PT What do you think of the virgin birth concept?

@lord_sidious_

You don't need the Force in your hand to control the lightsabre.
Your hand just grips it.

Also the Force can move inanimate objects with not problem.
And objects some distance from them.
So why would an artificial limb be different?

And suppose that you have parts of your inner organs replaced, say your stomach.
Does the Force flow through there if you use a lightsabre?

But if there are no midis at the end of the artificial limb, there is nothing to connect to.
So no signal that is getting weaker.
And if the artificial part is inside the body, with living tissue all around it, then no problem with the signal getting weaker either.

Correct on the math.

Midis are smaller than bacteria though as they are needed in all forms of life.
So even the smallest bacteria would have midis inside them.

And if it is midis per volume of blood. Blood cells are the type of cells you get in the blood.
So is it the conc per blood cell? If so, is there are reason to think the midi count is different in other cells?

If it is the numbers of midis per volume of blood.
Are there midis in the blood plasma and thus outside of the cells?
If not and this is the total number of midis in all the blood cells in the sample size.
Then you have another possible variable.
Do all life forms have the same number of blood cells per volume of blood?
If not, the number gets hard to use.
Now you have to compare the average number for humans vs those of some non-human species.
Plus the number of blood cells can vary depending on outside factors.

Luke still has to conquer Vader as well.
And getting weaker in old age is not really shown in SW.
Dooku is old and he is far from weak. Yoda is over 900 years old and still very strong.

And this is the risk you take if you try to over explain something. Esp if you try to explain something "mystical" using "scientific" concepts.

Like if you try to explain the exact way the One Ring makes normal people invisible but not powerful people like Sauron.

The some in the audience is going to go "If this works like this in case A, why doesn't it work like this in case B."
And so on.

Star Trek has fallen into this trap more than once. They use actual scientific concepts in order to make it sound legit and then the plot needs certain things to happen so the science gets bent or twisted.
So in the end, if you know what those science terms means, you would get more annoyed than if they had just said "This machine is powered by unicorn hair".

Technically, Obi-Wan said Luke's father wanted Luke to have his lightsaber when he was old enough. Not directly stated that he wanted Luke to become a Jedi.
And given the age Jedi are taken in in the PT, the "When you were old enough" would mean maybe one-two years old.
Also, given that Jedi were not supposed to marry or have kids in the PT, why exactly would Luke's father talk to Obi-Wan about his son and wanting to pass his lightsaber along to him?

The implication in the OT was that Jedi having families was not out of the ordinary or against the rules.
Several of the early scripts to ANH was about fathers training their sons to become Jedi.
In an early version of RotJ Luke say "I am a Jedi like my father and grand father before me."

As for age, Yoda says that Luke is too old in ESB but again if we go with the PT age of maybe one year old as the normal age. Then Luke is waaay too old. So much so that it gets silly.
Yoda also berates Luke for being reckless and Obi-wan says "Was I any different when you taught me?"
If Obi-Wan is talking about when the time when he was a rookie Jedi, like Luke is, then their respective ages would naturally be somewhat similar.
If Obi-Wan is talking about how he was a newbie Jedi, say age five, and comparing himself with the 20+ age Luke, the statement makes no sense.

Luke makes a choice to become a jedi as an adult. Sure outside factors played into it.
In the PT, no one makes a choice to become a Jedi. It is made for them when they are infants.
Well Anakin makes a choice but he is no adult.
Sure they can leave but how easy is it to walk away from the only life you have ever known?

Lucas said before that anyone could become a Jedi if they put their mind to it. It was hard but the door was open to everyone.
Not so with the PT, now the Jedi club is more exclusive, only those with the right set of genes can become Jedi.

So instead of an organisation that people could ask to join when they were old enough, say 15-18 and getting accepted or rejected depending on who they were as people. Now it is an organisation that takes people in almost directly after birth because of what their genes are like.

