I want to do everything. I want to know everything. I want to be everything. My attention span is infamously short. One moment I want to build an app, then write a book, then start a business. My interests are many, I like to: Write code Write stories Read books Design things Walk for 2-3 hours Play SNES and PS1 era JRPGs Listen to business, political, and comedy podcasts If only there was enough time in the day! Did I mention I'm getting an MBA? My job is to write code. I do that a lot. But I love design, should I be a designer? But I want to lead, if I work hard, can I be the big boss? I read a book a month. That's what I finish -- I start many, many more. But I lose the hook. Where's the focus? Do I want focus? I bought a white noise machine. It's supposed to drown out the noisy neighbors. I sit, work, then the bass starts -- thump, thump, thump. I crank up the white noise. Still, there's the bass. So I put in ear plugs, and sigh with relief. Finally, quiet. Is this focus? Still, in this world of silence, I want all the things.
(Marvel: Infinity War and Endgame spoilers ahead) (Marvel: Infinity War and Endgame spoilers ahead) (No, seriously, Marvel: Infinity War and Endgame spoilers are ahead) I'm a member of the Thanos fan club. Not because I think he should be nominated for citizen of the year, or because /r/thanosdidnothingwrong. I like Thanos because he is an excellent villain. He manages to be evil on a scale hither to undreamt of, while displaying none of the cliche attributes of the megalomaniacal action movie villain, which typically include: Pointless cruelty World domination for its own sake Stupidity With Thanos, we get something different -- he has a conviction. He wants to destroy half of all life in the universe so that the other half can "thrive." He will accept whatever means that he must to justify that end, but does not indulge himself in casual cruelty. A good demonstration of his attributes as a character can be seen in this scene from Infinity War. It can't be ignored that in this scene, his troops commit genocide while one of his top subordinates tells everyone that they are being given salvation, etc. etc. But we also see that Thanos is kind to Gamora, saving her from what's about to happen and distracting her while his troops do the deed. This shows a terrifying duality: he is simultaneously committing a monumental act of evil and a small act of kindness. He wraps it in a justification of how the universe must be kept in balance. And over the course of several movies, he barely strays from the exact goal that he says he is after. Nebula says it herself in Endgame: "Father is many things. A liar is not one of them." And that's not all -- Thanos displays several attributes that makes him a terrifying and unique villain. Thanos is tough The heros have to execute multi-character combos to keep Thanos from closing his fist. And that's without any infinity stones, as seen near the climax of Endgame. Thanos is a tough challenge to beat, even in a series with overpowered characters. Even Captain Marvel, who can one-shot a space battleship can't beat Thanos one-on-one. Heck, in Infinity War, he wins. Out of one million possible scenarios Dr. Strange sees with the Time Stone, Thanos wins. He is one tough cookie. Thanos isn't stupid Thanos doesn't make any major strategic blunders in Infinity War or Endgame. He moves in force to collect the infinity stones, using each one as an advantage in acquiring the others. He already has the capability to use them and one of the more useful stones (the power stone) in his possession before going after the harder opponents. He acquires the Time Stone before going after the one stone that his enemies know how to permanently destroy. Once he acquires all the stones, he uses them immediately. And after he uses them, he destroys them, making it "impossible" to undo what he has done. It's a really good plan. He didn't seem to know that time travel would come up, but as soon as the heroes started traveling back in time, he reacted quickly to the situation. His response is particularly fascinating. As soon as he gets the capability to travel through time himself, he goes straight for the jugular, launching a surprise attack with his space battleship and almost wins. Conclusion Thanos is a terrifying villain not because he is an insane megalomaniac, but because he knows exactly what he wants, and has the resources and power to get it. And more than anything else, because he wins. Completely, absolutely. At least for one movie, with a year or so of wait time in between. The ending of Infinity War was uncommonly bold. Few movies are willing to go there. To let the bad guy win. And because they were willing to do that, Endgame is that much more powerful when the heros are finally able to undo what was done.
