Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert and this is gonna be a vault episode for you.
Speaker 1: This is one that we originally published nine two. I
Speaker 1: believe this was for Hobbit Day. This is a discussion
Speaker 1: of the Orcs of Middle Earth getting into where they
Speaker 1: come from in the dark corners of the human imagination.
Speaker 1: So I hope you enjoy. But of those unhappy ones
Speaker 1: who are ensnared by melk Or, little is known of
Speaker 1: a certainty, for who of the living has descended into
Speaker 1: the pits of a toumbno or has explored the darkness
Speaker 1: of the councils of melk Or. Yet this is held
Speaker 1: true by the wise of Eressia, that all those of
Speaker 1: the KINDI who came into the hands of melk Or
Speaker 1: aerotomno was broken, were put there in prison, and by
Speaker 1: slow arts of cruelty, were corrupted and enslaved. And thus
Speaker 1: did Melcor breathe the hideous race of the Orcs in
Speaker 1: envy and mockery of the elves of whom they were
Speaker 1: afterwards the bitterest foes, For the Orcs had life and
Speaker 1: multiplied after the manner of the children of Iluvatar, and
Speaker 1: nought that had life of its own, nor the semblance
Speaker 1: of life could ever milk or make since his rebellion
Speaker 1: in the ain Alundli before the beginning. So say the wise,
Speaker 1: and deep in their dark hearts, the Orcs loathed the
Speaker 1: master whom they served, in fear the maker only of
Speaker 1: their misery. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Land and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And man, I had to read that opening part quite
Speaker 1: a few times. That, of course, is from The Silmarillion
Speaker 1: by R. R. Tolkien. Yeah, and of course we're talking
Speaker 1: about Tolkien because today's publication date is September two, which
Speaker 1: also happens to be the credited birth date of both
Speaker 1: Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, the Hobbits central to J. R.
Speaker 1: Tolkien Saga of Middle Earth. Uh. Thus this has become
Speaker 1: known as Hobbit Day, which falls during Tolkien Week, at
Speaker 1: least as proposed by the American Tolkien Society in nine eight.
Speaker 1: So this tradition is roughly a month older than I am.
Speaker 1: That's funny. So it's a week long festival then, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently a week long celebration of Middle Earth and all
Speaker 1: things Tolkien. I was not aware of it until just
Speaker 1: like last month, and I realized that the publication day
Speaker 1: lined up perfectly, and I'm like, oh, well, we've already
Speaker 1: done an episode on the One Ring. We did another
Speaker 1: one on Hobbits and how their their biology works and
Speaker 1: how they, you know, relate to multiple meals per day
Speaker 1: and to sunlight, and so I thought, we gotta come
Speaker 1: with something else that we can talk about on hobby
Speaker 1: Day itself. So you wanted to talk about orcs. I
Speaker 1: guess you've had Tolken on the brain all year, right,
Speaker 1: Are you still you're still reading it with the family?
Speaker 1: No way, I haven't been reading it. We've been meaning
Speaker 1: to come back around to Fellowship of the Rings, but
Speaker 1: instead we just we just got into Star Wars this year,
Speaker 1: so that's where we are. But I couldn't. I couldn't
Speaker 1: let the stars seemed to align on this particular episode.
Speaker 1: So I thought, well, we've got to we gotta do something,
Speaker 1: and I started looking around. I thought, well, maybe it's orcs.
Speaker 1: Orcs are such a central part of the work and
Speaker 1: something that has been highly influential on fantasy in general, like,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, fantasy games, fantasy books, fantasy movies, they're just
Speaker 1: lousy with orcs. You know. I was trying to think
Speaker 1: when I first started, when I first became aware of orcs,
Speaker 1: and I think before I ever read any Tolken, I
Speaker 1: played the Warcraft games, which which have orcs in them,
Speaker 1: which are essentially the palace guard that Jabba's Palace from
Speaker 1: Return of the Jedi. Yeah, they're green, and they've got tusks,
Speaker 1: and they've got kind of like a bulldog faces. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have that. They look a lot like those Gamorian
Speaker 1: guards from from Jedi. Um. They also, of course, of course,
Speaker 1: um that whole gaming system I think has its roots
Speaker 1: too and being inspired by the Warhammer games as well,
Speaker 1: which yeah, which I'll touch based on that in a
Speaker 1: little bit, because I think they're very important to the
Speaker 1: history of how we interpret orcs. UM. I think I've
Speaker 1: I have always pictured the Orcs of Middle Earth in
Speaker 1: less detail, like, you know, more abstract, brutish creatures in
Speaker 1: the you know, in the rough semblance of human beings.
Speaker 1: And part of that might be that I at a
Speaker 1: very early age I saw at least parts of the
Speaker 1: original UH animated version where all the animation is pretty
Speaker 1: much like that. It's kind of like abstract shapes and
Speaker 1: less detail, and the Orcs and other evil things things
Speaker 1: are often shown in kind of a silhouette. This is
Speaker 1: the ralph back she won with the does have rhotoscoping
Speaker 1: in it. Rotoscoping animation. I believe that's the technique they used. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It's it's interesting. It's a little bit different
Speaker 1: from the Rank and bass Uh animation that you saw
Speaker 1: on The Hobbit and then saw on the Return of
Speaker 1: the King, which you know, basically finished what this film didn't. Oh,
Speaker 1: this is the one where Sauman is Santa Claus. They
Speaker 1: give him a red robe. It's been so long, I
Speaker 1: don't even I don't even remember that honestly, but but
Speaker 1: I I remember flashes of it. It had it had
Speaker 1: some sort of an impact on me. Um. I'd say that,
Speaker 1: I think in hearing about Middle Earth and all um,
Speaker 1: it probably also has a lot to do with like
Speaker 1: the two earliest stories that I remember my dad telling
Speaker 1: me were he would tell me about Beowulf and Grendel.
Speaker 1: So had this like really early idea of Grendel in
Speaker 1: my head, And then I remember him telling me about
Speaker 1: the Battle of Hastings, So I have I think I
Speaker 1: ended up sort of cobbling together this this Middle Earth
Speaker 1: orc as being a combination of Norsemen or Viking and
Speaker 1: that figure of Grendel. M hmm. But that's just me personally,
Speaker 1: just based on like where I came into learning about
Speaker 1: Bahabbed and what I've been exposed to previously. Um and
Speaker 1: as as we're going to discuss here, there's there's subsequently
Speaker 1: been so many different visions of orcs and what worcs are,
Speaker 1: and we're still in the process, uh of of defining
Speaker 1: and redefining what an orc is. For some reason, I
Speaker 1: remember thinking that the Orcs of the Peter Jackson movies
Speaker 1: have a very dickensiean villain kind of flare, Like they've
Speaker 1: got this, you know, sinister Cockney accent that you hear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Peter Jackson orcs are are are very important in
Speaker 1: our our modern perceptions of them, but even those are
Speaker 1: are suitably very There are a lot of different visions
Speaker 1: of what an orc is in those films. They range
Speaker 1: from like big like dark brutes to more goblin e forms.
Speaker 1: There's like one general that shows up and I think
Speaker 1: Return of the King that has this very like elephant
Speaker 1: man um tumorous appearance, and then by the Hobbit films
Speaker 1: they seem to have refined it a little bit to
Speaker 1: where you have either refined the work in general or
Speaker 1: that or just they've decided to portray these sort of
Speaker 1: misty mountain orcs as being almost kind of nos ferratu
Speaker 1: in like they kind of look like big beefy nos
Speaker 1: Feratus in a way in a way that I think
Speaker 1: really works more the classic Max shrek nos ferat or
Speaker 1: the klaus Kinski nos Ferra to the Max shredded nos Ferrati.
Speaker 1: That's that's what they are. Like. This is very just
Speaker 1: very beefy um juice to Max. Now we mentioned mentioned
Speaker 1: U Warhammer just a second ago. I've long been a
Speaker 1: fan of of Warhammer, and Warhammer forty thousand one is
Speaker 1: like the Fantasy version. One is essentially like a sci
Speaker 1: fi version of the same universe, and it is evolved
Speaker 1: since then. And you have orcs in both of them,
Speaker 1: and in both games orcs are depicted as green skinned,
Speaker 1: almost bold dog like in their cranial structure, and even
Speaker 1: more to the point, though these orcs are presented in
Speaker 1: a manner that I would I would dare describe as fun.
Speaker 1: Uh They If Orcs are often you know, serving to
Speaker 1: to represent a kind of dark savagery of humanity, I'd
Speaker 1: say that the the Orc Boys as they're sometimes called,
Speaker 1: this with a z uh run counter to that, embodying
Speaker 1: the spirit that kind of celebrates a kind of goofy
Speaker 1: primal rebellion, especially in in Warreham or forty thousand, the
Speaker 1: futuristic version, which is a very dark and nihilistic, you know,
Speaker 1: grim dark kind of fictional setting. The Orcs are pretty
Speaker 1: much the only faction that actually resonate with any lightness
Speaker 1: and whimsy. Like you see are the depictions of them
Speaker 1: or the way that the various collectors have painted them up,
Speaker 1: and they often have bright colors and kind of a fun,
Speaker 1: goofy quality to them. I ran across one I think
Speaker 1: is like a current figure where it's like an Orc
Speaker 1: captain and he has like a big pirate hat on
Speaker 1: and a bunch of cool colorful iconography. They have this
Speaker 1: kind of slap dash technology to them. Uh, they're they're
Speaker 1: a little bit monstars in space jam. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: space Sham, but it's when the nerdy aliens get really
Speaker 1: big and good at sports and then then become the monstars. Okay,
Speaker 1: well I'll take your word for it. Um. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess I'm imagining from your telling of it, like sort
Speaker 1: of lighthearted monstrosity, kind of cartoonish monstrosity. Yes, Okay, space
Speaker 1: Jam never gets too bleak, you know they don't. Space
Speaker 1: Jam doesn't go full grim dark a grim dark space
Speaker 1: Jam reboot that would be that would be scot that'd
Speaker 1: be so good. Now, this embracing of Orc nature. You'll
Speaker 1: find this elsewhere as well. Uh. Indungeons and Dragons, of course,
Speaker 1: one may play a half work or even full bloody
Speaker 1: to work, which allows room for that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and will come back to Dungeons and Dragons in a bit.
