Speaker 1: But of those unhappy ones who were ensnared by Melkor,
Speaker 1: little is known of a certainty, for who of the
Speaker 1: living has descended into the pits of autumno or has
Speaker 1: explored the darkness of the councils of Melkor. Yet this
Speaker 1: is held true by the wise of Eressia, that all
Speaker 1: those of the KINDI who came into the hands of
Speaker 1: Melkor errotumno was broken, were put there in prison, and
Speaker 1: by slow arts of cruelty, were corrupted and enslaved. And
Speaker 1: thus did Melkor breathe the hideous race of the Orcs
Speaker 1: in envy and mockery of the elves of whom they
Speaker 1: were afterwards the bitterest foes. For the Orcs had life
Speaker 1: and multiplied after the manner of the children of Iluvatar,
Speaker 1: And naught that had life of its own, nor the
Speaker 1: semblance of life, could ever Melkor make since his rebellion
Speaker 1: in the Aino Lundeli 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. The
Speaker 1: production of my heart radio hey welcome to stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind. My name is Robert Land, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And man, I had to read that opening
Speaker 1: part quite a few times. That, of course, is from
Speaker 1: The Sill Marillion by j. R. R. Tolkien. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: of course we're talking about Tolkien because today's publication date
Speaker 1: is September, which also happens to be the credited birth
Speaker 1: date of both Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, the Hobbits central
Speaker 1: to J. R. Tolkien saga of Middle Earth. Uh. Thus
Speaker 1: this has become known as Hobbit Day, which falls during
Speaker 1: Tolkien Week, at least as proposed by the American Tolkien
Speaker 1: Society in Night. So this TRD and is roughly a
Speaker 1: month older than I am. That's funny. So it's a
Speaker 1: week long festival then, yeah, yeah, apparently a week long
Speaker 1: celebration of Middle Earth and all things token. I was
Speaker 1: not aware of it until just like last month and
Speaker 1: I realized the publication day lined up perfectly, and I'm like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we've already done an episode on the One Ring. We
Speaker 1: did another one on Hobbits and how their their biology
Speaker 1: works and how they relate to multiple meals per day
Speaker 1: and to Sunlight, and so I thought, well, we got
Speaker 1: to come with something else that we can talk about
Speaker 1: on Hobbit Day itself. So you wanted to talk about orcs.
Speaker 1: I guess you've had Token on the brain all year, right,
Speaker 1: Are you still? Are you 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: Started looking around, I thought, well, maybe it's orcs. Orcs
Speaker 1: are such a central part of the work and something
Speaker 1: 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 Tolkien, I
Speaker 1: played the warcraft games which which have orcs in them,
Speaker 1: which are essentially the palace guards at Java'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 base on that in a
Speaker 1: little bit, because think they're very important to the history
Speaker 1: of how we interpret orcs. Um. I 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 are
Speaker 1: often shown in kind of a silhouette. This is the
Speaker 1: ralph back she one with the does have rhotoscoping in it.
Speaker 1: 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 Sauma this 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
Speaker 1: that 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 Norseman or Viking and
Speaker 1: that figure of Grendel. M M. But that's just me personally,
Speaker 1: just based on like where I came into learning about
Speaker 1: the Hobbit and what I've been exposed to previously. UM.
Speaker 1: And as as we're going to discuss here. There's there's
Speaker 1: subsequently been so many different visions of orcs and what
Speaker 1: orcs are, and we're still in the process us uh
Speaker 1: of of defining and redefining what an orc is. For
Speaker 1: some reason, I remember thinking that the orcs of the
Speaker 1: Peter Jackson movies have a very dickensie and villain kind
Speaker 1: of flare, like they've got this, you know, sinister Cockney
Speaker 1: accent that you hear. Yeah, the Peter Jackson orcs are
Speaker 1: are are very important in our our modern perceptions of them.
Speaker 1: But but even those are are suitably very There are
Speaker 1: a lot of different visions of what an orc is
Speaker 1: in those films. They range from like big like dark
Speaker 1: brutes to more goblin e forms. There's like one general
Speaker 1: that shows up and I think Return of the King
Speaker 1: that has this very like elephant man um tumorous appearance.
Speaker 1: And then by the Hobbit films they seem to have
Speaker 1: refined it a little bit to where you have either
Speaker 1: refined the work in general or that, or just they've
Speaker 1: decided to portray these sort of misty mountain orcs as
Speaker 1: being almost kind of nos Feratu in they kind of
Speaker 1: look like big, beefy nos Feratus in a way, in
Speaker 1: a way that I think really works more the classic
Speaker 1: Max shrek nos Ferrat or the klass Kinski knows Ferra
Speaker 1: to the Max shredded nos Ferratto. That's that's what they
Speaker 1: are like. This is very just very beefy um je Max.
Speaker 1: Now we mentioned mentioned um Warhammer just a second ago.
Speaker 1: I've long been a fan of of Warhammer, and Warhammer
Speaker 1: forty thousand one is like the fantasy version one is
Speaker 1: essentially like a sci fi version of the same universe,
Speaker 1: and it is evolved since then. And you have orcs
Speaker 1: in both of them, and in both games orcs are
Speaker 1: depicted as green skinned, almost bold, dog like in their
Speaker 1: cranial structure. And even more to the point though, these
Speaker 1: orcs are presented in a manner that I would I
Speaker 1: would dare describe as fun. They If orcs are often,
Speaker 1: you know, serving to to represent a kind of dark
Speaker 1: savagery of humanity, I'd say that the the Orc Boys
Speaker 1: as there sometimes called this with a z uh run
Speaker 1: counter to that, embodying the spirit that kind of celebrates
Speaker 1: the kind of goofy primal rebellion, especially in in Warham
Speaker 1: or forty the futuristic version which is a very dark
Speaker 1: and nihilistic, you know, grim dark kind of fictional setting.
Speaker 1: The Orcs are pretty much the only faction that actually
Speaker 1: resonate with any lightness in Whimsy. Like you see are
Speaker 1: the depictions of them or the way that the various
Speaker 1: collectors have painted them up, and they often have bright
Speaker 1: colors and kind of a fun goofy quality to them.
Speaker 1: I ran across one. I think this is like a
Speaker 1: current figure where it's like an Orc captain and he
Speaker 1: has like a big pirate hat on and a bunch
Speaker 1: of cool colorful iconography. They have this kind of slap
Speaker 1: dash technology to them. Uh, they're they're a little bit
Speaker 1: monstars in space Jam. I haven't seen space Sham, but
Speaker 1: it's when the nerdy aliens get really big and good
Speaker 1: at sports and then they become the mon stars. 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. In Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: of course, one may play a half work or even
Speaker 1: full blooded works, 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. Koe, and he has
Speaker 1: this comic series called Orc Stain, and it presents a
Speaker 1: delightfully crude and whimsical vision of a world just overrun
Speaker 1: with orcs. The protagonist himself is an Orc here and
Speaker 1: it has this kind of I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: the art that accompanies the British musical Um Act Guerrillas.
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 the old teenage meeting Ninja turtles,
Speaker 1: comics like the Bebop and rock Steadier. You're not actually
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 don't 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?
