## Pokémon :Origion of species doubt. * Author: u/user19911506 * * URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/8im7nh/pokémon_origion_of_species_doubt/ * Score: 3 * Created: 2018-05-11T08:37:14 ### Post: I have recently started Origin of species after seeing it's recommendations in this group , I had few doubts in the world. The main characters age is between 11 - 14 , but they still no about hypothesis testing, Bayes theorem and advanced statistical and mathematical model , should I think that this is the nature of the world or there is any other explanation. Another doubt is I did not fully understand that why a Pokémon listen to its trainers after getting caught, like are they brain washed in the poke ball ? ### Comments: > **u/DaystarEld** [+15] *Pokémon Professor* (8 hours later) > > Others have already done a good job of answering the questions here, but if you want my take on things, you can always check out my [FAQ](http://daystareld.com/pokemon/pokemon-faq/) and let me know if you have any more. > > Thanks for reading, and hope you've enjoyed it, even with the questions :) >> **u/user19911506** [+5] (10 hours later) >> >> Hey, Thanks for replying, I binged on the fan fic site and am eagerly waiting for the latest chapter, feel little sad that the waiting game has started >>> **u/DaystarEld** [+1] *Pokémon Professor* (11 hours later) >>> >>> Glad to hear it! And I know that feeling, there's like 6 other stories I'm playing it with now myself. >> **u/Gotu_Jayle** [+3] (11 hours later) >> >> The FAQ was a very entertaining read! Thank you, and much applause! >>> **u/DaystarEld** [+2] *Pokémon Professor* (19 hours later) >>> >>> Glad you enjoyed it! > **u/thrawnca** [+10] *Carbon-based biped* (2 hours later) > > Is this any more unreasonable than canon, where 11-12 year olds are sent out to wander around the world fighting and *collecting* monsters, including ghosts, sentient toxic sludge, and giant rock snakes? > **u/Krynaverion** [+9] (9 minutes later) > > I have to answer the age is something that bothers me as well and I replaced the age of the characters in my mind with being 15-17, which still sets the lead characters as genius-like, but matches their behavior better. >> **u/user19911506** [-2] (41 minutes later) >> >> Can you please clear why the Pokémon listens to its trainers once caught >>> **u/None** [+9] (an hour later) >>> >>> its explained in chapter four that the pokmon inside the pokeballs are trained with the use of virtual reality to listen to their trainers commands. >>>> **u/user19911506** [+1] (2 hours later) >>>> >>>> Sorry about multiple postings, internet issues > **u/RynnisOne** [+7] (8 hours later) > > Some people like to imagine how awesome it would be if Mon were real. All the cool things they could do, how the world would be different, etc, etc. > > I'd like to think that in such a universe, people would dream about a place where common animals couldn't breathe fire, summon storms, rewrite reality, or win a game of chicken with oncoming cars. A world where humans were at the apex of nature, a place where they could conceive of deities in their own image instead of God being a goat stuck in a fence. > > The kids are more advanced mentally due to evolutionary pressures. Sure, you COULD coddle your kids from a young age, but likely this would result in them being torn apart by a squirrel or eaten by a motile plant when they set off into the world. Those kids don't last long. Teaching them the fundamentals of raising Mon and sensing them out into the world early with friends is probably the best way to prepare them for life in a world full of Mon. It probably hearkens back to their ancestors who learned to domesticate or at least befriend Mon, because the ones that didn't were either killed off by the creatures or conquered by those who tamed them. > **u/tjhance** [+6] (10 hours later) > > in addition to the answers about why it might be realistic because X, Y, Z, I'll add that I actually am just fine reading stories with a conceit like "yeah, these kids are pretty smart, so what?" without much justification. Because I like rational fiction, I like reading stories about highly intelligent people with lots of agency talking about bayes theorem and the experimental method, so I just accept that yeah, the characters will do those things even if it needs to be a bit unrealistic to make that story happen. > > "unrealistically smart/mature characters" just isn't in the same bucket for me as being internally inconsistent or having unrealistic travel times or whatever. Although I do think it's great when a story goes an extra mile to justify why its characters are the way they are in an elegant way. >> **u/eaglejarl** [+2] (3 days later) >> >> Also, the modern concept that tweens are stupid and helpless is pretty recent. A few hundred years ago kids were married at 14 and running their own shops not much later. >>> **u/1573594268** [+2] (5 days later) >>> >>> I might be biased because I have teaching experience in a extra-curricular k-12 robotics program, but basically every day I volunteer with the program I receive strong evidence that the vast majority of people underestimate the intellectual capacity of younger people. >>> >>> I've seen students in the 12-15 year range excel beyond many adults in programming, mechanical engineering, business development, and programming. The only difference is the students are in an environment conducive to testing and developing their skills in a way that they find rewarding and entertaining. >>> >>> I have no doubt that the 14 year old student I had the pleasure of working with who developed the team's award winning artificial intelligence system would theoretically have the intellectual capacity to succeed in many of the environments we see younger protagonists in, especially if forced to do so by some situation. >>> >>> --- >>> >>> I think the thing that makes a protagonist different than some NPC in these cases is the motivation and determination to utilize their mind effectively