Speaker 1: But one title, and this is one that our former
Speaker 1: co host Christian Uh turned me onto. Uh. There's a
Speaker 1: comic artist by the name of James um stoke O
Speaker 1: I believe that's S. T. O. K Oe, And he
Speaker 1: has this comic series called Orc Stain, and it presents
Speaker 1: a delightfully crude and whimsical vision of a world just
Speaker 1: overrun with Orcs. The protagonist himself as an Orc warrior,
Speaker 1: and it has this kind of I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: the art that accompanies the British musical um Act Gorillas.
Speaker 1: It has kind of that Guerrillas Tank Girl kind of
Speaker 1: vibe to it. It has this very kind of punk
Speaker 1: rock aesthetic, which I've I've I've seen I've seen that
Speaker 1: with orcs elsewhere where. This is kind of convergence of
Speaker 1: like punk art culture and the embracing of the orc. Yeah,
Speaker 1: punk monsters, I think is actually a pretty good tradition.
Speaker 1: I don't know how it got started, but I think
Speaker 1: of in the old uh the old teenage meeting Ninja turtles,
Speaker 1: comics like the Bebop and rock Steady. H you're a
Speaker 1: punk monsters exactly. Yeah, good point. So what does all
Speaker 1: this mean? What are orcs and and why do they
Speaker 1: resonate with us? So why do we continue to tell
Speaker 1: stories about Orcs and involve works in our games and
Speaker 1: our fiction, etcetera. Um? Can can we discuss science in
Speaker 1: relation to orcs? And are there problematic aspects here as well? Uh?
Speaker 1: So that's where we're gonna be talking about in this episode.
Speaker 1: But the first step, I imagine is to discuss what
Speaker 1: Tolkien says in Universe about the creation of the Orcs
Speaker 1: coming back to our cold opening, and then also discuss
Speaker 1: where he even got the name orc itself. All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's enlist in the Orc army, all right, Okay, So
Speaker 1: in Tolken's writings, the Orcs are the most common evil
Speaker 1: foot soldier. They're like the ubiquitous enemy um. In the
Speaker 1: Hobbit we deal more with goblins, which are often understood
Speaker 1: to be either lesser Orcs or a particular species or
Speaker 1: subspecies of mountain orc. And Tolkien apparently rolled out a
Speaker 1: few different contradictory origin stories for the Orc in his work.
Speaker 1: But according to the Token Encyclopedia, which is a book
Speaker 1: I typically turn into for such matters, uh, they were
Speaker 1: twisted forms of life that Milk Corp spawned in the
Speaker 1: pits of Utum. No no, uh. They served as the
Speaker 1: bulk of his armies, and then after his defeat they
Speaker 1: served as the bulk of Saron's armies as well. Now,
Speaker 1: was milk Or the same person as Saron in an
Speaker 1: earlier incarnation? Or was milk Or the god that Saaran
Speaker 1: served my understanding, and this is a good point for
Speaker 1: us to point out that neither of us are Tolkien
Speaker 1: scholars or or professed to be Tolkien experts pro it's
Speaker 1: you're you keep wanting to do these token episodes, and
Speaker 1: then we get the mail from people who are like, actually,
Speaker 1: I know and I I and I love it. I invited.
Speaker 1: I I definitely want to hear from from people more
Speaker 1: knowledgeable in the in Tolkien scholarship than I am, or
Speaker 1: just in general, you know, or or scholarship if you will. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: my understanding is that melk Or was the original fallen
Speaker 1: god that rebelled against everything. Then he was defeated Saaron,
Speaker 1: being like a fallen hephaestus type forge god had served
Speaker 1: milk Or. But with milk Or destroyed or you know,
Speaker 1: taken out of the picture permanently, now it's time for
Speaker 1: Saron to shine. Basically, Sawon was milk Or's VP. Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: Now now we we kicked off the episode here with
Speaker 1: that cold reading about the creation of the Orcs in
Speaker 1: the in the Pits of Autumn. No, you know, the
Speaker 1: idea that they would have been created, you know, this
Speaker 1: sort of blasphemous process that takes place in a fallen
Speaker 1: god's dungeons, like it was a sort of a mockery
Speaker 1: of life. Yeah, the idea that they captured els and
Speaker 1: twisted them through torture into this new terrible form of life,
Speaker 1: and that the Orcs therefore were products of pain and hate.
Speaker 1: They lived only for pain and hate, and outwardly they
Speaker 1: were quote and this is from the token Encyclopedia, bent,
Speaker 1: bow legged, and squat, so they were ape like in
Speaker 1: many respects, but cunning and cruel. Their skin looked as
Speaker 1: if burned. In their eyes were quote crimson gashes like
Speaker 1: narrow slits and black iron grates behind which hot coals burn. Now,
Speaker 1: there are different varieties of orc, we're told in Middle Earth,
Speaker 1: from the goblins of the Misty Mountains to standard orcs,
Speaker 1: and then later you get these taller, more sun resistant
Speaker 1: Urakai orcs that were made by Sauron much later. And
Speaker 1: it sounds as if the idea is that Sawin ends
Speaker 1: up combining orc stock with human stock to create a
Speaker 1: more human statured, day tolerant trooper. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: that ties into the idea that a lot of creatures
Speaker 1: in Middle Earth or in Tolken's world, like, if you're
Speaker 1: a bad creature, you're often sort of confined to a
Speaker 1: nighttime existence. You can't go out in the sun trolls
Speaker 1: are this way, and the Hobbit trolls are turned to
Speaker 1: stone when Gandalf tricks come into staying up till till
Speaker 1: the sun comes out. And I guess the idea is
Speaker 1: also that maybe the Orcs or the goblins just don't
Speaker 1: really like sunlight. Yeah. Now, the Token Encyclopedia and other
Speaker 1: sources as well, it has you'll find lengthy passages discussing
Speaker 1: the role of Orcs to the history of Middle Earth.
Speaker 1: Uh there's there's no shortage of of of information uh there.
Speaker 1: But basically, the idea is that throughout their history the
Speaker 1: numbers swell and shrink at times when dark lords rise
Speaker 1: up and then fall away. Um when they when dark
Speaker 1: lords come back to power, the Orcs are there to
Speaker 1: fill the ranks of the evil armies. But even when
Speaker 1: they're defeated, they never completely go away. They kind of
Speaker 1: shrink to the hidden corners of Middle Earth. Um. And
Speaker 1: even with the defeat of Sauron and Middle Earth's transformation
Speaker 1: into a modern world, there's this idea that the Orcs
Speaker 1: are out there somewhere. So that's the the in universe
Speaker 1: explanation or as cannon and origin stories can be cobbled together.
Speaker 1: But of course we know that J. R. Tolkien did
Speaker 1: not create Middle Earth out of nothing. He forged it
Speaker 1: out of existing mythological, folkloric and historic motifs. And I
Speaker 1: would say, actually, maybe more than anything, out of linguistic motifs.
Speaker 1: You know that Tolken loved language, and you often get
Speaker 1: the sense that his story came out of having a
Speaker 1: word for something, you know, like you'd find you'd find
Speaker 1: a word for something an old Norse. That's just a
Speaker 1: great word. And and it almost feels as if the
Speaker 1: character springs from the sound of the name. Sorry that
Speaker 1: that makes sense, I know, no, absolutely, I mean you
Speaker 1: you really you can't discuss Tolkien creating anything without without
Speaker 1: bringing in language, like clearly, like that was his his
Speaker 1: his primary um scholarly interest, and everything else kind of
Speaker 1: like springs out of that. And then thus that's where
Speaker 1: a lot of these characters and species come from as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it seems that Tolkien actually derived the term orc
Speaker 1: from a usage in Beowulf. Beowulf is, of course the
Speaker 1: great epic of Anglo Saxon. It's an epic poem from
Speaker 1: the early Middle Ages. We don't know exactly when it
Speaker 1: was composed, it was written in Old to English, which
Speaker 1: is the ancestor to modern English, but also which is
Speaker 1: you know, it's so unlike modern English that you can't
Speaker 1: just read it, you know, it's basically like another language.
Speaker 1: You need you need a glossary or translation basically to
Speaker 1: understand it. Uh And so the term specifically that appears
Speaker 1: in Beowulf is or caneus or caneus. It is a
Speaker 1: creature that's mentioned during the introduction of the monster Grendel,
Speaker 1: you know, the real first big bad that that Beowulf
Speaker 1: has to fight. Beowulf arrives at at roth Car's mead hall,
Speaker 1: and the mead hall is being terrorized by attacks from
Speaker 1: this monster Grendel. And so I'm going to read from
Speaker 1: the J. Leslie Hall translation of Beowulf in the part
Speaker 1: that mentions orcs uh so or the word or canaos
Speaker 1: at least Hall translates for that bitter murder, the killing
Speaker 1: of Abele all ruling father, the kindred of Cain crushed
Speaker 1: with his vengeance in the feud he rejoiced, not but
Speaker 1: far A drove him from kindred and kind that crime
Speaker 1: to atone for meter of justice. Thence Ill favored creatures
Speaker 1: elves and giants monsters of ocean came into being, and
Speaker 1: the giants that long time grappled with God, he gave
Speaker 1: them requital. Now in the Hall translation here there are
Speaker 1: a couple of different words. They get translated as giants.
