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Comment by jankotek | Hacker News Reader

I find it bit weird to derive any ethics from Star Wars.

All characters change sides way too often (first rebels, then republic/empire, then again rebels, then again republic...). Dart Vader commits genecide and destroys a few planets (including Leia's homeworld), but there is happy family reunion with Leia and Luck at the end... Jedis are good guys, but they never bother to send someone for Anakins mother, who is a slave...

I would not be surprised if Death Star construction was initiated during the Old Republic. The same way Clone Army was created by some Jedi guy.

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I'm in a post-Christmas hangover, so this seems like a great time for me to get pedantic about Star Wars stuff :)

I don't think anybody really changes sides. Star Wars is binary...everything is good or evil. The Republic (good) gets transformed by Palpatine into the Empire (evil), which is opposed by the Rebellion (good), which in turn overthrows the Empire and form the New Republic (good) to replace the Empire. Then lingering forces from the Empire form the New Order (bad) and a relative peace exists until it doesn't. Are there a small number of people who do ethically questionable things? Yes, but for the most part everyone adheres to their good or evil classification.

Darth Vader did help commit genocide, but I don't know that you could pin the blame for anything the death star did on him. Tarkin was the commanding officer and gave the direct command to blow up Alderaan. Vader was merely an enforcer detaining Leia and ensuring things were going according to plan. He's certainly got blood on his hands, but I wouldn't say he destroyed planets. AFAIK, Alderaan is the only one that got destroyed anyway.

Part of being a Jedi is shedding attachment, which is all Anakin's mother ever was (as evidenced by their relationship essentially sending him off the deep end into a genocidal rampage). The Jedi would've had no way of knowing that his mother was in danger while it was happening. If Anakin couldn't feel it in the force, how could people with no attachment to her? Anakin is the only living Jedi to have even met Shmi Skywalker, after all (Qui Gon is dead, Obi Wan never left the ship).

In episode III, it's shown that the death star was originally a separatist weapon.

rip expanded universe. sith where so much more nuanced.

There are worse criticisms of the Jedi than them being uncommitted to social justice---that dusty order of ascetics is an anti-democratic paramilitary that forcibly conscripts and trains child soldiers to engage in extrajudicial killings in the name of the Pax Galactica, a meritocracy rooted in the notion of genetic supermen. They are as vile as the Empire that succeeded them.

Most superhero teams seem to operate on similar principles.

And I would argue that this is somewhat justified because societies of muggles have not developed any mechanisms (organizationally and morally) to deal with individuals that fall several orders of magnitude outside the normal skillset of their species.

Put differently: Considering that there would almost nothing mere mortals could do to stop superman from declaring himself emperor of mankind (several supervillains try to do just that after all) they are already showing remarkable self-restraint and ethical behavior simply by not ruling the planet through force.

> Most superhero teams seem to operate on similar principles.

Agreed. This is why deconstructions of the superhero genre, such as Watchmen (or even lesser ones, such as Superman: Red Son), are so appealing.

I know it's still shocking to some, but the main reason people don't collect purses from elderly and disabled people they meet at night isn't because they might get caught, and it's also not because they're naive and passing up easy money. It's because they're holding on to something more valuable which they already have and are, which they would damage or even loose in the process.

If anything, the main or even sole reason to want power over others is impotence and insecurity, and if you're immortal and can do whatever you want, there is really no use for that, only downsides. Unless one subscribes to the Dwight Schrute theory of super heroes of course, which says all super heroes are born out of childhood trauma.

>meritocracy rooted in the notion of genetic supermen

Always funny to see phrases like that here, however if someone was force sensitive and had a zero midichlorian count they'd want them anyway, the order was never bred for their abilities, and with their vows of celibacy actively removed themselves from the gene pool. In regards to their use as a paramilitary, if a child was found to be able to read minds the CIA would be looking to kidnap them.

Isn't a meritocracy rooted in the notion of genetic supermen at least a little more reasonable when there are literal genetic supermen?