Side note, given that the PT Jedi are taken in almost directly after birth and they likely have no feelings or knowledge of their parents, siblings or extended family. The Jedi are now their family.
Also, since Jedi are taken in at such a young age, the Jedi organisation is far less likely to change over time. Everyone is raised almost exactly the same way, with the same ideals and same experiences.
No one can come into the organisation with a totally different background.
Well Anakin is the exception in that he actually knew and had feelings for his mother.
But was viewed as something bad, something to stamp out and get rid of.
In all, that the Jedi have become stuck in their ways, slow to change or adapt.
That is not so strange to me given this.
Change is not likely to come from within with everyone being raised in the same environment.
Change could maybe come from without but that is likely to be resisted or the change is very violent.
Which is what happened to the Jedi.

Maybe Lucas made the Jedi this way to make a point about them becoming stagnant and unable or unwilling to change.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

"Unicorn hair" is all midi-chlorians are. They're not meant to be scientifically accurate any more than the hyperdrive is. They can work whatever way Lucas wants them to work, because they're not real and don't operate according to the laws of our world. You might as well ask why starfighters make banking maneuvers in the vacuum of space.

 

I was thinking the Force might help the person use the lightsaber more efficiently, perhaps more strength or better agility or precision.
Moving distant objects is slower and less precise movement, so it might be a whole different aspect of the Force getting used.

Maybe with the chain of midi connections going around the artificial organ, it messes up the Force field somehow. It could affect the person's overall ability to generate/harvest Force energy, while the artificial limb affects the person's ability to apply that energy.

We don't really have a lot of information of how exactly the Force operates, so all this is just random speculation.

I guess it's possible that the midi concentration value reading has been normalized for hematocrit.
I don't think the midi count is necessarily definitive of Force potential, but rather just a marker. In real life, many markers are used in the medical field that are not definitive of whether the patient will get a medical event. For example, bone mineral density and cholesterol levels only help estimate the likelihood of fracture and heart attack/stroke, but are still widely used in practice.

Dooku wasn't that old yet.
As for Yoda, his death was sudden, it seemed to me like he chose death. Had he lived on, he might have eventually weakened.

 

This is why I don't like the midi-chlorian / cells aspect to all this. I think it is messier and, in my opinion, almost bordering on parody when people talk about how much you lose if you get a robotic hand for example. I get that Vader was likely severely weakened by his injuries, but I think that is as far as I would have taken any kind of exposition within the construct of the films' mythology.

 

Well, no one in the films did talk about it. These are posters on a Star Wars fan forum.

 

I know fella, I was referring to the conversations further up thread. When you see it discussed in that manner, it conjures up an almost comedy image

"Hey, you lose your hand there bub? Aw man, that's 5% force points you are down now!"

I like more vague explanations for this kind of stuff, they fire the imagination a bit more I think.

I'm not a big lover of over-exposition or "over" anything really, you can sometimes give away too much and not leave room for the viewer (or reader, in literature) to use his imagination, which I think can be a more satisfying approach to fiction sometimes.

 

I don't see what conversations in a thread on a fan forum have to do with the validity of the actual content of the movies.

As far as I can see, we both agree that being burned and having your limbs chopped off will reduce your power in the Force. Obviously, becoming less of a life-form will reduce your ability to channel the power of a life-force. So, obviously, there is a quantitative aspect to the whole thing, regardless of whatever arbitrary number a film may provide as a yardstick.

So, again, I'm having hard time seeing where the actual objection lies, other than the fact that you heard a number in a movie. Are you upset that you can't imagine the numbers for yourself anymore? How has the fire of your imagination actually been quenched, exactly?

 

Yes, we can both agree that Vader's damage weakened his Force capabilities. But, I don't particularly like having it explained to me as this working in such a biologically-based manner, which attributes numerical values to how effective you are with this. I like less exposition and it to be left up to whoever is consuming it to imagine how such a metaphysical concept might work.

I think that can be often a more satisfying approach to fiction, whether in film or in literature. It's the magic trick analogy again, remembering the line from The Prestige. "You don't want to look too closely, you don't want to see how it works. You just want to be.....fooled"

I think that there is some truth in that, in that the wonder or mystery of some of these fictional mystical concepts, like a good magic trick, is part of the fun.

So same outcome, just a preferential way of how that is delivered to the viewer. Does that make sense?

 

Agreed. While Vader's damage definitely weakened him, I stay away from equating a limb for limb and pound for pound measurement of the Force.

