Fact vs Fiction

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast, produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Nick Hare, Peter Coghill, and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing The Mandalorian.

Speaker B: 00:00:28

Peter, big fan of The Mandalorian? Yes, I am. So, I've been catching up on loads of Star Wars. The amount of Star Wars and other big sci-fi things, the amount of content being generated is phenomenal these days. So yeah, I've been catching up on Star Wars, and a thought occurred watching it that there's a lot of inconsistencies in the Star Wars universe. Inconsistencies with reality, but that's not what I'm particularly interested in. It's like inconsistencies within the universe itself. And I wondered, maybe these inconsistencies are, in some way, necessary to make it an interesting story, or an interesting platform for stories. Because it occurred to me that, well, if it was all completely internally consistent, it would end up potentially being just as boring as real life, right? You'd end up with, it'd become Neighbours or EastEnders rather than Star Wars. And I just thought, well, maybe in fiction you need these inconsistencies in order to provide you with degrees of freedom to explore interesting things.

Speaker A: 00:01:46

Give us some examples. Well, yeah.

Speaker B: 00:01:48

Oh yeah, I'd love to give you some examples. There's loads I want to get off my chest.

Speaker A: 00:01:50

We need to get straight into it. But just before we do, I'm not sure if I agree with the premise that anything that's factual has to be boring. But also, I think in factual stuff, you can still have your facts and your consistencies, but it's how you put those all together, it's how you construct it. I'm sure we'll go on to discuss that. It's about narrative as well. But nonetheless, we're all itching to hear the inconsistencies.

Speaker B: 00:02:14

Well, just a few that I picked out the top of my head on the way in this morning. But okay, so the galaxy is massive in Star Wars. That's one of the big things about Star Wars universe is everything is big. The scale of everything is big. You get exposed to thousands of different species from thousands of different planets. And yet, all the key events revolve around a very small clique, right? Everything that goes on in this galaxy is driven by one family and their associates. And everybody knows each other. Mind you, it's a bit like the UK, isn't it? Is it though? You think of all the daily life that goes on in the UK, it's fairly, fairly significant. All the businesses, all the stuff people do.

Speaker C: 00:02:57

Just substitute the Jedi Academy for Eton.

Speaker B: 00:03:01

I suppose that's okay, fair enough. Tick off the list. Right. Okay, this is a more scripty writing one, but revisions and changes to canon. Yeah, go on. So, I won't list it, but you'll probably guess that there's a TV Tropes article that lists them all for you. Right, good. There's a revision of this history of the Star Wars universe so that they can make more space- Go on, go on. For new stories. So there's references that Yoda makes to the Chosen One. Originally, it was obviously supposed to be Luke, right? But then they changed it to Anakin Skywalker, because he then defeats the Emperor. And it just changes lots of things all the time. Okay. At the whim of-

Speaker A: 00:03:53

Yeah, yeah. When they ask, they need to hang a bit of story on something. So they're like, oh, let's just have a prophecy or something. Oh yeah, the Sith. There's only two Sith, it says here, now. And then as you say, you can end up writing yourself into this corner then as a result. It's like you needed that at the time you did it, but then you created this new rule. And of course, if you're going to stick to it, as you say, I think every word you write in the Star Wars universe is going to form something which could constrain your future freedom of movement.

Speaker B: 00:04:25

Every choice you make only reduces the possibilities. Yeah. Stormtroopers not being able to hit anything, right? Okay, so they're pretty technologically advanced in this universe. They can do some pretty cool stuff. Yeah. But they haven't learned to shoot straight.

Speaker A: 00:04:40

Yeah, they haven't got automated targeting modules for some reason.

Speaker B: 00:04:43

Yeah, exactly. Why not? Why not just better training? And if they're that good, if they're that bad, why do they keep making more of them?

Speaker A: 00:04:53

Yeah, yeah. Make clones of someone who can shoot properly.

Speaker B: 00:04:57

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Size and scale of ships and things like Death Star, right? They're pretty big.