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 writing, the Orcs are the most common evil
Speaker 1: foot soldier. They were like the ubiquitous enemy. Um In
Speaker 1: the Hobbit we deal more with goblins, which are often
Speaker 1: understood to be either lesser Orcs or a particular species
Speaker 1: or subspecies of Mountain Orc and Tolkien apparently rolled out
Speaker 1: a few different contradictory origin stories for the Orc in
Speaker 1: his work. But according to the Tolkein Encyclopedia, which is
Speaker 1: a book I typically turn into for such matters, uh,
Speaker 1: they were twisted forms of life that Melk corps spawned
Speaker 1: in the pits of Autumno. 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 melk Or the same person Saron in an earlier incarnation?
Speaker 1: Or was milk Or the god that Sauron served? My understanding,
Speaker 1: and this is a good point for us to point
Speaker 1: out that neither of us are Tolkien scholars or or
Speaker 1: professed to be Tolkien experts. It's you're you keep wanting
Speaker 1: to do these Tolken episodes, and then we get the
Speaker 1: mail from people who are like, actually, I know, and
Speaker 1: I I and I love it. I invited. I I
Speaker 1: definitely want to hear from from people more knowledgeable in
Speaker 1: the in Tolkien scholarship than I am, or just in
Speaker 1: 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 Hephestus type forge god had served
Speaker 1: melk Orp, 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, Sawn was milk Or's VP. Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: Now now we keep off the episode here with that
Speaker 1: cold reading about the creation of the Orcs in the
Speaker 1: in the pits of Autumn. No, you know, the idea
Speaker 1: that they would have been created, you know, this sort
Speaker 1: of blasphemous process that takes place in a fallen god's dungeons,
Speaker 1: like it was sort of a mockery of life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea that they like captured els and twisted them
Speaker 1: through torture into this new terrible form of life, and
Speaker 1: 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 a from the token Encyclopedia, bent,
Speaker 1: bow legged, and squat So they were apelike in many respects,
Speaker 1: but cunning and cruel. Their skin looked as if burned
Speaker 1: in their eyes were quote Crimson gashes like narrow slits
Speaker 1: 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 works,
Speaker 1: and then later you get these taller, more sun resistant
Speaker 1: or a high orcs that were made by Sawing much later.
Speaker 1: And it sounds as if the idea is that Sawin
Speaker 1: ends up combining orc stock with human stock to create
Speaker 1: a more human stature day tolerant trooper. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think that ties into the idea that a lot of
Speaker 1: creatures in Middle Earth or in Tolken's world, like if
Speaker 1: you're a bad creature, you're often sort of confined to
Speaker 1: a nighttime existence. You can't go out in the sun.
Speaker 1: Trolls are this way, and the Hobbit trolls are turned
Speaker 1: to stone when Gandalf Tricks came into staying up till
Speaker 1: till the sun comes out. And I guess the the
Speaker 1: idea is also that maybe the orcs or the goblins
Speaker 1: just don't really like sunlight. Yeah. Now, the Token Encyclopedia
Speaker 1: and other sources as well, it has you'll find lengthy
Speaker 1: passages discussing the role of orcs to the history of
Speaker 1: Middle Earth. There's there's no shortage of of of information
Speaker 1: uh there. But basically the idea is that throughout their
Speaker 1: history the numbers swell and shrink at times when dark
Speaker 1: lord rise up and then fall away. Um. When they
Speaker 1: dark Lords come back to power, the Orcs so there
Speaker 1: to fill the ranks of the evil armies. But even
Speaker 1: when they're defeated, they never completely go away. They kind
Speaker 1: of shrink to the hidden corners of Middle Earth. Um.
Speaker 1: And even with the defeat of Saron and Middle Earth's
Speaker 1: transformation into a modern world, there's this idea that the
Speaker 1: Orcs are out there somewhere. So that's the the in
Speaker 1: universe explanation or as cannon and origin stories can be
Speaker 1: cobbled together. But of course we know that J. R.
Speaker 1: Tolkien did not create Middle Earth out of nothing. He
Speaker 1: forged it out of existing mythological, folkloric and historic motifs.
Speaker 1: And I would say, actually maybe more than anything out
Speaker 1: of linguistic motifs. You know, the Tolkien loved language, and
Speaker 1: you often get the sense that his story came out
Speaker 1: of having a word for something, you know, like you'd
Speaker 1: find you'd find a word for something an old Norse
Speaker 1: that's just a great word. And and it almost feels
Speaker 1: as if the character springs from the sound of the name.
Speaker 1: Sorry that that makes sense, I know, no, absolutely, I
Speaker 1: mean that you you really you can't discuss Tolkien creating
Speaker 1: anything without without bringing in language, like clearly, like that
Speaker 1: was his his his primary um scholarly interest, and everything
Speaker 1: else kind of like springs out of that. And then
Speaker 1: thus that's where a lot of these characters and species
Speaker 1: come from as well. Yeah, so it seems that Tolkien
Speaker 1: actually derived the term orc from a usage in Beowulf.
Speaker 1: Beowulf is of course the great epic of Anglo Saxon.
Speaker 1: It's an epic poem from the early Middle Ages. We
Speaker 1: don't know exactly when it was composed. It was written
Speaker 1: in Old English, which is the ancestor to modern English,
Speaker 1: but also which is you know, it's so unlike Modern
Speaker 1: English that you can't just read it, you know, it's
Speaker 1: basically like another language. You need you need a glossary
Speaker 1: or translation basically to understand it. Uh. And so the
Speaker 1: term specifically that appears in Beowulf is or cane us
Speaker 1: or cane Us. It is a creature that's mentioned during
Speaker 1: the introduction of the monster Grendel, you know, the real
Speaker 1: first big bad that that Beowulf has to fight. Beowulf
Speaker 1: arrives at at Rothgar's meat hall, and the meat hall
Speaker 1: is being terrorized by attacks from this monster Grendel. And
Speaker 1: so I'm going to read from the J. Leslie Hall
Speaker 1: translation of Beowulf. In the part that mentions orcs uh
Speaker 1: so or the word or knaos at least Hall translates
Speaker 1: for that bitter murder, the killing of able all ruling father,
Speaker 1: the kindred of Cain crushed with his vengeance in the
Speaker 1: feud he rejoiced, not but far away drove him from
Speaker 1: kindred and kind that crime to atone for meter of justice.
Speaker 1: Thence Ill favored creatures, elves and giants, monsters of ocean
Speaker 1: came into being. And the giants that long time grappled
Speaker 1: with God, he gave them requital. Now in the Hall
Speaker 1: translation here there are a couple of different words that
Speaker 1: get translated as giants. One is the old English gigantis,
Speaker 1: and the other is a yoton s, which I think
Speaker 1: is where we also get the word yoton like the
Speaker 1: Norse mythology giant a couple of different kinds of monsters.
Speaker 1: So in the line that mentions orknas it's a yotanus
Speaker 1: and ilfa giants and elves and or canas, which I
Speaker 1: think here is translated as monsters of ocean, but other
Speaker 1: translations have have chosen different terms for it, sometimes calling
Speaker 1: it a 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 Grindel 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: interest set of lines. A foe in the whole building.
Speaker 1: This horrible stranger was Grendel, entitled the march Stepper, famous
Speaker 1: who dwelt in the moor, fins, the marsh and the Fastness. Oh.
