On analysis methods

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Re: On analysis methods

Post by Norade »

So what do you actually see this changing if anything? Trek is still curb stomped by all the evidence and is done in even worse by a few easily quoted sources and most other universes are either two weak or way too strong to take them. The most interesting versus as far as I'm concerned in Wars versus 40k, but we run into an issue of unknowns there that make it hard to resolve.
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Re: On analysis methods

Post by Big Phil »

I think you've got your "analysis" backwards. Most people, when arguing Wars vs. Trek vs. B5 vs. Battlestar Galactica don't assume stupidity first. They assume some in universe explanation first, and stupidity last, like this, and the first two are roughly equivalent.


1a) The tech doesn't exist. Might be the case, but this means the source is wrong, which really needs justification. It's like saying the author is stupid. This should be the second-to-last resort - before the characters, but after everything else.

1b) There's some kind of limitation we don't know the details about. That's something to discuss at length and can bring up a whole lot of new insights about the setting, as well as literature or war, or whatever is being discussed in general.

3) The characters are stupid. I don't like this, see above. (this is why these two points go together. If you don't generally reject "he's an idiot", we never get to the fun stuff coming below)
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Re: On analysis methods

Post by Big Phil »

Mike was taking a highly antagonistic approach to his writing. Remember, most of the main site was written during the heyday of the vs. battles, or at least was the result of those battles. As a result, it's really not surprising that he's as insulting toward Trek as he is. That doesn't mean that other people default to stupidity as an explanation. I'm not sure you can even prove that Mike defaults to stupidity; if he was still participating, you could ask him directly, but my take on the main site is he's trying to be insulting and demeaning - not that his analysis presumes stupidity because he's lazy.
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Re: On analysis methods

Post by Purple »

Just a question. English is not my first language but I have studied it during my education. Still, this is new to me so I have to ask. Is there some sort of rule that I newer heard about before that the order in which the options in a sentence are presented also indicates the chance of their validity. Like if I say that the sky is either red or blue or orange does that mean that I am claiming that red is most likely fallowed by blue and finally the least likely orange? Becouse that is the vibe I get from reading your posts.
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Re: On analysis methods

Post by Batman »

No, there's no rule demanding that in the english language. However, people do tend to order the listed options by some methodology or other if they are discussing things they consider to be more or less likely as opposed to options that basically happen randomly.
Using your sky colour example if that is essentially random, no, the sequence in which they are mentioned doesn't mean beans. However, if you're trying to establish probabilities (as in the sky is more likely to be blue than chartreuse) then chances are there is likely to be a system to the sequence in which the colours are mentioned. It could be up from the bottom or down from the top, but there likely will be a method to it.
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Re: On analysis methods

Post by Kane Starkiller »

Destructionator XIII wrote:Does everybody do that? No, of course not. Does it happen more often than it should? Hell yeah, especially when Star Trek is involved, but I've seen it in Star Wars and Stargate threads early on too.
The thing is no one paid any attention to "lasers can't penetrate shields", "warp core generating billion GW per-" or "there is 5 billion GW running through that conduit" one liners until Trekkies started quoting them as some kind of evidence of Federation ships godlike abilities.
It was just a one liner that was used simply to set a tone for the audience: an outclassed ship or a very dangerous power line. But when Trekkies started coming up with these obscure dialogue fragments and pitting them against well established evidence people reacted and deconstructed them. I don't see what difference it makes that "character is an idiot" comes up first. Frankly it's the easiest thing to do and if people are so dishonest or lazy they'll use them as some kind of evidence they don't deserve more than "Data is an idiot" as a reply.
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Re: On analysis methods

Post by Vympel »

Mike puts the idiot explanation first, when it really should have been the last resort. The first assumption when a character does something that looks stupid should be that he knows something you don't. The question is: what could it be?
I really don't think anyone is meant to assign any preference to the explanation simply because of its order in the sentence. You could just as easily argue that if it was put second, then that's the last thing the reader saw, therefore its meant to be more important.

The "he's an idiot" explanation isn't used to just mock the characters for being stupid - its used - rightly IMO - as a bludgeon against stupid debaters who want to construct entire arguments over their idiotic interpretation of a line of dialog, as Kane Starkiller intimates.

