- Stephen Merchant is objectively tall as fork, what is wrong with y'all.
- I think that whatever the issue is with the points system, it's going to be either vaguely defined or mathematically simple. I doubt they would work exponential functions into this show.
- 500 years to an immortal being probably doesn't seem that long. It may be indistinguishable from, say, 5 minutes. Imagine trying to conceptualize the difference between a millisecond and a nanosecond.
Just wanted to re-emphasize this point. After all, the cake is for Marisol, who's celebrating her 39,000,000th birthday. Not immortal, but enough that time probably has little meaning to them.
They do have a concept of 'human' time though.
Dude straight up recognizes that Doug Fourcett is screwed because his life isn't long enough to get the points needed.
They could theoretically do the math but still not really notice that 500 years is a particularly long time without someone pointing it out to them.
To continue the analogy, I know the difference between a millisecond and a nanosecond, and know what they look like written out, but i still can't really FEEL the difference enough to discern one from n the other.
I mean, this is probably way over thinking it, but.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
just realized that the podcast has been lying to us.
the intro on some of them have Michael say that the top podcast in the good place is Mozart and Jimi Hendrix discussing music.
I fail to see the lie.
Assume that Good Place people live in a heavenly state where their every material need is granted. A Mozart/Hendrix podcast is one such material need. And for their part, Mozart and Hendrix are probably grateful to have a brief respite from the bees with teeth and penis flatterers to talk about Cardi B’s new album.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
also we know that *near perfect simulcra can be summoned by janets, so the real mozart and hendrix may be in the bad place but their clones might make a podcast
the good place is rigging the scores to keep out the plebs
future speculation:
I don't think so, unless this somehow happened in conjunction with the bad place. This episode all but confirmed that the bad place higher ups (or at least Shawn and probably others?) were in on whatever has been happening.
Also, anyone want to shift through who got into the good place 521 years ago? Deaths in 1497
I sincerely doubt it will be an actual historical figure that went to the good place 521 years ago
remember, this is the show that gave us Jeremy Bearimy, Mindy St Clair, and Doug Forcett
Wait, does this mean that Mindy st clair is the one person who got closest to getting into the good place in 500-something years? That seems...off
Her near miss was due to the foundation that she planned to set up. Maybe the way to get points is to do good deeds that affect a significant proportion of the population. Doug's issue is that he's doing very local things, and also harm-limiting acts like minimising his carbon footprint as opposed to active harm-reducing things like sucking carbon out of the air and turning it into graphene sheets.
I think that's also why nobody's getting into the Good Place any more. The population is so large now that proportionally, most good deeds don't affect things all that much. Help one person now, there are still 9 billion others that you haven't helped as opposed to a mere half billion. Conversely, pollution in 1500 affected half a billion people, and now it affects 9 billion.
I'm half-convinced that The Good Place is tainted not by The Bad Place but by themselves, in a dark mirror of how people in The Bad Place are capable of changing even in the afterlife. I think on a more meta-narrative level that hits the theme the entire show has been going for: that the concept of the afterlife as it is set up is really, really fucked up (Why should a negligible, arbitrary, and finite period of time determine your existence for eternity?!?!?! THAT IS SO FUCKED AND SO AMORAL THAT IT IS IN FACT BAD IN AND OF ITSELF. Any deity or organization that is okay with such a system is, fundamentally, pitilessly evil)
A less, uh, anarchist reading would be that the points system got derailed by massive population growth and there's some kind of devaluation or other issue going on
Eddy on
"and the morning stars I have seen
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
just realized that the podcast has been lying to us.
the intro on some of them have Michael say that the top podcast in the good place is Mozart and Jimi Hendrix discussing music.
I fail to see the lie.
Assume that Good Place people live in a heavenly state where their every material need is granted. A Mozart/Hendrix podcast is one such material need. And for their part, Mozart and Hendrix are probably grateful to have a brief respite from the bees with teeth and penis flatterers to talk about Cardi B’s new album.
That second one doesn't sound like a punishment thanks to autocorrect
just realized that the podcast has been lying to us.
the intro on some of them have Michael say that the top podcast in the good place is Mozart and Jimi Hendrix discussing music.
I fail to see the lie.
Assume that Good Place people live in a heavenly state where their every material need is granted. A Mozart/Hendrix podcast is one such material need. And for their part, Mozart and Hendrix are probably grateful to have a brief respite from the bees with teeth and penis flatterers to talk about Cardi B’s new album.
They could just have Good Janet summon a copy of them.
Is that implying that he needs more points but won’t get them due to age?
Or is it saying that that number is too low based on how long he’s been alive?
It would be perfectly logical to have a rule like “If you’re 69 then you go to the Bad Place because 69 is a naughty number”, which is frankly just as logical as most of their other absurd rules
Is that implying that he needs more points but won’t get them due to age?
Or is it saying that that number is too low based on how long he’s been alive?