Speaker A: 00:05:04

Oh yeah, Death Star's all kinds of different sizes, depending on what they need to do.

Speaker B: 00:05:08

And the speed at which they're built. So the new order went from basically the main fleet was wiped out, Battle of Yavin, and they rebuilt it in 20 years. Not only that, but the Death Star took approximately 20 years to build. Starkiller, the big one in the more recent movies. We don't talk about those. Took around 25, 30 years to build. And it's much, much, much bigger.

Speaker A: 00:05:37

Yeah. Yeah. But when they go to the Death Star in episode four, when they go to rescue Princess Leia, you know, this thing is meant to be the size of like Europe or something. And yet they sort of go, oh, she's on that floor. Let's get the lift. Yeah, that's no moon. That's no moon, right? Let's say if it was the size of even a small moon, you can't just get a lift in five minutes from, you know, from Paris to Rome. It's like, you know, we don't care because it would be very boring to see them travelling around. An hour long movie of them travelling.

Speaker B: 00:06:13

Well, doing a crosswind. So that's physics. So there's all sorts of physics things. But I think that's straying towards the realism versus inconsistencies within.

Speaker A: 00:06:23

Right. Is there more or is it really for Chris to come in? Or is there something within this list you need to comment on, Chris?

Speaker B: 00:06:28

I feel like we've got the idea. Yeah. But it's not just Star Wars. It's everything. It's Star Trek. It's Lord of the Rings. It's everything. It's got these sort of annoying changes or inconsistencies that mean that I think it's just the writers writing their way out the corner. OK, Chris?

Speaker C: 00:06:46

Yeah, so I think this is a really interesting kind of area because for fiction to work, suspension of disbelief is essential, right? Like when you're from the earliest days of fiction theatre, you know, those kinds of things that you have to suspend your disbelief. You know, why am I seeing this person's life and not intervening at a fundamental level? You have to. You know, why doesn't time move properly? You know, why aren't I watching every single element of this? Why isn't anyone going to the toilet? You know, for fiction to be able to exist in any of its forms, you have to accept that it's not reality, right? And therefore, that you've been either presented some, like you were saying about documentaries, in a sense, documentaries are fiction, right? You're not actually watching the events in person and being part of them, right? So suspension of disbelief is essential. And we accept that and some of it we're happy to go with and some of it we're not happy to go with. And I think what's interesting is what are the things that we're not happy to go with? Why do they annoy us? And that's something that I think we can tease on. The other thing is what Peter's talking about really is world building, world generation, world consistencies. And so, you know, there are character inconsistencies like this character's behaved in a way that wasn't consistent with their plot holes. There are continuity errors where somebody walks on with the wrong watch. But I think what Peter's talking about is the idea of world building, which is about the environment in which the story takes place, right? And it's got a particular role in fiction. And that role in fiction is particularly important to certain types of people and in particular types of genre. You know, think of if you get a novel and you open the novel and there's a map at the front of the novel, right? Your reaction to that tells you the extent to which you're likely to be annoyed by world building problems. And I'm sure Nick and Peter know exactly what I mean. You know, for me, whenever I got a book and there was a map in the front of it, I was like, oh, yes, this is me. You know, this is a world to explore here. Whereas most sort of sniffy literary fiction people would, you know, that would be it for them. They'd have made their mind up by not even getting to page one. But apparently enormous family trees are OK because Tolstoy is full of them. Quite exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dramatis personae. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, so I think that's quite, I think what we're sort of talking about is particular types of problems or inconsistencies and ones that relate to the world in which the stories take place.

