Michael Wong Star Wars Fan Wank

[Libertad]

George Lucas fucked up. End of story.

[Kaelik]

George Lucas fucked up. End of story.

No Libertad, you don't understand, according to team dumbshit, George Lucas didn't fuck up, because he communicated exactly what he meant to communicate, that Han Solo is dumber than a box of rocks.

After all, the line cannot be indicative of Solo's stupidity unless George Lucas meant for it to mean that.

So my position is that George Lucas fucked up, and the position of team "Han Solo is dumb as shit" actually thinks that the thing where people hear that line and have an instinctual jolt of "Parsecs? Man whomever wrote this script fucked up" is the intended feeling, but you are supposed to aim it at Han Solo.

George Lucas is a tortured genius who writes dialogue that actually conveys his points is the actual position of the people who think that Han Solo was supposed to be an idiot.

[Juton]

I don't understand Kaelik's nerd rage at all. Did Harrison Ford save your life at some point? Is that why you are defending a fictional character he portrayed? Why does it matter if Han Solo once said something kind of stupid? Why does it matter?

Or is it just another case of someone being wrong on the internet? These aren't rhetorical questions.

[nockermensch]

George Lucas fucked up. End of story.

No Libertad, you don't understand, according to team dumbshit, George Lucas didn't fuck up, because he communicated exactly what he meant to communicate, that Han Solo is dumber than a box of rocks.

After all, the line cannot be indicative of Solo's stupidity unless George Lucas meant for it to mean that.

So my position is that George Lucas fucked up, and the position of team "Han Solo is dumb as shit" actually thinks that the thing where people hear that line and have an instinctual jolt of "Parsecs? Man whomever wrote this script fucked up" is the intended feeling, but you are supposed to aim it at Han Solo.

George Lucas is a tortured genius who writes dialogue that actually conveys his points is the actual position of the people who think that Han Solo was supposed to be an idiot.

So, what's your opinion about the imbd script? Is that a retconning too?

Or do you think the writer had intended for Han Solo to spout some bullshit, but not that particular bullshit? Because this position is extremely arrogant, specially after it was pointed in this thread how people in the real world also use wrong units in coloquial speech.

BTW, I always found the "official explanation" of Kessel Run as cringeworthly heavy-handed as AlderaanGreedo shooting first or force mitochondria.

[DSMatticus]

George Lucas's fuck ups are more likely to be dialogue fuck ups than unit fuck ups, ergo any ambiguous fuck up is more likely to be of dialogue than of units.

That's not how probability works.

Wat? That's totally how probability works. If D and U are disjoint sets of F and D is larger than U, then an element randomly selected from F is more likely to be in D than U. Don't get me wrong; that is a shitty, unfair way to approach the problem, because I was being a smartass. But the probability of that shitty, unfair approach is just fine. Now, despite my smartassery, the general point absolutely holds: Kaelik thinks the explanation that Lucas fucked up the units is clearly and obviously more likely than Lucas writing shitty and unbelievable dialogue. And everything Lucas has ever written is a wonderful counter example to that point. Why is the possibility that Lucas attempted to write a boastful nonsense bluff into Han's dialogue but failed miserably in a spectacular and stupid way hard to believe? That's his entire career as a scriptwriter.

Firstly, if this was the case why does no-one draw attention to it? What purpose does the line serve if the audience doesn't get the reference?

Someone does draw attention to it. The quote we are referring to is explicitly Ben responding to it, nonverbally. Now, it's totally the case that the audience doesn't get it, even with that response. And the only question you have to ask after that is whether or not you think George Lucas is a good scriptwriter? If no, then his totally failed joke is absolutely consistent with your beliefs about George Lucas, and you have no reason to be surprised that he failed to deliver his joke to the audience.

Secondly, the Kessel Run was later retconned to actually be measured in parsecs rather than time. Why would this be done if George had meant it as a jokey mistake all along?

