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Tequila Bob posted:Ooh, good point! Let's try it with the other Darths - "inmaul", "intyrannus", and "inplagueis" are also sensible common words that Lucas just removed the "in" from. He definitely didn't just do it for one character. You convinced me! Lucas is the guy who looked at a creature that looked like a brontosaurus and said, "Call it a Ronto." It's totally in line with how he names poo poo.
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Sep 30, 2023 16:11
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Snowmanatee posted:The last season of The Mandalorian had an episode that also made the droids say they enjoy being slaves, basically. It's all very hosed up if you acknowledge they're sentient beings. I read it more as "If we prove that we can still be useful, then maybe the meat people won't kill us."
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Sep 30, 2023 16:35
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HootTheOwl posted:I like how Thtawn decides Zaarin's weakness is his reliance on superior technology and his answer to this is an even superior fighter craft that will later be referred to as the "God emperor of fighters" I mean, it worked. The Missile Boat is a huge force multiplier and draws Zaarin in and waste resources to either destroy the prototypes or capture one, and since you and your wingman are basically Red Baron-levels of good, all it amounts to is spreading his resources thin. Also, baiting Zaarin to use experimental technology to destroy himself instead of trapping him and having the Emperor deal with him is a great final "gently caress you" from Thrawn (though we know the Emperor is dead, because the debriefing officer straight up tells you the Battle of Endor is happening)
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Sep 30, 2023 19:16
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't understand what you mean. There's slavery all over the OT. Mostly droid slavery, but not entirely. Slave Leia is like an entire genre of porn. But that's my point, in the OT slavery exists in the context of the Empire, that has important implications. If you keep the same implications with the Galatic Republic around it becomes problematic in ways which are imo unintended, especially because the prequels did nothing to frame that slavery in any other light, ie try to give an explanation. That is imo required if the whole point is "the Galaxy has been at peace for thousands of years and the Galactic Republic is good". If you want slavery as reflection of the decline of the Galactic Republic you need to explore it in more detail or otherwise it undermine not only the Galactic Republic (and thus Jedi) and tells a story of "things were never better even when the Republic was around". If you already start with slavery and systems that are outside of Galactic Republic control (for whatever reason) then you need to put some work into it. quote:No, everything is more than adequately explained. The Republic claims to be a galactic government of all its member planets, but not only do they lack a formal military, they don't even know what's going on in their own territory. When Padme tells the Senate what's happening to Naboo, someone suggests assembling a fact-finding mission to verify that a huge military has actually blockaded a planet and landed troops. Nothing is explained, you just fill in the gaps in your mind. There is barely any info provided on the Galactic Republic in the movies(!). We know that a Senate exists, we know that representatives from various worlds are in it, we know that something like the Trade Federation with its own "military" exists but that's basically it. The politics and the structure of the Galactic Republic are never presented beyond a very surface level and everything else is just guess work. That's even true for the Jedi, we don't really know what their exact political role is. They are diplomats, a galactic "police" force, a spy/intelligence agency but also advisors to the political class? It's just not clear, you can once again do a lot of guesswork but it's intentionally left vague (that's also why the Jedi suddenly are also military leaders, does that mean they control the budget, logistics etc. too? How far does that go? We don't know). You also say that the Galactic Republic doesn't have a formal military but the only thing we see is that the GC doesn't have something like a "standing army". When Yoda gets the Clone Troops there are suddenly also capital ships, ground vehicles etc. available and it doesn't make sense all of that just popped out of thin air or that all of it could have been provided by some local production on Kamino. So the assumption can be made that a military-industrial complex exists in the Galatic Republic on many worlds, it's just that the GC relies on its members instead of having its own military infrastructure. In regards to not knowing what's going on in their territory... in the end I can only repeat myself, it's just sloppy writing. I don't want to pick apart the prequels again but the whole plan