Vader could barely even breath after his injuries. There was a lot going on with him. Both Anakin and Luke had limbs lobbed off and were much more powerful Jedi after.

 

Yeah, I just prefer a more abstract approach. @The_Phantom_Calamari talks a bit about the concept of "chi" in one of his earlier posts, and I think that this is the closest thing to the idea of the Force. It's pseudo-scientific, but isn't quantifiable by science or medicine. I think that some things should just be left alone without an attempt to explain how it works from person to person, because it makes for better fiction.

It's like characters trying to explain using physics, gravity, mass, aerodynamics and propulsion as to how Superman can fly for example* He just can, so do we really need to know how he does it?

* I'm not a DC aficionado, so I don't know whether this has ever been done in any Superman media.

 

To sum my feelings on the midis/body parts/number per cell stuff.

To me, in the OT, the Force was mostly a mental discipline. Luke's limitations that he had to overcome were in his mind, his thinking.
He could lift stones but something as large as a ship, that he could not believe possible.
Yoda made a point of not judging things on their size, the ship or him.

So I think the OT's focus when it came to the Force was not on the body but on the mind.
Faith, belief, focus, control those mattered. Not body mass, number of cells etc.
The midis, to me, puts more importance on the body and that I don't feel is what the OT had to say and now it becomes more or a numbers game. "This much of midis means you can do this..", "This much loss of limbs weakens you this much.." and so on.

That Vader was weakened after getting put in the suit. I saw that as mostly him being weakened against Force lightning. And for obvious reasons, his suit would get screwed over by lightning.
Other than that, Vader is shown as still very powerful.

@Bob Effette
About Superman, from what I recall the comics give the explanation that Earth's yellow sun and lower gravity is what gives him his power. That explains why he would get weaker under a red sun and anyone else from Krypton would have the same powers he has.
I think they also say that his cells can store some of the power from the yellow sun as otherwise he would get weaker at night or in the dark. But if he is away from the yellow sun too long, he gets weaker.
But they don't really try to explain it in details of aerodynamics or such things.

Spiderman gets his power when he is bitten by a radioactive spider, they don't say exactly how this works, what genes were altered. The X-Men gets power by having a mutant X gene. Exactly how that gives them powers or what powers is not explained in detail.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Thanks re: Superman. I did used to read DC comics as a kid, but drifted away from them.

Yeah, your interpretation of how the Force is used is similar to mine. It's a faith based thing to me, more of a spiritual idea.

I think that this is what gave Star Wars a great deal of mass appeal during the era of ANH being released. The concept of the Force tapping into the idea that you can do this if you simply believe in it is a great marketing tool. It gives fans something they can get behind and almost believe in themselves if that makes sense.

I noticed that when The Force Awakens trailer was aired, they used Luke's voiceover from ROTJ which goes of course:

"The Force is strong in my family, my father has it, I have it, my sister has it....... you have that power too!"

I thought that this was clever marketing because the "you" could be interpreted in the context of the trailer as Luke speaking directly to the audience, bringing them into the idea again.

 

Would regular people like you and me get the powers of Superman from a red sun?

 

Well, that's where we disagree, because as I see it the Force is supposed to be an encapsulation of everything we know about the universe. And one thing we know about the universe is that it can, at least in some part, be quantified. To ignore that is to ignore reality, and as fantastical as the Star Wars films are in terms of their imagery, they are ultimately supposed to be movies about the world we live in.

As I've talked about, midi-chlorians are in part a metaphor for the role genetic predispositions play in terms of determining what our talents are. In time, I have no doubt that this is the kind of thing that we will be able to quantify to a quite large degree. So when that time comes, where will we be left if all our mythological narratives have absolutely nothing to say about it? Why should our mythologies ignore important facts like these? How is that useful?

What the Star Wars prequels very ably do is provide a mythological framework to contextualize emerging realities of life like these in ways that aren't detrimental to the human spirit. That's why a point is made to show that despite Anakin's genetic gifts, it is his choice about how to use those gifts that really matters. And even someone who is less genetically gifted, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, can prove to be Anakin's superior by virtue of having more discipline than Anakin.

