Testing Chat IV: A New Hope

[Veef]

midichlorians is still the dumbest thing ever

[Glass Fort MacLeod]

Isn't it a miss manners forum?

Not as I've noticed, as I've gotten away with using foul language and even insulting people before at times.

What I figure he's going to hate, however, is its alot more tolerant of some viewpoints that wouldn't be accepted here (stuff that would, for example, drive Los up the wall. Attitudes towards women, etc.) They've made some real efforts in trying to stamp it out, but the simple fact is that spacebattles is too big to be effectively managed without making it more like, oh, SDN, and that would probably kill the board. You literally can do or say some horrible shit and the worst you might face is a tempban, unless you break the rules or cross a mod/admin.

The worst thing, at least from me, is no topic is ever truly 'ended.' unless the mods end it (usually with a banning, and sometimes not even then.) The same topics will come up over and over, with the same arguments, and it gets endlessly repetitive. What this means is that its the sort of board you can both love and hate.. its got some interesting conversatons, but its also got some of the most infuriating groupthink and some infuriating intolerance at the same time. Price of freedom, and all that, I guess.

Edit: Also, SBers have some of the worst entitlement complex I've ever seen on a forum. You get tons of people complaining because the board is moving SLOW and they should have it working properly. In other words, demanding they deserve proper functioning of a board they get to use free of charge and clog its bandwidth up with alot of silly shit.

[Glass Fort MacLeod]

Talking about Star Wars, on another forum someone posted that :

I just thought of something. And I'm sure plenty of people have thought of it before, but still. In the Star Wars prequels, at least, the Jedi are completely aware of what makes them able to use the Force: Midi-Chlorians. They know these organisms exist in their cells, and they can even do a per-cell count of them. Not ten years after the movie canon established this, they discovered that an army had been formed in secret. A clone army. One that had been designed for obedience and docility--in other words, to not rely on their own emotions and will too much. Why would the Jedi(secretly Sith) that formed this army not put in a little special order: make every single damn one of them a Jedi. Not just any Jedi, but militarized Jedi who don't back down from using guns. Maybe even are equipped with power armor powered by the same thing that powers the steel-melting plasma beams the Jedi use as weapons. Maybe, instead of blasters, they use kinetic weapons that they can use their TK to guide to their targets. Sentries can sense enemies. Mechanics can fix vehicles from inside the cab. Some of them could even use shields or bursts of energy like you sometimes see in the Pre-Ep. 1 books. There was a huge amount of missed potential there. Yes, I know that Sidious, when he placed the order, wanted them to fight the droids in a protracted war, not a curbstomp. But when the Jedi learned of it and were effectively militarized themselves, why did not one of these "wise and cunning" warriors ever think of it?

To which I responded :

Palpatine's plan was to takeover the Republic and turn it into a galactic empire with him at its head. Thing at which he succeeded. When you're an evil overlord, it's generally not too wise to give too much power, individually, to your rank and file soldiers. After all, who's to say that someone else couldn't maneuver them to unwittingly act against you, with all their supersoldier might ? From the point of view of the Sith Lords, they all had the interest in the world to limit as much as possible the number of Force Users, of people who could go toe-to-toe with them, on their playground. Also, out of universe, it wouldn't have fit with one of the theme of Star Wars, which is to say that the villains which tend to rely too much on technology and machines (The Empire, with the Death Star) are most vulnerable to the power of the human heart (Luke Skywalker and his space wizard powers).

Thoughts ?

All I can say is.. Mace Windu pretty much said at the outset that they're not warriors. They have not been trained or conditioned to think in that way for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. They're more peacekeepers and police, who rely more on a visible presence and the non-combat use of their powers to maintain order than military force. That's going to be a vastly different mindset from 'PRACTICAL MILITARY KILLER.' When you add the fact the Jedi are pretty much religious in mindset (which is a big part of the prequels - the Jedi had become stagnant nad inflexible, whilst the Sith had not.) expecting them to make short term changes from things they know and trust for generations is.. pretty silly.