It would be perfectly logical to have a rule like “If you’re 69 then you go to the Bad Place because 69 is a naughty number”, which is frankly just as logical as most of their other absurd rules
I was actually going to wonder if living past a certain age just immediately fucked you over.
I wonder if it's a thing of like, "You need x points per year, which is easy if you die at 40 because babies and children can really easily get points but hard if you live past that". Now, granted, the whole "life expentency used to be so low" thing is mostly a myth, and I feel like this show would get it right, but it would still be interesting
The person who has got closest to the Good Place in the last 500 years is Mindy St Clair, who only just missed out on it. She did one very good thing, a lot of small bad things, and died middle-aged. Sounds like they have a weighting problem. Enormous good deeds are weighted very highly, and lots of small good deeds are weighted too low to be significant.
I wonder if it's a thing of like, "You need x points per year, which is easy if you die at 40 because babies and children can really easily get points but hard if you live past that". Now, granted, the whole "life expentency used to be so low" thing is mostly a myth, and I feel like this show would get it right, but it would still be interesting
I was thinking that exact theory. Gonna be interesting to see how the show goes on this.
I feel like any prediction is probably folly but my personal theory is
that nobody is rigging the points. The system has just evolved over time such that nobody is good enough, even Doug Forcett. They spent a lot of time this episode telling us why it was impossible for anyone to hack the accounting system which makes it feel like one of the demons saying, "Yeaaaah, but we did anyway" would feel really cheap. I think the system built up around the point system has just resulted in increasingly few people getting into the Good Place simply thanks to the system itself.
An overall message along the lines of 'once you set up a system that arbitrarily decides that every action can be quantitatively described as good or bad that system will always, over time, lead to everyone and everything being bad' seems like the sort of message the show would be trying to give.
Unrelated to predictions, I thought Janet's little speech to Michael near the end of the episode was great and a really positive turn for the story of the season (not that the story was bad or anything; I just like the direction it implies).
Yeah I can see this. Basically
500 years ago there was less stuff to do and less of it was bad,
or the software that decides if a new action is good or bad is mis calibrated or corrupted. Like it decided using a phone is negative points. Oops now most of the world will never make it to the Good Place.
I doubt the answer will be any variant of the word "math." My guess:
It's going to end up being the fault of a being in the Good Place. Maybe getting ever more snooty about new people coming in, and getting the threshold raised so they don't have to deal with it. Some sort of parallels on looking down at nouveaux-riche.
I doubt the answer will be any variant of the word "math." My guess:
It's going to end up being the fault of a being in the Good Place. Maybe getting ever more snooty about new people coming in, and getting the threshold raised so they don't have to deal with it. Some sort of parallels on looking down at nouveaux-riche.
Show speculation.
While that is likely, I hope the show doesn't go that way. It feels too close to Both Sides-ing the afterlife. That good or bad doesn't matter, everyone is just a different flavor of jerk.
And, as a storytelling mechanism, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just me being grumpy on current society being too quick to take the cynical view of both sides of an issue being equally bad.
Just have to wait until end of this week to see where the show goes on this.
Schur's shows are innately optimistic, so I imagine the long term plan is Michael creating a newer, fair afterlife where people are allowed to get better.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
The concept of no-one being good enough for heaven is actually a very Christian concept - Christian doctrine states that all have fallen short of the perfection that God requires, and only the sacrifice of Christ can intercede to forgive sins and allow people to get into heaven.
No one has gotten into the good place for 521 years because over time it's become so much easier to be bad and do bad things. Whole categories of being an asshole have been invented and codified into society. I imagine this spiked when the internet came out.
Similarly, being good is still the same few tenets, but are increasingly outweighed by the amount of casual badness.
Okay, say you give someone money on the street, but if your a regular Amazon Prime subscriber? Not even close.
Doug Forcett doesn't get in because he knows the system. We know from Tahani that intent matters. You don't get points for altruism if you know the end goal because you're only doing good for a payoff.
Finally, the printing press was invented in 1450 which is not exactly 521 years which is a shame cause I was hoping for a solid printing press invention of pornography bit.
I don't think I'm going to spend too much time speculating on the exact mechanics of why things have gone pear shaped, but I strongly suspect it's not going to be the fault of someone or some group being malicious. I think it's going to be an accident of bureaucracy, or of a system that seems reasonable but is ultimately untenable.
The idea of people being basically good and well meaning, but short sighted, seems a very Schur take on the afterlife.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
The concept of no-one being good enough for heaven is actually a very Christian concept - Christian doctrine states that all have fallen short of the perfection that God requires, and only the sacrifice of Christ can intercede to forgive sins and allow people to get into heaven.