And since midi-chlorians and the Force are such all-encompassing concepts, it's a metaphor that applies to everyone. Everyone is naturally talented at something. The key is finding out what that something is, and deciding what you want to do about it. You can't control what you're naturally good at, but you can control how you make use of your talents. You can certainly decide to ignore your natural talents and instead work hard at doing or being something else, but at the end of the day your natural talents are what set you apart. They're the things that you can do better than most other people, and that means they provide the greatest potential for you to bring something to the world that no one else can. There's a certain amount of responsibility in that.

It really comes down to the question, What is God? Well, some people think God is some guy sitting up in the clouds somewhere more or less apart from the universe. But George Lucas seems to think God is the universe, in all its aspects. That includes science.

 

That's a comprehensive way of looking at it, and I appreciate your detailed interpretation. I do get which angle you are coming from. Nicely written post.

 

It has been many years since I read a Superman or DC comic but from what I've read, no.
The idea is that yellow sunlight contains more energy than red sunlight so anyone that comes from a world with a red sun would get some kind of power under a yellow one.

There is Daxam, a world with a red sun and is like Krypton in most regards.
So anyone from Daxam would have the powers of Superman on earth, which they do.
The difference are that they are not vulnerable to Kryptonite or magic, like Superman is, but they are vulnerable to lead.
In "The Great Darkness Saga" Darkseid gets control over Daxam and it's people and now he has an army of billions of beings, each with the power of Superman. That was bad.

There was one very old story I read ages ago where someone from Earth came to a world smaller than Earth and with a blue or white sun and there this person had powers like Superman.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

@Samuel Vimes - Thanks for the detailed answer. So a blue / white sun gives humans super powers. Good to know.

 

100% agree

reminds me of those pokemon cards.

 

I think Anakin's conception (along with midichlorians and Jar Jar) is one of the three mortal sins of TPM.

 

Agreed. I don't particularly like the whole "Chosen One" theme. The story works just as well if Anakin had just been a regular guy, came from relatively normal beginnings, and was just something of a mild talent among the Jedi Knights, who happened to turn. I actually think it would have worked better than the whole messianic / midi-chlorian thing.

 

That's right, Yoda told Luke his father was "powerful". That's why the remaining Jedi placed their hopes with Luke and his sister while the Sith were afraid of him and wanted to convert him. Some dude with average talent wouldn't cut it (it ain't Harry Potter).

As for the Chosen One prophecy, I think it added an additional burden on Anakin's shoulder and one of the reasons he and the Jedi were at odds. Remember, he was a lowly slave boy who suddenly was thrust in the middle of the galactic politics and was told he could be the savior except the very people he wanted to belong with didn't really trust him. The prophecy also made his turn much more poignant. It's one thing when it's a regular Jedi who betrays his brothers and sisters (or even someone like Dooku), but when it happens to your Chosen one... a much bigger impact.

Also, unless you know the story, for a first time viewing in an episodic order it must be quite a shock since you normally don't expect the Chosen One to turn - die, maybe, but not fulfill their destiny. Finally, we get an epic "Your were the chosen one" speech perfectly delivered by Ewan

 

I'd just assumed that Shmi got pregnant from a dirty toilet seat. She probably had to use a common commode in the slave quarters, and who knows how often they get clean, or cleaned properly? I'm surprised it didn't happen more often.

 

Moving a conversation here from another thread:

I see midichlorians as being similar to mitochondria, but obviously not exactly the same. I sort of explored some possibilities earlier in this thread:

With the paternal option, here's a possible mechanism I just came up with: In Earth-humans, the polar bodies are useless, so most of the cytoplasm from the primary oocyte ends up in the ovum during oogenesis. Perhaps GFFA "humans" are different, their polar bodies do some important work (like maybe...inspect lower quality sperm to destroy and/or guide healthy sperm to the ovum or something) while the ovum is just dormant until fertilization. So for them, their polar bodies get all the midichlorians from the primary oocyte in order for them the function, while the dormant ovum doesn't get any. Sperm cells need to do a lot of work, so they have a high concentration of midichlorians squeezed into their small cytoplasm. Therefore, the zygote gets all of their midichlorians from the sperm.