Nerd Notes, June

Over the last couple months I watched Andor. I have a lot I could say about Andor because that show is both incredible and timely, but most of it has been said better by others already… there is, however, one thing I haven’t seen covered that is so instrumental to the show, so I’ll be the courageous one to ask:

The easy thing to do here is just to say, “hey, Star Wars always requires some willful suspension of disbelief.” But - for whatever reason - my brain is not willing to accept that and has been puzzling over any possible ways that there could be a society far more technologically advanced than ours that hasn’t deployed something that is relatively basic in our society. And, yes, part of the reason I’m so interested in this is because I feel like the continuing encroachment of facial recognition and video surveillance in general is a tragedy…though it’s worth noting - the Empire definitely does have video surveillance in spades, which makes the facial recognition thing all the more fascinating to me.

So let’s play with some theories…

• Theory 1: the Empire has video collection but not actually optical recognition capabilities. The first and most obvious objection to this goes allllllll the way back to the beginning in the first scene of the original Star Wars movie: there are self-navigating droids. How could they possibly self navigate without optical recognition? And this is where I want to pause a moment - before discarding this theory - to nerd out about the concept of Umwelt. If you’re not familiar with it, umwelt is a term for the sensory range and experience that a particular species possesses. I first learned about it in Ed Yong’s fantastic book An Immense World, and I’ve been thinking about it with regard to the umwelt of machines after reading Ray Naylor’s The Mountain in the Sea, in which he introduces this idea that we currently conceive of AI as having enhanced human umwelt, but it’s entirely possible to conceive of a machine that has its own unique umwelt that might draw from multiple species. With regard to Star Wars, we could easily imagine that the droids are navigating based on echolocation - similar to bats - and the things they have that we imagine as eyes are there to make us more socially receptive to them.

• Unfortunately, in one of the later episodes of Andor a droid is reading a playing card. This almost certainly requires pretty strong optical recognition. It may have happened in other scenes throughout the series, but this was the one that I saw while I had this idea kicking around in my brain.

• Theory 2: Poor systems integration. Prior to Palpatine’s takeover, it’s a Galactic Federation. Federations are usually comprised of bodies with significant amounts of autonomy. Maybe we’re just seeing the result of a highly fragmented system in which each planet has its own database, or proprietary file formats, or distinct data structures, and the Empire hasn’t been able to integrate it all into a single usable system.
  • I think this theory is entirely credible, except even with this level of complexity they could still probably put in the manpower to brute force a system to work for the most wanted criminals in the galaxy, and the show Andor makes it quite clear that Cassian Andor is one of those people. The fact that they never get a camera that recognizes him and flags it to their Galactic Control Center is just bizarre.
• Theory 3: Technical infeasibility in multi-species civilization. Let’s be real: even just for a single species on planet Earth - humans - our facial recognition capabilities still come up short. I have done a light perusing of the interwebz to see if I can find any examples of a facial recognition system that is working across multiple species at once. So far, I haven’t found any (send me examples if you have them!). So, imagine just how much more complex it is on a galactic scale where they’re dealing with dozens if not hundreds of different species, each of which would have to use a different facial recognition algorithm presumably, and that rests on the assumption that each of those species actually has distinct faces. If that assumption was found to be faulty, that may have been an area of study that was never deeply pursued because it was known that it would have limited utility.
  • Of all the theories, this one feels like the one that might actually make sense. The Galactic Empire doesn’t do facial recognition because it knows that it can’t recognize enough of the faces for the system to act as an effective deterrent. I’m going to go with that one.

But just for fun, I asked my buddy Claude about it. And aside from some “willful suspension of disbelief” answers, he made this point

Within the universe itself, there are a few possible explanations. The Empire seems to rely heavily on documentation and bureaucratic control - they're constantly asking for "papers" and identification codes rather than biometric scanning. This suggests their surveillance state operates more through institutional control than technological omnipresence. It's also worth noting that the Empire does have some recognition technology - they can identify ships through transponder codes and have various scanning systems.

^ This to me bolsters Theory 3. They aren’t using biometrics because it’s hard to standardize biometrics across species given how varied the unique biometric indicators could be from species to species, whereas the design of ships and communication systems all falls within the realm of “things created by living things” so can be standardized.

So I pressed Claude to go a little further and explain if there were any internally consistent explanations from within the Star Wars universe, and if you’ve read this far then you’re far enough down the rabbit hole with me to go a little farther. Please enjoy the following explanations:

Alien diversity challenges: The galaxy contains thousands of sentient species with vastly different facial structures, from humanoids to tentacled beings to energy creatures. A facial recognition system would need an impossibly vast database covering every species' variations, subspecies, and hybrid populations. The logistical nightmare of maintaining such a system across the galaxy might make it impractical.

Cybersecurity vulnerabilities: In a galaxy where slicing (hacking) is common and droids can be reprogrammed, facial recognition databases would be prime targets for Rebel infiltration. A compromised system could actually help insurgents by giving them access to Imperial security networks. The Empire might deliberately avoid centralized biometric systems to prevent catastrophic security breaches.

Cultural resistance: Many species and planets likely have strong cultural taboos against biometric scanning, viewing it as a violation of privacy or religious beliefs. The Empire, despite its authoritarianism, still needs to maintain some level of cooperation from member worlds. Implementing universal facial recognition could spark more widespread rebellion.

Force interference: The prevalence of Force-sensitive individuals might interfere with sophisticated scanning technology. We see throughout the series that the Force can influence minds and perceptions - perhaps it also creates "noise" in biometric systems, making them unreliable.

Resource allocation: The Empire prioritizes military might over domestic surveillance technology. They'd rather spend credits on Death Stars and Star Destroyers than on galaxy-spanning facial recognition infrastructure. Their approach is more about projecting overwhelming force than subtle monitoring.

Shapeshifters and disguise technology: With species like Clawdites who can naturally shapeshift, plus advanced holographic disguise technology, facial recognition might be easily defeated anyway, making the investment pointless.

And isn’t all of that a lot more satisfying than “willful suspension of disbelief”? I’m pretty sure if you’ve read this far then the answer is yes.

What happened at the North American Championship

We have to get in some Pokemon too, of course. There were 2 noteworthy things that happened at the North American International Championship…

In the Junior division, the finals was played between 2 siblings! This is not an inherently cute construct, but the 2 siblings in question - Annabelle and Kenji - really cranked the cute dial all the way to the max by showing up in matching Team Rocket attire, complete with matching finger nail polish, matching watches, and matching shocks of red hair dye. The only time juniors make it onto the stream is in the finals of International Championships, so 4 times a year…this usually means that nerves reign supreme, but these 2 were so comfortable playing against each other that it was a whole vibe.

In the Senior division, Gabriel Fernandez completed the perfect season. OK, technically, he probably needs to win the World Championship for that to be an official perfect season, but on the Champion Points leaderboard he had a perfect season. For World Championship qualification, each player gets their 5 best finishes from international and regional championships. Internationals are worth more points, but there are only 3 of them…so a perfect season would mean that a player has to win all 3 of the International Championships and win 2 Regional Championships. Here’s the last year of Gabriel Fernandez’s tournament finishes:

Not bad, right?

One last one…

I mentioned the Munkidori Froslass deck that both kids and I played for our final tournament of the season. If you want to see how it plays, here’s an example:

Funny enough, this deck is on the come up with the new Destined Rivals set because it got one huuuuuge addition with the Grimmsnarl…and, ironically, the fact that it has become super meta has made it a lot less interesting to me - but I have changed the deck in a way that Tommy says is stupid, but that I’m really enjoying…more to come?