of Palpatine in TPM falls apart if you really look into it and the same is true for the whole Trade conflict thing. But even if we ignore that the movie doesn't try to say the GC is "bad" because it doesn't know what's going on or that something like the Trade Federation exists and can do something like that and instead the whole focus is on the invasion and bureaucratic technicalities. Even Padme doesn't question the existence or the power of the Trade Federation, apparently noone would have had a problem with the Trade Federation without that invasion. You also say that "planets like Tattooine are the Galactic Third World" but that's really just a guess, the movies never give information about the exact political status and how they relate to the GC or why they are "independent" or outside of GC control. We can make all sorts of assumptions or take guesses but the prequels leave it intentionally vague. The OT at least gave it the excuse of it being a crime world and that at least fits thematically with the Empire around and after the fall of the Republic. That's why I think that including Tattooine in this role in the prequels was a major mistake. If you already start at a point where things are that bad then you undermine the value of the GC. That doesn't mean the GC couldn't have been flawed but it's a similar problem as recent SW has with the New Republic. If you highlight all the bad parts and don't give proper context or explore it more deeply then you arrive at a point where the Empire really doesn't look that much different to what came before and after it and that's thematically a real issue. Snowmanatee posted:The last season of The Mandalorian had an episode that also made the droids say they enjoy being slaves, basically. It's all very hosed up if you acknowledge they're sentient beings. It isn't that easy. If we take morality and ethics the question is always what the frame of reference is. Our pets for example are sentient too and yet we don't consider them "slaves" (at least so far). But even within humanity we accept that children are basically "slaves" for very pragmatic reasons. For the same reason philosophers have in the past asked the question if it would be moral to have slaves who enjoy being slaves, it's a question that has seen a resurgence with the rise of AI recently. The reason we usually avoid to contemplate whether or not slavery can ever be a "moral" thing is obviously because for humanity it has always been a question about other human beings so trying to defend slavery in that context has very different implications and a specific context. Just imagine another species in the Star Wars universe that is more of a hive mind and functions more like ants, at that point how do you apply the human concept of "slavery" to that? Are you legs, arms, eyes etc. slaves to your brain? In a human context the most important part about slavery is the human experience, ie humans suffer under slavery and you can argue that even the "natural" state of humans is not being enslaved. The problem with talking about AI or Droids in this case is that in cases like Star Wars they get anthropomorphized and their own experience isn't explored in any depth and when it IS explored we often get very mixed signals. Some Droids in Star Wars are definitely treated and function like (more intelligent) pets while others get to be even more "human" (down to language and humanoid bodies). But even within the more human type you have those that are like children in many ways. But there is one consistent throughline in Star Wars so far, Droids don't seem to FEEL oppressed or a desire to not be "slaves". That doesn't mean that they are always "pleased" but any time they aren't it doesn't seem to be connected to their overall role in society and more about who specifically and how they have to serve them (C3P0 might get annoyed about the fact that he is dragged into dangerous situations but not because he has to follow commands, it's because he doesn't get to do what he was programmed to do). We also see that Droids can be slaves to other droids, there is no "shared culture" or understanding. The "mind" of a human isn't more or less "alien" to C3P0 than that of R2D2 (from what we can tell). So is it hosed up? That is impossible to say with what is given to us. If Droids are more like pets or at least beings that experience the world from a very "alien" perspective then a concept like "slavery" just doesn't apply in the same way. If Droids on the other hand are supposed to be closer to a (mechanical) human mind (and that implies they experience the world in a very similar way) then it is indeed problematic but Star Wars hasn't really gone in that direction (so far).
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Sep 30, 2023 20:45
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Speaking of, is The Mandalorian basically over now aside from the aforementioned Filoniverse movie or is the series just in limbo at the moment? I know Andor and Bad Batch will be coming back for one more season at least and there's going to be another Tales of the Jedi at some point.