Speaker A: 00:09:51

OK, because we need to be careful here that, you know, to not tread a well-trodden path because ultimately we need I think we need to steer clear of saying, hey, don't let the truth get in the way of a good story. Right. Yeah, but that's that's patently the case that you need you need some rules. Otherwise, the drama doesn't make sense. Yes. So but also, no, I think also what we're talking about is this world building thing is important. But also, I think really what we're talking about is balance. Is that about right? About the balance in the force. That as well. Always, always that. So I do want to define some terms. So and I and I think this is where we might discover the some, you know, where where there's an interesting, tricky middle ground. Right. So obviously, consistency is about the the work, the fiction as a whole, actually like not contradicting itself effectively. You can't have your will. They travel at the speed of light one day and the next day. Suddenly it's really, really hard to do that. Things like I mean, to take Star Wars as an example, the fact that in in The Last Jedi, that there's something this thing called the the Holdo Maneuver, which was the last Jedi. Oh, it's one of the one of the new ones. Yeah. Where Admiral Holdo accelerates a ship to light speed and uses it as a weapon to destroy this like enemy Star Destroyer thing. And it's like, well, why has nobody done that ever before? And and the the answer is a load of a load of cobbled together retroactive nonsense about, oh, well, you know, it's illegal and nobody's thought of it before. And there has to be a human on board, none of which is believable in the context of everything else in you've ever seen in Star Wars. So that's consistency. It's like it's like is it is it has it contradicted itself? And the problem is, I think if it does, then we have a very deep seated. Well, for one thing, logically, it becomes impossible to suspend disbelief. You can't believe two contradictory things at the same time. So I guess that is the hardest form of of of undermining suspension of disbelief is to tell people two contradictory things about the universe they're watching. I think we can do that all the time. But anyway, well, OK, fine. But I mean, OK, that's that's what I'm saying. That's consistency. And then we have realism, which, you know, we've touched on. But realism means it is obeys the rules of our universe and our world. And then another kind of realism, which is getting even sort of higher, like the most realistic level of realistic is when the facts about the world is set on Earth. People in the real world appear in the film, et cetera. Right. So when you've got the facts about the world now, I think we want to say the consistency absolutely pretty much got to be there. But you can play you can play with the rules of the universe a bit. And, you know, that's OK as long as you're consistent. But you're in the realms of fantasy and sci fi there. But you there's also like you can you can change facts. People at this is the thing that people are most happy for you to do is changing facts about the world. So, for example, the West Wing is, I think, realistic. People want it to be like the real White House. But the president is totally fictional. So that's weird when you think about it. I'm watching this very realistic drama about American politics, but actually it's about someone who doesn't exist. Titanic, another one where it's sort of realistic and it kind of needs to be so realistic to work. But but the main characters don't exist. And in fact, there's a thing called the celebrity paradox, which is one of those really it's like a really fundamental. It's like, you know, you're not the camera, but, you know, the camera has to exist in the real world for you to be watching it notionally. You're seeing it from a viewpoint. Now, that viewpoint doesn't exist. Now, it's the same. The celebrity paradox is the fact that in the real world, if you were if you if the Terminator was real. Yeah, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. People would go, you look just like Arnold Schwarzenegger all the time. Exactly. And but most importantly, that the work of fiction you're watching doesn't exist. And that and that is most egregious, actually, in soap operas, because lots of people watch EastEnders, but no one in EastEnders watches EastEnders. Because if they did, they would become aware that horribly that their lives are being shown to millions of people around Britain. So so so that's there's like. So what I'm saying is you can't ever eliminate it completely, but that there are different levels of rules that you're allowed to change. And so I was saying that at the bottom, you're allowed to change facts about the world. In fact, it's required. So some facts about the world can change for sure. Like mostly stories are about fictional characters. You're allowed. You're allowed to change the rules of the universe, right? A bit. But then we're in the realm of sci-fi and fantasy. But what you're definitely not allowed to do is contradict yourself. So that's that's. There we go. Anyway, just to finish. I can't. I can't hold on to this like in the West Wing. I'm just repeating what you're saying, but from another angle, like Martin Sheen can't exist in the West Wing, right? So that and not just him, but all those other actors. Yeah. So it's already quite unlike the real world. Exactly. If they were talking about which films they like and they said, oh, Apocalypse Now, have you ever seen that? Martin Sheen's character wouldn't be able to go, yeah, I was in it. He'd have to say, yeah, there's a guy in it who looks just like me when I was younger.