Speaker 1: I love that. So if you think of Grendel as
Speaker 1: a stranger, it gets into some interesting territory about what
Speaker 1: monstrosity means, and that a lot of times are our
Speaker 1: mythical monsters are sort of ways of mentally metabolizing concepts
Speaker 1: of people who are unfamiliar or who you worry might
Speaker 1: be threatening to you somehow. Yeah. Absolutely, But then also
Speaker 1: just from a surely like in that on the other hand,
Speaker 1: like just from an imaginative perspective, like I hear that,
Speaker 1: and I just love the idea of Grendel as this
Speaker 1: as as the stranger, as this you know, this being
Speaker 1: that 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 Caine, who in the biblical
Speaker 1: story murdered his brother Abel. Caine was you know, the
Speaker 1: third human to exist, and Able 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 Kine and sends him off wandering in
Speaker 1: the wilderness to the land of not and Caine'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 syncratism. 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, uh that of course is um is adapted
Speaker 1: and switched around a little bit most more probably more
Speaker 1: famously 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. Orc 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 in mythologies before that involve something that is
Speaker 1: translated as a goblin, And it does seem to suggest
Speaker 1: that there is just sort of an intrinsic goblin nous
Speaker 1: to the human imagination, like there is a space preserved
Speaker 1: for the goblin that we we don't even really need
Speaker 1: to even expand on too much. Well, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's just there's a general fear of something
Speaker 1: that is evil, that is roughly shaped like a human
Speaker 1: and has human capabilities in a way, but cannot be
Speaker 1: reasoned with and has no and has no like mercy
Speaker 1: or morality, and is just sort of like meanness and
Speaker 1: cruelty and human form or human form, Yeah, or you know,
Speaker 1: kind of I guess sometimes with the goblin, I get
Speaker 1: a sense of like the diminutive nature of the goblin's
Speaker 1: suggested like a hidden supernatural element to it. And even
Speaker 1: though the the the idea of Tolkien's orcs, they kind
Speaker 1: of evolve out of an idea of a goblin, they
Speaker 1: become something different, They become something more like a human
Speaker 1: and therefore kind of divorced from like the supernatural world
Speaker 1: of pure fairies, in the same way that Tolken's elves
Speaker 1: are something different than like the the ideas of the
Speaker 1: fair folk or even the Tuatha de dan and uh
Speaker 1: that that you find in 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 humans, but they're they're like
Speaker 1: 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 an Orkneus altogether. Now, Um, speaking of the idea
Speaker 1: of of orc is being related to sea monsters, I
Speaker 1: of course poked up Orc in Carol Roses, Giants, Monsters
Speaker 1: and Dragons, one of my favorite books to to look
Speaker 1: up various creatures and just uh and and actually she
Speaker 1: has another book related to fairies. In the Fairy Book,
Speaker 1: she has a listing for for Orc, just saying it's
Speaker 1: one of Tolkien's creations, very short, not much to it.
Speaker 1: In the Monster's 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 sev 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
Speaker 1: furios So. It means something like Orlando's frenzy or something.
Speaker 1: Uh So, So, Orlando is the hero of the story
Speaker 1: and he slays I think he slays a lot of
Speaker 1: monsters in it. Um, but I looked it up in
Speaker 1: Orlando Furios. So it's in Canto seventeen that the the
Speaker 1: Orco monster is mentioned, And so I want to read
Speaker 1: from the William Stewart Rose translation. So, Uh, we get
Speaker 1: the narration, while with much solace, seated and around we
Speaker 1: from the chase, expect our lord's return approaching us along
Speaker 1: the shore, astound the orc, that fearful monster we discern
Speaker 1: God grant fair sir. He never may confound your eyesight
Speaker 1: with his semblance, foul and stern. Better it is of
Speaker 1: him by fame to hear than to behold him by
Speaker 1: approaching near to calculate the grizzly monster's height, so measureless
Speaker 1: is he exceeds all skill of fungus hue. In place
Speaker 1: of orbs of sight, their sockets two small bones, like
Speaker 1: berries fill towards us. As I say, he speeds out
Speaker 1: right along the shore and seems a moving hill, tusks
Speaker 1: jutting out like savage swine. He shows abreast with drivel,
Speaker 1: foul and pointed nose. Okay, so what do we know
Speaker 1: about this monster? Uh? He's too tall to calculate his height.
Speaker 1: No one has the skill to calculate how high he is,
Speaker 1: and that that makes it sound like he must be
Speaker 1: like leaving the atmosphere. Um. He also has he's a
Speaker 1: fungus hue, and I guess there are fungus is of
Speaker 1: a lot of different hues, and he in place of eyeballs,
Speaker 1: he has bones that are like berries. Now, up until
Speaker 1: that point, I'm definitely picturing what I think this is.
Speaker 1: But then the tusks kind of throw it off because
Speaker 1: the tust sound like more something you would see oll
Speaker 1: for seen, you know, an actual tusk see creature, but
Speaker 1: also in the fabulous u Chi miracle 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: because it does seem to be there is a connection here.
Speaker 1: So when you read this, I could not help but
Speaker 1: picture the orca, the killer whale, you know, because there's
Speaker 1: something about like, you know, the fungus hue uh in
Speaker 1: place of orbs of side imagining those big white eye
Speaker 1: spots that are of course not their eyes, even though
Speaker 1: it's it's almost impossible to look at a killer whale
Speaker 1: and not think of that as their eyes. Their eyes
Speaker 1: are actually much you know, smaller, Um, And are there
Speaker 1: those big eye spots I think actually make killer whales
Speaker 1: cuter than they otherwise they look less like the like
Speaker 1: the vicious wolves of the sea that they are. Um.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, there's this connection between orcus and or
Speaker 1: kinnis orca that's the scientific name for killer whales, or kinness,
Speaker 1: meaning belonging to orcas or simply the kingdom of the dead. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Roman idea of orc orco sea monsters was or
Speaker 1: became associated with the killer whale. Yeah. I guess that's right.
Speaker 1: And and I want to be clear. I think a
Speaker 1: minute ago we we describe the killer whale as vicious,
Speaker 1: which we don't mean in a in a negative moral sense,
Speaker 1: but we do mean in a descriptive sense about like
Speaker 1: their behavior as they prey on sharks, which is just awesome. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there as when concerning um orcas and their their natural prey.
Speaker 1: I think viciousness is a well deserved adjective. Watch any
Speaker 1: nature documentary about their their hunting of baby whales, and
Speaker 1: you will agree. Um, But then again, hey, it's that
Speaker 1: that's the world. They're just doing their part in it.
Speaker 1: The blessings of milk or all right. On that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a break, but when we come
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about works than all right, we're back now.
Speaker 1: There are certainly a number of ways to crunch the
Speaker 1: idea of an orc that the of Tolkien's Orc a
Speaker 1: humanoid other that is also not human. Insignificant ways. I
Speaker 1: have to come back to something that um, that author
Speaker 1: Terence Hawkins Um wrote about in his novel American Neolithic,
Speaker 1: of which there's a revised edition. Now. They believe it
Speaker 1: has to do with the Neanderthal surviving into into modern days.