On a more macro level, the 'warp stafing' argument is a good example. Certain people love to make this argument, even when, looking at all the evidence, its clear such a thing hasn't ever existed except in convoluted multi-step implications in the debaters' minds.

Of course, there are times when the characters are simply being idiots, and we just have to accept those times. It happens.
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Re: On analysis methods

Post by Agent Sorchus »

What should also be mentioned in regards to taking the authorial opinion for Star trek is that you have so many differing authors that it should be very confusing. SW could have been equally confusing unless you say that GLucas' opinion is the only one that counts best. (ex. ~from the thread that started this; do we take the opinion of the writers of the episode or the writers of the movie's that seem to intend for genesis to be lost. No I am not making this as an argument since I didn't follow the prior thread enough.)

Another thing to consider when thinking about the author's intent for Star Trek is that a large part of the technical details aren't added by the writers. The science experts are given a script with "tech" written in places for the expert to fill in with technobable and more plausible facts, but there was no intent to make all the 'facts' add up. The animator's had more reason to be consistent with their work than did the writers when talking about technical aspects.
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Re: On analysis methods

Post by Stofsk »

Speaking as someone who has been studying literature for years, author's intent is completely irrelevant to literary analysis. He shouldn't call it 'literary analysis' on that page anyway, since there are many different ways to analyse a text, and author's intent is only one and one that is very de-emphasised from my experience. Similarly, he also misappropriates the term suspension of disbelief as well - it's more apt to call it 'canon literalism', like Adam says.

Despite the above, Mike is generally right to dismiss author's intent anyway. I don't think Adam is advocating that at all.

As far as the SoD/canon literalism approach goes, sometimes it is superior, however I think a big pitfall with it is how it assumes the text is 'documentary evidence' and thus we pretend it actually existed for analysis purposes. The problem there is there are so many things we see onscreen which violate that principle, like vfx gaffes. Take the infamous example from TNG 'Darmok' where the Enterprise fires its phasers from out of its forward photorp launcher. This is a clear vfx mistake (out-of-universe they admitted it as such) but if we were to be strict in our canon literalist approach we would conclude that the Enterprise somehow has the ability to fire phasers where photorps shoot out from. In an earlier episode of TNG, maybe it was 'The Battle' in season one, another similar mistake was made when a tractor beam was fired from the same location!

That's a pretty extraordinary element of the ship's design. Or, they were vfx mistakes which should be dismissed. Ironically, mistakes of this sort tend to violate people's suspension of disbelief so it is natural to try and find an explanation for it, but I think the canon literalist approach wouldn't be valuable in such a situation. I honestly couldn't account for it any other way than to use an out-of-universe explanation like the vfx guys screwed up. Other examples would be in assuming what we hear is just as correct as what we see. So does that mean all the people in SW are actually speaking English and by some extraordinary coincidence Basic is the exact same language? Don't laugh, because that's precisely what taking the canon literalist approach entails (everything we see and hear is true and factual documentary evidence). But we don't assume that, so therefore there are already implicit limitations in that approach. (incidentally I am reminded of the theatrical cut of Star Wars which showed english words if I'm not mistaken in the Death Star when Ben goes to shut down the tractor beam; of course this was changed in the special edition)

What about sound in space? :D
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Re: On analysis methods

Post by Norade »

Destructionator XIII wrote:Another example, more subtle this time: not too long ago in PST, there was another starfleet marines thread where body armor was discussed. Alyeska argued that armoring Trek troopers would be useful. But, we all can observe that body armor is pretty rare in Star Trek.

While he never actually said it, saying something unused in the setting would be useful is implicitly saying the characters are idiots. If it's so obviously useful that a fan can see the potential, surely Starfleet bosses would see it too. But, they don't use it, meaning they didn't see it, so therefore they are idiots.
Having decent computer security, using the security measures they do have, actually building defenses in a ground battle, having weapons that aren't shaped to be as awkward as possible, and many other things are all ways that Trek could be made more effective yet they fail to change these things time and time again. I think it's pretty fair to say that in many ways Trek does suffer a massive block that prevents it from being effective, this could be easily pointed to a stupidity. When we repeatedly see characters on screen talking out their ass on very simple things that most secondary students would be expected to get right that further validates the point and can't simply be dismissed out of hand because you don't like it.