Genetic superiority as a trope distinctly lacks the kinds of compassionate loving-kindness, strong moral/ethical codes, and good leadership skills one would want out of the supermen put in place to rule mere mortals such as ourselves, hence Iain Banks' reply, when questioned whether Culture AIs would be what gods are actually like, was "If we're lucky."

The trope is based on it allowing for reluctant superhero character. Since powers are given by birth, we can watch kids struggle to come to grips with their powers. If powers are earned, then superheros would all be driven 'winners' ... mostly the psycopaths able to defeat all competitors. That is where we get evil characters.

As a general rule, good guys have powers forced upon them. Bad guys have to work for them. This enforces the concept of an elite class of 'good' families and a dangerous group of upstart peasants. The theme has been with us since ancient times. Far too long imho.

Ok, but that's a critique of the writers, not an in-universe critique of the Jedi. I guess I misunderstood the angle you were coming at this from.

The standard critiques of anti-democratic regimes almost never appeal to the existence of individual decision makers -- or even groups of decision makers -- whose governing ability is superior to that of the current dictator.

(In fact, many critiques of anti-democratic regimes don't even accept that this is something over which there is even a debate to be had. As one author put it, men have a "self-evident" right to govern themselves within a framework respectful of human rights.)

That's the real awesomeness about Rogue One... imo, it was a middle finger for Lucas and is the way Disney will unwind those godawful prequels.

The appearance of the force as a religion that people have faith in and are passionate about is a good way to do away with the dopey prequel stuff.

My point is not about social justice, but leaving behind your mother in bad conditions.

Not to mention that in Rogue One, it was essentially a suicide mission against an existing government.

It's seemed to pull alot from the US invasion of the middle East, except that the rebel terrorists are the good guys. Alot if desert scenes, roadside bombs, even some of the style of head dress was reminiscent of the black head scarfs Al-Qaeda uses

I really find the opposite in Star wars (before Rogue One). Most of the villains are bad and most of the good guys are good. There are only occasional flip-flops and they are all major plot points to clearly indicate the transition. They keep the morality so easy the average 7 year old can follow it. They go so far out of their way to make it easy as to color code good and evil (what color is uniform? The lightsabre?).

Compare this something like with actual moral issues like Schindler's List. The main character navigated a huge moral gray area. He couldn't make any proper kind of stand against the industrialization of evil in WWII Germany but he did what he to save what lives he could and that meant not saving some (to reduce suspicion). It also meant lying to all the people who accepted him as peers. He was a traitor all the Germans as he ran factories that hurt the war effort, He was an enemy of the allies because he ran a munitions factory. To the families of the people he saved he still might have been viewed poorly because his employees were functionally slaves. But the choice to enslave those people in safe working conditions and keep them alive and well fed saved them and to them he was a hero.

There are tons of other movies, books and stories where the good guys are not clearly good and the bad guys not clearly bad. Consider Worm (Web serial), the heroes are jerks who sacrifice the lives of others and the villains are often just looking out for their own. Who is really good and bad?

It doesn't seem that any particular ethics are being "derived" from Star Wars in the article. The author looks instead to be using the story as a jumping-off point for discussion of various issues and tradeoffs in the ethical space.

In any case, the site is called "Sci-Fi Policy" which leads me to believe this kind of exegesis is their bread and butter. Perhaps they aren't usually making airtight arguments in their posts but I think the discussion is still useful and fun.

> I would not be surprised if Death Star construction was initiated during the Old Republic.

It actually was. In the prequel trilogy, we see that the Separatists have plans for it, which are then acquired by the Empire at the end of the film.