Speaker 1: One is the old English gigantists, and the other is
Speaker 1: a yoton s, which I think is where we also
Speaker 1: get the word yoton like the Norse mythology giant a
Speaker 1: couple of different kinds of monsters. So in the line
Speaker 1: that mentions orkans, it's a yotanus and ilfa giants and
Speaker 1: elves and or can a s which I think here
Speaker 1: is translated as monsters of ocean, but other translations have
Speaker 1: have chosen different terms for it, sometimes calling it a
Speaker 1: a demon or a goblin or something like that. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's also an interesting translation note in the j. Leslie
Speaker 1: Hall version of Beowulf, which notes that when Grendel himself
Speaker 1: is introduced, the word used to describe him could be
Speaker 1: translated as demon and often is or could be translated
Speaker 1: as stranger. Uh. Literary and linguistic conflation of the unfamiliar
Speaker 1: person with the monster of hell, and j. Leslie Hall
Speaker 1: actually chooses stranger in in this translation, making for an
Speaker 1: interesting set of lines. A foe in the hall building,
Speaker 1: this horrible stranger was Grindel, entitled the march Stepper, famous
Speaker 1: who dwelt in the moor, fins, the marsh and the
Speaker 1: fastness that. So, if you think of Grendel as a stranger,
Speaker 1: this gets into some interesting territory about what monstrosity means,
Speaker 1: and that a lot of times are our mythical monsters
Speaker 1: are sort of ways of mentally metabolizing concepts of people
Speaker 1: who are unfamiliar or who you worry might be threatening
Speaker 1: to you somehow. Yeah. Absolutely, But then also just from
Speaker 1: a surely like in that on the other hand, like
Speaker 1: just from an imaginative perspective, like I hear that, and
Speaker 1: I just love the idea of Grendel as this, as
Speaker 1: as the stranger, as this, you know, this being that
Speaker 1: is um that is almost from another world, you know,
Speaker 1: because in many many respects he is well and much
Speaker 1: like the Orc that we were just talking about, Grendel
Speaker 1: here has given an unholy origin story. Right. They say
Speaker 1: that he has descended from Kine, who in the biblical
Speaker 1: story murdered his brother Abel Caine was you know, the
Speaker 1: third human to exist and Abel was the fourth and Caine,
Speaker 1: I guess, got jealous of Able having having good offerings
Speaker 1: to God that God was very pleased with, and so
Speaker 1: Kane murdered him. And then God comes to Caine saying, hey,
Speaker 1: where's your brother? And Kane says, am I my brother's keeper.
Speaker 1: So God curses Kane and sends him off wandering in
Speaker 1: the wilderness to the land of not and Kane's offspring
Speaker 1: apparently become the monster Grendel. So it's like there there's
Speaker 1: a sort of there's a generational curse that has passed
Speaker 1: down for that original crime. Now, in a nineteenth century
Speaker 1: glossary of Anglo Saxon terms, the scholar Thomas Wright notes
Speaker 1: that orc means possibly hell, devil, or specter or goblin uh,
Speaker 1: and he notes that it is phonetically similar to Orcus,
Speaker 1: which was a Roman god of the underworld I think
Speaker 1: somewhat regularly conflated with Satan during times of Christian syncretism. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Orcus of course has come up on the podcast before.
Speaker 1: And this also brings to mind that that line from
Speaker 1: William Blake that of course is um is adapted and
Speaker 1: switched around a little bit most more probably more famously
Speaker 1: to most listeners in Blade Runner. But that line fiery,
Speaker 1: the angels rose as they rose deep thunder rolled around
Speaker 1: their shores, indignant, burning with the fires of Orc. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's come up before. I know you like that one,
Speaker 1: and that's great. I mean, Blake is always great, but
Speaker 1: Orc there is different. Work is not so much a monster.
Speaker 1: There is kind of like I don't recall exactly some
Speaker 1: kind of character. Yeah. Yeah, you you're dealing with the
Speaker 1: Blake um um cinematic universe there as opposed to any
Speaker 1: of these others. UM. I should add add one thing.
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting that we don't have to really discuss
Speaker 1: what a goblin is in any of this UM. There's
Speaker 1: something about the goblin in particular that I think you'll
Speaker 1: find just about everywhere. Like we've discussed um various Chinese
Speaker 1: folklore's and mythologies before that involve something that is translated
Speaker 1: as a goblin. And it does seem to suggest that
Speaker 1: there is just sort of an intrinsic goblin nous to
Speaker 1: the human imagination, Like there is a space preserved for
Speaker 1: the goblin that we we don't even really need to
Speaker 1: even expand on too much. Well, yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's just there's a general fear of something that
Speaker 1: is evil that is roughly shaped like a human and
Speaker 1: has human capabilities in a way, but cannot be reasoned
Speaker 1: with and has no and has no like mercy or morality,
Speaker 1: and is just sort of like meanness and cruelty and
Speaker 1: human form or right human form. Yeah, or even kind
Speaker 1: of uh, I guess sometimes with the Goblin, I get
Speaker 1: a sense of like the diminutive nature of the goblin'sgested
Speaker 1: like a hidden supernatural element to it. And even though
Speaker 1: the the the idea of Tolkien's orcs, they kind of
Speaker 1: evolve out of an idea of a goblin, they become
Speaker 1: something different, They become something more like a human and
Speaker 1: therefore kind of divorced from like the supernatural world of
Speaker 1: pure fairies, in the same way that Token's elves are
Speaker 1: something different than like the the ideas of the fair
Speaker 1: folk or even the Tuatha de Dan and uh that
Speaker 1: that you find you know, Irish mythology. Well, yeah, Another
Speaker 1: thing that's funny is that by the time you get
Speaker 1: to Tolkien, suddenly elves are thought of as these sort
Speaker 1: of like superhumans. They're like human links, but they're they're
Speaker 1: like so beautiful and so graceful and so rational and good. Um.
Speaker 1: But but here in in Beowulf, the elves just seemed
Speaker 1: to be another type of monster. They're listed alongside the
Speaker 1: Yotanas and the monsters of the ocean. I mean they're
Speaker 1: in the same line. It's a Yotanas and Ilva and
Speaker 1: uh and Orcanus altogether. Now. Um, speaking of the idea
Speaker 1: of of orc is being related to sea monsters, I
Speaker 1: of course looked up Orc in Carol Roses, Giants, Monsters
Speaker 1: and Dragons, one of my favorite books too, to look
Speaker 1: up various creatures and uh and and actually she has
Speaker 1: another book related to fairies. In the Fairy Book, she
Speaker 1: has a listing for for Orc, just saying it's one
Speaker 1: of Tolkien's creations, very short, not much to it. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the Monsters book, she mentions Orc or Orco, a
Speaker 1: monster described by Plenty of the Elder in the Natural History.
Speaker 1: Came out in sevente or thereabouts, and it's described as
Speaker 1: a very large oceanic creature, said to be larger than
Speaker 1: a whale and capable of eating whales. It was known
Speaker 1: as Orco later on and referenced in Orlando Furioso in
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but the poet Lodovico Ariosto so Orlando Furioso.
Speaker 1: I must, I must admit this. We were talking about
Speaker 1: it before we started. I just figured out that this,
Speaker 1: this epic poem is not about a guy named Orlando Furio,
Speaker 1: so it means something like Orlando's frenzy or something. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: So Orlando is the hero of the story, and he
Speaker 1: slays I think he slays a lot of monsters in it. Um,
Speaker 1: but I looked it up in Orlando Furio. So it's
Speaker 1: in Canto seventeen that the the Orco monster is mentioned.
Speaker 1: And so I want to read from the William Stewart
Speaker 1: Rose translation. So uh, we get the narration. While with
Speaker 1: much solace seated in around we from the chase, expect
Speaker 1: our Lord's return, approaching us along the shore, astound the orc,
Speaker 1: that fearful monster we discern God grant fair sir, he
Speaker 1: never may confound your eyesight with his semblance foul and stern.
Speaker 1: Better it is of him by fame to hear than
Speaker 1: to behold him. By approaching near to calculate the grizzly
Speaker 1: monster's height, so measureless is he exceeds all skill of
Speaker 1: fungus hue in place of orbs of sight their sockets
Speaker 1: two small bones like berries fill towards us. As I say,
Speaker 1: he speeds out right along the shore and seems a
Speaker 1: moving hill tusks jutting out like savage swine. He shows
Speaker 1: abreast with drivel foul and pointed nose. Okay, so what
Speaker 1: do we know about this monster? Uh? He's too tall
Speaker 1: to calculate his height. No one has the skill to
Speaker 1: calculate how high he is, and that that makes it
Speaker 1: sound like he must be like leaving the atmosphere. Um.
Speaker 1: He also has he's of fungus hue, and I guess
Speaker 1: the'rengus is of a lot of different hues, and he
Speaker 1: in place of eyeballs, he has bones that are like berries. Now,
Speaker 1: up until that point, I'm definitely picturing what I think
Speaker 1: this is. But then the tusks kind of throw it
Speaker 1: off because the tust sound like more something you would
Speaker 1: see for see in you know, an actual tusk sea creature,
Speaker 1: but also in the fabulous uh chimerical uh sea monster
Speaker 1: that you see in various maps. Oh yeah, exactly like
Speaker 1: the kind of like a wild boar's face on a
Speaker 1: whale's body. Exactly. I think something like that might be
Speaker 1: kind of imagined here, except he's advancing along the shore,
Speaker 1: so he seems to be able to leave the water. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Well, it brings to mind um. And
Speaker 1: then because it does seem to be there is a
Speaker 1: connection here. So when you read this, I could not
Speaker 1: help but picture the orca the killer whale, you know,
Speaker 1: because there's something about like you know, the fungus hue
Speaker 1: uh in place of orbs of side imagining those big
Speaker 1: eye spots that are of course not their eyes, even
Speaker 1: though it's it's almost impossible to look at a killer
Speaker 1: whale and not think of that as their eyes. Their
Speaker 1: eyes are actually much you know, smaller, um. And are
Speaker 1: there those big eye spots I think actually make killer
Speaker 1: whales cuter than they otherwise they look less like the
Speaker 1: like the vicious wolves of the sea that they are. Um.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, there's this connection between Orcus and um
Speaker 1: or kinnis Orca that's the scientific name for killer whales,
Speaker 1: or kinnus meaning belonging to Orcus, or simply the kingdom
Speaker 1: of the dead. Uh. The Roman idea of orc orco
Speaker 1: sea monsters was or became associated with the killer whale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess that's right, And and I want to be clear.
Speaker 1: I think a minute ago we we describe the killer
Speaker 1: whale as vicious, which we don't mean in a in
Speaker 1: a negative moral sense, but we do mean in a
Speaker 1: descriptive sense about like their behavior as they prey on sharks,
Speaker 1: which is just awesome. Yeah. There as when concerning um
Speaker 1: orcas and their their natural prey, I think viciousness is
Speaker 1: a well deserved adjective. Watch any Nature documentary about their
Speaker 1: their hunting of baby whales and you will agree. Um.