Speaker 1: But there's this wonderful line where the Neandertal character is
Speaker 1: speaking to the reader and says, quote, you for whom
Speaker 1: we have always been the other, our existence buried deep
Speaker 1: in your racial memories, since the time when glaciers girdled
Speaker 1: the world and the contest between man and animal was
Speaker 1: yet to be decided. We haunt your legends as we
Speaker 1: haunt your dreams, misshapen versions of yourself bad copies formally
Speaker 1: Cobalds or Grimlin now more locks and orcs, um so,
Speaker 1: so in this line, basically it's uh, the idea is that, uh,
Speaker 1: there might be some connection between the idea of orcs
Speaker 1: or more locks or other type beings and maybe the
Speaker 1: notion that humans did live alongside Neanderthals for a period
Speaker 1: of time and played at least some role in their destruction, well,
Speaker 1: depending on how you define destruction, because of course we
Speaker 1: do see the disappearance of the Neanderthal as a distinct
Speaker 1: branch of the homogeneous but also it does appear that
Speaker 1: Homo sapiens and Neanderthals also intermingled. Yeah, we went to
Speaker 1: let's see, we went a good deal into this in
Speaker 1: our Almost Cannibals episode because we're basically there was one
Speaker 1: point we were discussing the idea of cannibalism by neander
Speaker 1: Dolls by early humans, and you see examples of cannibalism
Speaker 1: in both groups. But there's less evidence to suggest that, say,
Speaker 1: humans aid all the neander dolls or the neander eight humans.
Speaker 1: Um I mean it. Basically, there are a number of
Speaker 1: open questions about what exactly happened between Neanderthals and humans.
Speaker 1: To what extent anything happened. Um. A lot of sources
Speaker 1: seem to indicate that there was There was probably at
Speaker 1: least a competition for resources, if not something more you know, nefarious, uh,
Speaker 1: with of course than the inder 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 that, and that is that that
Speaker 1: is our tendency to dehumanize due to xenophobic, nationalistic, uh
Speaker 1: and or racist attitudes and and this is an issue
Speaker 1: that certainly comes up in the consideration of orcs. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think one of the most difficult things when you
Speaker 1: dig into the history 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 if nothing else, you confront
Speaker 1: the you know, the basic idea that that these that
Speaker 1: monsters always emerge from, if not one particular time, they
Speaker 1: emerge out of different times. And and token's orcs especially,
Speaker 1: I mean they're emerging out of twentieth century Europe, you know,
Speaker 1: out of the 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 that zombie fiction has been so
Speaker 1: so successful is that it presents a completely um, you know,
Speaker 1: ethically acceptable in any that can just be eradicated without
Speaker 1: any second consideration. Um And I think that you know,
Speaker 1: you remember when we did um the episode about daydreaming,
Speaker 1: and one of the studies we looked at discovered that
Speaker 1: one of the most common things that people daydream about
Speaker 1: is they just sort of fantasize about violent conflict 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 The Lord of the Rings, there's
Speaker 1: part where sam Wise gamge Uh he recognized as a
Speaker 1: fallen soldier from the other side, from somebody who's fighting
Speaker 1: for Saron, but is a human fighting for Saron one
Speaker 1: of the for one of the men from Harad, And
Speaker 1: sam Wise looks at him and he feels bad. He says,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, you know, was this man really evil
Speaker 1: or what kind of lies or threats brought him here
Speaker 1: so far from home? And wouldn't he rather be living
Speaker 1: at peace? That's interesting. It's a kind of strange moment
Speaker 1: where suddenly, out of this otherwise kind of manicheean uh
Speaker 1: good versus evil war fantasy war with a with a
Speaker 1: non human enemy, suddenly there's this this breakthrough where one
Speaker 1: of the characters on the supposed good side thinks, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, aren't the people on the other side humans too?
Speaker 1: Aren't they you know? Don't they have lives? Don't they
Speaker 1: have moral complexities behind their story? This is one of
Speaker 1: the things that you see time and time again in
Speaker 1: in this discussion. And I do want to I want
Speaker 1: to drive home that this is a This has been
Speaker 1: a topic of of continual consideration by token scholars and
Speaker 1: literary cultural scholars alike, both in reference to the original
Speaker 1: works and you know, the original writings Jared Tolken and
Speaker 1: these various film are incarnations because on one hand, yeah,
Speaker 1: like there's this idea if you read um uh you know,
Speaker 1: like in our our cold opening, this idea of the
Speaker 1: Orcs is just this purely inhuman thing, just made out
Speaker 1: of savagery. Uh you know that, Like that sounds more
Speaker 1: in keeping with a zombie myth, right, just like no
Speaker 1: ethical problems at all. But but along the lines of
Speaker 1: this example of a human fighting for Sara, and there
Speaker 1: are plenty of examples in the Lord of the Rings
Speaker 1: where Tolken does engage in a certain humanization of the Orcs,
Speaker 1: like they're given some sense of individuality. I believe they're
Speaker 1: you know, scenes where they've been taken captives by their
Speaker 1: works and their overhearing or conversations. Uh yeah, Maryan Pippen
Speaker 1: when they're kidnapped by the Orcs, they sort of interact
Speaker 1: with the orcs in a way that suggests to me
Speaker 1: at least that the orcs are sentient. You know, they're
Speaker 1: they're not like, they're not like robots, you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're not just evil killing machines, like they've got motivations
Speaker 1: of their own. So that makes everything a lot more complicated.
Speaker 1: Everything we're about to talk about a little more complicated.
Speaker 1: Um now, we can't possibly cover the entire discourse on
Speaker 1: this topic. It looks like there's some very good sources
Speaker 1: out there that you can find. I ran across a
Speaker 1: book that I've is cited in a source that I'm
Speaker 1: going to mention by Demitra Fimi, titled Token Race and
Speaker 1: Cultural History, that is supposedly quite good. But some of
Speaker 1: the key issues that are often brought up about orcs
Speaker 1: are that orcs are clearly described as having dark skin,
Speaker 1: Orcs are described as being quote unquote slant eyed, And
Speaker 1: there's this sense that, yeah, orcs are human shaped and
Speaker 1: are more or less human like, but then they are
Speaker 1: also less than human or described as less than human.
Speaker 1: And it is often suggested that like, you know, nothing
Speaker 1: but brutal violence, it's against the orcs. Is is permissible
Speaker 1: and that you know that that is that they should
Speaker 1: just be eradicated by the higher um uh species of
Speaker 1: Middle Earth. And I mean some of this I think
Speaker 1: might be as getting back to the oken Um duality here.
Speaker 1: I think part of it is just by if you
Speaker 1: start telling stories about something, you're gonna end up humanizing it.
Speaker 1: So I can see where you could start with your
Speaker 1: with your you know you're just completely um, you know,
Speaker 1: irredeemable enemy. But then you you can't help but but
Speaker 1: but but humanize it a bit in the same way
Speaker 1: that Um, say, like in Um in the Clone Wars,
Speaker 1: you know, you have the Droid army. The droids are
Speaker 1: like a great example of an enemy army that is
Speaker 1: set up to be easily and dispatched without any ethical quandaries.