Heck, that can be said of the Star Wars galaxy as a whole. THey've had long long periods of time without much in the way of truly 'galactic' war, people are going to get rusty at it and need time to gear up to 'war footings' and shit. Assuming they're even allowed to or that such is a good idea (I suspect that, culturally, there is a strong motivation against overt militarization, or efficient militarization, which is why we see shit like walkers and stuff rathre than PRACTICAL supertanks. Politics, diplomacy, and economics all get in the way of waging a truly 'efficient' war, and this is probably a good thing, as the SW galaxy could nuke itself in fairly short order if it didn't. Even without 200 GIGATON turbolasers.)


Honestly this is always the danger I see in 'fan based sensible/realistic' - people look at shit different ways, they have different ideas of what makes sense, but that doesn't neccesarily mean its the best fit for the setting. It can be real easy to convince yourself you know the 'answers' to the questions of the setting, only to end up imposing your preconceptions on it and changing that setting, and thats not a good thing.
It also shows how fans spend more time obsessing over and arguing over their 'points of view' of how the universe is/works in different ways than over the actual facts

[Shroom Man 777]

either way the shabad-oud witches will lay waste to all their craps with their cetacyborgs

[Infinity Biscuit]

Connor, do you post on SB? What's your name over there?

[RogueIce]

Thoughts ?

That whoever you're discussing this is a bit of a wanker.

What I figure he's going to hate, however, is its alot more tolerant of some viewpoints that wouldn't be accepted here (stuff that would, for example, drive Los up the wall. Attitudes towards women, etc.) They've made some real efforts in trying to stamp it out, but the simple fact is that spacebattles is too big to be effectively managed without making it more like, oh, SDN, and that would probably kill the board. You literally can do or say some horrible shit and the worst you might face is a tempban, unless you break the rules or cross a mod/admin.

The worst thing, at least from me, is no topic is ever truly 'ended.' unless the mods end it (usually with a banning, and sometimes not even then.) The same topics will come up over and over, with the same arguments, and it gets endlessly repetitive. What this means is that its the sort of board you can both love and hate.. its got some interesting conversatons, but its also got some of the most infuriating groupthink and some infuriating intolerance at the same time. Price of freedom, and all that, I guess.

This is why I avoid the srs bzns parts of SB. If you hang around the General and Games forums it's not too bad. And unlike SDN there's some actual life to everything that isn't Hard Core Debates™ so it won't get totally boring.

Sure you can find some dumb/annoying things in there too, but it's much less pronounced I figure.

[RogueIce]

I lost a lot of my interest in SW when they so cruelly kicked TCW to the curb.

I'm pretty much going to be SW Free until 2015, looks like.

Unless Timothy Zahn writes something new between now and then.

So it's not a Timothy Zahn book, but close enough:

New Animated Series Star Wars Rebels Coming Fall 2014

Headed up by mostly the same team as The Clone Wars and...wait a minute, what's this?

"Executive producer Greg Weisman brings with him a wealth of animation experience with credits such as Young Justice, The Spectacular Spider-Man and Gargoyles."

Greg motherfuckin' Weisman is going to be on this show?! FUCK YEAH!!!

My faith in the franchise has just been restored.

[Glass Fort MacLeod]

Connor, do you post on SB? What's your name over there?

Funny enough, Connor MacLeod Subtle huh?

I've been there since before 2000-2001 IIRC. I mostly stay in Vs debates and tech debates, but thats infuriating enough, and I read most of the debates. And sometimes I post elsewhere. I've actually had pretty well associations with many of the mods and admins on and off for quite awhile too.

[Glass Fort MacLeod]

This is why I avoid the srs bzns parts of SB. If you hang around the General and Games forums it's not too bad. And unlike SDN there's some actual life to everything that isn't Hard Core Debates™ so it won't get totally boring.

Sure you can find some dumb/annoying things in there too, but it's much less pronounced I figure.

Honestly part of the problem with the place (and part of the problem that cropped up in SDN) is that stuff that shouldn't be 'serious' got treated as such. Thats partly why I have such an aversion to Hard sci fi. I like to take sci fi 'serious' like you take any game (its not interesting unless you have some sort of guidelines or rules to play by, even if people can't AGREE on those rules) but there's a certain point when rules become obstacles.

Its honestly not just symptomatic of those boards, I think it spreads to lots of other places like Tvtropes, various wikis, and such.

[Oxymoron]

Thoughts ?