That is an expanded universe retcon, and it was likely written by someone who had never even read the Episode IV script. Remember: the script clearly states Han is lying, and the only question is whether his lie is falsified boasting or stupid falsified boasting. In the expanded universe, Han Solo isn't lying at all; he actually does the Kessel Run in under twelve parsecs, twice. It is inconsistent with either interpretation of the script, so the simple answer is: they didn't read the script, and went with the popular interpretation that George Lucas didn't know what a parsec was and they wanted to fix his mistake without having to pretend that line of dialogue never happened. But without the script, they didn't even understand the line of dialogue. Because it's exactly as hard to catch that Han is an idiot as it is to catch that Han is bragging falsely from Ben's reaction.

[Whatever]

George Lucas's fuck ups are more likely to be dialogue fuck ups than unit fuck ups, ergo any ambiguous fuck up is more likely to be of dialogue than of units.

That's not how probability works.

Wat? That's totally how probability works. If D and U are disjoint sets of F and D is larger than U, then an element randomly selected from F is more likely to be in D than U. Don't get me wrong; that is a shitty, unfair way to approach the problem, because I was being a smartass. But the probability of that shitty, unfair approach is just fine.

But you specified an "ambiguous fuck up." That's not randomly selected from F, because it has dialogue and units. Most of the dialogue fuckups won't have units at all.

[Kaelik]

EDIT: DSM.

The following could be the case:

George Lucas wrote 4000 lines of dialogue, and 90% of them are shit. George Lucas ever thought about units ever twice in his life. He was wrong both times, therefore 100% failure.

The part where you pretend that a larger number of bad dialogue lines exist than unit fuck ups means that any given line incorporating both dialogue and units is more likely to be a dialogue fuck up is stupid.

I don't understand Kaelik's nerd rage at all. Did Harrison Ford save your life at some point? Is that why you are defending a fictional character he portrayed? Why does it matter if Han Solo once said something kind of stupid? Why does it matter?

Or is it just another case of someone being wrong on the internet? These aren't rhetorical questions.

People have taken the position that obviously George Lucas meant for Han Solo to be dumber than a box of rocks. This does not seem obvious, or even likely to me, and all the evidence they point to as making it so obvious seems to point either perpendicularly or in literally the opposite direction.

I am "nerd raging" in that I am telling them they are wrong. I don't understand how that is nerd rage any more or less than any other time I have ever posted.

Why is my position "nerd rage" but people whining about how of course George Lucas is a genius and he meant for Han Solo to sound stupid not nerd rage?

So, what's your opinion about the imbd script? Is that a retconning too?

Or do you think the writer had intended for Han Solo to spout some bullshit, but not that particular bullshit? Because this position is extremely arrogant, specially after it was pointed in this thread how people in the real world also use wrong units in coloquial speech.

1) Are you an idiot? In what possible way does the imdb script at all militate against my point that George Lucas thought parsecs was a spacey sounding word and used it irrespective of its actual meaning, and that he meant for Han Solo to lie in the correct units?

Literally nothing about that script states that Han Solo's lie was the kind of box of rocks stupid that would result in someone speaking gibberish instead of English.

I think it is very obvious that the writer meant for him to say that specific bullshit, but that he thought that specific bullshit sounded spacey, and didn't care or understand that he was describing making a run in a short distance.

I think that is way more likely than someone using the words "obvious misinformation" to describe someone talking about running a marathon in less than 12 kjladsknlbjdsfanlkjfgadskjldsefkjwakjsfghjab.

As previously established, Han Solo either did or did not run the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs. If he did not, then by definition his statement is a lie. So you would use "misinformation" to indicate that he knew the real information, and was giving out not that. You would not use it to indicate someone lying about gibberish.

2) People gave examples where people use idiomatic language to describe their actions. Using idiomatic language is not using units incorrectly any more than using "fucking" to describe someone making your life harder by a means not related to sticking their dick in you is.