Speaker C: 00:15:19

One of the weirdest things on that note is when you have a celebrity cameo in fiction. Yes. That's that kind of. Yeah, but they their cameo is as the celebrity who may actually know one of the actual actors. Right. It all starts to get a bit weird when you try when you break it down, when you deconstruct

Speaker A: 00:15:40

and just also just finish off the but actually sometimes it is broken on purpose. And that's quite nice when that happens. I'm thinking about what's the Eddie Murphy film, one of his early ones? Trading Places. It happens in that when references to itself and Fourth Wall and all that business anyway. Yeah, there's that one moment where he looks at the camera while someone's explaining something to him as if to say, these guys think I'm morons and it works really well. And there's a scene in Blade as well with Wesley Snipes when he's just killed a vampire and he looks at the camera and does a fist pump. It's a really good moment. And there's another Eddie Murphy one where I think we've talked about this before, where when it's coming to America and his character in there, who's completely different, different universe, different world, chucks some cash to some beggars in the street who, of course, is Morty and the other guy who got bankrupted in there. It's a nice crossover. Anyway, Nick, keep going. I stopped. I interrupted you. Well, no, so anyway, that's so I suppose I've just defined what kinds of unrealism I'd be talking about. So, you know, changing facts, which is OK, and then changing the laws of the universe. But I suppose this is where I want to bring in my I suppose my point is it actually is quite difficult to do some things which feel like it's just a change of facts, carry with them a bunch of sort of metaphysical rules that you need to obey in order not to be not to actually accidentally end up inconsistent. Right. So it's a bit like importing a software library or something, you know, instead of having to code it from scratch in Star Wars, for example, you don't we don't spend ages learning what these people are like. They're not humans. They evolved in a different galaxy, for example, a long time ago. But George Lucas obviously worked out it was much easier if we just said just assume these people are exactly like humans. So we don't have to spend ages work learning that they're actually pretty like humans. So he downloads the human module and inserts it into Star Wars. But aha, now we now he's got a problem on his hands because he's also then has to have a bunch of rules about how humans work. And he's now not allowed to violate those without. So he couldn't, for example, have Luke being exactly like he is. But for some reason, you know, when photosynthesize. Yeah. Or that he looks at every time they look at the colour red, they explode or something like that. Like that. The problem is that would start feeling like it was a contradiction, even though actually you could say, well, no, it's just the laws of the universe are a bit different about these specific creatures. They're actually not like humans. It turns out here's some ways that they're different. I think that would we'd start to feel a bit cheated then.

Speaker B: 00:18:36

And I like your you've got a sort of hierarchy of plausibility. Yeah. Rules set rules for the hierarchy of rules, plausibility for fiction. I think that's interesting because I think they are slightly reordered for plausibility in real life. Go on, go on. Yeah, because I think the most fundamental thing you can't get away from are fundamental science principles like the physics and the economics of the universe. You can't change those. If you change those, that's obviously and very apparently inconsistent. But things you are allowed to change to be remain plausible would be people's names or people's some of the facty things. You know, you could say, well, the population of the UK is 65 million, but it might be 70 million. They're both plausible. Right. What was the third one is?

Speaker A: 00:19:30

Oh, well, the inconsistency is the word.

Speaker B: 00:19:32

Inconsistency in stories. Yeah. But that you could also change. So you can have it happens every day in courts of law. Two people, two parties are arguing different series of events to explain an outcome. So that is totally plausible that either one is true. Otherwise, it's a waste of court time.

