Is Yoda Evil?

[Arphahat]

Originally Posted by Bone

I think he misses the point. Yoda's famous quote, "do or do not, there is no try" is not to say you shouldn't try. Instead, he puts the focus on the results of trying. Many people say they are trying, but are going in half-assed. Not committing. Clearly, Yoda believes in training, which is trying with a purpose, an end result. It's about the most confidence you can inspire by saying "the only thing you have to do to make this work, is to believe you can". Of course he is required to admonish Luke's "I don't believe it!" with "that is why you fail!".

If you watch the training scenes, Yoda IS giving positive feedback when Luke is getting better. He's just not falling for the "you're special no matter what" fallacy of giving positive feedback when someone is failing.

Yoda believed in democracy. He was on a council himself, and they came to decisions as a group.

I've seen so many people miss the point of the "try not" line. You are completely correct. Obviously, you are going to do things and not succeed some times, but the line talks about the attitude while "trying" to do something. Don't go into something believing that you can't do it, but you'll "try" because some old green dood is harassing you about it.

[Bone]

Thank you. Mr. Miyagi almost says the same thing. 'Either you karate do "yes" or karate do "no." You karate do "guess so," *squish* just like grape!'

[Krispy]

He has pointy ears. That's pretty evil.

[Lint of Death]

Yoda's actually presenting a more Taoist perspective with "Do or do not" than what the guy describes as "junior high school Zen." There is no "try" because there is no goal. Success and failure - even belief and disbelief - are completely irrelevant, Yoda intends to explain, there is only the action you take. You lift that X-Wing out of the muck, or you do something else like... like whine.

Yoda helps a lot! He saves Anakin and Obi-Wan's asses in Episode 2, battles the Emperor in 3, aides the war effort in both films, guides Qui-Gon in 1, and I'm sure there are examples in the original trilogy as well.

[Xerxes]

I don't think he'd have much respect for college zen either.

[Matthias]

The guy was an idiot when he said kids needed BASIC on computers to learn how to program, and he's an idiot for calling Yoda evil for emphasizing that "trying" doesn't matter if you get your hand cut off by a cyborg.

To rant a bit off-topic, there's nothing you can do in BASIC that can't be done in C or Ruby or Python, and all of those languages are readily available on any operating system your little heart could desire, with the internet providing dozens or hundreds of easily understandable tutorials, and communities built around helping newbies. On top of that, there are several great projects for designing child-friendly programming languages, from MIT's Scratch project to Lego Mindstorms, which is a full-blown systems programming language used in everything from the LHC to the SpaceX dragon, skinned to look big and friendly.

[Pale Ale]

Hyperbole for Clicks???


Bad Internet!!! BAD!!!

[Narradisall]

Pffft, he is a little hypocrit.

Do or do not, there is no try?

Tell that to him after he goes against the Emperor. He tries and then leaves when the fight isn't going his way then proclaims he failed! He didn't even try!

[Reverant]

You ever meet that one crazy guy on the bus that seems to have a vast knowledge of various topics, but everything he says makes you think ..."Wait a minute. That doesn't sound right at all."

That's what this dude reminds me of. The only thing more tiring than a nutball is an eloquent nutball

[Lint of Death]

Originally Posted by Narradisall

Pffft, he is a little hypocrit.

Do or do not, there is no try?

Tell that to him after he goes against the Emperor. He tries and then leaves when the fight isn't going his way then proclaims he failed! He didn't even try!

Incidentally, I never said I liked the Tao Te Ching. Having studied it recently I found it a garbage heap full of cons: condescensions, contradictions, and confidence tricks.

[VerseD]

Originally Posted by Lint of Death

Incidentally, I never said I liked the Tao Te Ching. Having studied it recently I found it a garbage heap full of cons: condescensions, contradictions, and confidence tricks.

I love the Tao Te Ching. It is like a grand koan to take us past the limits of our reason. When you get to the top of the mountain, keep climbing.

[Narradisall]

Well if you're trying to climb an imaginary incline, I guess you've gone well past reason at that point.

[Lint of Death]

Originally Posted by Narradisall

Well if you're trying to climb an imaginary incline, I guess you've gone well past reason at that point.

If reason were a conquering army, then the Tao would be a castle with a mile-deep moat half-filled with crocodiles and no drawbridge. And no gates. In the center of the Sun. No items. Final Destination.

Also, if you're trying to do anything, you've already failed. If this doesn't make any sense to you, it never will. Stop thinking about it.

[Narradisall]

Yet I added the trying in that phrase.

[Narradisall]

Originally Posted by Lint of Death

Incidentally, I never said I liked the Tao Te Ching. Having studied it recently I found it a garbage heap full of cons: condescensions, contradictions, and confidence tricks.

So.... religion then?

[Doogie2K]

Originally Posted by Matthias

...Lego Mindstorms, which is a full-blown systems programming language used in everything from the LHC to the SpaceX dragon, skinned to look big and friendly.

More specifically, Mindstorms is based on NI's LabView language, which, while common in academia and industry, can also be fucking horrendous to work with for "real" programming tasks beyond a certain level of complexity. But for messing with a little toy robot? Totally rad. (I have a Mindstorms kit at home that I have no time to play with. )

Unless there is literally Lego MindStorms shit in the LHC. That would be badass.

[Panthera]

Originally Posted by Narradisall

So.... religion then?

It is actually a religious text. Sort of. It's complicated.

[Matthias]

Originally Posted by Doogie2K

More specifically, Mindstorms is based on NI's LabView language, which, while common in academia and industry, can also be fucking horrendous to work with for "real" programming tasks beyond a certain level of complexity. But for messing with a little toy robot? Totally rad. (I have a Mindstorms kit at home that I have no time to play with. )

Unless there is literally Lego MindStorms shit in the LHC. That would be badass.

I disagree, but I also work on the LabVIEW compiler

I will say that I would have agreed with you about 18 months ago, but after seeing just how much some of our customers get done in G (the language used by the LabVIEW program), and just how much of our own IDE is written in G, it's pretty surprising. You just have to learn dataflow best practices, which isn't commonly taught. It certainly isn't the best language for every type of problem, but it's surprisingly capable. The biggest hurdle I see right now is that the largest chunk of our market is non-programmers who don't have time to learn programming and need to just ship something, and the next biggest chunk is traditional programmers who don't have time to learn a new paradigm.

Besides, it's almost certainly the all-around best way to work with real-time devices and FPGA, at least in my few years' experience. We just released a new device built for RF research and testing. It's entire software stack is written in G, which we make available to users, so they can completely rewrite everything down to the drivers to fit their needs. The thing blew our competitor's best box out of the water, with a 20x speed improvement and 1/3rd the error (apparently due mostly to drawing less power, and therefore polluting the RF spectrum less).

Plus, dataflow languages are inherently easier to parallelize with little to no programmer effort, so we can utilize multicore processors better than the average C library without our users even knowing what multicore is

Anyway, again, that's all off-topic, and I apologize.

[Wasson_]

...Yoda is a good guy.

all you need to know.

[JayVe]

Originally Posted by Wasson_

...Yoda is a good guy.

all you need to know.

Those Jedi are a bunch of liars.

Your father is dead!

Yoda! You seek Yoda! Take you to him I will.

I don't recall Vader ever lying...