People did not give examples, nor fucking could they, because they do not exist, of people lying about how great they are in the wrong units when they know the right ones and intend to be believed.

IE, Paul Ryan lied about running a Marathon in a specific amount of time, and likewise, people lie about their 40 time in seconds, not voltrons.

If your official position is that George Lucas meant for the character Han Solo to be know the difference between a parsec and an hour, but say the wrong one because he thought it would help fool them, then you are an idiot, and you have no evidence for that position.

If your official position is that George Lucas meant for the character Han Solo to be so stupid that he doesn't know the difference between a parsec and an hour, then you are just full of shit, because in the same fucking movie he gets in a chair and flies a ship while looking at dials and controls and not being confused.

[DSMatticus]

That's not how probability works.

Wat? That's totally how probability works. If D and U are disjoint sets of F and D is larger than U, then an element randomly selected from F is more likely to be in D than U. Don't get me wrong; that is a shitty, unfair way to approach the problem, because I was being a smartass. But the probability of that shitty, unfair approach is just fine.

But you specified an "ambiguous fuck up." That's not randomly selected from F, because it has dialogue and units. Most of the dialogue fuckups won't have units at all.

I did specify ambiguous. Well, fuck. In the spirit of this conversation, I'm going to claim that ambiguous is itself ambiguous, and hunt for a definition of ambiguous that salvages my statement even though it clearly isn't the definition the author originally intended. [Bullshit argument from the definition of ambiguous as "doubtful or uncertain" in various dictionaries goes here.]

If your official position is that George Lucas meant for the character Han Solo to be know the difference between a parsec and an hour, but say the wrong one because he thought it would help fool them, then you are an idiot, and you have no evidence for that position.

If your official position is that George Lucas meant for the character Han Solo to be so stupid that he doesn't know the difference between a parsec and an hour, then you are just full of shit, because in the same fucking movie he gets in a chair and flies a ship while looking at dials and controls and not being confused.

You are appealling to the implausibility of a fictional character's behavior. I should not have to tell you how fucking stupid that is. It doesn't actually matter that parsec would not actually be a fancy technobabble word in the setting that would impress people and Han Solo would be better off bragging with an at least coherent claim, and it also doesn't matter that a space pilot not knowing what a parsec is even more implausible. Because guess what: Han Solo isn't a person who actually exists, and the implausibility of his actions means fuck all. Han Solo is actually an invention of George Lucas's mind. No, really; I'm not making this up. He's totally fake. And that means that any implausibility in Han Solo's actions that you cite is only evidence that those actions mean something else if you assume Lucas possesses the necessary competence to recognize said implausibility.

So, the "it's a stupid lie" position is that Lucas wanted to write Han Solo trying to bewilder them with a nonsensical technical claim, and Lucas wanted Ben to catch him on it. But Lucas wrote the particular line of dialogue so stupidly that everyone in the setting should have caught him on it, and Han Solo is a moron for telling it. The only requirement for that to be true is that Lucas writes shitty, unnatural dialogue and is bad at following the consequences of such dialogue through to the consistency of the narrative as a whole. Giant fucking checkmark. And the evidence for that is it is by far the most natural reading of the script, and the proposed alternative is stupid as fuck and essentially unexplained; it's not really clear why Han Solo's attempt to brag deceitfully would be stupid if not for the fact that it was babble.

[Ted the Flayer]

I don't think anyone is saying George Lucas is a genius. If the claims that the "parsec" line was on purpose is true, lucas would be no less at fault for writing it.

I have heard anecdotes (that's like data, right?) that Ford had a habit of just not reading his lines if he thought they were stupid enough though.

[Chamomile]

Kaelik is fundamentally arguing that a line in the script which explicitly describe Han's actions as stupid is not evidence that Han sometimes tries to do something stupid. This is such an inane position that I feel no reason to waste anymore time arguing it. Kaelik has already admitted that he thought I was lying before I linked the script, and human interaction being what it is he is obviously unwilling to back down to a position after having committed to it as thoroughly as he has with the first post when he tried to call me out.