That whoever you're discussing this is a bit of a wanker.

Well, yes. Of course. I know that.

[Oxymoron]

either way the shabad-oud witches will lay waste to all their craps with their cetacyborgs

Damn whore-priestesses and their overcompensatingly powerful ships.

[Flagg]

I lost a lot of my interest in SW when they so cruelly kicked TCW to the curb.

I'm pretty much going to be SW Free until 2015, looks like.

Unless Timothy Zahn writes something new between now and then.

So it's not a Timothy Zahn book, but close enough:

New Animated Series Star Wars Rebels Coming Fall 2014

Headed up by mostly the same team as The Clone Wars and...wait a minute, what's this?

"Executive producer Greg Weisman brings with him a wealth of animation experience with credits such as Young Justice, The Spectacular Spider-Man and Gargoyles."

Greg motherfuckin' Weisman is going to be on this show?! FUCK YEAH!!!

My faith in the franchise has just been restored.

Gargoyles is easily my favorite childhood animated series. This is some great news.

[Glass Fort MacLeod]

I wonder what the delta vee of a giant cyborg spacewhale might be.

TO THE CALCULATOR ROOM!

(and no we will not assume it is a spherical mass of iron.)

[Flagg]

God Jub is a misogynistic moron.

[Jung]

Another post I wrote in that SB thread:

Yes, this definitely seems like a good critique of TNG to me. It may even qualify for the OP, as you could argue there is a certain hypocrisy involved - on the one hand I'd speculate Star Trek's noninterventionist ethos and ideal of cultural tolerance is very much informed by seeing what the opposite attitudes got us historically, on the other hand it presents a vision of the world that is in line with the premises upon which the White Man's Burden was founded; other cultures (like the Ferenghi, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, various weird planets of the week etc.) are portrayed as barbaric and inferior, and the Federation pretty much comes off as the light of the world. Arguably, this makes Star Trek's tolerant messages come off as rather hollow. I think you could make a pretty solid critique that Star Trek still reflects a fundamentally White Man's Burden view of the world, with other cultures being "half devil and half child", and sees the flaw in the imperialist project as fundamentally being one of trying to bring the savage heathens to the light too forcefully and too quickly, rather than with the fundamental imperialist assumptions (one culture is the light of the world, the rest are savage heathens, and the light of the world culture has a charge to bring its light to the savage heathens).

The Culture has been mentioned, and from what I've heard of it on SB it makes me uncomfortable for similar reasons - there seems to be more than a little of the ring of the White Man's Burden in its actions and vision of its place in the universe; it sees itself as a superior culture with a right and duty to bring other cultures more into line with its own values.

I mentioned TGG earlier - one of the frustrating things about that project was in a way its premise might arguably have made better TNG than actual TNG - if you want to present a utopian vision while questioning the notion that a single culture and set of values is clearly the best and should be adopted by everybody, groups like the ADN and the Talorans would have made a much better foil for that utopian vision than the kind of alternatives to the Federation TNG+ Star Trek actually gave us (cartoonish space capitalists! violent space Vikings! space fascists!).

Any thoughts?

[RogueIce]

Edit: Also, SBers have some of the worst entitlement complex I've ever seen on a forum. You get tons of people complaining because the board is moving SLOW and they should have it working properly. In other words, demanding they deserve proper functioning of a board they get to use free of charge and clog its bandwidth up with alot of silly shit.

Well one's definition of "silly shit" isn't a universal thing.

And to be fair I have seen people offer to pony up the money for server upgrades. Don't know what the ratio of them to the whiners is, though. Me, I just treat it as something of a running joke and go elsewhere to waste my Internet time when the server tanks.

Well, yes. Of course. I know that.

So why bother?

Any thoughts?

The whole "let a planet get wiped out by a random asteroid/space disaster because PRIME DIRECTIVE" has always bothered me. I suppose it'd be one thing if they were arguing about intervening in political squabbles or even wars on non-warp planets, because "mysteriously powerful aliens are taking sides" could lead to more problems than it solves, even if you are stopping a genocide-in-progress, because who knows what your intervention will cause later on down the line unless you monitor them, and at that point you've basically committed yourself to "raising them up" or else hoping they don't kill themselves later.