Speaker 1: But then again, hey, it's that. That's the world. They're
Speaker 1: just doing their part in it. The blessings of milk
Speaker 1: or all right. On that note, we're gonna take a break,
Speaker 1: but when we come back we'll talk more about works.
Speaker 1: Thank alright, we're back now. There are certainly a number
Speaker 1: of ways to crunch the idea of an orc that
Speaker 1: the of Tolkien's orc a humanoid other that is also
Speaker 1: not human insignificant ways. I have to come back to
Speaker 1: something that um, that author Terence Hawkins Um wrote about
Speaker 1: in his novel American Neolithic, of which there's a revised
Speaker 1: edition out. I believe it has to do with the
Speaker 1: Neanderthal surviving into into modern a's. But there's this wonderful
Speaker 1: line where the Neanderthal character is speaking to the reader
Speaker 1: and says, quote you for whom we have always been
Speaker 1: the other, our existence buried deep in your racial memories,
Speaker 1: since the time when glaciers girdled the world and the
Speaker 1: contest between man and animal was yet to be decided.
Speaker 1: We haunt your legends as we haunt your dreams, misshapen
Speaker 1: versions of yourself, bad copies formally Cobalds or Grimlin's now
Speaker 1: more locks and orcs, um so so in this line,
Speaker 1: basically it's the idea is that, uh, there might be
Speaker 1: some connection between the idea of orcs or more locks
Speaker 1: or other type beings and maybe the notion that humans
Speaker 1: did live alongside Neanderthals for a period of time and
Speaker 1: played at least some role in their destruction. Well, depending
Speaker 1: on how you define destruction, because of course we do
Speaker 1: see the disappearance of the Neanderthal as a distinct branch
Speaker 1: of the Homo genus, but also it does appear that
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens and Neanderthals also intermingled. Yeah, we went to
Speaker 1: see we went a good deal into this in our
Speaker 1: almost Cannibals episode because we're basically there was one point
Speaker 1: we were discussing the idea of cannibalism by neander Dolls
Speaker 1: by early humans, and you see examples of cannibalism in
Speaker 1: both groups, but there's less evidence to suggest that, say,
Speaker 1: humans aid all the neander dolls or the Neanderals aid humans. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean it, basically, there are a number of open
Speaker 1: questions about what exactly happened between Neanderthals and humans. To
Speaker 1: what extent anything happened. UM. A lot of sources seem
Speaker 1: to indicate that there was there was probably at least
Speaker 1: a competition for resources, if not something more you know, nefarious, uh,
Speaker 1: with of course in the neander Dolls eventually um, fading away,
Speaker 1: leaving only us. But what well, I take that back,
Speaker 1: also some trace of Neanderthals within our own genetics. Now
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think of a true humanoid other and
Speaker 1: how human society would process its downfall. Uh. There's another
Speaker 1: huge issue to consider them, and that is that that
Speaker 1: is our tendency to dehumanize due to xenophobic, nationalistic, uh
Speaker 1: and or racist attitudes. And this is an issue that
Speaker 1: certainly comes up in the consideration of orcs. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think one of the most difficult things when you dig
Speaker 1: into the history of of ideas about monsters. As much
Speaker 1: as we love them today and they're fun in the
Speaker 1: in the forms we have them, they may often have
Speaker 1: their origins in ideas that if we were fully understand them,
Speaker 1: we would find quite repugnant. I mean, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of the origins of monster legends are probably in
Speaker 1: some process of dehumanizing people who are human. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: and it it is. It's truly heartbreaking because you want
Speaker 1: monsters to be this pure escapism. But then yeah, when
Speaker 1: you start pulling the various threads, you often find yourself
Speaker 1: confronting something like this and nothing else. You confront the
Speaker 1: you know, the basic idea that that these that monsters
Speaker 1: always emerge from, if not one particular time, they emerge
Speaker 1: out of different times and and Tolkien's works especially, I
Speaker 1: mean they're emerging out of twentieth century Europe, you know,
Speaker 1: out of a period during which there were two devastating
Speaker 1: world wars. Uh. Certainly there's plenty of European racism and
Speaker 1: xenophobia going around at the time, the wartime demonization of
Speaker 1: the enemy like this, these are all elements in the soup,
Speaker 1: no matter no matter how much you want to focus
Speaker 1: on these just being purely fictional beings in a you know,
Speaker 1: in another world or in a world that is inspired
Speaker 1: purely out of like the scholarly consideration of myths and
Speaker 1: and fairy tales. Right. I mean, I think at the
Speaker 1: very least, what you can definitely say about the orc,
Speaker 1: no matter what else we know about them, is that
Speaker 1: they are a dehumanized form of the enemy to be
Speaker 1: represented in war. Um and in a way, you know,
Speaker 1: if if Tolkien was trying to consciously sort of recreate
Speaker 1: something like a mythology. We see something like this in
Speaker 1: lots of mythologies, you know it. It is of course
Speaker 1: common for humans to to to dehumanize their enemies and
Speaker 1: to think of them as something you know less than
Speaker 1: the people like us, right And and I mean we
Speaker 1: we see this everywhere. I mean, this is one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that arguably the zombie fiction has been so
Speaker 1: so successful is that it presents a completely um, you know,
Speaker 1: ethically acceptable enemy that can just be eradicated without any
Speaker 1: second consideration. Um. And I think that you know, you
Speaker 1: remember when we did um the episode about daydreaming, and
Speaker 1: one of the studies we looked at discovered that one
Speaker 1: of the most common things that people daydream about is
Speaker 1: they just sort of fantasize about violent conflict and that
Speaker 1: people they think like, oh, if there was a fight,
Speaker 1: what would I do? Uh? You know, there there's this
Speaker 1: kind of thing, And so obviously people's brains are drawn
Speaker 1: to this kind of scenario to fantasize about, you know,
Speaker 1: for understandable reasons, like you like you want to be
Speaker 1: like that. That's where a lot of potential risk lies
Speaker 1: and you want to imagine, like, well, what could I
Speaker 1: do to get out of this? How could I win?
Speaker 1: That kind of thing? But then also that you know,
Speaker 1: I think about In Lord of the Rings, there's part
Speaker 1: where sam Wise gamge uh. He recognized as a fallen
Speaker 1: soldier from the other side from somebody who's fighting for Saron,
Speaker 1: but is a human fighting for Saron one of the
Speaker 1: for one of the men from Harad, and sam Wise
Speaker 1: looks at him and he feels bad. He says, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, you know, was this man really evil or
Speaker 1: what kind of lies or threats brought him here so
Speaker 1: far from home? And wouldn't he rather be living at peace.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. It's a kind of strange moment where suddenly,
Speaker 1: out of this otherwise kind of manichean uh good versus
Speaker 1: evil war fantasy war with a with a non human enemy,
Speaker 1: suddenly there's this this breakthrough where one of the characters
Speaker 1: on the supposed good side thinks, wait a minute, aren't
Speaker 1: the people on the other side humans too, Aren't that
Speaker 1: you know? Don't they have lives? Don't they have moral
Speaker 1: complexities behind their story. This is one of the things
Speaker 1: that you see time and time again in in this discussion.
Speaker 1: And I do want to I want to drive home
Speaker 1: that this is a This has been a topic of
Speaker 1: of continual consideration by token scholars and literary cultural scholars alike,
Speaker 1: both in reference to the original works and the you know,
Speaker 1: the original writings there are token and these various film
Speaker 1: are incarnations. Because on one hand, yeah, like there's this
Speaker 1: idea if you read uh uh you know, like in
Speaker 1: our our cold opening, this idea of the orcs is
Speaker 1: just this purely inhuman thing just made out of savagery.
Speaker 1: Uh you know that, Like that sounds more in keeping
Speaker 1: with the zombie myth, right, just like no ethical problems
Speaker 1: at all. But but along the lines of this example
Speaker 1: of a human fighting for sau and there are plenty
Speaker 1: of examples in the Lord of the Rings were Token
Speaker 1: does engage in a certain humanization of the Orcs, like
Speaker 1: they're given some sense of individuality. I believe they're you know,
Speaker 1: scenes where they've been taken captives by their works and
Speaker 1: their overhearing or conversations, Uh yeah, Maryan Pippen when they're
Speaker 1: kidnapped by the Orcs, they sort of interact with the
Speaker 1: Orcs in a way that suggests to me, at least
Speaker 1: that the Orcs are sentient, you know, they're they're not like,
Speaker 1: they're not like robots, you know, they're they're not just
Speaker 1: evil killing machines, like they've got motivations of their own.
Speaker 1: So that makes everything a lot more complicated. Everything we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about a lot more complicated. Um, now,
Speaker 1: we can't possibly cover the entire discourse on this topic.
Speaker 1: It looks like there's some very good sources out there
Speaker 1: that you can find. I I ran across a book
Speaker 1: that I've is cited in a source that I'm gonna
Speaker 1: mention by Demitra Fimi title Token Race and Cultural History,
Speaker 1: that is supposedly quite good, but Some of the key
Speaker 1: issues that are often brought up about orcs are that
Speaker 1: orcs are clearly described as having dark skin, Orcs are
Speaker 1: described as being quote unquote slantide. And there's this sense that, yeah,
Speaker 1: orcs are human shaped and are more or less human like,
Speaker 1: but then they are also less than human or described
Speaker 1: as less than human. And it is often suggested that like,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing but brutal violence it's against the orcs,
Speaker 1: is is permissible, and that you know that that is
Speaker 1: that they should just be eradicated by the higher um
Speaker 1: uh species of Middle Earth. And I mean some of
Speaker 1: this I think might be as getting back to the
Speaker 1: token um duality here. I think part of it is
Speaker 1: just by if you start telling stories about something, you're
Speaker 1: gonna end up humanizing it. So I can see where
Speaker 1: you could start with your with your you know, you're
Speaker 1: just completely um you know, irredeemable enemy. But then you
Speaker 1: you can't help but but but but humanize it a
Speaker 1: bit in the same way that um say, like in
Speaker 1: in the Clone Wars, you know you have the Droid army.
Speaker 1: The droids are like a great example of an enemy
Speaker 1: army that is set up to be easily and dispatched
Speaker 1: without any ethical quandaries. And you still see this kind
Speaker 1: of creep in clone wars uh storytelling in which you'll
Speaker 1: you'll end up sympathizing with the droids. You know you
Speaker 1: can't help, but but apply uh, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: human characteristics to the droids at times. Now, one of
Speaker 1: the works I was looking at for this is a
Speaker 1: paper by Robert T. Talley Jr. Uh let us now
Speaker 1: praise famous Orcs, simple humanity and tokens in human creatures.