It's also worth noting that he was explicitly trying to call me out, by name, even though all I mentioned was that Ben's reaction is in the script (something which is factually true and very easy to verify), which was a response to Desdan's hypothesis that Alec Guinness is just smarter than George Lucas (something which is probably true anyway). It was ishy that actually made the claim that Han Solo could justifiably make dumb decisions in general because of the dumb decision mentioned and explicitly called stupid in the script, but Kaelik mentions me by name and not ishy.

Conclusion: Kaelik is most likely raging because he doesn't like me, personally, assumed I was pulling stuff from my ass when I mentioned the line in the script, and didn't bother to spend the thirty seconds googling "star wars Episode IV script" to confirm it (which is how I found it). If I had to guess why he doesn't like me (or at least, why he likes me even less than other people in the 'Han Solo's explicitly stupid decision was stupid' camp), it's probably because I've never been shy about articulating how pathetic his sperging out over trivial minutia mostly or completely unrelated to the actual discussion is. As exhibit A, every post he's made in this thread.

Which is why I recommend just completely ignoring every post Kaelik makes in this entire thread. He's made it abundantly obvious that this has bugger all to do with Star Wars or facts, and whether or not my suspicions about the source of his incoherent rage is accurate doesn't change the fact that absolutely nothing good will come from trying to talk to him.

[Kaelik]

Kaelik is fundamentally arguing that a line in the script which explicitly describe Han's actions as stupid is not evidence that Han sometimes tries to do something stupid.

No, Kaelik is explicitly arguing that Han's actions were not intended to be specifically using a unit of distance instead of time for something measured in time. Whether or not it is stupid to lie about how fast/short you did the Kessel Run to someone who has never even heard of Kessel is completely beside the point, even if it is stupid.

It's also worth noting that he was explicitly trying to call me out, by name, even though all I mentioned was that Ben's reaction is in the script (something which is factually true and very easy to verify), which was a response to Desdan's hypothesis that Alec Guinness is just smarter than George Lucas (something which is probably true anyway). It was ishy that actually made the claim that Han Solo could justifiably make dumb decisions in general because of the dumb decision mentioned and explicitly called stupid in the script, but Kaelik mentions me by name and not ishy.

Or in the alternative, I didn't think ishy was being serious, because he said something really stupid, and then linked to darths and droids, a comic that expressly exists as a parody of star wars. Therefore, I assumed he was making a joke in reference to it, just like someone would make a joke about how Legolas is a girl and link to that lord of the rings parody that it is based on.

Conclusion: Kaelik is most likely raging because he doesn't like me, personally

Conclusion: Everything else you wrote in this post is a waste of space, because it is based on the false premise that I remember who you even are from thread to thread as if differentiating you from german spam bots was actually worth my time. Sorry, if you ever made fun of me, it didn't bother me enough for me to even remember anything you have ever said as belonging to a specific poster that I didn't read in the last two days.

[John Magnum]

Kaelik is fundamentally arguing that a line in the script which explicitly describe Han's actions as stupid is not evidence that Han sometimes tries to do something stupid.

And now you're pulling the same idiotic equivocation too. It would be stupid for Han Solo to lie about the performance of an obviously shabby beater to impress a relatively savvy potential business partner. It would also be stupid for Han Solo to fucking forget the difference between distance and time. The fact that these are both stupid things does not mean that the fact that the script implies Han's actions were stupid proves that therefore Han can't tell the difference between time and space.

[Chamomile]

And now you're pulling the same idiotic equivocation too. It would be stupid for Han Solo to lie about the performance of an obviously shabby beater to impress a relatively savvy potential business partner. It would also be stupid for Han Solo to fucking forget the difference between distance and time. The fact that these are both stupid things does not mean that the fact that the script implies Han's actions were stupid proves that therefore Han can't tell the difference between time and space.