I mean I can get behind the general noninterference thing, especially with the more "primitive" (even by our standards) societies. That said if you can prevent a natural disaster or negative space wedgie from wiping them out and they'll never know...why the fuck wouldn't you? I kinda like how STID handled that a bit, and can sympathize with what Kirk and Spock were trying to accomplish. Granted things went pear shaped and who knows what the ramifications will be now that the society is celebrating the Enterprise God, but their heart was in the right place.

Though arguably you could say that the odds of just that sort of thing happening (unforeseen consequences) is why the Prime Directive is there at all. Granted zapping an asteroid in space probably carries less risk of unintended detection than anything that involves setting foot on the planet itself, but still.

[Civil War Man]

The whole "let a planet get wiped out by a random asteroid/space disaster because PRIME DIRECTIVE" has always bothered me. I suppose it'd be one thing if they were arguing about intervening in political squabbles or even wars on non-warp planets, because "mysteriously powerful aliens are taking sides" could lead to more problems than it solves, even if you are stopping a genocide-in-progress, because who knows what your intervention will cause later on down the line unless you monitor them, and at that point you've basically committed yourself to "raising them up" or else hoping they don't kill themselves later.

I mean I can get behind the general noninterference thing, especially with the more "primitive" (even by our standards) societies. That said if you can prevent a natural disaster or negative space wedgie from wiping them out and they'll never know...why the fuck wouldn't you? I kinda like how STID handled that a bit, and can sympathize with what Kirk and Spock were trying to accomplish. Granted things went pear shaped and who knows what the ramifications will be now that the society is celebrating the Enterprise God, but their heart was in the right place.

Though arguably you could say that the odds of just that sort of thing happening (unforeseen consequences) is why the Prime Directive is there at all. Granted zapping an asteroid in space probably carries less risk of unintended detection than anything that involves setting foot on the planet itself, but still.

In addition, to have unintended consequences go in the other direction, suppose the Enterprise decides to refuse to evacuate a pre-Warp civilization from a planet that's about to be destroyed, letting it get wiped out instead of uplifted, and preventing one or more members of that civilization from being in the right place to prevent a major tragedy further down the road.

The Prime Directive kind of strikes me as similar to those Zero Tolerance policies in schools, where it's done less for the betterment of all and more to cover the asses of the people in charge. When one of their subordinates cocks things up and makes a bad choice, the administrators are much more vulnerable if their policy is "Try to use your better judgement" than if it's "Never interfere ever," because when it's the latter, all of the blame for the bad decision can be placed on the subordinate.

[adr]

i would point out the "watch them get wiped out" is actually super rare and does seem to be an exception; picard's intervention in "pen pals" was on the record (ref "the drumhead") and he didn't get fired for it

the other one that comes up a lot is "homebound" or something, with worf's brother, and that prolly wasn't preventable anyway. so what did you expect them to do? i guess they could beam up a few hundred random people, saying saving some is better than none, but that's a minefield too. how do you pick who lives? what happens then?


which brings me to the other point: i think the prime directive's strictness isn't even necessarily about what it does to the ppl on the planet, but more about what might happen to the starship captain. if they decide to get involved once it makes it easier to do it again later (either individually or the captain, now an admiral, influences the next generation who slide a wee bit further down the slippery slope) and the next thing you know, you're playing god in all the wrong ways, from the direct stuff to a kind of attitude like "we bailed your sorry asses out so you owe us" after first contact is made that sours things

slippery slopes aren't necessarily true, but that's how a lot of tyranny gets started: with little things that shift the new normal over time until what seemed totally unthinkable 20 years ago is just the way things are done now. the prime directive at least throws some sand on the ice to get a lil more footing



and lastly i haven't actually seen "dear doctor" but from what i've heard of it there might be an interesting thing there too, where maybe what looks like a disaster to you is actually perfectly normal to them, and stepping in to prevent it actually does a lot of long term harm.

take for instance a natural forest fire. this looks terrible, all the destruction, but it serves a vital purpose in the ecosystem, it is a part of the life cycle there

if you decide to stop it, saying surely any fate is better than death for the forest, you might inadvertently doom it down the line because the fire was actually part of the environment's renewal process and you just fucked that up



perhaps this doesn't quite apply to star trek humanoids, but nevertheless these are alien planets and things aren't necessarily going to be the same kind of normal that you're used to

[RogueIce]

In addition, to have unintended consequences go in the other direction, suppose the Enterprise decides to refuse to evacuate a pre-Warp civilization from a planet that's about to be destroyed, letting it get wiped out instead of uplifted, and preventing one or more members of that civilization from being in the right place to prevent a major tragedy further down the road.