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Sep 30, 2023 20:49
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Larryb posted:Speaking of, is The Mandalorian basically over now aside from the aforementioned Filoniverse movie or is the series just in limbo at the moment? I know Andor and Bad Batch will be coming back for one more season at least and there's going to be another Tales of the Jedi at some point. They were planning to start filming for season 4 in october but it had to be delayed due to the strikes
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Sep 30, 2023 21:04
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I think there were only three major missteps with the world building in the prequel era, but those three have vast impact on everything. One of them is that the Republic had no standing army. I don't know why the choice was made to tell a story with an enormous military industrial complex forming a state within a state that, through a society exhausted by a decades long war, collapses under that weight. Seems right up Lucas's alley. The Imperial military should have been the Clone Wars swollen Republican military. The Clones were the desperate means to fill out the rank and file of the ground pounders and endless rosters of pilots. Natural humans fill out the officer corps that gains prestige in society as a rival to the Jedi (who are reduced to glorified special operations personnel).
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Sep 30, 2023 21:22
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LinkesAuge posted:Nothing is explained, you just fill in the gaps in your mind. There is barely any info provided on the Galactic Republic in the movies(!). We know that a Senate exists, we know that representatives from various worlds are in it, we know that something like the Trade Federation with its own "military" exists but that's basically it. The politics and the structure of the Galactic Republic are never presented beyond a very surface level and everything else is just guess work. All of this stuff is illustrated in the first couple minutes of Phantom Menace. Everything else you missed is illustrated by around the halfway point. Tattooine, for example. Shmii doesn’t say “Tatooine is not formally part of the Republic.” She says “the Republic doesn’t exist out here”. That phrasing only makes sense if she’s talking about the Republic’s institutions, like ‘the rule of law’. Because Tatooine is formally part of the Republic, Quigon and Padme are confused to discover organic slaves, and that their credit cards don’t work. The basic point is that these rich folk are totally naive - sheltered and oblivious.
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Oct 1, 2023 01:07
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Wasn’t that one episode of Mandelorian establishing that the droids in this one city were grateful for having been constructed and maintained and pitied the organics around them for being so short-lived?“You die so fast, we don’t mind making your brief existences a little easier.” Granting that episode didn’t make a lot of sense (“I’ll create a droid rebellion so I can get authorized to hit the droid kill switch that I sit next to every day instead of just hitting the switch”), that community was scared enough of the droids to have that kill switch, but it also had droid bars. I don’t think Mos Eisley had bars where the droids could go when kicked out of the other bars. I did get a feeling from that episode that it was establishing the droids were almost uniformly better people than the actual living people. But it’s unclear how these droids are treated and that’s the major X-factor.
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Oct 1, 2023 01:10
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Serving organics is like community service, a droid doesn't die, and they live so long they serve just to impart meaning into their eternal lives
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Oct 1, 2023 01:23
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droids like doing work and don't like being mistreated. many others are the same: we call them people. the part where this work might include 'being a tractor' isn't really an obstacle; nobody puts a restraining bolt on Hubie in The Love Bug. if you put a restraining bolt on your droid tractor and make it till your field, you have taken a person and made them a slave. this is the status quo of star wars. something really hosed up going on mostly in the background is part of its charm. ungulateman fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Oct 1, 2023 |
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Oct 1, 2023 01:42
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Gonky seems to like gonking
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Oct 1, 2023 01:44
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ungulateman posted:droids like doing work and don't like being mistreated. many others are the same: we call them people. the part where this work might include 'being a tractor' isn't really an obstacle; nobody puts a restraining bolt on Hubie in The Love Bug. Droids don’t have legal rights though
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Oct 1, 2023 01:46
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Larryb posted:Droids don’t have legal rights though Probably, maybe, but... Based on what? I bet Huyang has more "rights" than Shmi Skywalker did
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Oct 1, 2023 01:50
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maybealabia posted:Probably, maybe, but... Based on what? True, I just assumed from what I’ve seen that despite clearly having sentience droids were officially considered property in the SW universe and how they were treated depended largely on their owners. Is there some EU stuff that says otherwise (seriously, I’m curious)?