No, actually, it wouldn't be a stupid boast to try and claim that your ship is faster than it is to a farmboy and a hermit. Ben knows Han is lying because he's secretly a retired space general, but Han doesn't know that and couldn't reasonably know that. The boast is explicitly stated to be obvious misinformation and also to have been a stupid move, and we have a very clear and simple reason as to why that might be true that is completely consistent with everything we know about George Lucas' writing capabilities.

On the other hand, there's no reason why Han's inability to determine that Ben is secretly a retired general would be "stupid," and his inability to hide secrets from a mind-reader who he doesn't know is a mind-reader would definitely not fall into the realm of a "stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation." You're claiming that the line was supposed to have been plausible, but it was explicitly described as being not that.

[PoliteNewb]

On the other hand, there's no reason why Han's inability to determine that Ben is secretly a retired general would be "stupid," and his inability to hide secrets from a mind-reader who he doesn't know is a mind-reader would definitely not fall into the realm of a "stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation."

Yes, there is a reason those things are stupid. Because they are going to fail.
Now, you seem to be equating that with Han knowing such actions would be stupid (which of course, he wouldn't).

Question: is it or is it not possible to do something stupid without knowing that it was a dumb move?

I posit that it is...that in fact, that is a large percentage of dumb moves, that seemed entirely plausible when they were done.

[lans]

The use of wrong units could be a way to gauge customers. Like if I'm selling a computer to a hick farmer and after being asked if it runs fast, I respond by saying does a 160 gigabytes sound fast to you? Then charging him way more than I would otherwise as he has no clue he would be getting screwed over

[DSMatticus]

Yes, there is a reason those things are stupid. Because they are going to fail.

That is absolutely one hundred percent not what stupid means. It is not stupid to look for your car keys in the last place you left them just because your wife drove your car to get coffee in the morning while you were in the shower and put the keys somewhere else when she got back. It's totally going to fail, because the keys simply aren't there, but it's not stupid. As a matter of fact: looking anywhere else first would be stupid, unless your wife moving your keys was routine enough to warrant doing so.

Stupid means that something is either wrong/nonsensical, or that it is resulting from a decision that is wrong/nonsensical. The decision to bluff a hick farmer is neither strictly wrong nor nonsensical. The decision to bluff an educated mind reader is stupid. Han Solo is not making the decision to do the latter, he is making the decision to do the former. Now, it turns out the reality of the situation is that he is bluffing an educated mind reader, but he has no way of actually knowing that without being a mind reader himself, so the decision to do so (barring some other argument) is not stupid.

Now, using stupid to mean "doomed to failure" is a really common mistake, so you could plausibly argue that Lucas's use of stupid is as stupid as his use of parsecs, but if we start going down that road we're setting fire to our only primary evidence and it merely gets us back to ambiguity.

[Kaelik]

The decision to bluff a hick farmer about how fast/short you did something on the other side of the galaxy that he knows absolutely nothing about is stupid.

If I time traveled to 1000 and lied about how strong I was, I wouldn't lie about how many Newtons of force I exert, and to do so would be stupid. Not because it is the wrong unit, because it is not, but because that doesn't mean anything to them.

[RadiantPhoenix]

So, question:

Does either side disagree with the following statement:

"Han Solo's line about the Kessel Run in A New Hope is stupid and should probably not be considered in any discussion that's not specifically about Han Solo, Harrison Ford, or George Lucas."

If so, why?

[Chamomile]

Well, I wouldn't agree to that statement because I think of a couple of other topics offhand that the line would apply to (for example, it would be the perfect example for a discussion about poor scriptwriting or unclear characterization, or a discussion about how neither of those two things stop a movie from being an international phenomenon and beloved classic). I'm not sure what you're really trying to establish with that statement, so I can't say whether or not I fundamentally agree with what you're getting at in spirit, either.