Speaker 1: This was published in myth Floor back in and Um.
Speaker 1: He he looks at at both sides of the of
Speaker 1: the discussion here. Basically. Now, Tally ultimately does not himself
Speaker 1: accused Token of racism, but he does outline much of
Speaker 1: the evidence that can be cited in such a charge, admitting, quote,
Speaker 1: it is true that no one can read about these
Speaker 1: quote Swart and quote slant eyed orc so many times
Speaker 1: without becoming offended. And he also points out that Tolkien
Speaker 1: himself notoriously wrote in one of his letters, quote the
Speaker 1: Orcs are definitely stated to be corruptions of the human
Speaker 1: form seen in elves and men. They are or were squat, broad,
Speaker 1: flat nosed, sallow skin, with wide mouths and slant eyes,
Speaker 1: in fact degraded in repulsive versions of the two Europeans
Speaker 1: least lovely Mongol types. Uh. That is not a good sentiment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And according to Anderson Riric, the third in why is
Speaker 1: the Only Good orc adad Orc published in MFS Modern
Speaker 1: Fiction Studies, Uh, Tolken's friend C. S. Lewis even made
Speaker 1: passing mention of racism in light of the book's first publication,
Speaker 1: but again, but apparently did not pursue the idea all
Speaker 1: that much. So, you know, it seems to have been
Speaker 1: something that was at least in the conversation concerning orcs
Speaker 1: uh for quite some time, and maybe even on on
Speaker 1: Tolken's mind at least at times. I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: help but I had forgotten that passage about the human
Speaker 1: servants of of Mordor. But that's interesting as well. I've
Speaker 1: also seen it argued that this sort of view of
Speaker 1: the racial enemy tied up with the orc was also
Speaker 1: readily exhibited it in World War One and World War
Speaker 1: two propaganda against both Germans and the Japanese, where you
Speaker 1: see like a monstrous racial version of the enemy depicted
Speaker 1: in propaganda posters and then on top of that, we're
Speaker 1: talking about an era of eugenics, ideas of racial purity. Um.
Speaker 1: All that going on in the background, and this is
Speaker 1: ultimately again the world that these works emerge from. UM.
Speaker 1: Now fimi UM concludes, according to to Tally, that that
Speaker 1: Tolkien's quote objectionable racial uh characterizations are consistent with the
Speaker 1: discourse of his time, and in any event, consistent with
Speaker 1: the quote hierarchical world in which his mythic history unfolds.
Speaker 1: Now that being said, I don't think that makes it
Speaker 1: any easier for modern readers or viewers. You know, once
Speaker 1: you start focusing on these these elements, once you start
Speaker 1: you know, noticing them in your your reading of the
Speaker 1: tax or the viewing of the movies that spawned from them,
Speaker 1: you know, you see modern adaptations dealing with this in
Speaker 1: in almost diametrically opposed ways, right, um. Because one way
Speaker 1: you could deal with it is to try to embrace
Speaker 1: even harder the distinctions that would make you know, whatever
Speaker 1: kind of like monster enemy and it is it is
Speaker 1: clearly not human. You know, you want to go full
Speaker 1: zombie or full robot to suggest that like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: the orcs can't be They're not a metaphor for like
Speaker 1: in any people, they're just that they're not human at all.
Speaker 1: They're like, you know, bio robots or something. And then
Speaker 1: the other direction would be to actually try to humanize
Speaker 1: them more and make them seem more complicated. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it is true. I mean, like it much fantasy and
Speaker 1: epic writing is this way. But as they're they currently
Speaker 1: exist in the story, the orcs are in this uncomfortable
Speaker 1: middle position where they are sort of human, but they're
Speaker 1: they're they're not treated with the fairness that we would
Speaker 1: have hope should be afforded to all sentient creatures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's I guess that's that's the ambiguity of it
Speaker 1: that makes it difficult, and um, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: also I would say with Olkin, it doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be nearly as is clear kind of situation as we
Speaker 1: have to say with HP Lovecraft, you know who, we
Speaker 1: have such you know, damning examples of racist sentiment in
Speaker 1: his in his private letters, and then and then when
Speaker 1: you look at his works of fiction in light of
Speaker 1: those letters, I mean it's just it's, um, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't ignore these elements in his work. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: told Tolkien's writings certainly have been accused of containing wrong
Speaker 1: or outmoded attitudes to race, with the works very much
Speaker 1: of the center of all this. But but then you,
Speaker 1: I mean, you have defenders pointing out well, okay, Token
Speaker 1: himself was anti racists, both in peace time and during
Speaker 1: the Two World Wars. I don't know, you're still left
Speaker 1: with with what we still have is just continual discussion
Speaker 1: of like, how are we supposed to process Um Tolkien's
Speaker 1: work as a as a modern consumer and a modern thinker. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess one of the ways that we're
Speaker 1: left to deal with it is just to uh, is
Speaker 1: to don't let yourself get Lord of the Rings brain,
Speaker 1: or at least certainly don't let yourself get orc brain,
Speaker 1: thinking outside of the fantasy of the text. You know,
Speaker 1: the real world does not have orcs in it, Like
Speaker 1: you know, all the people, even people you might be
Speaker 1: in conflict against our human and that you know, and
Speaker 1: and to maybe lean more into the same wise gamge
Speaker 1: way of thinking about things, to to always try to
Speaker 1: remember that even somebody who you might be at war
Speaker 1: with is still a human and they've got their own motivations,
Speaker 1: they are morally complex in the same way that you are. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean I think it's one of Tolkien's letters.
Speaker 1: He even said something similar where He's like, well, in
Speaker 1: the real world you have works on both sides of
Speaker 1: a conflict. Um, because I guess in a sense of
Speaker 1: the works, the orcs is us right. Uh. I want
Speaker 1: to note too that I thought Dungeons and Dragons UM,
Speaker 1: the game, the company behind it, they recently made mention
Speaker 1: of something this some of this concerning works in a
Speaker 1: diversity statement. UM. They put this out. This was this year.
Speaker 1: They wrote, quote, throughout the fifty year history of D
Speaker 1: and D, some of the people's in the game works
Speaker 1: and drought being too prim and examples have been characterized
Speaker 1: as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent
Speaker 1: of how real world ethnic groups have been and continue
Speaker 1: to be denigrated. That's just not right, and it's not
Speaker 1: something we believe in. Despite our conscious efforts to the contrary,
Speaker 1: we have allowed some of those old descriptions to reappear
Speaker 1: in the game. We recognize that to live our values,
Speaker 1: we have to do an even better job in handling
Speaker 1: these issues. If we make mistakes, our priorities to make
Speaker 1: things right, and then they go on to stress a
Speaker 1: forward facing commitment to betraying orcs and drought as quote
Speaker 1: just as morally and culturally complex as other people's, which
Speaker 1: which I think is a way to go, especially considering
Speaker 1: and Orcs and drought have such a prominent role in
Speaker 1: Duns and Dragons of storytelling, the drought being the dark
Speaker 1: elves of the undertarg Yeah, the more I think about it,
Speaker 1: the more I think that the clear defining line, really,
Speaker 1: I guess would have to be sentience, right, that there
Speaker 1: there was an idea here, maybe in older versions of
Speaker 1: D and D, apparently somewhat ambiguously represented in in The
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings, that there are some types of
Speaker 1: people or types of creatures that are sentient, they're thinking
Speaker 1: beings like us, but they are also wholly evil, And
Speaker 1: in a way that's just sort of that's sort of
Speaker 1: self contradictory, right, Like, you know, a sentient being couldn't
Speaker 1: be as an entire people wholly evil because their sentience
Speaker 1: would sort of necessarily imply that there is, you know,
Speaker 1: that there is moral complexity to them. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it works when you're talking about and basically comes down
Speaker 1: to the alignment system in Dungeons and Dragons, which on
Speaker 1: an individual level doesn't really work in the real world.
Speaker 1: Like I mean the idea that I mean I am
Speaker 1: I am I neutral evil? Or am I am I
Speaker 1: neutral good? Like I think in reality we have multiple
Speaker 1: alignments in ourselves at all times, and it's about it's
Speaker 1: about nurturing the alignments that are the person we want
Speaker 1: to be, you know. And then certainly when you get
Speaker 1: into a species wide alignment, like what is humanity's alignment? Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, it depends on what we're doing at any
Speaker 1: given time. It depends on what you're focusing on. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're there aspects of humanities, um, you know, role in
Speaker 1: the world that are that would seem you know, at
Speaker 1: least lawful evil even or neutral evil, and there are
Speaker 1: other things that are that are not so. So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's one of these things that when it works
Speaker 1: well within a game context, as long as you're not
Speaker 1: thinking too hard about it, I guess, I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's ever gonna go away. The convention
Speaker 1: of having uh, various types of fantasy storytelling in which
Speaker 1: there is some kind of conflict and the enemy of
Speaker 1: the Heroes is an army of monsters. But I guess
Speaker 1: that mindset has its its place within fiction as just
Speaker 1: the same way a horror mindset does or anything like that.
Speaker 1: You know, don't pull it out into the real world
Speaker 1: and try to use it on humans. Yeah, alright, on
Speaker 1: that note, we're going to take a break, but we'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Than alright, we're back. So let's let's
Speaker 1: move back to the in universe concept of the Orc
Speaker 1: and consider how we might apply science to the situation. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, I'd like to refer back to the
Speaker 1: writings of our Scott Baker, who mentioned on the show before,
Speaker 1: and heck he's been on the show a couple of times,
Speaker 1: asn't me u, But he wrote this Second Apocalypse so OCCO,
Speaker 1: which takes a lot of inspiration from Tolkien but applies
Speaker 1: a different, uh philosophical and at times science fictional limbs
Speaker 1: to everything. And in the place of Orcs, he presents
Speaker 1: these creatures that are called the Shrink, which are described
Speaker 1: as one of the the quote unquote weapon races that
Speaker 1: were engineered by the Big batties in this series, the
Speaker 1: the alien in Karai. So these are depraved, like thoroughly
Speaker 1: inhuman creatures from another world that they in cry and
Speaker 1: they've taken members of the elf like non men uh
Speaker 1: in this world, and they've used the technique or the
Speaker 1: old science to twist them into savage creatures of the
Speaker 1: bassist and most violent instinct, often to scribed as retaining
Speaker 1: the beautiful faces of the non men, only twisted with
Speaker 1: like raw violent emotion and with kind of emaciated bodies.