Speaker A: 00:19:52

And I don't know if it's similar to that or not, but what can be really tricky in documentary is when something truly, really looks utterly implausible, but actually is true. Whatever that means is telling that story in a way that actually reveals it or makes it feel true, even though it is true. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: 00:20:14

Well, I think there is this tension in fiction or storytelling, which is which relates to a theory from social psychology called construal level theory by sort of devised and developed by Trope and Lieberman. And this sort of argues that the more distant an object, and I'll define distance in a minute, the more abstract our thought about it tends to be, and the more proximal, the more concrete our thought tends to be. But distance is partly defined geographically. That's an element of distance. But it's also socially and temporally as well. So one of the examples they give is when you book a holiday, right? And I'm about to go on holiday tomorrow. When you book the holiday, you're thinking in broad terms about your holiday. But as it gets closer, you're like, I'm going tomorrow. I'm starting to think about how many pairs of pants I need and taxi rides from the airport. So you sort of zero in. And for a story to be engaging and feel realistic, it needs to have elements of and they talk about sort of high level construal and low level construal, which basically kind of means abstract down to concrete. For a story to be believable and for you to immerse yourself in the world, you have to start getting people to think in a more concrete way, right? That's where the realism of the story comes. You want them to think about the details of the way the world works and what's going on. How many pants Luke Skywalker's got. How many pants Luke Skywalker's got.

Speaker A: 00:22:02

Yeah, and the fact that they don't bring any spares or indeed change at all for what looks like months or weeks.

Speaker C: 00:22:08

Exactly. So but when you want to get that immersion, you need to show them a bit of detail like the control system on a ship or something like that with loads of buttons on that looks detailed, right? You know, you sort of give that impression of detail. But obviously, the more detail you create, the more bogged down the world gets. But the more likely you are to create some inconsistency. So it's this sort of match between wanting to operate at the abstract wavy hand kind of, oh, there were some clone wars. You know, oh, that sounds interesting. And you do that imagination piece. So you give the reader, the audience something to imagine through to, right, we really want you to be immersed in this situation. So we need to see, you know, them making a cup of coffee or something, you know, and hear them breathing heavily or whatever it is. And yeah, that sort of that kind of tension, the more detail you add, the more, A, the author has to have thought it all through. Yeah. Every single aspect of how it might have gone wrong, which is obviously to create an entire world in your head is pretty much impossible. And to think about those sort of consistency. So the art from the author's perspective is how do you give the impression of detail without having laid out all this boring detail and probably painted yourself into that corner that we were talking about earlier? Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:23:45

So, I mean, and I feel like actually that's quite a good way of thinking about, I know we've done one on rings of power, but I'll never tire of slagging it off. What's rings of power? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where they, you know, you feel that the authors, the screenwriters have really not got as far as the detail bit. And they go, right, but what if these army, they can take an army from Numenor and they go and they fight the orcs and it's going to be great. And what they haven't really done is said, well, how many ships do you need? How big is the army going to be? How are they going to feed themselves? What's the distance they've got to travel? You know, how are they going to, how are they going to, you know, how are they going to know where they're meant to go? All of these things that you, leaving it at that abstract level, you as a viewer, you just know, you just know that this isn't right because they're failing to answer those questions that you have. It's just got me thinking about plumbing on Tatooine, you know, and just thinking about because all these different plants, different sizes, I presume there's different gravity going on. And so what happens when you flush the loo and how does that work on Tatooine? Yeah, because isn't there such a thing as a sand toilet? Yes, there is, yeah. They use them, the army use them, don't they, when they're in the desert and stuff? I don't know, but yeah, it's called a spade. I haven't found that particular page in my engineering manual. But also, one thing that occurs to me, I met the family guy did it really well, which is, you know, the lack of health and safety going on at, on the Death Star, you know, saying, oh, just give me a handrail. I'm here looking at a 200 foot thing, but there's no, there's no handrail. Also, all I want is a handrail.

Speaker C: 00:25:15

But the point is, some of it we're happy to let slide, right? You know, we don't want them to tell us about toilets on Tatooine. But you have to sort of feel like there would be an answer if you asked it. Exactly. And also, if they do show you a toilet on Tatooine, for some reason, you sure as hell want it to make sense and be consistent with the other bits of detail they've wanted. So it really is this idea, it's almost like human vision, that what you're looking at there, you see in lots of detail and everything around here, your brain is more or less putting together based on, you know, not a huge amount of visual information. Yeah, I've got some other.