[erik]

Whether it should be considered relies largely upon whether it means something or not.

I always presumed that whoever wrote the line was an idiot (breaking the verisimilitude of the movie briefly as a stupid writer's error). It is most likely the writer was the one who didn't know anything about space and didn't bother checking any references, as evidenced by everything else that happens in space in Star Wars.

In my most generous moments that it was intended that hyperdrive travel times were discussed as actually making distances shorter what with the butt-fucking of relativity, and thus making a run in some shorter distance was an accepted measure of speed... or that he was boasting of a clever route to make a shortcut using warpwharbarggl (and his claim was only ludicrous due to the extent of the shortcut).

I suppose if it was some ill-attempted measure of referencing travel time by shortened distances or shortcut warp-routes then it would be relevant to the Star Wars canon. If it is a stupid one-off nonsense line then it is relevant to just about nothing other than that either Han Solo is supposed to be an incompetent pilot, or that the writer had no background in science and couldn't be fucked to check a reference book.

Now, at no point did I ever imagine that the line was written to cast Han Solo as a buffoon who didn't know how to tell a damn lie about something he was supposed to be knowledgeable about. It is fascinating to find anyone espousing the notion that it was written to illustrate that either Han Solo is too stupid to tell a proper lie, or he is too stupid to know the difference between units.

Then again, 35 years later. Prometheus.

[Chamomile]

Now, at no point did I ever imagine that the line was written to cast Han Solo as a buffoon who didn't know how to tell a damn lie about something he was supposed to be knowledgeable about.

Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation.

Well, uh, you have imagined wrong.

[erik]

Now, at no point did I ever imagine that the line was written to cast Han Solo as a buffoon who didn't know how to tell a damn lie about something he was supposed to be knowledgeable about.

Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation.

Well, uh, you have imagined wrong.

Um, no.

I actually read the rest of this thread and agree with the sensible folk who understand that you can give misinformation without it being total gibberish like confusing distance with time. Why would you assume that misinformation would imply "gibberish" rather than "boastful claim", especially in this context?

Possibilities...
1. The writers intended for it to be misinformation of gibberish, in which case, what the fuck. Apparently Solo is supposed to be a blathering moron not to be trusted to pilot a starship and Ben should have said, "These are not the passengers you're looking for" and moved on to find a competent pilot who won't launch them into a star because they cannot tell the difference between time and distance.

2. The writers intended for it to be misinformation where it is supposed to make sense but not actually be true due to overstatement (i.e. boasting).
-2a. either the writers are ignorant themselves... LIKELY considering absolutely nothing about space is accurate in the movies.
-2b. or it is Star Wars technojargon where using parsec as a reference to shortening a trip actually makes sense

I'm thinking 2a or 2b are far more likely than 1.

[Foxwarrior]

Well, the speed of light is a handy dandy tool for pretending that time and distance are interchangeable, because it provides a nice, constant, universal ratio.

So (if he meant to say light-parsecs), a bit over 3 years.

He sure is patient.

[tussock]

If I time traveled to 1000 and lied about how strong I was, I wouldn't lie about how many Newtons of force I exert, and to do so would be stupid. Not because it is the wrong unit, because it is not, but because that doesn't mean anything to them.

If you travelled that far into the past, you'd have to learn to speak late old English.

"We sildra biddeth thee, eala' lare-you, theet thou teas'e ous spressan ritey, forthum ungelearedeh wee sindon, and geweammodlice we spresseth."

Or as a rough literal translation: We children do ask you, reverent teacher, that you teach us to speak rightly; as unlearned we are, and as-creatures-corrupt we do speak. With all the ge- and -eh and -eth and -an that carry meaning and so on.

And even then you'd sound like you were reading a poem, so they'd call you "woot" and burn you to be safe, but that's the only sources we have, so there you have it.