> The first Death Star's schematics are visible in the scenes on Geonosis in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones showcasing the early development of the Death Star prototype, the Death Star plans were designed by Geonosians led by Archduke Poggle the Lesser, a member of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, and is shown early in construction at the end of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Star

I didn't see anyone say it yet; so The Old Republic is the name of the story-line that exists 3,000-4,000 years before the time of the Star Wars movies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Old_Republic

The appearance of the Death Star plans in the prequel trilogy is not proof that development of the Death Star was started during 'the old republic'

My guess is the OP is referring to the Republic that directly preceded the Galactic Empire as 'the Old Republic'. Despite the confusing nature of having another storyline, it is the previous(old) republic from the context of the events in episode IV-VI.

Yeah. After victory over the Empire, the Rebellion formed the New Republic. I'm pretty sure the name the Old Republic was coined later and is just meant to make clear which Republic you're referring to.

The Rogue One companion novel, "Catalyst", clarifies this. These days, those new books are full-fledged canon rather than "expanded universe" material.

The Republic obtained those Death Star plans from the Separatists after the Battle of Genonosis (i.e. Episode II). The Republic started building it during the Clone Wars, they hadn't even been rechristened as "The Empire" yet.

Is this an EU knowledge, or one after the continuity refresh?

It's on screen in the RoTS, so it's always been canon:

https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7330/13094455004_f54959dbb5_b....

OK, thanks for clarification.

No, that's right out of the movies.

Star Wars is unusual in that it's an explicitly Manichean universe. The "light" and "dark" sides of the force are equated with good and evil, and assigned in a way that's clear both in and out of universe. It's not a universe of grey areas.

(There's a lot of people trying to reinvent ethics and metaethics from the ground up in this thread, badly..)

The entire meta-ethical point of the first six films is that the dark and light side are both in error and Skywalker brings balance to the force by being the first grey Jedi. So I wouldn't be so quick to judge.

Sadly Disney seemly want to make it pure manicheism again, probably easier for kids to understand and sell toys...

I wish some of the movies would get stories inspired by Kotor series, where the author really wanted to make the wars in star wars resemble real ones, with no obvious good and evil sides.

I'm personally hoping that with the success of these star wars stories that maybe they'll do what they let Marvel do with Daredevil/Punisher/Jessica Jones etc. and perhaps make a more serious (pure opinion here, btw) version of things in these universes like they have with their Netflix Collab originals. IMO they're the best thing in not just TV but all of the marvel universe right now (and arguably some of the best entertainment of this sort period, in my not humble opinion ;). Star wars could benefit sincerely from this treatment.

I'm unsure it is possible to translate the Netflix-Marvel series' success to non-Earth stories, let alone to Star Wars. To have the deep stories that you enjoyed they need enough screen time to tell the stories. The 4 individual stories + 1 miniseries of the Defenders is supposed to be about $200 million [1]. That comes out to 26 + 13 + 13 + 13 + 7? = 72, which is $2.7 million per episode. This uses mostly existing sets and straightforward special effects. Star Wars in particular is commonly set aboard complex spaceships or vastly different alien worlds in the company of aliens and robots. Therefore the investment required to initiate this seems like it would be significantly higher.

Game of Thrones, for context of a series with both well known actors and amazing sets and effects, is about $10 million per episode. If we assume that a Star Wars series would cost about the same and it would take approximately a similar number of episodes to tell such a story, that would be $720 million. I might be wrong, but I don't think such an investment in film has never been done before.

I think it will depend greatly on both the continued success of the Marvel TV shows + how the remaining Star Wars films perform.

1: [Marvel’s Netflix Bound TV Shows To Cost A Whopping $200 Million](http://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/marvels-netflix-bound-tv...)

Well, wasn't Rogue One exactly that treatment? It was a visceral and brutal experience (especially when one compares it to fable tales of SW). I left the cinema quite unsettled by how gray everything was, the sacrifices and commitment to the cause.

I'd really love SW movies to be more like that, less bland and mentally lazy (AND NO MORE DEATHSTARS FFS)

> NO MORE DEATHSTARS FFS

Oh God yes. I was so pissed when the Force Awakens culminated with yet another, bigger Death Star.