Speaker A: 00:25:55

So before you go in, I just feel at the moment what we're saying is, yeah, yeah, there's this and there's, yes, there's this. And we need to think about this and that. And oh, it's all, I think so far we're in the business of complaining without giving solutions or draw it all together. I mean, what are we trying to say here other than that? Oh, it's difficult. I mean, I just don't. So I'm just going to try and get to that. Excellent. But only because so. OK, so what is what are the tradeoffs? We've we've talked about this problem of, you know, the more you the more you want people to be engaged, the more you need to answer questions that they have about the universe and how it works. And also probably you need to draw in a lot of other things like humans and just say, right, these are these humans. This is the White House. And if you've done that, well, bad luck, because you're going to need to make sure that that behaves according to the real world thing. This has to be like the White House and that has to be like humans. So so you're getting the benefit of all of that as a writer, but you have to make sure that you're paying the price, which means that those answers have to now work. Right. What you what you show happens has to work. But there's also and I think this is close to what Peter was talking about the beginning, this problem of like, where does it conflict with actually getting in the way of fun? Like, like, are there some things that we want? So, for example, ammo is probably the biggest, the most unrealistic thing that you routinely get is in fiction is people not, you know, it's just people firing constantly and not reloading their guns or even worrying about ammo conservation or anything, because it would be really boring in a work of fiction to have people, you know, just conserving ammo all the time and having to watch people carrying ammo back and forth and that kind of thing. But there's there's a whole load of other things, just things that, you know, if they're cool, we just, you know, let them slide. But I think they have to be they're not allowed to break that kind of rule of consistency if it means the plot depends on it. So that will be my I think I'd say so. So so the acceptable breaks from reality are all stuff that don't really matter. Like, you know, like, yeah, what the TV tropes called the one Steve limit, which is that you can't have two characters called Steve because that would just be confusing. So unless you make it a thing. Well, exactly. But things like, yeah, like not worrying too much about travel times, you know, it's like those are the things that we're happy not as long as they don't affect the story. And but the problem, the problem is when you've is when you haven't noticed that there's an inconsistency built in. And I would say going back to Star Wars.

Speaker B: 00:28:32

And I mean, one thing that Star Wars is very good at, I think, is lacing in lots of bits of detail and not really fully explaining it as seeds for future authors to do something with later on. Yeah, because this is this is a bugbear I have with Star Trek universe. Everything's sort of too clean and precise within the Star Trek universe. Systems always work and people can always fix them really quickly until they can't write until a plot point is needed. Oh, suddenly the warp drawer doesn't work anymore or suddenly the communications are offline as like the key part, key enabler to allow the story to happen the way that it happens. It's infuriating.

Speaker A: 00:29:20

Yeah. So basically the plot, I think what we're saying is the plot has to be rigorous. That's got to obey the rules. Yeah, it's got to not contradict itself. And it has to be consistent with things that the story is relying on, you know, in general, the rules of the things that the story is relying on. So, you know, if you have a gun, you can't just make it sort of suddenly, you know, fire lasers because you need it to do that if you've previously not mentioned that fact. And it's just supposed to be just a gun. But I think what we're saying is you're allowed to bugger around with other stuff as long as it doesn't affect the plot. I think, put it even more simply, anything goes as long as in aggregate, it contributes to fun as it were. Yeah, but as long as, no, not the plot. But well, but within that, there's a cascade of the plot. So I think that encompasses everything we're talking about. So the plot itself should contribute towards the overall aim of fun and getting enjoyment from it. So inconsistencies in the plot are allowed as long as they don't detract from the fun. No, I'm not allowing inconsistencies in the plot. So therefore, they're not allowed. They're not allowed. But what I'm saying is that I'm not going to get too worked up if someone's got, you know, in a horror film or something, you know, like someone's, you know, when they close the mirror and the baddies behind them, that just doesn't work in real life. Someone can't get into the bathroom without you realising you'd hear them. It's just completely implausible. But it doesn't matter because the point is that that person's going to get murdered. That's the key plot point is they're going to get murdered by the baddie. We know that that could happen in a realistic way, but it doesn't really matter that it happens in an unrealistic way. That's the point. Like this person murdering that person is the key thing. Precisely how that works doesn't affect the overall story. So you're allowed to be you're allowed to have this rule of spooky is allowed to happen because it's spooky and scary. But, you know, you're not allowed, for example, to have someone being killed by someone else in a different town or something just totally made up or unrealistic or coming back to life again. Yeah, exactly. Right. So listen, I want to grope towards a conclusion here. Then I've got a question. Chris, where do you want to take us or Peter?