Why are we here? Humans have always asked this question. There is something about the hum-drum of everyday life that makes us ask what the purpose is. Is there some higher goal, a reason to keep getting up in the morning? Why must we inflict Mondays on ourselves again, and again, and again. Indeed, to get anything done in this world, we have to tolerate some level of pain. Physical exertion, thought, pain, failure. Even that which we enjoy most is sometimes laborious, and the simplest tasks still have setbacks. There is suffering and joy. Evil and good. Our lives are stories fated someday to end. Death is a dark abyss through which we cannot see -- for all we know, there is nothing there but oblivion. So what are we to do? Even after we finish a book, we walk away with something. Knowledge, experience, memories. But those are all doomed to go away someday. Why are we here? Some say we are here to give glory to God. I have the deepest respect for all religions, but religious experiences by their nature are very personal. If they could be shared and studied as we do the laws of the physical universe, then religious belief would be in the province of fact. Instead we must believe, but there are many religions -- which one, as someone who has not had a profoundly personal religious experience of my own, am I to believe if any? Why should I strive for any particular afterlife when there are many competing concepts and I have no reason to believe in one of them over the others? Some say that we are here to help others. This is indeed the truest pursuit that anyone can devote themselves to, but what are we to help others towards? This is rather subjective -- suppose we were able to help everyone and bring an end to war, poverty, and suffering. Then what? Has our goal been accomplished? We present ourselves with the same philosophical problem. By focusing on the end, all we get are more questions. What if we instead focus on the journey? Journey and destination I do not go on a vacation so that I can arrive back home. Vacations allow us to get away, to experience. They are a journey, and their value is in the time we spend on them, not in their ending. Similarly, we can think of life as a journey rather than as a destination. The importance is in what we do, not where we end up, because we all end up in the same place anyway. There is some value in this. We still must ask ourselves though what do we value? Whether we look to maximize good for the individual (ourselves) or the collective (everyone), the question still remains, what is good? Maybe it's pleasure. This is a rather hedonistic idea -- we want to make everyone as happy as they could possibly be, but it gets a little weird when you think about it. Pleasure and pain are just our bodies' carrots and sticks, used to incentivize us to do biological things. Survive, reproduce. Do these things have inherent value? Perhaps, but not in the same ways that our bodies evolved to reward. We feel the biological urge to give preference to propagating and protecting our own genes, often at the expense of others. This leads to bad things like tribal mentality too. We are biological creatures, but we differ from animals in that we have the ability to reason beyond our biological imperatives. As technology develops, we may be able to separate the sense of pleasure from its arbitrary evolutionary origins, but where does this lead us? Does it bring any real meaning, or just a superficial sense of manufactured satisfaction? Maybe there isn't an answer We see here that there is no unifying goal for everyone to work towards, at least not one that I can think of. There are so many different paths in life, so many possible goals to work towards. There is only one authority who can tell us the meaning of life. That authority is you. Me. Ourselves. We have to form our own answers to these questions, Find the right balance for each of us, because everyone is different. If you want to help someone, help them achieve what they want to achieve, not what you want them to. We can usually do that by sharing effective systems that work for achieving intended results. What is my answer? I think a lot about making an impact. Leaving something that will last longer than I do, particularly ideas. It's a really hard goal, because it takes a lot of work, and most people who try don't succeed. I'd like to write a book, and I want to contribute, however minorly as I can, towards this civilization we are building as humans. Right now we are in a time of transition from medieval horse-and-buggy to something else. I want that something to be a benevolent interstellar civilization. That's going to take a long time though. Where is the meaning in that? I'm not sure, but as we grow as a species, maybe we will find better answers to these questions. Maybe right now this is all we have, but after we've built a few dyson spheres and traveled to the other side of the galaxy a few times, we'll have a better idea of what we're talking about. Right now we just live on a planet of warring primate-descendants. One that's getting better every year, at a rate never before seen in recorded history.
