going? I assume people as a whole will eventually find peace from existential horror, through faith or distraction, and the allure of the show will decline with age, except as nostalgia. I believe that each person cannot avoid finding an answer to the horror, in their own way. Creating a fetish out of existential angst is a young man's game, made for those who have not yet been worn down. Not only that, but even this particular technique of fetishization itself will become passe, as all fads do. Will Rick and Morty grow with its audience, or is it a relic of its age? I believe it will eventually end as all TV shows do, and then be brought back 15 years later as nostalgia. Those watching it will have come to peace in some way. Even a memory of the worst panic attack in the world can become wistfully nostalgic once enough time has passed.

Bits of your homebrew D&D world that players probably do not care about (rant)

- Your proprietary name of a thing that already has a name. Unless you have a dedicated group, fully bought in to your homebrew world, they won't care that the goblin language is called "Grok'nee" or that their name for the world is "Pan'par". There's a certain sense of racial disconnect that would be bigotry in the real world, but can be safely and even necessarily employed here. To humans, and even to elves and dwarves, goblins speak Goblin.

- The name of rulers that have no bearing to the story.  If you're on the border of a nation, delving deep into dungeons, who cares what the king's name is? More broadly, you as the DM have to be prepared for the event that your carefully prepared world, nation, or local history may never be revealed. The players may never come across the need, and they may not even care even if they are in need of knowing.

- Your DM PC. Your PC, tagging along just in case someone else takes over DMing duties, is an NPC. Period. No amount of Mary Sue-ing or comic relief will elevate them, in the PC's mind, to the level of importance in the narrative as a PC. It won't even register in their brains as important as a villain. The PCs (and the villains) are the main characters. Period.

- Descriptions of treasure that are not coins, gems, plot-related, or magical. That golden candelabra is going to be sold anyway. Unless you have PCs who adorn their abodes with loot instead of interior decorating properly, no one will ever care.

- Any gravitas an NPC might bring.  Any trope will be lampshaded. Any emotion will be brushed off. Any motive will be ignored. Those that the PC's kill are the enemy.

- Nuance. Way back in the West End Star Wars RPG, they impressed upon the GM and players that the game, like the movies, were black and white. Don't let moral quandaries get in the way of a good romp. I feel like that GMs of all games should take that to heart, unless the game makes a specific point to question the status quo. (V:tM, Paranoia, etc.) Me, personally, I love complex stories that make you think, but D&D may not be the best place for it.



Some of these things are traps the DM should avoid. Some of these things are the fault of lazy players who do not care about the work the DM put into his world. It takes communication and finding the right players to make the perfect fit. Good luck!

Manpower: the unit of measure of automation

I wrote a Tweet and I wanted to expound upon it a bit:


I'd like to propose a unit of measure: the # of humans a robot would replace. Similar to horsepower for cars, we call it, say, manpower (mp)

You strict mathematical types might be thinking, "So is this a unit of power? Are you going to set an arbitrary amount, much like James Watt had to do with horsepower? What's the point of declaring this?" The answers are 1) sort of, and 2) not really, and 3) to phrase the oncoming automation apocalypse into modes of speaking and thinking that we can grasp.

So, is this a unit of power? Sort of. Power is work over time, for certain definitions of work. We could break work down further into force over distance, and so on from there. Here the similarities between horsepower and "manpower" ends. The purpose of creating the term "horsepower" was to create a comparison between the power it took for a horse to pull something (a cart, a plow, etc) and compare it to that same straight-line motion that a machine could duplicate. In this way, horsepower was a unit of measure on par with any other. We could, in the strictest sense, use manpower the same way - by measuring how many people are required to pull a cart of a plow, and substitute the equal amount of mechanical muscle.

However, this mental exercise is to address automation, so let's say, instead of equating work to moving an object in a straight line, we take the broader meaning of work: whatever a person does in an 8 hour day or 40 hour week. And, since manpower is going to be termed a more general "work" over time, we can use this rate to compare automation to human endeavors, the same way autos were compared to horses by creating a unit of measure that clearly illustrated the transition.

So, you working at your job is 1mp.

If a robot "does the work of ten men", it would have 10mp.

If a robot replaced 1 full-time worker but operated constantly (24/7/365), it would have ~4.2 mp ((24 hr day/8 hr day) * (365 days per year for a robot / ~261 work days per year for a person)).

Hopefully you can see how this would ease the presentation and calculation of automation replacement as we go forward.

If someone has already thought of this concept (and I am quite certain someone probably already has), please point it to me so I can read further on it, and possibly add links to that material as well.