"A man named Darth Tenebrous knew my mother, back when she was still alive, and he took me as his apprentice. There usually aren't many surviving Sith, and usually a master takes but one apprentice, and lets the Sith continue through them."

"What sort of things do you think would be most important for you to learn about? I imagine your own skills are best suited for politics, if you're an ambassador, but what in particular do you try to accomplish?"

"I'm mostly focused on making things better for the people on my planet--negotiating for trade and protection with nearby planets and so forth. Occasionally working out multi-planet agreements in our little corner of the galaxy to keep anyone from declaring war on anyone else for another few years.

It seems like I ought to start at the beginning--how does one even choose which problems to tackle first?"

"Well, based on how much value you would be adding to the world through different actions - although it's fairly difficult to measure such a thing. A typical unit might be years of life you're adding to each person, but adjusted for the quality their life might have - which is of course somewhat hard to determine, as well. And then you of course have to multiply by the probabilities of success, and so on."

"There's likely a lot of research that would be involved, when it comes to something this important, and I'm not familiar with all the background. But I can try to help estimate things, if you want. Such as... hmm. Are there any specific agreements you've come to recently?"

"The last major one would be...hmmm...the adjustments to the treaty between us and the Drey, on our nearest neighboring planet. They just got out of a pretty nasty civil war, and we allowed them to renegotiate somewhat more favorable trade terms while they rebuild, in exchange for similar provisions on our side should we ever find ourselves in a similar position."

Plagueis nods. "Not necessarily the most straightforward effects, I imagine... what sort of trade terms in particular? Why do they want such terms, and what cost is there to you?"

"We'd previously had agreements about what percentage of their production of certain resources, like rare metals that were relatively abundant under their oceans, they would reserve to sell to us, at prices indexed to various interplanetary standards. The war destroyed a lot of their infrastructure, their economy was in shambles, and they were interested in retaining a lot more of what they would be producing for on-planet building projects, and thought they could get a better deal on a lot of the rest from other buyers. We sacrificed a well-priced source of resources in the present for ongoing diplomatic goodwill and increased leverage with a stronger trading partner in the future.

"I'll note that it sounds as though you're trying to appraise plans' value based on how it would benefit Raishenzë, and that if you hope to do the most good, what matters is how much you help all people, even if your own world draws no benefit. Of course, in the long run, you do need to insist on being paid in turn at some point, because otherwise they'll have no point to help someone else if they're themselves selfish. Nevertheless, it seems you have quite a bit of loyalty to your own people, and that's often not a good thing, when it comes to stepping back and seeing what would benefit everyone."

"So, the way I would approach this, if I'm trying to calculate how much a potential plan would accomplish... hmm. I suppose I'd look at the amount of metal they would be keeping for themselves, divide by the amount it takes for the average of these building projects, multiply by how much benefit the average building project would have, which would be a little complicated - what sort of projects would these typically be? And what would the money they would have gotten from trading with you have been spent on, otherwise, we'll need to subtract the benefits from that, dependent on how much money that would be, and how they could convert that to helping people, if that's even what they would be doing. And of course that's just how it affects them, we would also need to separately calculate how much you would gain and lose, which I presume would be a total negative or else you wouldn't have been trading with them in the first place, so subtract that, and then of course add the potential gains in case Raishenzë ended up in a similar amount of trouble, multiplied by the probability of that, which would require a lot more assumptions to calculate, such as the rate of wars like this, and it isn't even just a probability multiplied by an amount because there are different levels of problems, so it might be closer to a continuous distribution, and then - "

He's rambling. "Okay, I'm not sure if we can actually figure all of this out right now. But the point is, this is the sort of process you might go through, when you're trying to determine what actions to take - and of course, you would then calculate what would happen if you didn't rearrange this agreement, and compare the benefits or costs of each. So you try to get a simple enough equation for how much effect something would have, and if any term in that equation isn't something you have statistics on, then you break it down into much simpler terms until you're pretty confident about what each term is."

"Obviously, your final result isn't going to be very exact! It's possible that two plans will have similar results, and the margins of error will be wide enough that this isn't helpful at all, and you're better with just going with what your intuition says. But I've found that most of the time, when you try to break it down like this, you find that actually, the results are very far apart, and there's a clear answer for which is better. Even if you can't get a perfect result, just doing the calculations will help you think about what factors you even want to consider in the first place."

Asatyyl's eyes go a little unfocused; that is a LOT of calculations. And the suggestion that he diminish his loyalty to his own people on favor of "the good of all" is hitting him in a place that makes him feel a bit defensive. "Loyalty to the people around him" is something he's using as a foundation for a lot of other things. "That is...quite a process. It seems like it might take quite a bit of time to learn to apply these teachings effectively. It's not something I would abandon my previous moral guidelines over until I was very sure I had it right. But I can see how this approach could help increase the total goodness for all people if applied correctly."