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Oct 1, 2023 01:54
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There were a few scattered EU references to droid manumission.
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Oct 1, 2023 01:55
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Sash! posted:One of them is that the Republic had no standing army. the republic is a multilateral organisation like the u.n., not a country. the jedi were previously sufficient as a peacekeeping force/religious police.
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Oct 1, 2023 02:04
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Palpatines plan in TPM makes sense when you realize he's all about making chaos and playing both sides of it, so that whoever comes up on top, he'll win. He's Littlefinger with more cackling and controlling from larger positions of power. He centered a bug issue around his own planet so he'd get the attention. Then played both sides so that if the Trade Federation won, he's now leading them around from the shadows AND the displaced politician whose planet got taken over by a bunch of jerks, where he could push for more power, faster. That's what's often missed from TPM; Palpatine centered it around his own planet for that important reason.
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Oct 1, 2023 02:07
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Larryb posted:Droids don’t have legal rights though lots of people are denied legal rights.
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Oct 1, 2023 02:11
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HootTheOwl posted:Serving organics is like community service, a droid doesn't die, and they live so long they serve just to impart meaning into their eternal lives ungulateman posted:droids like doing work and don't like being mistreated. many others are the same: we call them people. the part where this work might include 'being a tractor' isn't really an obstacle; nobody puts a restraining bolt on Hubie in The Love Bug. Where have I seen this before oh yes https://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plans/frederick-douglasss-narrative-myth-happy-slave
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Oct 1, 2023 02:19
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Kesper North posted:Where have I seen this before oh yes I mean this is ignoring the presented argument that they're fundamentally alien AND that we the audience don't really understand their capabilities etc For example, is conceivable that a binary load lifter wouldn't even understand the concept of "being free" and many types of droids might literally go insane without being given a purpose Edit: Those that want to be free obviously should be but we just don't know poo poo because it's a movie and that's not what it's about. Contrast that with The Creator or even Short Circuit where this question is actually contemplated meaningfully by the writing maybeadracula fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Oct 1, 2023 |
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Oct 1, 2023 02:23
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Darko posted:Palpatines plan in TPM makes sense when you realize he's all about making chaos and playing both sides of it, so that whoever comes up on top, he'll win. He's Littlefinger with more cackling and controlling from larger positions of power. That's something I think people miss about the Clone Wars is how irrelevant they were in the grand scheme of things. And oh what a grand scheme it was; Whoever won, Palaptine came out on top. All he had to do was sit back, let the Galaxy implode and shuffle itself in a billion little ways in a million little conflicts throughout the war, and it all benefits him. Any time a planet is subjugated, or liberated, whoever is now in charge benefits him. They're loyal to the faction that's now in charge (ie; His) Any time an upstart splinter group fighting one of the main sides of the war is created or destroyed, it benefits him because he knows they exist, their tactics, and where they are. If either side ultimately wins or loses, it benefits him because he's on top of both.
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Oct 1, 2023 02:43
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I am still out here in the weeds with the theory that Palpatine ran the Empire inefficiently to maximize suffering and hostility. The Galactic Empire is basically a giant misery pump that Palpatine can use to power his Dark Side rituals. It’s like how at the end of Andor that the dehumanizing prison labor and competition was used to construct widgets for the Death Star, right? Why go to all that trouble when an automated factory could poo poo them out much faster and with more QC? Because the cruelty is the point and those widgets are now saturated charged with human suffering. It’s a goddam spell to make the sword sharper.