and not just give up. >>> >>> The protagonists I enjoy reading about are intelligent - yes - but I believe the vast majority of people are more intelligent and have much greater mental capacity than they give themselves credit for. Successful protagonists just have the mental discipline to think through problems - something people often fail to do in real life just as well. >>> >>> (Who here knows they have problems in their life they could fix, but refuse to put forth the effort required to actually come up with a solution? Only then to further put it out of their mind, guilty with the knowledge that they *could* come up with a solution, but unwilling to define with certainty the reasons stopping them because then they *know* they'd tear those reasons apart and that would mean they'd have to actually *do* something about the problems?) >>> >>> I'd say, too, the additional environmental pressures are a significant factor. >>> >>> --- >>> >>> All that said, intelligence, knowledge, and experience are difficult to work with for writers. I have read that the origin of knowledge we learn is frequently more difficult to retain than the knowledge itself, and perhaps this is why it is often easy to accidentally give a character knowledge they should not have. Sometimes it's easy to make a character reach a solution that is based off of rational logic, but some of the steps require known information canonically unknown to the character. Raw intelligence cannot simply brute force its way forward at all times. >>> >>> *That* said, rational fiction authors generally do a much better job om average than most simply because I believe they do spend their time validating the logical steps each character makes during their decision making process - a constant ongoing "sanity check" of sorts. >>> >>> --- >>> >>> As a post-note I think it just comes down to ability to actualize intellectual ability. It's not as if rational thought is some magic ability bestowed upon individuals reaching the society-designated age of majority. It's the emotional and situational situations that prevent people from reaching their potential. This is generally excusable for younger people because their physiological and brain-chemistry changes make it more difficult. There is ample real-world precedence for people being forced to move past these issues due to various favors, however. Likewise the vast majority of adults struggle with emotions and situations limiting them from using their mind to its fullest extent as well. >>> >>> --- >>> >>> //RANT >>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (6 days later) >>>> >>>> > kids are capable of more than we give them credit for >>>> >>>> That was pretty much my point...? >>>>> **u/1573594268** [+2] (6 days later) >>>>> >>>>> Yes, I was agreeing and elaborating. > **u/MonstrousBird** [+7] (an hour later) > > I think the pokémon does actually get brainwashed in the poke ball by a simulated training programme which does get mentioned a few times. >> **u/Revisional_Sin** [+1] (2 hours later) >> >> I was a bit disappointed by this, feels like cheating. >>> **u/Salivanth** [+4] (3 days later) >>> >>> Sure, but nobody wants to read a story where the protagonists have to spend a year and a half slowly domesticating a feral Pokemon before it starts to listen to them in battle. >>> >>> Though it would be an interesting alteration to the world. People wouldn't catch wild Pokemon any more, they'd have to buy them from domesticators. Only rare Pokemon would be worth capturing, to then sell to those same domesticators. >>> >>> But in the end, Origin of Species is more about justifying canon with the least changes possible (Wild Pokemon can be used within days of capture) than radically changing it. >>>> **u/Revisional_Sin** [+1] (7 days later) >>>> >>>> OBJECTION! I'd love to see a story like that, but agree it would have to be completely different. >>>> >>>> Yeah, I was being too harsh. DaysterEld has done a great job, so I shouldn't complain. > **u/Revisional_Sin** [+4] (2 hours later) > > Excuses: > > Red wants to be a professor and has spent a lot of time hanging out and helping out at the lab. > > Leaf is the daughter of a (pushy?) professor. > > The high passive danger of the world, plus the fact that 12 year olds can leave home to go on adventures with a chance of death, requires and results in more mature children. >> **u/Sailor_Vulcan** [+6] *Champion of Justice and Reason* (2 hours later) >> >> Actually I'm pretty sure the author's reasoning was more nuanced than that. It's a combination of culture and evolutionary pressures that cause humans in Pokemon world to mentally mature faster than humans in our world. > **u/None** [+5] (3 hours later) > > I feel like the age thing can be forgiven as an artifact of canon. It's like how, in real life, nobody would give 11 years olds objects capable of incredible destruction, but HPMOR is still rational because in Harry Potter you go to Hogwarts at 11, so you can't fault a rational author for keeping that in the fic. > > For me it's the same with Origin of Species; normal 11 year olds are nowhere near mature or smart enough to handle wandering around a continent full of magical beasts by themselves, but in Pokemon kids leave to become trainers at 11. So I actually find it more believable for the main characters to act 'too mature', then to read a story about what would actually happen if actual 11 years old went out on an adventure. I just like to believe that humans in the Pokemon world just evolved to mature a lot faster. It's the author's way of keeping one of the stations of canon (the age trainers leave on their adventures), while still making the work readable and rational; I don't think many people on his sub would be interested in reading an actual 11 year olds point of view, and I think even more people would find it even more contrived if the characters acted like normal eleven year olds and then still pulled off all the clever stuff they do. >> **u/Amonwilde** [+4] (3 hours later) >> >> Just