Speaker 1: And so they're they're engineered to combat the non men
Speaker 1: warriors while also consisting on next to nothing like they
Speaker 1: were told that they just they live off of grubs
Speaker 1: and insects that they find uh on as they scavenge
Speaker 1: other lands that are otherwise fruitless. They could otherwise not
Speaker 1: support an army at all, And they're all part of
Speaker 1: the scheme to you know, essentially destroy the world and
Speaker 1: eradicate conscious beings from it. And so I think it's
Speaker 1: an interesting take on the idea of an orc, or
Speaker 1: at least an orc as an engineered warrior being more
Speaker 1: or less an organic robot made for savagery and war
Speaker 1: that is itself incapable of self reflection. Uh. And if
Speaker 1: you're indeed the you know, the Inkari or a dark
Speaker 1: lord of Mendle Earth. It makes sense, I guess to
Speaker 1: create such servants. Uh. And indeed, this whole concept it
Speaker 1: probably gets closer to the idea of like a zombie army,
Speaker 1: or a droid army, or a subservient reanimated skeleton army,
Speaker 1: you know, something that is just purely the tool of
Speaker 1: the great adversary. Well, yeah, and tying into something I
Speaker 1: was talking about earlier, it seems to me significant probably
Speaker 1: the most significant thing that they are imagined as as
Speaker 1: basically being not sentient or not able to reflect on
Speaker 1: their own behavior, which I mean at that point, it
Speaker 1: does seem like that being probably does lack whatever it
Speaker 1: is that that we think of as most significant to
Speaker 1: be human, right, like if you know you're you're not
Speaker 1: capable of reflecting on your own behavior. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: the with Baker's work, Yeah, there's this idea first of all,
Speaker 1: that it is not conscious. He's you know, he's going
Speaker 1: to tell you of a creature's conscious or not. It's
Speaker 1: kind of his whole thing. But then also the idea
Speaker 1: that they are definitely engineered. They're a thing that is created,
Speaker 1: They're a a new creation based on uh, you know,
Speaker 1: some designs or raw materials from this other species, you
Speaker 1: know Peter Watts in the novel Eco Praxia, I recall
Speaker 1: imagine something like this, But it is a type of
Speaker 1: human soldier who has had their nervous system modified, essentially
Speaker 1: so that they have the ability to at will turn
Speaker 1: off their consciousness during combat, essentially to become a more
Speaker 1: efficient killer. So the brain still works the same, except
Speaker 1: it's just not conscious while it's fighting. And apparently this
Speaker 1: makes you better at being a soldier. Interesting. Um, so,
Speaker 1: so I think these are these are interesting ways to
Speaker 1: think of a particular like weapons species in a fantasy
Speaker 1: or sci fi context. But but I was also interested
Speaker 1: to see what else could be glean science wise from
Speaker 1: the Orcs of Middle Earth. So I turned to the
Speaker 1: book The Science of Middle Earth by Henry Gee, who
Speaker 1: is himself a long time editor at the science journal
Speaker 1: Nature as well as a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist. And
Speaker 1: so he covers a great deal up from Middle Earth
Speaker 1: in his book, but beginning with the sixth chapter he
Speaker 1: begins to discuss it works a bit, and the sixth
Speaker 1: chapter is tie inventing the orcs. Um he spends on
Speaker 1: a fair amount of time discussing some of what we've
Speaker 1: already discussed, like where do we get the word orc?
Speaker 1: What does it mean? It's ties into mythology. Uh. But
Speaker 1: he also points out, Okay, let's let's talk about how
Speaker 1: how they're made and how they reproduce. So he starts
Speaker 1: by pointing out that there's a fair amount of incongruity
Speaker 1: concerning the origins of Eric Orcs and Tolkien's Middle Earth. Um,
Speaker 1: you can look at various descriptions and cinematic depictions, uh
Speaker 1: that on one hand make them look like they're bread,
Speaker 1: and another it looks like they're created via torture. Um.
Speaker 1: And if it's torture, are we're talking about something that
Speaker 1: is more? Is this the way we're describing something that's
Speaker 1: being done to the body that can't be understood, like
Speaker 1: something like the technique, something like a sci fi genetic
Speaker 1: engineering or is it something psychological? Right? Uh? I seem
Speaker 1: to recalling the Peter Jackson movie that at least some
Speaker 1: of them, maybe this was only the uru Quai, or
Speaker 1: or maybe it was all of the Orcs, but somehow
Speaker 1: the servants of Saramon were being like grown of the earth,
Speaker 1: like they came up out of the ground. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: and that's something that the g U discusses as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that this idea that that there's something that's just like
Speaker 1: pulled out of the earth, like this sort of primal creation.
Speaker 1: They're just made of mud and stone. Um or maybe
Speaker 1: their plants or fungus. Yeah, well yeah, maybe there's some
Speaker 1: sort of fungal element as well. Um, So he didn't
Speaker 1: get into the fun Now now I'm thinking about the
Speaker 1: fungal orc idea. That's a whole different theory. But but
Speaker 1: that the author here, he does discuss one interesting evolutionary
Speaker 1: aspect of orcs in Tolken, and that is that we
Speaker 1: have in an oorc army a collection of varying orc subspecies,
Speaker 1: which he says would ultimately fit well with the idea
Speaker 1: that orcs have, in periods of decline withdrawn to various
Speaker 1: corners of the world. You know, this, this bunch withdrawals
Speaker 1: to the misty mountains, this one withdrawals to these waste
Speaker 1: lands over here, et cetera. So he writes the following quote.
Speaker 1: The enormous variety of orcs, which is it turns out,
Speaker 1: is crucial to the story, can be seen as a
Speaker 1: consequence of the smallness and isolation of populations evolving in
Speaker 1: their own particular ways to suit local conditions, their isolation
Speaker 1: enhanced by mutual antipathy and incomprehension. Evolutionary theory tells us
Speaker 1: that evolution happens faster and has more idiosyncratic results when
Speaker 1: populations are small and isolated. So Tolkien's portrait of the
Speaker 1: Orcs as a collection of very diverse kindreds is biologically
Speaker 1: very accurate, except that is, for one thing, sex. You know,
Speaker 1: one thing you could not accuse the Lord of the
Speaker 1: Rings of is having too much sex in it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently there have been there agievements and mentions one paper
Speaker 1: that is like saying there's no sex in Middle Earth?
Speaker 1: Like what does that mean? Like, if you take that literally,
Speaker 1: does it mean like there's no They're like sex sexual
Speaker 1: reproduction is not a thing in Middle Earth? Um, I
Speaker 1: think that would probably be going a bit far. But
Speaker 1: in trying to piece together exactly where Orcs come from
Speaker 1: and how they reproduce it, it does has become a
Speaker 1: little sticky. Yeah, I mean there there is remarkably little
Speaker 1: little sex in the Lord of the Rings. I mean
Speaker 1: people are described as descending from parents basically, so you're
Speaker 1: you imagine there is some sexual reproduction going on. I
Speaker 1: remember GIMII at some point gets very um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: excited about the idea of how beautiful Galadriel is. But
Speaker 1: they're just not very sexually charged stories. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting if if Tolkien is in a
Speaker 1: way trying to create a sort of epic mythology, because
Speaker 1: I don't know, most world mythologies are pretty crammed with sex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, people are always be be getting other folks, right, Um,
Speaker 1: Whereas in the Tolkien books, like even with the Orcs,
Speaker 1: there's occasionally like reference to one being the son of another,
Speaker 1: you know, of parentage, but there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: detail there, and certainly there are no scenes depicting it.
Speaker 1: So he basically points out, well, if we're talking about
Speaker 1: evolution and and the biology that work, like sex is
Speaker 1: obviously an important part of the equation. But of course
Speaker 1: we have little or no evidence of Orc sex in
Speaker 1: the books. Um, which I don't know. That seems a
Speaker 1: little maybe nitpicky, uh to to say, but but because
Speaker 1: they're I know, they are apparently five references to Orc
Speaker 1: reproduction aside from discussion of creation or breeding by others,
Speaker 1: which G thinks is is miniscule, But to me that
Speaker 1: kind of sounds like a lot. I would if you
Speaker 1: had to, if you ask me to guess how many
Speaker 1: references to orc reproduction there are in the book, I
Speaker 1: would have guessed like maybe one. I would have just zo.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think they're I vaguely remember a passage
Speaker 1: where one character is talking about, well, the Orcs have
Speaker 1: been reproducing in the mountains. There are a lot of them.
Speaker 1: Um Like that would have been the only one that
Speaker 1: it would have come to my mind. Not only is
Speaker 1: there no mention of of of actual Orc sex, there's
Speaker 1: no mention of female orcs. And this is perhaps more
Speaker 1: significant now. Naturally, this doesn't mean there were no female orcs,
Speaker 1: nor does it mean that there was no Orc sex,
Speaker 1: you know, no more than the absence of sex from
Speaker 1: the rest of the books mean that sex didn't exist
Speaker 1: for other species of Middle Earth. But he he does
Speaker 1: point out that the idea, you know that we could
Speaker 1: compare this to the idea of a purely manufactured or species,
Speaker 1: much in the same way that the you know, the
Speaker 1: clones and the droids and star wars are are created,
Speaker 1: and it would this would actually be in keeping with
Speaker 1: the industrialized warfare of the world wars, you know, full
Speaker 1: of mechanized artillery and this overall degregation of the individual soldier,
Speaker 1: as well as the overall quote emasculating effects of industrialization
Speaker 1: in the world. So in other words, perhaps there's no
Speaker 1: female or or male work at all. There's only just
Speaker 1: neutral flesh machines that serve this fallen god. You know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that Tolken was was very uh, he would
Speaker 1: very strenuously reject the idea that Lord of the Rings
Speaker 1: was an allegory for any particular war. Like I think
Speaker 1: the thing most often raised is like people saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: I see, you know, it's supposed to be about World
Speaker 1: War two and Hitler is Sauron and you know, the
Speaker 1: Orcs or the Nazis and all that, which I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously coming out of the World War two era, it
Speaker 1: would probably be hard not to try to make that
Speaker 1: comparison in in like an epic struggle. But Tolkien always
Speaker 1: like he thoroughly rejected the idea that Lord of the
Speaker 1: Rings was an allegory for any particular historical events on Earth.