[DSMatticus]

Um, no.

I actually read the rest of this thread and agree with the sensible folk who understand that you can give misinformation without it being total gibberish like confusing distance with time. Why would you assume that misinformation would imply "gibberish" rather than "boastful claim", especially in this context?

Let's try that again:

Now, at no point did I ever imagine that the line was written to cast Han Solo as a buffoon who didn't know how to tell a damn lie about something he was supposed to be knowledgeable about.

Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation.

There is no reading of the script where NEITHER 'Han Solo is making a stupid attempt at lying' NOR 'the lie itself is stupid' are true.

And that is the key problem with 2a or 2b. If you assert that "attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation," is referring to a completely coherent boastful lie, you are left with the burden of explaining why that completely coherent boastful lie is stupid. Why was it stupid of Han Solo to try and bluff a couple of people who were successfully passing as hick farmers with a claim they couldn't possibly falsify or even understand the context of if they were hick farmers? That isn't actually stupid. At all.

The writers intended for it to be misinformation of gibberish, in which case, what the fuck. Apparently Solo is supposed to be a blathering moron not to be trusted to pilot a starship and Ben should have said, "These are not the passengers you're looking for" and moved on to find a competent pilot who won't launch them into a star because they cannot tell the difference between time and distance.

This an argument from the implausibility of a fictional character, just like Kaelik made earlier. There is a giant hidden assumption in your argument: George Lucas doesn't write implausible lines in scripts. But he totally does, so the implausibility of that exchange is totally in line with everything we know about George Lucas's ability to write dialogue.

The decision to bluff a hick farmer about how fast/short you did something on the other side of the galaxy that he knows absolutely nothing about is stupid.

If I time traveled to 1000 and lied about how strong I was, I wouldn't lie about how many Newtons of force I exert, and to do so would be stupid. Not because it is the wrong unit, because it is not, but because that doesn't mean anything to them.

It's getting difficult to take you seriously. The thing you're talking about there? People do that. When people lack the requisite knowledge to call bullshit on you, you can substitute confidence/fast-talking/general subterfuge for knowledge.

The light-hearted examples are things like blinker fluid jokes and the snipe hunt. The entire point is that they don't have any clue what you're talking about, so you can get away with saying totally false or even incoherent things. Now, there are at least two practical applications of something like that:

1) If you don't know what you're talking about, and the other guy doesn't know what you're talking about, you can at least sound like you do (and therefore appear to possess competence you actually don't) by confidently dropping jargon neither of you understand. For example, if I want to break into a locked lab room and steal shit, I could throw on a lab coat and try to catch a janitor and start dropping bullshit jargon like how I left my electrorotarimometer running and it's costing the lab thousands of dollars in materials and electricity by the hour and if you don't get me into that room this instant it'll be both our asses on the line. I have no idea what's in the lab. He has no idea what in the lab. Electrorotarimometer is fucking gibberish I made up out of words that sounded sciency. And you know what; that will totally work some of the time. The implication here is that George Lucas wanted to write Han Solo as a subpar pilot, and being the terrible writer he is, he thought "parsec" sounded like a spacey term you'd technobabble someone with. Now, that's stupid and ridiculous because everyone in Star Wars has to know what a parsec is (unless it's an antiquidated/esoteric unit of measurement or something). But George Lucas writing stupid and ridiculous dialogue is not a deal breaker for this position, and honestly I'd find it easier to palate that Lucas failed to think his dialogue through than he failed to consult a dictionary to figure out what parsec meant before writing it.

2) If you do know what you're talking about, and you want to know how much the other guy knows what you're talking about, you can drop bullshit jargon and see if he calls you on it. If he does, whoops, you fucked up. If he doesn't, you have found out you have someone totally inexperienced and started testing the depths of their gullibility. This is something a swindler like Han Solo would totally do. And people do this, too. "Is the computer fast? It's got 8 gigs of RAM!"