to be clear, children aren't given dangerous objects and their full freedom in our culture. But in other cultures children are regarded as small adults and were traditionally given, or were allowed to make, fires, knives, and other weapons, and were given all the freedoms of an adult. Check out *Don't Sleep, There are Snakes* for some perspective on this, it may shift your idea of "normal" for children to regard it only as normal for our own culture. >>> **u/None** [+5] (4 hours later) >>> >>> but I feel like treating children as small adults and giving them weapons is different from giving children wands and then also giving them the ability to poison/kill dozens of people (cuz in HPMOR transfiguration is that dangerous), or giving them control over what could be incredibly destructive creatures, like Pokemon. >>> >>> Still you do have a point. I remember being shocked when I read that, back in the day, the age of typical Aboriginal Walkabout was 10-16, not just 16 on the dot. Our ideas of how children should behave are firmly rooted in culture. >>>> **u/Amonwilde** [+2] (4 hours later) >>>> >>>> If you treat children as adults, and you let adults have WMD, then children will have WMD. QED. >>>> >>>> Children are highly sensitive to expectations. If all children were required to do advanced math, many or most would be able to. If they were required to get jobs and earn a living, many or most would be able to. After 10-12, children don't have really glaring cognitive deficits like they do up to that point. In cultures where they're treated like adults, they more or less also act like adults in most meaningful ways. >>>> >>>> Note that I'm not saying that we should treat children as adults. Frankly, I don't think we treat adults very well. But I think they should have more autonomy then they do now. Two generations ago in the US children could walk freely. Now they're trapped inside their homes. > **u/Trips-Over-Tail** [+2] *Death of Crabs* (7 hours later) > > The Pokeballs have programs that mentally condition basic commands and an attachment to their trainer. It really only works on Pokemon who are amenable or neutral, if they have reason to dislike you beyond the basic "got beat up and snatched out of the wild" you have to work on that yourself. > > I think DayStarEld has made it clear that in this world kids are regarded as miniature adults by the time they are of age to get a Pokemon licence. Their culture and education makes this possible. Also a prosperous society with a low population helps. Part of the reason for that low population is that Pokemon are very dangerous, which introduces a significant selection pressure on humanity. Dumb kids, or even smart kids by our world's standards tend to get smooshed by Onyx, eviscerated by Shiftry, or poisoned by Beedrill, while strategically brilliant kids go on to become (one presumes) reproductively successful Champions. > > Not that that's how intelligence is usually inherited, but it's not like Pokemon evolution makes any sense, so why not? > **u/DCarrier** [+2] (10 hours later) > > > The main characters age is between 11 - 14 , but they still no about hypothesis testing, Bayes theorem and advanced statistical and mathematical model , should I think that this is the nature of the world or there is any other explanation. > > They read Giovanni's blog, which seems to be their equivalent of LessWrong and the like. The real question is how they understand it so well, and how they're so smart in general. Rationalist fiction always has smart main characters, so you just kind of have to accept that when it's about kids. Just like you're accepting that can carry around powerful magical creatures in tiny balls. > > > Another doubt is I did not fully understand that why a Pokémon listen to its trainers after getting caught, like are they brain washed in the poke ball ? > > Partially, but it's also important to remember pokemon aren't human. Beating them up is a way to establish dominance, so that helps get them to listen to you. You can train them without using pokeballs, but it's much more labor-intensive. > **u/Croktopus** [+2] (2 days later) > > My interpretation is that they're not *quite* human. Like, similar evolutionary lines and all, but they've had to contend with seemingly-mystical monsters of absurd power, and somehow they havent been driven to extinction. in such a world, even if genetically they're identical to humans, society is gonna ask a hell of a lot more from you at a younger age. I'd imagine that Red, Blue, and Leaf have basically spent all their time from a very young age studying this stuff, and yeah, maybe people's brains do develop faster due to the selective pressure of pokemon. i'd point to the old lady in pewter city who was talking about how when she was young, pokeball technology wasnt really a thing, or was in its infancy. like, the way people talk about the stormbringers is the way they used to talk about a particularly angry kangaskhan > > alternatively, daystar wanted the characters to have this level of cognition, and also wanted to mirror how in the games you start your journey as a preteen, and so he decided to just be like fuck it, it's part of the story's conceit > **u/plushiemancer** [+2] (4 days later) > > minor spoiler: > > minor spoiler: > > minor spoiler: > > I can't say anything about the knowledge side, but on the emotional strength side, their world is at war with wild Pokemons. Children grow up fast in these kind of environments. > > Ok a bit about the knowledge side too: the 2 protagonists are "special", with mind related powers. They also grew up with a real scientist. > **u/eaglejarl** [+1] (3 days later) > > > Another doubt is I did not fully understand that why a Pokémon listen to its trainers after getting caught, like are they brain washed in the poke ball ? > > I believe that that is the canonical Pokémon answer. Kids capture wild animals, trap them in a tiny ball until they develop Stockholm Syndrome, then use them for glorified dog fighting. ---