Even if you feel the need to stick with the super weapon trope, the Empire has PLENTY of other nasty machines sitting around.

They kind of had to. Episodes 1, 2 and 3 were really bad and to convey a subtle message like that good and evil aren't always clear requires nuance and skill to convey.

Like another commenter said, it's post-Christmas, time to get pedantic about Star Wars.

I find it hard to buy the idea that the climax of RotJ supports this idea. At the end of RotJ all is portrayed as having worked out as well as they possibly could have, and all because Luke has made the extremely deontological choice to not fight his father.

Does Episode III contain the phrase "Only a Sith believes in absolutes"? Yes, and that's why everyone hates it.

Wat? Luke brings "balance" by reigning in a Dark Side run amok, dismantling an Empire that got too powerful and literally oppressed the whole galaxy. That's the point of the OT. The "balance" is a galaxy with two Sith and enough Jedi to contain them, nothing more.

The Prequel Trilogy is a ham-handed social critique that tries to show you "how democracy dies" and attacks rigid institutions for being inhumane. Any "imbalance" for the Light Side is not even a topic - after all, the Force is just a bunch of nano-organisms in your blood! The prequels don't bring any meaningful element to philosophical issues surrounding the Force, and they are such terrible movies that they should just be ignored; a lot of people now rightly hope they will be remade by Disney, which would be the right thing to do.

I don't know. Luke brings "balance" by killing all known dark side users; only light side users exist now, and no one knows how it's going to play in the future (we merely see the celebration through the galaxy, not how things evolve in the years after).

There is no balance at the end, only one side is winning.

I find it weird to derive ethics from fictional examples at all. The reason is “ex falso quod libet”, i.e. that one can derive any statement from a false (in this case, fictional) proposition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion

The purpose is not to have a fictional work as some basis for deriving morals. Rather, it is to test our moral sense in extreme conditions, to see how it reacts, and to see whether the theory we have still holds up.

As an example, consider theft. As a society, we have a strong aversion to theft. This aversion is enshrined in our laws, our religions, and even our grammar (e.g. "my pen" as opposed to "your pen"). So, we would consider "Do not steal." as a general moral guideline, functional in all scenarios.

But we haven't tested it in all scenarios. Let's consider somebody who steals for the purpose of helping another, commits no other crimes, and dedicates his life to helping others, even when it harms himself. Would we still consider the theft to be immoral? I would say no, and showing such a case is the primary purpose of "Les Miserables". We have pushed our general "Do not steal." outside of usual usage, and have found that it does not apply at extreme cases.

Similarly, the author of the article is saying that Rogue One is a good test of the existing moral principle "Do not build intentionally flawed buildings." This moral principle works in most day-to-day cases. However, in the case of building a Death Star for an oppressive regime, this moral principle may not hold.

The true dilemmas of life, ethical or otherwise, can't be expressed as inductive or deductive arguments. At best, you can put together an abductive argument that ends up looking like a pros and cons list - and even still it's a judgement call, and not one that's readily communicable to contemporaries or posterity.

Buddha, Jesus, Plato/Socrates, Swift, Nietzsche - seriously, if you throw a dart at a random distribution of centuries, the greatest moral thinker from that century used fictional constructs of some kind to illustrate their point. The 21st century is not going to be any different.

But there's an even bigger problem here that borders on illiteracy. Believing that ideas fleshed out in fiction serve no practical purpose completely ignores the history of all ideas, not just moral ones. Great fiction thinks.

If you want to learn about love, read Shakespeare. Texts on the mating habits of higher primates are not going to help your romantic life. If you want to learn about friendship, The Lord of the Rings is going to offer better advice than anything Freud wrote. If you want to learn about government, Homer or Jonathan Swift can teach you more about the machinations of power than Machiavelli or John Locke.

I believe the reason is that fiction speaks to the whole mind, not just the part of the brain that parses language and performs algebra.

