Jiro comments on Use the Try Harder, Luke - Less Wrong

59 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 October 2008 10:52AM

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Comment author: Jiro 20 July 2014 03:14:06AM 2 points [-]

(Yes, I know this is an old post.)

As a plot device, midichlorians do a fairly good job explaining why not just anyone can learn to be a Jedi, PROVIDED the munchkinny idea "inject midichlorians into wannabe Jedi" never occurs to anyone.

It seems fairly obvious to me that midichlorians are what you get when someone heard of mitochondria, and someone else renamed it because they realized that it wouldn't work that way with actual mitochondria.

You cannot, of course, give people mitochondria by injecting them. So I really wouldn't expect it to be possible to give people midichlorians by injection either.