Speaker 1: You know, he he in fact thought allegories were quite stupid,
Speaker 1: and he did not like them. But nevertheless, this is
Speaker 1: one where it's like really hard to miss that what
Speaker 1: would seem like allegorical significance the way that the mortor
Speaker 1: war machine in has these tones that so resemble the
Speaker 1: production lines of mechanized warfare going into World War two. Yeah. Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: in fact, this was interesting. I've never heard this, but
Speaker 1: he uh pointed out in the book as well that
Speaker 1: there's an earlier version of the Lost Tail, the Fall
Speaker 1: of Gone to Lend, which features a siege not by
Speaker 1: Orcs and trolls, but by quote vast articulated fire breathing machines.
Speaker 1: Tolkien apparently later abandoned this idea in favor of living
Speaker 1: creatures you know that works, the trolls, etcetera. But at
Speaker 1: least at one point there was this vision of the
Speaker 1: the Armies of more Door being like mechanical industrial creations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's it's there in the book. Still,
Speaker 1: even though the Orcs are biological in some way mythological biological,
Speaker 1: the the Armies of more Door, I think, are very
Speaker 1: much seen as like a sort of an industrializing wave
Speaker 1: of something that destroys the natural landscape and replaces it
Speaker 1: with industry and machinery and ash and smoke. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah it's and certainly you look at more
Speaker 1: door and what is more do or about this sort
Speaker 1: of geologic vision of like pure industrial dynym right, I
Speaker 1: mean nothing, nothing, No trees grow there, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just like a it's it's a vast asphalt parking lot
Speaker 1: full of factories for weapons. Yeah, it's exports are war
Speaker 1: weapons and volcanic ash. That seems to be it. Now. Now,
Speaker 1: all this being said that there are mentions to mention
Speaker 1: of orcs like breeding in the wild, so they still
Speaker 1: seem to reproduce in the wild in some manner. But
Speaker 1: who knows, it could be like a Jurassic Park situation
Speaker 1: right where there's some sort of mutation that observed that
Speaker 1: that occurs or something. Um, you know, he suggests, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe do suggests, well, maybe orcs lay eggs. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: what it is. Uh. He ultimately says, you know, if
Speaker 1: if it's there are a number of different ideas you
Speaker 1: could propose, since there's no real discussion of it in
Speaker 1: the book, as long as it doesn't break anything else
Speaker 1: in the book. I mean it's all kind of fair game,
Speaker 1: like he has. He has some fun with the idea
Speaker 1: that perhaps it works are use social insects and there's
Speaker 1: like an unseen or queen that does all the egg production. Uh.
Speaker 1: And indeed, he points out that the goblins of the
Speaker 1: Misty Mountains and the uh and the the orcs of
Speaker 1: Maria behave much like an ant colony in some respects.
Speaker 1: That would be interesting. But again, I think in the
Speaker 1: few glimpses we do get into orc psychology, the orcs
Speaker 1: seem far too selfish and and individualistic to be used
Speaker 1: social uh animals right, Like, I mean, the like the
Speaker 1: individual worker ants own bodily existence matters quite little to
Speaker 1: it compared to you know, protecting the queen and the
Speaker 1: reproductive possibilities of the hive. Individual orcs really do seem
Speaker 1: to sort of be in it for themselves when they can,
Speaker 1: you know, when they think they can get away with something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's absolutely now. Now. Another idea that he brings up
Speaker 1: is okay, perhaps works reproduced by parthenogenesis or cloning. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, he writes that this could work well, especially
Speaker 1: when you're thinking about the shrinking habitats that works have
Speaker 1: during their times of decline. But this would also mean
Speaker 1: that all orcs would inherently need to be female, which
Speaker 1: also might work with the fact that there's never any
Speaker 1: mention of male and female orcs. Orcs are kind of
Speaker 1: presented as sexless, even though they're you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: described with with male terminology. I mean, maybe we're just
Speaker 1: talking about on all female species. Maybe we're just getting
Speaker 1: the story told through the like paternalistic lens of how
Speaker 1: how the men and the elves view things could be.
Speaker 1: And speaking of elves, another thing that he brings up is, Okay,
Speaker 1: if we go back to this other origin store, the
Speaker 1: idea that that that more goth or milk, or that
Speaker 1: they they basically like tortured the elves uh in order
Speaker 1: to make orcs, well, he points out that, Okay, well
Speaker 1: if you just because you if you were to torture
Speaker 1: a bunch of elves and break them and like and
Speaker 1: so forth and then have and breathe them, you're still
Speaker 1: gonna you're not gonna produce orcs. You're gonna produce more elves, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and then certainly they could have you know,
Speaker 1: the dark Lord could use this technique over time to
Speaker 1: you know, encourage orc istra rates that you know, and
Speaker 1: you know, adapt to a hellish dungeon environment. But this
Speaker 1: would ultimately require periods of evolutionary time that are far
Speaker 1: beyond anything we're presented within the Middle Earth timeline. No.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, this is a more mythological way of
Speaker 1: imagining how traits are established in a species. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's kind of a magical lamarchianism, yeah, and
Speaker 1: any rights that. Ultimately, Tolkien was of course more concerned well,
Speaker 1: certainly with with linguistic aspects of everything, like what does
Speaker 1: it mean that Orcs have a language that or speak
Speaker 1: while they speak in a more primitive tongue, you know,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. But then also Tolkien was more
Speaker 1: concerned with theological ramifications like what happens to the soul
Speaker 1: of the elf if it is made into an orc?
Speaker 1: You know? Uh, so there's this whole line of thinking
Speaker 1: as well. So all of this was far more on
Speaker 1: Tolkien's brain as opposed to you know, evolutionary biology. But
Speaker 1: what if everything in Middle Earth is actually a mushroom?
Speaker 1: Like absolutely everything, even the ants mushrooms? Uh, I'll have
Speaker 1: to carry that with me on the next reread. Oh,
Speaker 1: I want to come back to I want to come
Speaker 1: back to NTS this October because I've got a I've
Speaker 1: got almost kind of like an evil int thing i
Speaker 1: want to do. Oh that sounds promising to me. So
Speaker 1: let's see. At this point, we've talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: Orcs as a as a problem faced by the other
Speaker 1: species of Middle Earth. We talked about problematic aspects of
Speaker 1: of of the work as a fictional creation. We've talked
Speaker 1: about the problems with Orc reproduction or figuring out exactly
Speaker 1: what Orc reproduction consists of. But I understand you have
Speaker 1: you have one more or problem for us here, Joe. Well,
Speaker 1: so this only relates to Hobbits and Orcs in a
Speaker 1: completely arbitrary way. But it's actually I think it's maybe
Speaker 1: the most delightful of all the things that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about today. Alright, let's do it. So if
Speaker 1: you're a puzzle nerd, there's actually gonna be a puzzle
Speaker 1: that you can pause the episode to try to solve.
Speaker 1: And this is going to be the Hobbits and Orcs problem. Now,
Speaker 1: my main source here is a cha after in the
Speaker 1: Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning, which is just the
Speaker 1: jolliest of reads. But it's actually more interesting than you
Speaker 1: might expect. That that sounds incredibly dry, It's only somewhat dry.
Speaker 1: But specifically, I'm looking at a chapter on problem solving
Speaker 1: by Laura r. Novic who is at Vanderbilt University and
Speaker 1: Miriam Bassock, who is at the University of Washington. Both
Speaker 1: are psychology professors who study cognition and problem solving. Now,
Speaker 1: the study of problem solving is actually a really fascinating
Speaker 1: field or combination of fields. It's highly relevant to our lives,
Speaker 1: and I would say, to be fair, it encompasses. It
Speaker 1: encompasses actually at least two main questions that are very
Speaker 1: different from one another. One is a question primarily for
Speaker 1: mathematics and computer science, and this is the study of
Speaker 1: problem solving algorithms, such as those for search or sorting,
Speaker 1: and the study of which methods are actually the most
Speaker 1: efficient at solving different kinds of problems. The other question
Speaker 1: is one for psychology and cognitive neuroscience, which is, regardless
Speaker 1: of what methods are actually the most efficient, what do
Speaker 1: our brains tend to do? You know, when a human
Speaker 1: is faced with a problem, what kinds of algorithms and
Speaker 1: methods do we actually use in practice. So where do
Speaker 1: the orcs come in? Well, one puzzle that has been
Speaker 1: used to study human tendencies and problem solving is known
Speaker 1: as the Hobbits and Orcs problem, and it's a variation
Speaker 1: on the classic river crossing puzzle. Robert, have you ever
Speaker 1: done one of these? Where you know you've got a
Speaker 1: you've got a wolf, and a sheep and a cabbage
Speaker 1: all together on one side of a river, and you've
Speaker 1: got to figure out how to get them across. Do
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about? Oh? I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't have a strong memory of this. Now, Okay, well
Speaker 1: here's this version. Okay, we're gonna go to the Brandywine River,
Speaker 1: the one that that separates I believe, bree from Buckland.
Speaker 1: Now at the Brandywine River, on the north side of
Speaker 1: the river, you've got three hobbits and three orcs, and
Speaker 1: your goal is to get all six creatures across the
Speaker 1: river to the other side. Now, there's a boat that
Speaker 1: you can use to ferry them across, but there are
Speaker 1: a couple of major limitations. First of all, the boat
Speaker 1: can only hold two creatures at a time, and there
Speaker 1: always has to be at least one creature at least
Speaker 1: one Hobbit or Orc in the boat in order to
Speaker 1: row it. So you can't send the boat across the
Speaker 1: river empty. Second, you can never leave hobbits in a
Speaker 1: place where they are outnumbered by orcs, or of course,
Speaker 1: the orcs will eat them. And now your goal in
Speaker 1: this problem is to figure out what sequence of steps
Speaker 1: you can use to get all the Hobbits and the
Speaker 1: Orcs to the other side of the river without breaking
Speaker 1: any of the rules. Now, it's not necessary, but if
Speaker 1: you do want to pause the episode here and try
Speaker 1: to solve the puzzle yourself, go for it. I'll give
Speaker 1: you a hint that it can be solved in what's
Speaker 1: usually considered fourteen steps or fourteen stages. Okay, so I'm
Speaker 1: not going to eat out all of the steps to
Speaker 1: the solution here, but you can look it up and
Speaker 1: find it online. If you're stumped, I'm sure just google it.