Speaker C: 00:31:55

Well, I was just going to I was just going to sort of say and I think another kind of rule or another way to sort of tip of of mitigating the risk of of inconsistencies is to sort of be impressionistic. And there are lots of devices that allow you to be impressionistic. And one of the ones that I particularly like is the sort of use of artifacts or, you know, historical, you know, references to historical things. So, you know, when they're when they arrive on a planet or something and there are ruins there or, you know, they come across a journal that somebody has has produced, which you only get little excerpts. So where you actually give a small amount of of detail and that detail opens up a world of imagination in the person, but you haven't actually committed yourself to a set of a set of facts.

Speaker A: 00:33:01

Yeah, I went to the Harry Potter studios a couple of years ago with my kids, and I was really impressed by how much effort they put into those really incidental things, like the books that they just have lying around, for example, that they made actual like magic textbooks with with with, you know, 40 pages in each with different diagrams and writing. And it's it's really impressive. And for that reason, because, you know, if you someone is going to pause the video and go, that's just the same page five times.

Speaker C: 00:33:32

So, you know, they have to and that attention to detail. There's something about that attention to detail that that works, even though you don't see all the 40 pages. There's something it's like talking, creating a language in the, you know, a whole language of which you see hardly any. But nevertheless, the depth of it just comes through in some way.

Speaker A: 00:33:56

There's a really potent mixture, I think, of diligence and imagination going on there, I think.

Speaker B: 00:34:02

Peter? Well, I could go with Chris. One of the things I like most about drama, movies and well, fiction generally, these high, you know, this big production value fiction is the set design, prop design, costume design. The script can usually go hang and it does. It's awful a lot of the time. But the way that the universe is painted for you on your on your screen is often the most interesting thing. Just the level of detail and some of your spend weeks working on a prop that might have half a second screen time. Yeah, yeah. It's impressive, isn't it?

Speaker A: 00:34:41

Yeah, really. And it does. It builds to it's relevant and valuable. Well, you know, like Red Letter Media have this phrase which they use, which is that you might not notice, but your brain does. Well, you know, and I think that's right. Yeah, that's right. It's that feeling, that uneasy feeling of hang on, they've skipped something here. Whereas when you get that little bit of detail, it's like, yeah, like Master and Commander, one of my favourite films ever, full of that. They don't even explain it. It's just like, OK, there's a bit of procedure. There's some lingo you don't understand. But the point is, you know that you're you're looking at something which somebody has really tried to make look realistic. And and it's like, well, I'm much more willing to I'm there with them now because I'm seeing what life is like on a ship in the 18th century. Well, interesting, actually, because Master and Commander, actually, I've only watched it once. I didn't think it was very good, actually. But this makes me want to go back and watch it again. I'm still not convinced I would be into it anyway. But also famously, the books Master and Commander. Oh, my God. Like six pages on rigging. It just they the books go too much into it. And if you want sort of. Maybe for your taste. Well, but also if you really want sort of more rip roaring, but in a similar sort of fashion. I don't. If. Right. It would be Horatio Hornblower and all those books. Right. Which are much more rip roaring and, you know, just give me a paragraph on the rigging. That's fine.

Speaker B: 00:36:01

Sharp at sea.