Speaker 1: And you still see this kind of creep in Clone
Speaker 1: Wars uh storytelling, in which you'll you'll end up sympathizing
Speaker 1: with the droids. You know you can't help, but but
Speaker 1: apply uh, you know, sort of human characteristics to the
Speaker 1: droids at times. Now, one of the works I was
Speaker 1: looking at for this is um a paper by Robert T.
Speaker 1: Talley Jr. Uh Let us now praise famous orcs simple
Speaker 1: humanity and tokens in human creatures. This was published in
Speaker 1: myth lower Back in two and um he he looks
Speaker 1: at at both sides of the of the discussion here
Speaker 1: basically now, Tally ultimately does not himself accused Tolken of racism,
Speaker 1: but he does outline much of the evidence that can
Speaker 1: be cited in such a charge, admitting quote it is
Speaker 1: true that no one can read about the quote Swart
Speaker 1: and quote slant eyed Orc so many times without becoming offended.
Speaker 1: And he also points out that Tolkien himself notoriously wrote
Speaker 1: in one of his letters quote the Orcs are definitely
Speaker 1: stated to be corruptions of the human form seen in
Speaker 1: elves and men. They are or were squat broad, flat nosed,
Speaker 1: sallow skin, with wide mouths and slant eyes. In fact
Speaker 1: degraded in repulsive versions of the two Europeans least lovely
Speaker 1: Mongol types. That is not a good sentiment. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: according to Anderson Ririk, the third in why is the
Speaker 1: only good orcadel Orc published in MFS Modern Fiction Studies.
Speaker 1: UH Tolkien's friend C. S. Lewis even made passing minh
Speaker 1: And 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: Tolkien'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 Mordor. But that's interesting as well. I've also
Speaker 1: seen it argued that this sort of view of the
Speaker 1: racial enemy tied up with the orc was also readily
Speaker 1: exhibited in World War One and World War two propaganda
Speaker 1: against both Germans and the Japanese, where you see like
Speaker 1: a monstrous racial version of the enemy depicted in propaganda posters.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, we're talking about an
Speaker 1: era of eugenics, ideas of racial purity. Um. All that
Speaker 1: going on in the background, and this is ultimately again
Speaker 1: the world that these works emerge from. UM now fimi
Speaker 1: UM concludes, according to to Tally, that that Tolkien quote
Speaker 1: objectionable racial uh characterizations are consistent with the discourse of
Speaker 1: his time, and in in any event, consistent with the
Speaker 1: quote hierarchical world in which his mythic history unfolds. Now
Speaker 1: that being said, I don't think that makes it any
Speaker 1: easier for modern readers or viewers. You know, once you
Speaker 1: start focusing on these these elements, once you start you know,
Speaker 1: noticing them in your your reading of the tax or
Speaker 1: the viewing of the movies that spawned from them, you know,
Speaker 1: you see modern adaptations dealing with this in in almost
Speaker 1: diametrically opposed ways, right, um, because one way you could
Speaker 1: deal with it is to try to embrace even harder
Speaker 1: the distinctions that would make you know, whatever kind of
Speaker 1: like monster enemy and it is it is clearly not human.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to go full zombie or full
Speaker 1: robot uh, to suggest that like, no, no, no, the
Speaker 1: orcs can't be. They're not a metaphor for like in
Speaker 1: 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 there 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: hope should be afforded to all sentient creatures. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's I guess that's that's the ambiguity of it that
Speaker 1: makes it difficult, and um, you know, and it's also
Speaker 1: I would say with Tolkien it doesn't seem to be
Speaker 1: nearly as as clear cut of situation as we have
Speaker 1: to say with HP. Lovecraft, you know who, we have
Speaker 1: such you know, damning examples of racist sentiment in his
Speaker 1: in his private letters. And then and then when you
Speaker 1: look at his works of fiction in light of those letters,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's, um, you know, you can't
Speaker 1: ignore these elements in his work. Um, you know told
Speaker 1: Tolkien's writings certainly have been accused of containing wrong or
Speaker 1: outmoded attitudes to ray with the works very much at
Speaker 1: the center of all of 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. Uh,
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 sam 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 two prime examples, have been characterized as
Speaker 1: monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of
Speaker 1: how real world ethnic groups have been and continue to
Speaker 1: be denigrated. That's just not right, and it's not something
Speaker 1: 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: far word facing commitment to betraying Orcs and drought as
Speaker 1: quote just as morally and culturally complex as other people's,
Speaker 1: which which I think is is a way to go,
Speaker 1: especially considering and Orcs and drought have such a prominent
Speaker 1: role in Duns and Dragons of storytelling, the drought being
Speaker 1: the dark elves of the Undertark. Yeah, the more I
Speaker 1: think about it, the more I think that the clear
Speaker 1: dividing line, really, I guess would have to be sentience, right,
Speaker 1: that there there was an idea here, maybe in older
Speaker 1: versions of D and D apparently somewhat ambiguously represented in
Speaker 1: in The Lord of the Rings, that there are some
Speaker 1: types of people or types of creatures that are sentient
Speaker 1: they're thinking beings like us, but they are also wholly evil,
Speaker 1: and in a way that's just sort of that's sort
Speaker 1: of self contradictory, right, Like, you know, a sentient being
Speaker 1: couldn't be as an entire people wholly evil because their
Speaker 1: sentience 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 and my
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?
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 if 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 convention of
Speaker 1: having uh, various types of fantasy storytelling in which there
Speaker 1: is some kind of conflict and the enemy of the
Speaker 1: heroes is an army of monsters. But I guess that
Speaker 1: mindset has its its place within fiction as just the
Speaker 1: 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. Thank thank Alright, we're back. So let's
Speaker 1: let's move back to the in universe concept of the
Speaker 1: Orc 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 have mentioned on the
Speaker 1: show before, and heck he's been on the show a
Speaker 1: couple of times, hasn't he. But he wrote this Second
Speaker 1: Apocalypse SOCCO, which takes a lot of inspiration from Tolkien,
Speaker 1: but applies a different, uh philosophical and at times science
Speaker 1: fictional limbs to everything. And in the place of orcs,
Speaker 1: he presents these creatures that are called the Shrunk, which
Speaker 1: are described as one of the the quote unquote weapon
Speaker 1: races that were engineered by the big batties in this series,
Speaker 1: the the alien in Karai. So these are depraved like
Speaker 1: thoroughly inhuman creatures from another world that they an cry
Speaker 1: and they've taken members of the elf like non men
Speaker 1: uh in this world, and they've used the technique or
Speaker 1: the old science to twist them into savage creatures of
Speaker 1: the basest and most violent instinct often described 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: this 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 were indeed the you know, the Inkari or a
Speaker 1: dark lord of Middle Earth, it makes sense, I guess,
Speaker 1: to create such servants. Uh. And indeed, this whole concept
Speaker 1: it probably gets closer to the idea of like a
Speaker 1: zombie army, or a droid army, or a subservient reanimated
Speaker 1: skeleton army, you know, something that is just purely the
Speaker 1: tool of the great adversary. Well, yeah, and tying into
Speaker 1: something I was talking about earlier, it seems to me significant,
Speaker 1: probably the most significant thing that they are imagined as
Speaker 1: as basically being not sentient or not able to reflect
Speaker 1: on their own behavior, which I mean at that point
Speaker 1: it does seem like that being probably does lack whatever
Speaker 1: it is that that we think of as most significant
Speaker 1: to be human, right, like, if you know you're you're
Speaker 1: not capable of reflecting on your own behavior. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and the with Baker's work, Yeah, there's this idea first
Speaker 1: of all, that it is not conscious. He's you know,
Speaker 1: he's going to tell you of a creature's conscious or not.