> I believe the reason is that fiction speaks to the whole mind, not just the part of the brain that parses language and performs algebra.

Well said.

> ___ is going to offer better advice than anything Freud wrote.

You could replace that with "A Bucket of Clams" and the sentence is still true.

Ha! Have an upvote.

But seriously, if you can't make friends with a bucket of clams, you're just not trying.

I don't think the point is to actually derive ethics from fiction. It's the other way around. We express our ethics, morals and associated conundrums through fiction as a way of explaining them. This is especially important when those ethical problems are not always encountered directly or knowingly by the people who face them, in this case, by engineers who aren't fully aware of the societal impact of their work.

What are you even talking about? Humans have always looked to fiction to derive morality. The ancient Greek Mythologies, the Bible, the Torah, the Koran . . . literally everything that most people value as presenting foundation for ethics and morality is completely fictional.

And even if you take one or more of those documents to be literally true and a source of historical fact, even Jesus used parables--fiction--to explain moral principles.

This is really one of the strangest appeals to logic I've ever encountered.

I think you're subtly contradicting yourself here. While humans have, for millennia, used fiction to enshrine and explain morality, I don't think a sensible case can be made for suggesting we use it to derive or define morality. Unless, as in the case of holy scriptures, one argues that adherents derive morality from that which has been enshrined in the fictional source. But still, the fiction itself enshrines the moral teachings, and readers derive whatever they do from it (and even then, inconsistently at best).

Fictional is not always "wrong" or "false" as you claim.

There are so many fictional books which have so much to teach.

You can think of Star Wars how you like, but condemning fictional stories as bad only because they are no "true" stories -- is very short-sighted in my eyes. (and in my opinion a totally wrong understanding of the principles of logic).

There are also so many "true" stories, where you can draw the wrong ethics from!! (newest events included!)

The problem of course is that even if some fictional stories contain the right moral lessons, the ones that would work out in the real world, you can't tell them from the ones that are 'wrong' and 'false'. At best you can find stories that tell lessons you already agree with.

And while 'real' stories might still be doctored by the writer to send a particular message and mislead you to a conclusion, at least they're constrained by the facts.

Even, when you have a totally true and unbiased report of a true story, will it always lead to the right ethics?

I very much doubt so.

There where to many people living, that brought suffering to others without ever been punished. Many people that slaughtered others, where living a wealthy life till their end. And others, that did good, ended in poverty.

No, "true" life sometimes teaches the wrong ethics. Or should we find our ethics in slaughtering each others?

Just because something is abhorrent doesn't make it "false".

Bad people get away with terrible things all the time. No amount of moralizing changes this true fact.

I don't know, which kind of ethics you would prefer.

The one that doesn't lie to me?

Just because it is possible to get away with bad things, doesn't mean you should do them.

A good ethics system should address this.

By the same line of reasoning it should be impossible to derive ethics from thought experiments.

Not to mention the droid slave race, who are as human as any other characters yet are bought and sold as chattle.

I am taken aback by the regular use of torture, specifically the depiction of how well it works.

The Old Republic seems to be totally cool with the idea of slavery, Anakin's mother as you say, droids seem to be self-aware with personalities etc but are mere property, and so on. The Jedi were intent on preserving the status quo and not rocking the boat. Overthrowing it was absolutely the right thing to do.

Tatooine is beyond the Republic's sphere of influence. Droids only develope personalities after going a long period of time without a memory wipe (a quirk of their programming?) R2, 3PO, Chopper, and K-2 are the only canonical droids we see with personalities.

Is a memory wipe any better than slavery? In a world with the technology to wipe human minds, you could say the same about us.

The way the phenomenon of them developing personalities is presented, I would say yes it's better than slavery. Memory wipes are a part of routine maintenance (and security protocol in case of government or military use), and prolonged skipping of that maintenance can result in a personality beyond the one programmed into the droid. Their personalities are little more than a glitch in an old system that needs a wipe.