Speaker A: 00:36:02

Yeah. Well, yeah. Anyway. Right. We're going to stop there. Except I've got a question. Go on. We need to be quick with this one. Favourite universe. Right. Favourite universe. I think we're probably talking in fiction because why? Why? You know, why would why would you just, you know, you're not allowed to choose this one. Yeah. I mean, you could, but I think, you know, favourite universe in any kind of fiction, I suppose, whether it's book, film, whatever, as soon as anyone's got an answer, go for it.

Speaker B: 00:36:29

Star Wars. Despite its inconsistencies. It just it just it's just vast. The way it's described, the scale of everything, every every book that I read as a teenager, the movies, the TV series, the games. They're all one thing they all get right is describing these enormous ancient things that are just around that people have forgotten about the big temples and things or just the scale that they they produce in the fleets and the ships. They're all enormous. But then they screw it up by by having an inconsistency during some sort of scene.

Speaker A: 00:37:07

And I love the whole, yeah, the the magic of the Jedi and all that business. And yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Let's go for Chris. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker C: 00:37:17

Chris is usually yeah. So I I think it's no secret probably that mine would be Middle Earth. I'd also add in, though, the Dune universe. But one thing I wanted to clear up about Middle Earth is talking about inconsistencies is it always comes up this idea of the Eagles. Why didn't they just fly in? And it's it's not an inconsistency at all. Just being a fanboy. It's obviously ridiculous. What you have to remember is is that is that Sauron exists, right? He's the all seeing eye. And the whole point of of hobbits scuttling along the ground is that that's the only way you can you can get into Mordor without being spotted. If you fly in on a you know, this king of the Eagles, then those beasts, you know, the Nazgul fly or, you know, he's he's going to use his powers to thwart you. So it's all about so always. Yeah, always. I think that's a point well made. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to get that off my chest.

Speaker B: 00:38:21

There's a fairly universal sort of thing used in stories because they they explain why they're able to blow up the Death Star for the same reason. It's they have this whole Tarkin doctrine, which means the Empire is all about being big and impressive, having big guns. And they always forget the small guns. Yeah. Exhaust ports.

Speaker A: 00:38:43

One thing I struggle, though, with with Tolkien world, but more in the films. I don't think it really comes out in the book is I sometimes get a few confused, especially in the Shire. Are we because the world essentially feels medieval, right? And yet it looks they're Edwardian. I was going to say Georgian. And maybe. Yeah.

Speaker C: 00:39:02

Yeah, Edwardian elements in terms of some of the technologies. And then, yeah, Georgian in terms of the waistcoats. Yeah. And the design. I'm totally good with that.

Speaker A: 00:39:11

You're fine with that. Yeah. For me, I find that personally, I find that really off putting. But maybe that kind of goes to what we're talking about.

Speaker B: 00:39:18

The figurability of in steampunk, that kind of mixing up of different epochs and technology. Yeah, yeah. The aesthetic works. Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:39:27

Yeah. We'll finish off. We'll go to Nick. But for me, favourite universe. I like the E&M Banks universe. It's just something really rich and imaginative and vast about it. I love. Also Hitchhiker's Guide. I like that universe. I think it's fun.

Speaker B: 00:39:42

Possibly the universe I'd least like to live in, though. It's horrible.

Speaker A: 00:39:45

Yeah, well, all these universes, it depends who you are and what you're up to in that universe. If you're a whale suddenly conjured into existence, that's not so good. Nick. I think in terms of hours engaged with it, it would be the world of Minecraft, which is a really strange, spooky world, very lonely, but vast, infinite and nice and manageable. You can go from sort of icy tundra to a desert in the space of five minutes. But it's not too small either. And it has a nice, you know, you always get something out of exploring. You'll see some new thing. No two worlds are the same anywhere. So, yeah, it's just that sort of sense of like infinite possibilities and its own completely unique, weird physics system. So, yeah, I think I probably Minecraft is the world, the universe I've spent more time in than any other. Although it's been quite several years since I played it. But, yeah, I've got so many, you know, happy memories of my time spent in Minecraft with my kids. Not by myself, my kids. Never played it. But, yeah. OK, nice. That was fun. So we'll stop there. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Chris Wragg, Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights. Until next time. Goodbye.