Speaker 1: It's kind of his whole thing. But then also the
Speaker 1: idea that they are definitely engineered. They're a thing that
Speaker 1: is created. They're a a new creation based on uh,
Speaker 1: you know, some designs or raw materials from this other species.
Speaker 1: You know. Peter Watts in the novel Eco Praxia, I
Speaker 1: recall imagine something like this. But it is a type
Speaker 1: of human soldier who has had their nervous system modified
Speaker 1: essentially so that they have the ability to at will
Speaker 1: turn off their consciousness during combat, essentially to become a
Speaker 1: more efficient killer. So the brain still works the same,
Speaker 1: except it's just not conscious while it's fighting. And apparently
Speaker 1: this makes you better at being a soldier interesting. Um. So,
Speaker 1: so I think these these are interesting ways to think
Speaker 1: of a particular like weapons species and a fantasy or
Speaker 1: sci fi context. But but I was also interested to
Speaker 1: see what else could be glean science wise from the
Speaker 1: Orcs of Middle Earth. So I turned to the book
Speaker 1: The Science of Middle Earth by Henry G who is
Speaker 1: himself a long time editor at the science journal Nature
Speaker 1: as well as a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist. And so
Speaker 1: he covers a great deal up from Middle Earth in
Speaker 1: this book, but beginning with the sixth chapter, he begins
Speaker 1: to discuss works a bit, and the sixth chapter is
Speaker 1: titled Inventing the Orcs. UM. He spends all a fair
Speaker 1: amount of time discussing some of what we've already discussed,
Speaker 1: like where do we get the word orc? What does
Speaker 1: it mean? It's ties into mythology. Uh. But he also
Speaker 1: points out, okay, let's let's talk about how how they're
Speaker 1: made and how they reproduce. So he starts by pointing
Speaker 1: out that there's a fair amount of incongruity concerning the
Speaker 1: origins of Eric Orcs and Tolken's Middle Earth. Um, you
Speaker 1: can look at various descriptions and cinematic depictions, uh that
Speaker 1: on one hand make them look like they're bread, and
Speaker 1: another it looks like they're created via torture. Um. And
Speaker 1: if it's torture, are we're talking about something that is more?
Speaker 1: Is this the way we're describing something that's being done
Speaker 1: to the body that can't be understood, like something like
Speaker 1: the technique, something like a sci fi genetic engineering or
Speaker 1: is it something psychological? Right? I seem to recalling the
Speaker 1: Peter Jackson movie that at least some of them, maybe
Speaker 1: this was only the Rakai or or maybe it was
Speaker 1: all of the Orcs, but somehow the servants of Saramon
Speaker 1: were being like grown out of the earth, like they
Speaker 1: came up out of the ground. Yeah. That that's and
Speaker 1: that's something that the g UH 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 work 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 Tolkien, and that is that we
Speaker 1: have in an orac 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 bunch withdrawals to
Speaker 1: the misty mountains, this one withdrawals to these waste lands
Speaker 1: 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 of 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: Oorcs 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? Like,
Speaker 1: 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 it orcs come
Speaker 1: from and how they reproduce it, it does 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 GHIMII 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 sex 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 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 of parentage, but there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of detail there, and certainly there are no scenes depicting it.
Speaker 1: So basically points out, well, if we're talking about evolution
Speaker 1: and and the biology the orc like sex is obviously
Speaker 1: an important part of the equation. But of course we
Speaker 1: have little or no evidence of Orc sex in the books. Um,
Speaker 1: which I don't know. This seems a little maybe nitpicky
Speaker 1: uh to to say, uh, But but because they're I
Speaker 1: don't know, they're apparently five references to Orc reproduction aside
Speaker 1: from discussion of creation or breeding by others, which G
Speaker 1: thinks is is miniscule, But to me that kind of
Speaker 1: sounds like a lot. I would if you had to
Speaker 1: if you asked me to guess how many references to
Speaker 1: Orc reproduction there are in the book, I would have
Speaker 1: guessed like maybe one. I would have just zo. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think they're I vaguely remember a passage where one
Speaker 1: character is talking about, well, the Orcs have been reproducing
Speaker 1: in the mountains. There are a lot of them, um
Speaker 1: like that would have been the only one that it
Speaker 1: would have come to my mind. Not only is there
Speaker 1: no mention of of of actual Orc sex, there's no
Speaker 1: mention of female Orcs. And this is perhaps more significant now. Naturally,
Speaker 1: this doesn't mean there were no female Orcs, nor does
Speaker 1: it mean that there was no Orc sex. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: no more than the absence of sex from the rest
Speaker 1: of the books mean that sex didn't exist for other
Speaker 1: species of Middle Earth. But he does point out that
Speaker 1: the idea, you know, that we could compare this to
Speaker 1: the idea of a purely manufactured Orc species much in
Speaker 1: the same way that the you know, the clones and
Speaker 1: the droids and star wars are are created, and it
Speaker 1: would this would actually be in keeping with the industrialized
Speaker 1: warfare of the world wars, you know, full of cognized
Speaker 1: artillery and this overall degregation of the individual soldier, as
Speaker 1: well as the overall quote emasculating effects of industrialization in
Speaker 1: the world. So, in other words, perhaps there's no female
Speaker 1: or or male work at all. There's only just neutral
Speaker 1: flesh machines that served this fallen god. You know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting that Tolkien was was very uh, he would very
Speaker 1: strenuously reject the idea that Lord of the Rings was
Speaker 1: an allegory for any particular war. Like, I think the
Speaker 1: 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, would
Speaker 1: probably be hard not to try to make that comparison
Speaker 1: in in like an epic struggle. But Tolkien always like
Speaker 1: he thoroughly rejected the idea that Lord of the Rings
Speaker 1: was an allegory for any particular historical events on Earth.