"What previous moral guidelines are you referring to, specifically?"

"The things I learned growing up, I suppose. The things I had modeled for me by those around me. They're more like intuitions now. Keep your word. Don't conspire with others against your kin. Protect those around you from harm. Take the path that looks like it will lead to the most good, sure, but only by building good upon good, not by falling to small harms along the way."

"But what happens when you can't protect those around you, without breaking your word? What happens when you can't take the path that leads to the most good, without conspiring against your kin? A set of supposedly essential rules not only isn't right, it's not even self-consistent, because there are necessarily possible situations in which you have to choose between them, even if they don't come up that often. Unless one rule logically implied another, I suppose, but then it would really just be the one in the first place."

"But even if we assume we're limited to situations in which the rules are compatible, I... am somewhat doubtful that a set of rules truly are what you want. If you see some opportunity to do something that really matters to you, and then you say no, you can't do what you want because the rules say not to, that sounds more like harmful instincts trained in you some external authority, than anything actually compatible with your own values. I don't try to save people because there's some rule I was taught that I have to make sure people never die - if anything, it goes against certain implicit rules of society, to try to prolong life to such an extent - I save people because I want to live, I want to experience all of the amazing things in life, and because I want that for other people too."

"The way morality is typically framed - as this is what you can do, and this is what you can't - has never really made sense. Actual morals aren't limitations, they're a set of the values that you care about, and then you just do what you can to realize those."

"And of course, the things you've said are valuable heuristics, at least a lot of the time! Keeping your word is nearly always the best thing to do, so that you can take advantage of the opportunities brought by cooperating with others. And I'll grant that, for at least most situations that someone tries to conspire against their own people, it's turned out awfully. But that doesn't mean they're always valid, even if there's a strong correlation. And it especially doesn't mean that they're the source of what's valuable, what you should be trying to do in the first place."

"Yes, I agree that there are ways to make better decisions. There's just--also so many ways to make worse ones.

"I'll have to study this way of thinking quite a bit before I'm certain I understand it well enough to use it. Could you walk me through another decision it helped you make? Maybe one early in your career?"

Plagueis thinks for a few moments. "Well, one of the earlier points in my career would have involved the reformation of the Free Trade Zones. They're a region of the galaxy in the Outer Rim, and the Republic doesn't tax any trade there, unlike the rest of the galaxy. They were originally established during a time of crisis in which the Republic had to lift taxes in order to make the systems out there even capable of surviving economically, but by modern times they were essentially just territory for the Trade Federation's monopoly. A lot of Senators were trying to change regulations there, and make it so that the Trade Federation would no longer be able to operate to the same extent - the main initiative everyone was discussing, would have been limiting the amount the Trade Federation would be able to involve itself, so that at least half of the total profit went to individual planets and companies."

"My company was originally against this, because most of our business in the area was through the Trade Federation, and we wouldn't have been able to profit as much if they lost power, at least in the short term. But I decided to negotiate a compromise with the Senators involved, and support the changes to the Free Trade Zone, in exchange for changing the details of the Trade Federation's Senate representation. Previously they essentially had a Senator of their own, because Trade Federation employees made up a substantial fraction of the people in the Neimoidian system, and most of the time, they were able to select a Neimoidian Senator who was aligned to their interests. But we changed it so that there would be a Senator who was officially, directly representing the Trade Federation instead, which would give them a slightly higher amount of representation."

"So what were the calculations behind this? Well, first off, one of the reasons I was going to do this in the first place, was that it looked like the changes were going to be passed anyway, especially because the Jedi were lobbying in favor of them, and they have quite a bit of influence in the Senate. I would have estimated a 90% chance it would have been passed, based on statistics on how the number of Senators who seem to be in favor at first correlates with the final votes, and how the Jedi influence matters, and Senate beliefs on different issues, and so on."

"Oh, and to establish which of the original options would have been better in the first place - while I do have higher priorities than what's good for the company, especially what happens to everyone overall, there wasn't actually much of a difference, in my final calculations. If the Trade Federation lost its power, it would have given the planets 50% of the total profits from trade in the region, in theory, but that would have been decreased by the ways in which they're simply not as efficient as the Federation - so drop it to 35%, maybe, I don't remember the exact amounts. And I don't remember exactly what that was 35% of, either, but I think it would have been on the order of... hmm, the average amount spent by a system on trade each standard year is somewhere around five hundred billion credits, and there were... maybe a thousand systems involved, so 175 trillion credits? No, that's a little too high, these were mostly smaller systems, I would guess it's closer to a hundred trillion. Obviously the actual numbers were more specific than any of this. So a hundred trillion credits, and I of course have no idea how much that translates to when it comes to the amount of profit they make from the trade; I would need more specific numbers that I really don't know, but let's say twenty trillion? Or something like that? Well, I'm just trying to get a rough estimate of the order of magnitude."