Indeed, but who can say that'll actually happen?

Or to go back to the STID example I used (mainly because I actually haven't seen most of the PD episodes so I can't really comment on them) what happens if those Enterprise Worshipers go back to the rest of their society and everyone else disagrees and now suddenly religious violence?

Granted you could say that even religious violence is better than Volcano Explodes, Everyone Dies but then are you responsible for ending that religious violence now, or just say, "Well at least they're still alive and can sort this out on their own." Do you just go around uplifting every pre-warp civilization or just the ones with an asteroid headed their way/dangerous plague threatening to kill everyone/super volcano about to explode/whatever? Do you make it a policy to always try and hide your hand and just try to deal with the fuckups as they come along? How do you deal with those inevitable fuckups? And so on.

The Prime Directive kind of strikes me as similar to those Zero Tolerance policies in schools, where it's done less for the betterment of all and more to cover the asses of the people in charge. When one of their subordinates cocks things up and makes a bad choice, the administrators are much more vulnerable if their policy is "Try to use your better judgement" than if it's "Never interfere ever," because when it's the latter, all of the blame for the bad decision can be placed on the subordinate.

Indeed, though I can see why you'd write it down that way.

I mean it's not like the legal code tries to specify every single exception to the things that are illegal like, "Stealing is bad, unless it's food and you need to survive" and stuff. Sure some do (self defense laws and the like) but mostly you kind of need to rely on a trial and/or hearing to sort out the facts. And since Captains have violated the Prime Directive and not been fired (as adr mentions) you could say that's pretty much how Starfleet Command actually handles it, the show/movies just never go into those details.

Though STID kinda did because Pike mentioned a hearing and tribunal, so it wasn't automatic "We're kicking you out of Starfleet" the way most Zero Tolerance Policies tend to be. It's kind of like the whole you can disobey illegal/immoral orders thing; yes you can and it's even explicitly spelled out that you can, but you'd better believe you'll need to justify yourself in an investigation or court martial afterwards.

I think the TNG-and-later era's weakness was that they had the characters treat it as a kind of Unbreakable Edict From On High and an absolute thing, rather than: "Yes 99% of the time we are not to interfere with pre-warp civilizations and this is Very Important for entirely valid reasons. But there is that 1% of the time where you have to act for the Greater Good and when that happens, you'd better be ready to justify yourself to Starfleet Command when they hear about it."

[Oxymoron]

I will save the following picture as AmericaFuckYeah.jpg :

[Aaron]

Wow

[Oxymoron]

I am seriously amazed at the sheer madness of the few american gun nuts I know.

I mean, they all have at least four different guns. Even one who just graduated from high school.

[Oxymoron]

Like, they say there's around as many guns in circulation in the US as there is inhabitants, but I would bet more than half of this number is in the hand of less than a sixth of the population.

[RogueIce]

I am seriously amazed at the sheer madness of the few american gun nuts I know.

I mean, they all have at least four different guns. Even one who just graduated from high school.

That's...not madness. I'm sure Aaron can expand on this, but it's not that difficult. A pistol for target shooting, shotgun for hunting and/or clay shooting, rifle for target shooting (it's different from a pistol) and/or hunting, and probably even a different caliber rifle for hunting different game (pretty sure you wouldn't shoot a rabbit with a .30-06, not if you want anything left of it).

And hell even on target shooting alone maybe you just want to alternate between, say, a pistol grip and regular wooden stock because there's a difference there, too. Really what's the madness in it besides just a generic "lol guns therefore gun nut lol"? It depends entirely on why they have those guns and what they use them for. But I don't see anything "madness" about it more than people who collect rare and expensive stamps or whatever.

[RogueIce]

I will save the following picture as AmericaFuckYeah.jpg :

That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

Although they should of painted those rounds in the blue field white for better accuracy.