Speaker 1: You know, 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 more
Speaker 1: door war machine in has these tones that so resemble
Speaker 1: the 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: Gia pointed out in the book as well that there's
Speaker 1: an earlier version of The Lost Tail, the Fall of Gondolin,
Speaker 1: which features a siege not by Orcs and trolls, but
Speaker 1: by quote vast articulated fire breathing machines. Tolkien apparently later
Speaker 1: abandoned this idea in favor of living creatures you know
Speaker 1: that works the trolls, etcetera. But at least at one
Speaker 1: point there was this vision of the the Armies of
Speaker 1: More Door being like mechanical industrial creations. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think that's it's there in the book. Still. Even though
Speaker 1: the Orcs are biological in some way mythological biological, the
Speaker 1: the Armies of More Door, I think, are very much
Speaker 1: seen as like a sort of an industrializing wave of
Speaker 1: something that destroys the natural landscape and replaces it with
Speaker 1: industry and machinery and ash and smoke. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, it's and certainly you look at More Door
Speaker 1: and what is more Door, but this sort of geologic
Speaker 1: vision of like pure industrial dinm right, I mean, nothing,
Speaker 1: no trees grow there, you know, it's just like a
Speaker 1: it's it's a vast asphalt parking lot full of factories
Speaker 1: for weapons. Yeah, it's exports are war weapons and and
Speaker 1: volcanic ash. That seems to be it now, um, 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 that
Speaker 1: their own lycen. Yeah, maybe do suggests well, maybe orcs
Speaker 1: lay eggs. Maybe that's what it is. Uh. He ultimately says,
Speaker 1: you know, if if it's there are a number of
Speaker 1: different ideas you could propose, since there's no real discussion
Speaker 1: of it in the book, as long as it doesn't
Speaker 1: break anything else in the book. I mean, it's all
Speaker 1: kind of fair game. Like he has. He has some
Speaker 1: fun with the idea that perhaps it works our use
Speaker 1: social insects and there's like an unseen or queen that
Speaker 1: does all the egg production. Uh. And indeed he points
Speaker 1: out that the goblins of the Misty Mountains and the
Speaker 1: uh and the the Orcs of Maria behave much like
Speaker 1: an ant colony in some respects. That would be interesting.
Speaker 1: But again, I think in the few glimpses we do
Speaker 1: get into orc psychology, the orcs seem far too selfish
Speaker 1: and and individualistic to be used social uh animals, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, the like the individual worker ants own bodily
Speaker 1: existence matters quite little to it compare into, you know,
Speaker 1: protecting the queen and the reproductive possibilities of the hive.
Speaker 1: Individual orcs really do seem to sort of be in
Speaker 1: it for themselves when they can, you know, when they
Speaker 1: think they can get away with something. Yeah, that's absolutely now. Now.
Speaker 1: Another idea that he brings up is, okay, perhaps works
Speaker 1: reproduced by parthenogenesis or cloning. Uh, you know. He writes
Speaker 1: that this could work well, especially when you're thinking about
Speaker 1: the shrinking habitats that works have during their times of decline.
Speaker 1: But this would also mean that all orcs would inherently
Speaker 1: need to be female, which also might work with the
Speaker 1: fact that there's never any mention of male and female orcs.
Speaker 1: Orcs are kind of presented as sexless even though they're
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're described with with male terminology. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe we're just talking about on all female species. Maybe
Speaker 1: we're just getting the story told through the like paternalistic
Speaker 1: lens of how how the men and the elves view
Speaker 1: things could be. And speaking of elves, another thing that
Speaker 1: he brings up. Okay, if we go back to this
Speaker 1: other origins store, the idea that that that more goth
Speaker 1: or milk, or that they they basically like tortured the
Speaker 1: elves uh in order to make orcs. Well, he points
Speaker 1: out that, Okay, well if you just because you if
Speaker 1: you were to torture a bunch of elves and break
Speaker 1: them and like and so forth, and then have and
Speaker 1: breede them, you're still gonna You're not gonna produce orcs.
Speaker 1: You're gonna produce more elves, um, you know. And then
Speaker 1: certainly they could, you know, the the dark Lord could
Speaker 1: use this technique over time to you know, encourage orcs
Speaker 1: traits that you know, and you know, adapt to a
Speaker 1: hellish dungeon environment. But this would ultimately require periods of
Speaker 1: evolutionary time that are far beyond anything we're presented within
Speaker 1: the Middle Earth timeline. No, I mean, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a more mythological way of imagining how traits are established
Speaker 1: in a species. You know, it's it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: a magical lamarchianism. Yeah, and any rights that ultimately, Tolkien
Speaker 1: was of course more concerned well, certainly with with linguistic
Speaker 1: aspects of everything, like what does it mean that Orcs
Speaker 1: have a language that orc speak while they speak in
Speaker 1: a more primitive tongue, you know, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But then also Tolkien was more concerned with theological ramifications
Speaker 1: like what happens to the soul of the elf if
Speaker 1: it is made into an orc? You know, So there's
Speaker 1: this whole line of thinking as well. So all of
Speaker 1: this was far more on Tolkien's brain as opposed to
Speaker 1: you know, evolutionary biology. But what if everything in Middle
Speaker 1: Earth is actually a mushroom? Like absolutely everything, even the
Speaker 1: ants mushrooms? It's that I'll have to carry that with
Speaker 1: me on the next reread. Oh, I want to come
Speaker 1: back to I want to come back to ants, uh
Speaker 1: this October because I've got a I've got almost kind
Speaker 1: of like an evil INNT thing I want to do.
Speaker 1: Oh that sounds promising to me. So let's see. At
Speaker 1: this point, we've talked about you know, Orcs as a
Speaker 1: as a problem faced by the other species of Middle Earth.
Speaker 1: We've talked about problematic aspects of of of the Orc
Speaker 1: as a fictional creation. We've talked about the problems with
Speaker 1: orc reproduction or figuring out exactly what ORC reproduction consists of.
Speaker 1: But I understand you have you have one more or
Speaker 1: problem for us here, Joe. Well, so this only relates
Speaker 1: to Hobbits and Orcs in a completely arbitrary way, but
Speaker 1: it's actually I think it's maybe the most delightful of
Speaker 1: all the things that we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 1: So if you're a puzzle nerd, there's actually going to
Speaker 1: be a puzzle that you can pause the episode to
Speaker 1: try to solve, and this is going to be the
Speaker 1: Hobbits and Orcs problem. Now, my main source here is
Speaker 1: a chapter in the Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning,
Speaker 1: which is just the jolliest of reads, but it's actually
Speaker 1: more interesting than you might expect. That that sounds incredibly dry,
Speaker 1: it's only somewhat dry. But specifically I'm looking at a
Speaker 1: chapter on problem solving by Laura r. Novic who is
Speaker 1: at Vanderbilt University and Miriam Bassock, who is at the
Speaker 1: University of Washington. Both are psychology professors who study cognition
Speaker 1: and problem I'm solving. Now, the study of problem solving
Speaker 1: is actually a really fascinating field, or combination of fields.
Speaker 1: It's highly relevant to our lives, and I would say,
Speaker 1: to be fair, it encompasses. It encompasses actually at least
Speaker 1: two main questions that are very different from one another.
Speaker 1: One is a question primarily for mathematics and computer science,
Speaker 1: and this is the study of problem solving algorithms, such
Speaker 1: as those for search or sorting, and the study of
Speaker 1: which methods are actually the most efficient at solving different
Speaker 1: kinds of problems. The other question is one for psychology
Speaker 1: and cognitive neuroscience, which is, regardless of what methods are
Speaker 1: actually the most efficient, what do our brains tend to do?