That said, I don’t think they are going there!
omg
Michael sacrifices himself all Jesus-like and the concept of life as we know it is dissolved as an arbitrarily short examination of an immortal, eternal soul's capacity for change
boom sorry for the spoilers suckers
(but more seriously, the second this show introduced the capacity for dead people to change there is no possible justice except this outcome)
Eddy on
"and the morning stars I have seen
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
I mean, he's the boss of, or at least highly placed in the Bad Place. He might have just been in a position to notice that they were building more penis flatteners than expected and ran the numbers.
I mean, he's the boss of, or at least highly placed in the Bad Place. He might have just been in a position to notice that they were building more penis flatteners than expected and ran the numbers.
I feel like it may be something along these lines. It would also explain why the Bad Place is so interested in getting our four humans back, since they may expose a flaw in the system that's been working the the Bad Place's favor.
Remember, Michael's entire selling point to Sean for his crafting of the Good Place was that it'd be a self-sustainable development, and set the template for more such encapsulated hells.
If there were an unlimited number of demons, and it's clear they enjoy their job, then there wouldn’t be a need to build an environment that didn't need demons and their tools.
Maybe we'll see that one of the problems that the lack of people going to the Good Place is it results in the Bad Place suffering from overcrowding. Sean doesn't see it as a problem, because people in upper middle management don't see this as a problem.
Remember, Michael's entire selling point to Sean for his crafting of the Good Place was that it'd be a self-sustainable development, and set the template for more such encapsulated hells.
If there were an unlimited number of demons, and it's clear they enjoy their job, then there wouldn’t be a need to build an environment that didn't need demons and their tools.
Maybe we'll see that one of the problems that the lack of people going to the Good Place is it results in the Bad Place suffering from overcrowding. Sean doesn't see it as a problem, because people in upper middle management don't see this as a problem.
They probably do. "The mean time between penis flattening is up to a full day, what is with this slacking off? Procedure calls for an average of once every two hours!"
Posts
To continue the analogy, I know the difference between a millisecond and a nanosecond, and know what they look like written out, but i still can't really FEEL the difference enough to discern one from n the other.
I mean, this is probably way over thinking it, but.
I fail to see the lie.
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
I think that's also why nobody's getting into the Good Place any more. The population is so large now that proportionally, most good deeds don't affect things all that much. Help one person now, there are still 9 billion others that you haven't helped as opposed to a mere half billion. Conversely, pollution in 1500 affected half a billion people, and now it affects 9 billion.
A less, uh, anarchist reading would be that the points system got derailed by massive population growth and there's some kind of devaluation or other issue going on
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
Is that implying that he needs more points but won’t get them due to age?
Or is it saying that that number is too low based on how long he’s been alive?
Also, overthrow and kill God like in a JRPG.
I thought the latter, like
I was thinking that exact theory. Gonna be interesting to see how the show goes on this.
Yeah I can see this. Basically
or the software that decides if a new action is good or bad is mis calibrated or corrupted. Like it decided using a phone is negative points. Oops now most of the world will never make it to the Good Place.
Show speculation.
And, as a storytelling mechanism, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just me being grumpy on current society being too quick to take the cynical view of both sides of an issue being equally bad.
Just have to wait until end of this week to see where the show goes on this.
This *is* the Bad Place.
Forking shirtballs dognabbit, I forgot.
That said, I don’t think they are going there!
Similarly, being good is still the same few tenets, but are increasingly outweighed by the amount of casual badness.
Okay, say you give someone money on the street, but if your a regular Amazon Prime subscriber? Not even close.
Doug Forcett doesn't get in because he knows the system. We know from Tahani that intent matters. You don't get points for altruism if you know the end goal because you're only doing good for a payoff.
Finally, the printing press was invented in 1450 which is not exactly 521 years which is a shame cause I was hoping for a solid printing press invention of pornography bit.
The idea of people being basically good and well meaning, but short sighted, seems a very Schur take on the afterlife.
omg
Michael sacrifices himself all Jesus-like and the concept of life as we know it is dissolved as an arbitrarily short examination of an immortal, eternal soul's capacity for change
boom sorry for the spoilers suckers
(but more seriously, the second this show introduced the capacity for dead people to change there is no possible justice except this outcome)
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
I think Micheal is right. The bad place hacked the system. Sean wouldnt know anything was wrong otherwise
I feel like it may be something along these lines. It would also explain why the Bad Place is so interested in getting our four humans back, since they may expose a flaw in the system that's been working the the Bad Place's favor.
Actually... apparently it is.
Remember, Michael's entire selling point to Sean for his crafting of the Good Place was that it'd be a self-sustainable development, and set the template for more such encapsulated hells.
If there were an unlimited number of demons, and it's clear they enjoy their job, then there wouldn’t be a need to build an environment that didn't need demons and their tools.
Maybe we'll see that one of the problems that the lack of people going to the Good Place is it results in the Bad Place suffering from overcrowding. Sean doesn't see it as a problem, because people in upper middle management don't see this as a problem.
They probably do. "The mean time between penis flattening is up to a full day, what is with this slacking off? Procedure calls for an average of once every two hours!"