Now if the actual intention of the wipes is to keep your droid in check and keep it subservient, yes that's absolutely slavery. But I've never seen it presented that way.

These kinds of things are difficult to discuss because they're not explored in the way they are in harder scifi like Star Trek. With Star Wars you're expected to take everything at face value and technology is hardly ever explained in-canon.

Hence the 4-year lifespan in Blade Runner.

Because Killing your slaves somehow justifies slavery?

Depends on if you view killing them before they develop into what is considered a being with rights I guess. It's honestly the exact same debate as abortion. I agree with you, for what it's worth.

It's not the same as abortion at all. A droid can be given or sold to someone else who wants to let it grow into a sentient being. Fetal or placenta transplants simply doesn't exist. These two scenarios are simply not the same.

At the risk of introducing a contentious topic into polite discussion: there's an obvious parallel with abortion. It's seen as pragmatic, and maybe even kind, to terminate an entity's existence before it can achieve the intelligence and sentience that grant it moral rights.

If you're OK owning and operating a robotic arm, and not OK with owning and operating a sentient AI, then what to do with robotic arms that develop sentience over time?

HK-47 will always be canon in my heart. Even if he'd prefer us all dead.

IG-88? He had enough personality to go rogue and become a bounty hunter, and is canonical.

Oh true, and presumably 4-LOM as well.

It is the difference between RIGHT and WRONG vs right and wrong.

Relativistic morality? (Its ok to kill this race because we are better than them)

if you think of the self aware droids as cattle then its kind of a choie about what you like more. Cows are really nice animals in taste and temperament. Its about where you draw the line, and I guess in a way the jedi were being all realpolitik with how they deal with the galaxy.

In earth scale I would say they best examples is States Rights vs Human Rights. At what point do we get involved with a country for their human rights abuses? I'm Australian and I would happily see a few of my politicians dragged off to the Hague to be hung for their treatment of refugees. so what do we do with, American and its spying and DPRK, the philipines, burma, iran etc etc.

The interesting thing about the Star wars films is that the build up of arms by forces in the galaxy is allowed. I know in other series of sci fi (DUNE) there was a repression of technology past a point, if only to add some normal level to the battle field. If you start to develop capability eventually the end result is the use of it, Im supprised the empire could get away with the build up in secret.

Anyway. Rouge one was a lot like the thin red line. so tip of the hat to the star wars people for making a wholly depressing and sad war film.

-Also something i noticed, the UI and control systems engeneers in the empire a crap. its like a jobs for the boys kind of operation where everyone gets to do something. why is the antenna sighting control seperate from the transmission control. they are so tightly related. and also. The antenna is for space communications, visual sight of the dish isn't really needed as your not pointing at anything.

Other than that everything was super realistic with the fish people and faster that light travel etc. :P

The manual controls for the library were the funniest thing ever. Oh yeah, the software can highlight the thing you want with a light. But moving a servo there is too hard, here, use these handles.

I imagined it as intentionally needing manual control, so that a computer security breach would not result in leaking sensitive documents. Somebody who gains remote access could highlight the document that they want to steal, but could not upload it to a remote server, without the help of a person nearby.

Granted, the same effect could be achieved by having the storage system deposit the hard drive in a box, to be picked up by hand, but I can't come up with any explanation about that.

I was shocked that the Empire's reaction to having their central secret military archive compromised was (spoiler ahead) to blow the whole base from space; more so when it is hinted that this was their only copy.

Watching the Death Star operating at low power was cool though, as well as knowing that it had undergone some "preliminary tests" before Episode IV.

I saw it less as a rational move on the part of the Empire, and more as a rational move on the part of Tarkin. With the Death Star functional, Krennic would be gaining more status. Tarkin wanted to take as much credit as possible, as seen earlier in the film. Given an excuse to remove a political rival with the excuse of securing the plans to prevent any additional transmissions, he took it.