Speaker 1: You know, when a human is faced with a problem,
Speaker 1: what kinds of algorithms and methods do we actually use
Speaker 1: in practice? So where do the orcs come in? Well,
Speaker 1: one puzzle that has been used to study human tendencies
Speaker 1: and problem solving is known as the Hobbits and Orcs problem,
Speaker 1: and it's a variation on the classic river crossing puzzle. Robert,
Speaker 1: have you ever done one of these where you know
Speaker 1: you've got a you've got a wolf and a sheep
Speaker 1: and a cabbage all together on one side of a river,
Speaker 1: and you've got to figure out how to get them across.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm talking about. Oh I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have a strong memory of this. Now, okay,
Speaker 1: well here's this version. Okay, we're gonna go to the
Speaker 1: Brandywine River, the one that that separates I believe bree
Speaker 1: from Buckland. Now at the Brandywine River, on the north
Speaker 1: side of the river, you've got three Hobbits and three Orcs,
Speaker 1: and your goal is to get all six creatures across
Speaker 1: the river to the other side. Now there's a boat
Speaker 1: that you can use to ferry them across, but there
Speaker 1: are a couple of major limitations. First of all, the
Speaker 1: boat can only hold two creatures at a time, and
Speaker 1: there always has to be at least one creature at
Speaker 1: least one Hobbit or Orc in the boat in order
Speaker 1: to row it, So you can't send the boat across
Speaker 1: the river empty. Second, you can never leave hobbit in
Speaker 1: a 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 read 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, Novic and Basok
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 ind 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: and armor Ad in two thousand four, who found that
Speaker 1: people naturally use the hill climbing heuristic in a task
Speaker 1: that involved sorting coins into a particular order. What you
Speaker 1: probably do is just like keep moving the coins in
Speaker 1: a way that makes them look closer to the final
Speaker 1: order they're supposed to be in until you get there.
Speaker 1: In the context of the Hobbits and Orcs game, hill
Speaker 1: climbing would mean that at each stage you just try
Speaker 1: to find whatever legal move will get the most creatures
Speaker 1: to the goal side of the river and off of
Speaker 1: the starting side of the river without breaking the rules.
Speaker 1: And studies have found that people do use the hill
Speaker 1: climbing heuristic to generate steps when solving the Hobbits and
Speaker 1: Orcs problem, and for the most part it works. But
Speaker 1: also two studies by Thomas and Greeno, both in nineteen
Speaker 1: four found that people hit a major roadblock around step
Speaker 1: number seven or eight in the game because, as an
Speaker 1: Ovic and Bassac right quote, the correct move at this
Speaker 1: point in fact, the only 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: or 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 Novic can Bassa
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 or
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 times,
Speaker 1: you reach what's known as false peaks, which are places
Speaker 1: that seem like the peak as you're ascending until you
Speaker 1: get there, and then you realize that you are only
Speaker 1: at the local highest altitude and there's actually a higher
Speaker 1: peak just over here. And this means that it really
Speaker 1: pays to think about what problem solving methods you're using
Speaker 1: without realizing it, whether and whether those methods are the
Speaker 1: best suited to the kind of problem you're facing. The
Speaker 1: hill climbing hereist it can be very useful for problems
Speaker 1: in which the solution space could be represented as a
Speaker 1: kind of single peak, like one mountain and an otherwise
Speaker 1: flat plain with an unobstructed slope. If the solution space
Speaker 1: is like that, then basically, yeah, you just keep trying
Speaker 1: 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 it 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
Speaker 1: is sometimes when I'm writing, I'm I'm working on a
Speaker 1: paragraph or a page or something that just does not
Speaker 1: feel right, Like I know it is not going right,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to fix it by tinkering around with
Speaker 1: word choice and junk like that, when in actuality, the
Speaker 1: best path to my goal will be, of course, to
Speaker 1: just delete what I have and start over in a
Speaker 1: different way. Yeah, sometimes I I think I encounter this
Speaker 1: when I'm Then I'm when I'm painting, like if I'm
Speaker 1: working on a miniature, and like you reach that point
Speaker 1: where I mean, I guess with the miniature it's it's
Speaker 1: sometimes harder. I mean, yeah, you can, you can just
Speaker 1: paint over everything and apply a new base pay code.
Speaker 1: You can use something to to strip the existing paint
Speaker 1: off of it. But like, like sometimes you're kind of
Speaker 1: continuing to work with the same problems that you've created
Speaker 1: for yourself on a you know, as far as a
Speaker 1: particular detail, and the figure goes, yeah, you're stuck on
Speaker 1: the local hill, when what you really need to do
Speaker 1: is go all the way down and find a different hill. Yeah, probably,
Speaker 1: like get a new figure and a new copy of
Speaker 1: the same figure and begin again. Yeah yeah. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: some ways around this in computer science can involve algorithms
Speaker 1: that insert various kinds of random leaps or random steps
Speaker 1: in sampling to make sure that you're actually moving toward
Speaker 1: the global solution rather than the local solution. And in
Speaker 1: a way I think this is this is sort of
Speaker 1: the algorithmic way of characterizing what we would call outside
Speaker 1: the box thinking, you know, thinking that lands on strategies
Speaker 1: that may take you pretty far away from the local
Speaker 1: peak in order to possibly find out that there is
Speaker 1: a much higher peak somewhere else, and a certain amount
Speaker 1: of randomness or willingness to be apparently counterproductive at least
Speaker 1: for the moment, can go a long way, and this
Speaker 1: is clearly what's been found like in in these studies
Speaker 1: using the Hobbits and Orcs problem, because it's like people
Speaker 1: really get stuck at the part that the part that
Speaker 1: they have the hardest time figuring out is the part
Speaker 1: where you have to move multiple pieces away from your
Speaker 1: in state in order to actually get there. Coincidentally, I
Speaker 1: think the dangers represented by the hill climbing heuristic are
Speaker 1: actually played out in literal topography in The Hobbit and
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings. For example, I recall in Fellowship
Speaker 1: of the Ring there's a lot of frustration about the
Speaker 1: straightest paths to more door being blocked, such as when
Speaker 1: they try to they try to go across the Red
Speaker 1: Horn pass of Kara Dress and they're blocked by bad weather,
Speaker 1: forcing them to backtrack and go a different way, even
Speaker 1: though you know they probably should have backtracked earlier, but
Speaker 1: they're they're stuck trying to go this way because it's
Speaker 1: where they already are. And I can't recall another specific passage,
Speaker 1: but it seems like they're more problems in the two Towers,
Speaker 1: you know, like uh, Frodo and Sam having to go
Speaker 1: down to go up, or having to go back to
Speaker 1: go forward and so forth. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm remembering
Speaker 1: that now. So anyway, keep the Hobbits and Orcs in mind.
Speaker 1: If you're stuck on a problem, consider are are you
Speaker 1: hill climbing? Are you refusing to send your Hobbit and
Speaker 1: Orc back across the river even though that's what you
Speaker 1: have to do? Yeah, that's interesting. I don't think i'd
Speaker 1: heard of this before. Um, but now now I guess
Speaker 1: I'll think of all problems in my life as being
Speaker 1: uh ones where it works might potentially eat me, or
Speaker 1: one where you're the orc and you're gonna fill up
Speaker 1: on Hobbit and ruin your dinner. You don't want to
Speaker 1: do that? All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and
Speaker 1: call this, uh this episode here. Um. Obviously we didn't
Speaker 1: get to, you know, get into everything about orcs within
Speaker 1: Tolkien's creations or within creations that have you know, come
Speaker 1: 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 of thoughts on on anything here
Speaker 1: related to Tolkien scholarship to you know, how we use
Speaker 1: orcs and popular culture. You know what, why we're fascinated
Speaker 1: 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 podcasts 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 producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact.
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