You really don't even have an argument for this besides not wanting these people to be idiots because they are in positions of command. Well, many real life commanders haven't been the brightest either so you're stuck with all the masses of stupidity we get to see in Trek.
Destructionator XIII wrote:By rejecting the idiot explanation, we're at the same time assuming that the setting is internally consistent, so their actions make sense. We shouldn't be saying "why is body armor useful". It's not used, therefore, assuming the characters are smart, it must not be useful.

Now, we've got to ask: why isn't it? What isn't there can tell us just as much as what is there.
A weapon mounted on the retarded dune buggy that could turn a useful amount would have clearly been useful and is a mod that could have been made in the hanger bay by a team with a cutting torch, some metal, and a welder. Does the fact that they didn't make this change mean that they had some limitation that prevented them doing so? Are phasers somehow limited to being the worthless hard to aim shape they are?
Destructionator XIII wrote:Speaking of internal consistency, Mike mentioned the stolen concept fallacy on that vs page. A stolen concept fallacy is when you mix and match elements of two mutually exclusive assumptions to make your argument.

Calling the character an idiot arguably falls under this: you're assuming the setting is internally consistent, since otherwise contradictions would be meaningless. But, at the same time, you're defying this assumption by concluding that the characters are idiots and the setting let them advance to importance anyway! (if the setting were truly consistent, the characters ought to keep the facts straight too)
People can't keep facts straight all the time IRL so your point falls flat on its face on that point. The setting can be internally consistent while having characters that wouldn't understand the term if it were the only thing that could save their lives.
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Purple wrote: Still, this is new to me so I have to ask. Is there some sort of rule that I newer heard about before that the order in which the options in a sentence are presented also indicates the chance of their validity.
Batman got this right. Remember, I'm not talking about outcomes or validity, but rather the method involved. It's not sure that writing it first means it's more important than the others, nor is it even certain that it came to mind first when writing it, but I think the consistency in the pattern - 5/5 times it comes first - gives weight to the idea that it probably did.
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Destructionator XIII wrote:
Kane Starkiller wrote:It was just a one liner that was used simply to set a tone for the audience: an outclassed ship or a very dangerous power line.
Indeed, and it should be left at that. By deconstructing it, you're giving that method of micro-analysis validity, when it's really an irrelevant distraction; a red herring.

Imagine if vs nerds were debating the Space Shuttle vs a group of tanks in a fight to the death.

"well the space shuttle puts out 10 gigawatts and reaches speeds of 11 km/s so the tanks are doomed"

You could answer that, but doing so means you're going to be wasting walls of text and you're going on the defensive in the debate, making it all the easier to trip up.

The individual specs are missing the main point - it's an absurd scenario on the face of it! You can and should win just by hammering that point home.
Could you pick a worse example than putting an unarmed shuttle against an entirely different unit? This example distorts the entire reason why we go into details.

If you instead had two armed space shuttles and were asking which would win in a fight it would be prudent to know as much as you can about each of them. Just like you you were asking about which tank has better odds of winning a fight. Instead you chose to compare apples to tractors.
Stofsk wrote:As far as the SoD/canon literalism approach goes, sometimes it is superior, however I think a big pitfall with it is how it assumes the text is 'documentary evidence' and thus we pretend it actually existed for analysis purposes. The problem there is there are so many things we see onscreen which violate that principle, like vfx gaffes. Take the infamous example from TNG 'Darmok' where the Enterprise fires its phasers from out of its forward photorp launcher. This is a clear vfx mistake (out-of-universe they admitted it as such) but if we were to be strict in our canon literalist approach we would conclude that the Enterprise somehow has the ability to fire phasers where photorps shoot out from. In an earlier episode of TNG, maybe it was 'The Battle' in season one, another similar mistake was made when a tractor beam was fired from the same location!

