I often guess something. It is strange for some people, and I am not suggesting it too. You will not get something based on guessing if you believe so. And you will get some insights, whether it is true or not, you will get insight if you believe in your guessing, which is the case for modern people nowadays.
That’s what data scientists do. Trying to get some pattern, and practical business beliefs if it could make more profit, then it is true. Like any other graphical analysis, it is something stochastic and a lot of mathematicians try to find the relationship between variables, which is directed to chance/opportunity/probability.
Probability means gambling. But data analysts don’t want to be told so. They feel like they’re using math to solve something, or they feel like they’re ‘solving’ something. There is a correlation and without searching further they sure that it is a causation. In business sometimes the analysis is work, then it is believed as the truth.
When in stock or crypto trading, a novice just looks at the graph and makes a position because they feel that this issuer or this coin has a potential to “go to the moon”. They are increasingly convinced when there’s someone who seems like a pro suggesting to buy that stock or coint.
On the other hand, there’s a trader who pays attention well by a lot of fundamental and technical analysis and he is sure that what the novice instincts are true. After a long period, the value of the stock or the coint is increased. In the end, both the novice and the pro make a profit from the stock or the coint. And the question is, is there anyone blaming one of them for making profit?
Profit for science, profit for history, profit for society, it is all about in this world. There’s no profit for long term, only profit for context.
This seems to be what I have been concerned about for this movie. Love story that makes a lot of people interested. A lot of people long for love, and Miyazaki provided that imagination. But I feel like he doesn’t want that to be the primary things which people will remember.
I mean, what is the meaning from independence and responsibility by strong woman? What is the meaning of breaking down a club containing history? What kind of school that has a philosophy and astrophysics enthusiasm club? What it means about debating something to be written off or not?
And the final question is,
“What do From Up on Poppy Hill want to tell its audience?”
So this is a strange thing for me, that many people will question, what is the point? Like everything needs to have a point.
Maybe a few have the same comments regarding the story of a novice trading and a pro trading which I have mentioned above. Some blame a novice trader that doesn’t have a strong knowledge about trading, only bandwagon the trend, and fear of missing out something. Some said a pro trader was wasting his time by analyzing too much while a novice trader can profit easily only by feeling. But when it worked, when it made a profit, who is blaming someone who can make a profit? Are they just spectators and envious of those who have profit? I believe they are not.
Miyazaki leads his audience, building stair after staircase, for something called profit (I said this in general). And it is the same like the act of a pseudo statistician (data analyst) who believes that correlation is the same as causation because it worked in business as the forecast they have made. And it is like the development of science. Full of positivism about what happened and what might happen. Some believe that it is worked by the act of sciences, some believe it is worked by the act of god.
But I rather say, Miyazaki, or the pseudo statistician, or any other scientist is nothing but the same as a stair builder.
The stairs builders arrange the stairs one by one, climb them, rearrange them, and climb them again, they believe because they can go to the upper side it means that the stairs they’re building are working. It is like this Spongebob scene.
They keep on nailing and riding it. By human logic, it is impossible and illogical, Spongebob will fall at the first board he hammered. But “Director” logic is not the same as human logic. And that applies to modern humans today. Or that is what is called probability.
We don’t stop building the future and when we stop for a while, looking at the down of the stairs, we’re just realized,
“Where are the previous stairs that I have built?”
And nothing left in the bottom other than darkness and emptiness.
It is too late to built the foundation and what we can do is only jump,
Or we can choose to continue building the future.
But “From Up on Poppy Hill” is not doing that. It didn’t continue the stairs, it stopped in that session, because it knew there is no future for that. It is only for some endless strange stairs.
So what is the meaning of From Up on Poppy Hill? Nothing. It is just awkward romanticism full of coercion, peppered with expectations of responsibility, braveness, history, philosophy, and logic, where the flavors are very bland and all that remains is strange romance that has expired.
After all, what can you expect from science?