Speaker 1: It'll come up. Um. One reason this particular puzzle is
Speaker 1: useful for studying problem solving is in studying what's known
Speaker 1: as the hill climbing heuristic. Now Here, Novik and Bassok
Speaker 1: described the hill climbing heuristic as a problem solving technique
Speaker 1: in which quote at each step the solver applies the
Speaker 1: operator that yields a new state that appears to be
Speaker 1: the most similar to the goal state. In other words,
Speaker 1: you know what you're end goal looks like, and at
Speaker 1: each step you do whatever it is that appears to
Speaker 1: get you into a state that looks more similar to
Speaker 1: the goal state. So if your goal is to get
Speaker 1: to the highest altitude, at each step you just try
Speaker 1: going uphill, hence hill climbing. Now, studies in cognitive psychology
Speaker 1: show that we use the hill climbing heuristic a lot.
Speaker 1: Uh Novic and Bassak site the example of Chronicle McGregor
Speaker 1: an armorade in two thousand four, who found that people
Speaker 1: naturally use the hill climbing heuristic in a task that
Speaker 1: involved sorting coins into a particular order, what you probably
Speaker 1: do is just like keep moving the coins in a
Speaker 1: way that makes them look closer to the final order
Speaker 1: they're supposed to be in until you get there. In
Speaker 1: the context of the Hobbits and Orcs game, hill climbing
Speaker 1: would mean that at each stage you just try to
Speaker 1: find whatever legal move will get the most creatures to
Speaker 1: the goal side of the river and off of the
Speaker 1: starting side of the river without breaking the rules, and
Speaker 1: studies have found that people do use the hill climbing
Speaker 1: heuristic to generate steps when solving the Hobbits and Orcs problem,
Speaker 1: and for the most part it works. But also two
Speaker 1: studies by Thomas and Greeno, both in nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: found that people hit a major roadblock around step number
Speaker 1: seven or eight in the game because, as an Ovic
Speaker 1: and Bassac right quote, the correct move at this point
Speaker 1: in fact, the own a non backtracking move is for
Speaker 1: one Hobbit and one Orc to take the boat back
Speaker 1: to the original side of the river. So essentially, while
Speaker 1: it must be done in order to complete the puzzle,
Speaker 1: it looks counterproductive because the only way you can finish
Speaker 1: the puzzle is to cause a temporary net migration of
Speaker 1: creatures to the wrong side of the river. It's a
Speaker 1: necessary step, but it actually ends up looking less similar
Speaker 1: to your goal state than the step before it did,
Speaker 1: and the studies by Thomas and Greeno both found that
Speaker 1: people really get hung up at this step. It was
Speaker 1: the step of the problem where both the probability of
Speaker 1: a of a player making an illegal move and the
Speaker 1: time taken to decide on the next move suddenly go
Speaker 1: way up compared to other steps, and Novid can Bass
Speaker 1: talk about how these studies highlight one of the inherent
Speaker 1: weaknesses of the hill climbing heuristic. Sometimes in all kinds
Speaker 1: of problem solving scenarios, you have to move backwards are
Speaker 1: laterally in order to reach your end goal. Like actual
Speaker 1: mountain climbers know this in a quite literal sense, you
Speaker 1: can't always reach the highest peak just by going straight up.
Speaker 1: A lot of times you have to go back down
Speaker 1: to reach a path that can actually be ascended. Other
Speaker 1: times you reach what's known as false peaks, which are
Speaker 1: places that seem like the peak as you're ascending until
Speaker 1: you get there, and then you realize that you are
Speaker 1: only at the local highest altitude and there's actually a
Speaker 1: higher peak just over here. And this means that it
Speaker 1: really pays to think about what problem solving methods you're
Speaker 1: using without realizing it, whether and whether those methods are
Speaker 1: the best suited to the kind of problem you're facing.
Speaker 1: Uh the hill climbing hereist, it can be very useful
Speaker 1: for problems in which the solution space could be represented
Speaker 1: as a kind of single peak, like one mountain and
Speaker 1: an otherwise flat plane with an unobstructed slope. If the
Speaker 1: solution spaces like that, then basically, yeah, you just keep
Speaker 1: trying to go uphill until you get to the highest point.
Speaker 1: But hill climbing can be ruinous for problems where the
Speaker 1: solution space could be represented as kind of like a
Speaker 1: a landscape with multiple different hills and peaks and valleys,
Speaker 1: because if you just keep trying to go uphill, what
Speaker 1: you're gonna do here is end up climbing to the
Speaker 1: top of whichever hill is closest to your starting position,
Speaker 1: and then you'll just be stuck there because even if
Speaker 1: you know there's a higher peak you have to get to,
Speaker 1: you have to go downhill to get to it. So
Speaker 1: I think what this means for our lives is if
Speaker 1: you're stuck on a task, it can be really useful
Speaker 1: to ask yourself, am I inappropriately trying to use the
Speaker 1: hill climbing heuristic? Do I actually need to temporarily move
Speaker 1: further away from my goal in order to actually get there?
Speaker 1: And in myself. One thing that immediately came to mind
Speaker 1: as an example of where I find myself doing this is, Uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes when I'm writing, I'm I'm working on a paragraph
Speaker 1: or a page or something that just does not feel right, Like,
Speaker 1: I know it is not going right, and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to fix it by tinkering around with word choice and
Speaker 1: junk like that, when in actuality, the best path to
Speaker 1: my goal be, of course, to just delete what I
Speaker 1: have and start over in a different way. Yeah. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: I h I think I encounter this when I'm when
Speaker 1: I'm when I'm painting, Like if I'm working on a miniature,
Speaker 1: and like you reach that point where I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess with the miniature, it's it's sometimes harder. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can, you can just paint over everything and apply
Speaker 1: a new base pay code. You can use something to
Speaker 1: to strip the existing paint off of it. But like, like,
Speaker 1: sometimes you're kind of continuing to work with the same
Speaker 1: problems that you've created for yourself on a you know,
Speaker 1: as far as a particular detail and the figure goes Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're stuck on the local hill when what you really
Speaker 1: need to do is go all the way down and
Speaker 1: find a different hill. Yeah, probably like get a new
Speaker 1: figure and a new copy of the same figure and
Speaker 1: begin again. Yeah. Yeah. Um. Now, some ways around this
Speaker 1: in computer science can involve algorithms that insert various kinds
Speaker 1: of random leaps or random steps in sampling to make
Speaker 1: sure that you're actually moving toward the global solution rather
Speaker 1: than the local solution. And in a way, I think
Speaker 1: this is this is sort of the algorithmic way of
Speaker 1: characterizing what we would call outside the box thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: thinking that lands on strategies that may take you pretty
Speaker 1: far away from the local peak in order to possibly
Speaker 1: find out that there is a much higher peak somewhere else,
Speaker 1: and a certain amount of randomness or willingness to be
Speaker 1: apparently counterproductive at least for the moment, can go a
Speaker 1: long way. And this is clearly what's been found like
Speaker 1: in in these studies using the Hobbits and Orcs problem,
Speaker 1: because it's like people really get stuck at the part
Speaker 1: that the part that they have the hardest time figuring
Speaker 1: out is the part where you have to move multiple
Speaker 1: pieces away from your in state in order to actually
Speaker 1: get there. Coincidentally, I think the dangers represented by the
Speaker 1: hill climbing heuristic are actually played out in literal topography
Speaker 1: in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, for example,
Speaker 1: I recall in Ollership of the Ring there's a lot
Speaker 1: of frustration about the straightest paths to more door being blocked,
Speaker 1: such as when they try to they try to go
Speaker 1: across the Red Horn pass of Kara Dress and they're
Speaker 1: blocked by bad weather, forcing them to backtrack and go
Speaker 1: a different way, even though you know they probably should
Speaker 1: have backtracked earlier, but they're they're stuck trying to go
Speaker 1: this way because it's where they already are. And I
Speaker 1: can't recall another specific passage, but it seems like they're similar.
Speaker 1: Similar problems in the two Towers, you know, like uh
Speaker 1: Frodo and Sam having to go down to go up,
Speaker 1: or having to go back to go forward and so forth.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I'm remembering that now. So anyway, keep
Speaker 1: the Hobbits and Orcs in mind. If you're stuck on
Speaker 1: a problem, consider are are you hill climbing? Are you
Speaker 1: refusing to send your Hobbit and Orc back across the
Speaker 1: river even though that's what you have to do? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I don't think i'd heard of this before, um,
Speaker 1: but now now, I guess I'll think of all problems
Speaker 1: in my life as being uh ones where it works
Speaker 1: might potentially eat me, or one where you're the Orc
Speaker 1: and you're gonna fill up on Hobbit and ruin your dinner.
Speaker 1: You don't want to do that, all right, Well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and call this, uh this episode here. Um.
Speaker 1: Obviously we didn't get to, you know, get into everything
Speaker 1: about orcs within Tolkien's creations or within creations that you
Speaker 1: know come in the wake of the Lord of the Rings. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we would love to hear from everyone out there
Speaker 1: if you have particular thoughts on on anything here related
Speaker 1: to Tolkien scholarship, to you know, how we use orcs
Speaker 1: and popular culture. You know what, what what, why we're
Speaker 1: fascinated by them, what we should be doing with them, etcetera.
Speaker 1: We you know, we're always open to hear from everybody. Uh.
Speaker 1: We're always happy to be corrected as well. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you would like to listen to other episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind, you can find us wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcast and wherever that happens to be. Uh.
Speaker 1: Just rate, review and subscribe. Those are great ways to
Speaker 1: help out the show. Huge thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio Do Sir Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: just to say hello. You can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
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