"Anyway, as I was saying, this would mean that if the Trade Federation lost its power, it would have given the planets twenty trillion credits' worth of profit per year, and I'm not even going to try to turn that into life years of certain qualities or anything like that right now, but it would have also brought substantial costs to the Trade Federation itself. Which would have been larger, the actual 50% amount, so that turns back into... twenty trillion times 50/35, or... let's call it thirty trillion. But money spent by the Trade Federation generally doesn't go towards such charitable efforts as money spent by individual planets, just because they spent more on indulging their own leaders. So it might not really be net useful to the universe."

"Okay, I'm getting sidetracked here, trying to figure out numbers I don't have. The point is, taking power from the Trade Federation would have some benefits and some costs and the final amount would probably be on the order of... I guess between ten and negative ten times a typical planet's GDP, per year. And with the 10% from earlier, that means that however the numbers come out, the benefit we would get from trying to resist the bill would be somewhere between, say, finding a typical planet, taking all of the money it makes, and then throwing it into the sun, or alternatively, doubling all of that money, except in reality it's spread out across a thousand or so."

"So is it a good idea to resist the bill, in order to do what would on average come out to something with an effect on the scale of an average planet's economy? Well, I can't really tell you without better numbers, although I think what we finally calculated at the time was that the final effect would be a negative one, somewhere around that of cutting a planet's economy in half. But the point is, the effects of resisting the bill are on the order of a single planet's economy. And so if either side had something much more important than that in its favor, then that concern would completely swamp out the other effects."

"And as it so happens, there was such a thing. That the Trade Federation would have a Senator, in name instead of just in practice. Now, this wouldn't change the votes much. There are thousands of Senators in the Republic; even if the Trade Federation got an entire Senator instead of just a symbolic one they already had, there aren't going to be any tied votes, or anything like that. But the potential advantage of a Senator isn't just what they can vote for, it's that they have authority to resolve various disputes on smaller levels, in the areas they govern. And - yes, I'm definitely aware how ridiculous and vulnerable to corruption this is, but it was luckily something that could be used for good - a Senator who stood for the Trade Federation would be capable of arbitrarily resolving trade disputes that the Federation itself was involved in. In principle, this wouldn't give them any real power, because their opponents could appeal to the Senate and have them revoke it if they so chose. But it would still be in effect until such point as the Senate reversed that resolution, and it usually never would, because the Senate never gets around to anything, and in any case has constant biases both in favor of the Trade Federation, and in favor of doing nothing."

"And would it, in fact, be a good thing for the Trade Federation to gain so much power? Well, in most cases, no, but as it so happens, the Sith have techniques for swaying the minds of those too mentally unstable, too unintelligent to think for themselves. The Senator in question was... not the most intelligent being I have met, to put it lightly." Oh, wait, now Asatyyl's going to think Plagueis could be using the mind tricks on him. Well, he'll keep talking, for now, and hope that doesn't come to mind, because he's not sure how he could prove that's not what he's doing. Even though Plagueis suspects mind tricks wouldn't even work.

"And so, for the past few decades, the Senators of the Trade Federation have been under the influence of the Force, or, for those that were not so vulnerable to those methods, simply the influence of bribery. And they have been intervening in various disputes in ways that failed to bring the Federation as much profit as they hoped, but instead, curiously enough, ended up benefiting more charitable pursuits, that helped the galaxy as a whole. Each of these interventions has benefited the galaxy on the same scale as could have been possible from any outcome of the initial Free Trade Zone dispute."

"So how was doing the math useful? Well, at first, everyone thought the most important part of what was going on was what would happen to the Free Trade Zones. But by calculating out what would happen, it quickly became clear that actually, the effects to the galaxy as a whole would be about the same, regardless of which way we intervened, both because of the low probability of success and the ways that the costs and benefits balanced each other out. So I began a search for more important things that I could trade this relatively small issue for - and there one was."

"As I was saying before, it isn't necessarily getting an exact number that matters - especially when you simply don't have enough information to get something too exact. Like now, when I'm quite sure I messed something up there, forgot a few things, and definitely oversimplified a lot - but it was still enough to see what to do. Most of the time, just by doing the rough calculations, you can see that certain concerns are far more important, or less important, than you might have guessed, and that will be enough to make the best decision clear."

"Did that all make sense?"

Asatyyl recognizes but is very chill about the posibility of mind tricks being used on him. While he is only of average skill at metacognition, he hasn't noticed any overt intrusions into his thought or behavior patterns. And he's come to think of Milliways as a liminal space where nothing he does really 'counts', and the only thing that matters is the experiences and information he'll take away with him.