I saw the new Aladdin movie over the weekend. Overall it was a great movie. Will Smith as the genie was a highlight: they really played up the “you can wish for whatever you want” aspect of the Aladdin story. The visuals, singing, and dancing was all very well done. But comparing the new movie with the old, there are a few issues that stand out. I was entertained, but my suspension of disbelief didn’t quite survive for much of the movie. (Spoilers ahead) The live action version starts as a scene-for-scene remake of the original animated movie. We see Aladdin running through the market chased by soldiers, Jafar discovering the cave, all of that. There are a few changes though that grate at the plausibility of character actions. First, they make it a little too obvious that undercover Jasmine is actually the princess. This is meant to clue in the viewer, but Aladdin really should have noticed too. Later on in the movie, Jasmine thinks that Aladdin is a prince a little too long, and they don’t do enough to establish the credibility of these lies. Character choices seem just a little bit less plausible in this version as they did in the original. Another issue is anachronisms. I’m not talking about the casual breaking-of-the-fourth-wall that the Genie partakes in during both movies. This is actually well done, and is handled well by the characters, who are plausibly bemused at the out of place illusions that the genie creates. I’m talking about the attitudes that characters take and their place in a medieval setting. Jafar wants to invade a neighboring country, and everyone in the court takes a 21st century attitude to this decision. The soldiers and the sultan don’t think about glory or riches, they’re just like “those people are our friends.” Which is a good sentiment, but a very modern one. And little is done in this setting to establish that the medieval world of Disney’s Aladdin is much kinder than the real medieval Middle East. Heck, in the original Aladdin, someone tries to cut off undercover jasmine’s hand for stealing an apple. Later, 2019 Disney tries to send us a message about the nature of power by first having Jafar wish to be king, having the soldiers side with him, then having Jasmine persuade them to side with her and the Sultan, then having him wish for power. The execution of this is okay, but comes off as implausible. Does Jafar’s wish to the Genie do anything other than adorn him in fancy robes? Because that’s all I see happen in the new one. Does it manipulate the soldiers’ minds? If so then how are they so easily persuaded? It would be more plausible if he first wishes for this, then a battle breaks out between his partisan’s and the sultans’s, and he has to wish for power for it to actually work. They even established that Jafar had partisans, but they wanted to squeeze in a character moment for Jasmine that didn’t exist in the original movie. This comes off as artificial unfortunately. The original story, where Jafar just wishes for both sultanhood and sorcery in quick succession, works great too and is honestly the smarter play. The ultimate play would be for him to just wish for power as a sorcerer and take the throne for himself, because titles mean something when he holds absolute power already. That brings us to Jafar’s character. He is much scarier, smarter, and more manipulative in the original. In the 2019 movie, Jafar just threatens Aladdin and gives him a dubious promise of riches to get him to grab the lamp. In the original, he actually puts on a refuse to fool Aladdin into looking for it himself. Which comes off as much more cunning, adding to Jafar’s character. Modern Disney removes Jafar’s backup plan to marry Jasmine, which totally makes sense from his perspective because he is the type of person to have multiple backup plans. Overall Jafar comes off as ineffective and kind of whiny in the new movie. Let’s talk about Aladdin too. In the original, he’s a cunning street rat who is deceptive enough to fall into the roll of a prince and do great. In the live action, he’s too bumbling to be plausible, particularly given his background which quite plausible includes some experience as a con artist. I’m not too certain about Jasmine’s character arc in the new movie either. It feels forced. They could have spent more time on why she wants to be sultan and what the cultural carrots and sticks are, rather than copy-and-pasting 2019 perceptions into a medieval world. I’m willing to give them slack here but they didn’t quite do their due diligence to make this plausible. Overall, the visuals and signing are better in the live action, but the characters and plot is better in the original animated Aladdin. I liked the movie though and recommend that anyone see it, if they’re a movie person, just for the singing and dancing, and the fun romance. I love to over-analyze fiction but I don’t let it hurt my enjoyment if I can. I enjoyed the original too and think it’s better. I may write more about this in future, but I am now really interested in this time period. I plan to start a WIP fantasy book set in a world based on he Islamic Golden Age, and will read some of the original Arabian Nights stories to learn more about the setting.
