A Neural Storm in an Electric, Invisible Teapot

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Yes; while I'm not an expert in that area, I'm a little overwhelmed about the wide array of beliefs. The Physical Force, however, is much more straightforward, in that it dispenses with any notion of the Force's will, and is not concerned about destiny either"

[member="Ultimatum"] suspected as much: he, too, seemed to have a variety of interactions with other Force-users of various denominations. And she knew that Force-users often came with highly variable Force-usage profiles. For example, Honoko, whom she trained in part before returning to Asop, was a little challenged in using the pneuma, even though the other two were not issues to her. On the other hand, mentalists tended to be stronger in it, irrespective of the other two. Jessica was perhaps more focused on the aperion even though she could use the other two without much trouble. Sometimes, however, some people used an alternate classification of ichor: Sense, Alter and Control, but that classification was typically associated with the Physical Force. To her, these six categories of ichor formed operators that commuted between each other, which meant they could be measured simultaneously. Just that there was only a minority that were interested in furthering their knowledge and understanding of the Force itself, as opposed to their uses.

"And, of course, there is also the question of the Force's morality; personally I believe the Force does not have an intrinsic morality, and I know others believe as much regardless of whether or not the Force has a will of its own, or individual objects have destinies"

 

[Ultimatum]

The droid wondered about these different beliefs. It truly was a religion in that regard. The multitude of beliefs that even among supposed allies put people at odds. Ultimatum had no doubt that Jedi would put aside such differences when put into a difficult position, however he was equally certain that the minor differences would cause some friction. That was a weakness that could be exploited, though Ultimatum hoped that he would not see the day such a weakness was used against them.

"I agree that the Force is lacking in the qualities that suggest it has a sentience to it. But then there area such things as incoporeal beings that can affect the real world, what is to say that the Force is not that on an extreme scale?" That was a theory the droid had not contemplated before. As with the strange Force ghosts, a being of immense power might be the entirety of the Force. But then there was still the lack of proper sentience within the Force that suggested nothing of the sort.

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"Or maybe a non-sentient species, or a whole biological kingdom of incorporeal non-sentients"

However appealing the theory that the Force could be a biological kingdom of incorporeal non-sentients could be, reconciling it with the quantum dice would be difficult at best, she thought. Sure, the early history of the dark side was peppered with schisms due to beliefs, the Force Wars of Tython, the Hundred-Year Darkness. Today the one thing that would limit the damage caused by internal ideological disputes regarding beliefs related to the nature of the Force itself, is the limited attention paid to the nature of the Force. Yes, [member="Ultimatum"] was right that some Jedi seemed to have disagreements about beliefs in the Force (and the same would presumably hold true of Sith among each other), just that most of those disputes don't make it to the public eye anymore. So, at this point, Jessica would simply talk about how the Force is a collection of quantum fields, each of which rolls dice, until proven otherwise. But the hard part of settling these disputes is proving, or disproving, any given Force-theory. Thus far there has been no progress made even with funding that seemed to be readily available for such endeavors. Yet the day any evidence to the contrary would come has not yet arrived, just that she needed to be prepared for the day where it would, in fact, arrive.

 

[Ultimatum]

She was quite right, they could theorize all day, and there would be no definite answer. That was the facet of theory in general that often lent itself to pointlessness. Especially in this case, there was no exact way to prove these theories at this point. Perhaps someday in the future, Force studies would become so advanced that these potentials could be examined and an actual answer could be formulated. However, that also remained little more than an idea. Jedi and Sith were the primary Force adherents and most of them did not study the Force in such a manner. Their focus was more on how they could use the Force. That was not necessarily a bad thing, but it did take away from the potential long term studies that could be done.

"Of course, if such things did exist, there would have been some indication by this time, correct? The Jedi have studied the Force for millennia and I would be surprised if little of that was aimed at the origin and nature of the Force."

[member="Jessica Med-Beq"]

 

[Jessica Med-Beq]

"That's, unfortunately, as far as I know the various theories about the origin and nature of the Force"

Jessica might have known a poodoo-load of stuff that other Force-users wouldn't even dream of knowing, or in some cases able to understand at all, and [member="Ultimatum"] knew as much. The droid was very lucky to have had a genius for a Jedi master. And yes, there were very clear advantages for one to possess a very good memory but hers was just not good enough to cause problems that weren't specific to a certain set of events. For those people with so-called perfect and/or eidetic memories she heard about, mental overload can become problematic. Hallucinations in the more extreme cases, but even though some historical stereotypes presented people with such memories as having high intellect, and maybe even genius-level (Janick is perhaps the highest-profile of the gang alive that possessed a so-called perfect memory, and Jessica knew that witch was just as bright as she herself was, so anything fluid intellect-related that applied to Janick, applied to Jessica as well), in the end, every single of them is limited in what their memories contained. So as much as Jessica acknowledged that organics could be distinguishable by the content of their memories...

"For what I know, I feel the need to ask if you feel Jedi seem to be, collectively speaking, attempting to do too many things at once and if you feel they suffered because of a scope of duty that could be too wide"