"Yes, I see. So you calculated that the purported choice under debate, whether to loosen the Trade Federation's hold on the outying planets, would actually have a negligable effect either way on the planetary economies, and the more important result would be the concessions you could gain on the side. You saw a way to increase the Sith's direct influence on the Senate in a way that would improve the galaxy's population as a whole more than the outcome of any one vote.

Seeing the specific considerations you included in your calculation, even if they weren't exact... I can see how having the information it provides could be useful if only to give you a sense of which way things are leaning. Particularly if you're as careful as you can to be aware of your own biases, you could have your whole outlook changed in a way that's hopefully more at one with reality."

He frowns "I'm still trying to understand the breadth of the power of the Force. The way it allows you to touch and influence minds... Is it possible that the Force makes it easier to see all the angles of the problem while you're making these calculations? Is it even something it's possible to do in a universe where the Force doesn't exist?"

"The Force doesn't make people more intelligent as a matter of routine, to the best of my knowledge, although Force-users are rare enough that it's hard to do controlled tests. Occasionally, it allows people to have insights into how things will go, and those especially attuned to it can even see clear visions of future events. But that's not something I can call on at will. And math and reason would work just as well without it, barring those rare circumstances."

"There are many things that people can use the Force for. Things like telepathy, and telekinesis, and visions of the future. And there are a lot of tricks that people have figured out, like creating electricity from one's fingertips, creating an illusion in the air, healing people, putting people to sleep, controlling the weather, and even limited forms of teleportation." He demonstrates the first two. "But in general, the more powerful a technique, the less control one has over it, at least without a lot of training and usually high midi-chlorian counts. The remainder of the control lies in the hands of... well, it's complicated. The Force is generally thought to have some sort of its own will, although I highly doubt it's all that intelligent. There are different theories. I would guess that it's some sort of a remnant of the consciousness of past Force-users, exerting some level of influence over the galaxy even today - there are recorded instances of things like that happening - but it's difficult to tell what it's doing. So for the most part, we have to rely on the smaller things."

"Visions of the future? Fascinating. Do they always come true? What does the will of the force seem to...want?"

"Generally, yes, they do come true, although they often contain misleading elements. I don't know what the Force wants, exactly; there's not much of a visible pattern to its actions. Most of the time, what it does with any given person will help them, but it's often simultaneously be helping opposing people, which suggests it might have multiple parts, aiming for different things. That's part of why I suspect it's left behind by people from the past."

"That"s incredible. Do you know if other people in your universe leave any kind of consciousness like that behind after they die, or only Force users? I've heard of lots of different beliefs about souls and so forth from different cultures in my universe, but personally I've never seen evidence that there's anything about any species of people I've met that exists after their bodies die."

"Not to my knowledge. Given that it's happened on some rare occasions, it seems at least possible that there's still something left from everyone, but... I wouldn't count on it. And even most Force-users haven't left behind anything, just a few who were especially powerful."

"I considered trying to generalize something like that as a way to try to fix death, but it didn't seem like a very feasible route. Most of what I'm working on is more of using the Force to repair people's bodies. Which I have figured out how to do, even when they're at a point where they otherwise would have died, but only one in a couple million people have strong Force abilities, and even fewer than that are at the same level as me, so just running around fixing individual people isn't anywhere near a full solution. I would have to figure out at least one of how to make people more permanently self-repairing, or how to create new midi-chlorians for everyone, neither of which I've succeeded at yet."

"That's disappointing, but I guess no worse than where we started. It makes me wonder what I don't know about my own universe yet.

It sounds like you've got quite a few paths available for making huge improvements to a lot of people's lives. Is spreading your philosophy--teaching more people this way of calculating their decisions--something you've done much of? I suppose you said the Jedi were opposed to it, they probably wouldn't like that much."

"Yes, they're quite a problem. I've found a few people, and one in particular has been a fairly good fit, but I haven't really spread anything on a wider scale."

"Do you ever get problems where different Sith come to different conclusions about what the best thing to do would be? Either because their definitions of "ultimate good" are slightly different or their calculations have come to different conclusions?"

"Certainly. Especially because there are some who are more attracted to the concept of using the dark side, of the power it brings them, than to the final goal of helping others. But we've usually been able to work out mutually beneficial negotiations that capture as much value for each of us as possible."

"That can be difficult enough without powers like what you showed me complicating things, I'm impressed you're able to manage it."

"Thank you," Plagueis replies. "Luckily enough, things that will benefit the vast majority of the galaxy on an unprecedented scale are, of course, decently correlated with the values of nearly any individual in particular. So even if there's a bit of divergence, everybody in theory already wants to help me make themselves immortal, and so they'll be willing to do a little charity work in exchange. Of course, many of the galaxy's people have objections to my methods, or don't even recognize that immortality is even something to be striving for in the first place. Unfortunately enough, one of the most common ways people cope with their approaching deaths is to convince themselves that death really isn't all that bad."