Also, I had recently read this fanfiction [1] about a project manager working on the second Death Star, complaining about how much of the institutional knowledge from the first Death Star had been lost, making the second Death Star be quite rushed. The loss of the original plans made the fanfiction fit in even better.

[1] https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11685932/1/Instruments-of-Destr...

The whole affair was a real shitshow. Blowing everything and everyone up is good bureaucratic response when your boss has a habit of strangling people.

>Watching the Death Star operating at low power was cool though

Oh yeah the slomo nuke that's literally outran by the characters. ಠ_ಠ

Given that they were a large distance away from the site of the explosion, it isn't unreasonable. From orbit, we see that the shockwave has covered a large proportion of Jedha's circumference, easily visible from space, at the time of the jump to hyperspace. Estimating the diameter at 5% of the planet's circumference, the shockwave traveled about 600 miles, which would take about 45 minutes for the shockwave to reach, assuming similar size and atmospheric density as Earth (reasonable, since humans can comfortably live there).

Clearly, the stronghold is not 600 miles from the city, as the shockwave was traveling faster than the rockwave, but it gives a good sense of timing. Note that the characters were not able to outrun the rockwave without the jump to hyperspace.

It looked to me like they're literally running out of the building as the shockwave was travelling through it, and then running to the ship and getting there before it gets to them. It didn't look like they were far from the site at all. Without seeing the scene again I guess it's hard to check.

Good point. I've only seen it once so far, so I will keep an eye out for it the next time. My interpretation was that the initial shockwave had hit the building, and was causing all the structural damage that we saw as they were leaving the building. The shockwave passed, at which point they were trying to get to the ship and leave before the larger danger of "the horizon is missing" reached them.

My feelings on it were that the building was shaking due to seismic activity at a low level on the outskirts of the rock wave. The sheer size of the rock wave might make it seem closer than it was. The problem is that we have little indication how far away the base was from the initial blast point. My thought it was quite a distance away since they had X-Wings parked out front in the open.

Logging and access control. Even today some "special collections" are not stored and provided access as easily as technologically possible in order to intentionally restrict access. The humans in the certified birth certificate process could be replaced by a very small shell script technologically, but legally their slowing things down paradoxically provide a useful service by getting in the way.

If I were retcon-ing the data silo design they're worried about a terror attack methodically destroying trillions of dollars of stored design data, or being too easy and fast to use, resulting in the wrong people putting together the wrong collection of ideas and figuring out the overall plan. You can do a lot of interesting compartmentalized grunt work engineering. So here's the static and dynamic loads gimmie a minimal mass truss design for those loads with a factor of safety of 9 but you don't have to be told thats the death star's laser cannon support thingy and it would be bad if enough people put 2 and 2 together.

Star Wars gotta have 70s sci-fi technology, it can't keep pace with advances in sci-fi!

Relativistic morality? (Its ok to kill this race because we are better than them)

Nitpick, but this isn't what relativistic morality means; it means that there's no One True morality. Racial supremacism doesn't really have anything to do with it.

you're correct. I was just moving quickly on a tangent and genocides based on religion, race etc came quickest to my mind as an example. But its a big galaxy and there are lots of normal.

You're not the first to notice this: http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-case-for-the-empire/articl...

I did not comment on some abstract fight, but on idea of leaving close relative alone in harsh conditions. Just send some money, buy her freedom, and do your jedi stuff after that.

It is like fighting for social justice, while your children are starving.

If this is about Anakin's personal morality, he was a kid when he left. And by joining the Jedi order, he was supposed to shed his familial attachments. And then in Episode II, he violated those principles to rush to her side when he sensed she was in mortal danger.

Isn't the Jedi's goal only to bring "balance to the force"?

So their mission isn't to "do good", but more like "not let there be any bigger evil than what already existed" (that would break the equilibrium of forces). At least that seemed to be the theory. In practice, they were mostly law enforcement agents of the Republic, until the republic turned into an "evil empire".

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