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Oct 1, 2023 02:55
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maybealabia posted:For example, is conceivable that a binary load lifter wouldn't even understand the concept of "being free" and many types of droids might literally go insane without being given a purpose in star wars, binary load lifters understand the concept of "being free". human beings in real life also prefer to have a purpose. part of not being enslaved is getting to decide that what purpose is, rather than it being given to them as an instruction or order. ungulateman fucked around with this message at 03:11 on Oct 1, 2023 |
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Oct 1, 2023 03:05
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ungulateman posted:in star wars, binary load lifters understand the concept of "being free". Droids are built for a specific purpose though, which is a little different. Do binary load lifters understand the concept of being free? Or do they want to lift loads? No loads refused load lifters
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Oct 1, 2023 03:41
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ungulateman posted:in star wars, binary load lifters understand the concept of "being free". Oh ok, we have the definitive answer. close the thread.
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Oct 1, 2023 04:24
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The only philosophical question a binary load lifter understands is to be or not to be.
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Oct 1, 2023 05:04
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I mean I used that example because the name is funny and they've been implied to be particularly dumb but the fact is that we don't know much about most menial droids or if they have "robots" like we do for automating simple repetitive tasks We know protocol droids and astromechs and medical droids etc have to be "smart" to do their jobs, but power droids far less so Chopper is clearly a person because a non sapient being couldn't possibly be as gleefully murderous
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Oct 1, 2023 05:11
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Lobok posted:The only philosophical question a binary load lifter understands is to beep or not to beep.
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Oct 1, 2023 05:47
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maybealabia posted:I mean I used that example because the name is funny and they've been implied to be particularly dumb but the fact is that we don't know much about most menial droids or if they have "robots" like we do for automating simple repetitive tasks
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Oct 1, 2023 05:48
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maybealabia posted:I mean I used that example because the name is funny and they've been implied to be particularly dumb but the fact is that we don't know much about most menial droids or if they have "robots" like we do for automating simple repetitive tasks We actually kinda do; It's inferred across both canons that it's recommended to regularly memory-wipe droids you own so they function "properly", but most droid owners don't. The reason being that over time they develop personalities and get more self-aware, and most people just like their droid being their buddy. The more intelligent droids just know they are and get more snarky about things cause they know they're right all the time (see; Every Astromech ever)
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Oct 1, 2023 05:56
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How do people think that droids aren’t sentient when they make decisions and feel pain
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Oct 1, 2023 07:00
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I don't see the argument for connecting sentience to feeling pain. If you have this are you less sentient than a normal person? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_insensitivity_to_pain
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Oct 1, 2023 07:10
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Idgaf about your gotcha Droids are living beings
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Oct 1, 2023 07:26
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CelticPredator posted:How do people think that droids aren’t sentient when they make decisions and feel pain I only eat Marsupial Ape fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Oct 1, 2023 |
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Oct 1, 2023 07:36
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CelticPredator posted:Idgaf about your gotcha Droids are living beings I mean I think they are too, just your chosen reasons have extremely obvious problems. Why even post an argument if you don't want anyone to talk to you about it
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Oct 1, 2023 07:46
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Listen, I’m not a racist. I just consider myself an organic chauvinist.
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Oct 1, 2023 09:07
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maybealabia posted:Chopper is clearly a person because a non sapient being couldn't possibly be as gleefully murderous Have you ever met a cat? Neddy Seagoon posted:The reason being that over time they develop personalities and get more self-aware, and most people just like their droid being their buddy. Most of the main characters who are so Droids seem to achieve sentience, but don't seem to start with it with some exceptions (droids made by future dark lords of the sith for example). If the odds favor an emergent sentience incompatible with society (like a desire to murder or a listless existence as a maintenance droid that can't do maintenance) maybe the owners feel a responsibility from allowing those droids minds to survive long enough to achieve the ability to suffer? Maybe a spaceship is no place to nurture a self-aware welder bot, but once we make this score and settle down we can stop the maintenance and teach it to love and wonder.
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Oct 1, 2023 09:23
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given what chopper went through in his quest for that matching leg he's sentient and has free will
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Oct 1, 2023 10:15
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Is there a reccomended "best of chopper" for non rebels watchers
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Oct 1, 2023 11:43
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