That's a pretty extraordinary element of the ship's design. Or, they were vfx mistakes which should be dismissed. Ironically, mistakes of this sort tend to violate people's suspension of disbelief so it is natural to try and find an explanation for it, but I think the canon literalist approach wouldn't be valuable in such a situation. I honestly couldn't account for it any other way than to use an out-of-universe explanation like the vfx guys screwed up. Other examples would be in assuming what we hear is just as correct as what we see. So does that mean all the people in SW are actually speaking English and by some extraordinary coincidence Basic is the exact same language? Don't laugh, because that's precisely what taking the canon literalist approach entails (everything we see and hear is true and factual documentary evidence). But we don't assume that, so therefore there are already implicit limitations in that approach. (incidentally I am reminded of the theatrical cut of Star Wars which showed english words if I'm not mistaken in the Death Star when Ben goes to shut down the tractor beam; of course this was changed in the special edition)
VFX errors are bad no matter how you slice it and do tend to throw a wrinkle in the debate no matter how you slice it. The simplest way of sticking to the documentary approach would be to say that for security purposes the footage was edited before release to the public. However that way leads to other issues and thus creates more problems than it solves. The other way of saying they must have an emergency phaser or tractor beam located there also has issues so again you're left choosing from a bunch of less than satisfactory options.
Stofsk wrote:What about sound in space?
Given the fact that this has been explained many times over in the books I have to ask if that was meant as a joke or as something you actually thought was a mistake funny enough to justify a smiley.
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Re: On analysis methods

Post by Stofsk »

Yeah that was meant as a joke hence the smiley but now that you mention it, the explanation given in the books is fucking retarded.
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Re: On analysis methods

Post by Norade »

Stofsk wrote:Yeah that was meant as a joke hence the smiley but now that you mention it, the explanation given in the books is fucking retarded.
I don't think that adding sound to give gunners and pilots an extra sense to use is that bad actually. It seems easier than making them need to see extra things and if it's a reliable technology that has been shown to have benefits why not use it?
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Re: On analysis methods

Post by Connor MacLeod »

I don't hav elong, but I just wanted to note two things based on my experience (both in the time I wasted in the "great debatE" of vs debating, and in general doing my own analysis with silly stuff like 40k.) Mike's site originated largely from his participation in ASVS, which is a long LONG time in the past (like before 2000). The Website, I recall reading, was pretty much a response to that and the sort of fans he'd dealt with at that time, and much of it is geared towards dealing with those sorts of people. And by "sort of people" I don't mean Trekkies per se, but I mean the rabid, hardcore "NEVER GIVE UP AND NEVER SURRENDER" types like Scooter who invest deeply in who wins the debate. When I got involved in it (around late 90s early 2000s) I started out on Spacebattles and both the nature of the debate and debating enviroment is vastly different than what it is now (or hell, even what it was in 2002-2003) and I myself am a much more differnt person. Given that, I can only imagine Mike's attitudes have changed over time (interacting with him semi-frequently has lead me to believe some of his opinions differ from what he used to believe, although that's largely anecdotal and its up to the individual whether they believe me or not.)

Now, alot of Mike's page is what we can call out of date. In my personal experience, its HARD just ot keep up with the 40K crap I do on SDN. I have a HUGE list of "revisions" corrections and all other changes as my opinions and methodology have changed, or I gained new understanding or insight from others (my lasgun analysis for example needs a HUGE revision, because of the stuff I picked up from Luke Campbell's excellent website and on SFConsim.) I have no idea if/when I'll get to that, and its very time consuming. Mike is a married man with kids, and he's had less and less time to devote to maintaining the website. I know he's always intended to do it (or, as with the "strategic resources/sci fi analysis" page, to take it in new direction.) but for whatever reason he hasn't or doesn't. I don't blame him for that, I don't rush to do all my updates, even though I know people use alot of my own outdated conclusions/analysis (and despite me correcting that. It's one of the more aggravating things I've had to deal with.)

Another big point is the time factor. Again in my own experience, we're talking about many years, or even a decade of more, or time for many of those webpages. That's a HUGE span of time for a "vs" or "analytical" POV for things to change. I know that my own atittudes and opinions have changed on a yearly basis, nevermind over a decade. And not just people, but the debate enviroment changes. I can assert to the fact (hell I believe I did up there) that vs debating is nothing like it used to be. Hell, compared ot some of the people I used to deal with, arguing with D13 over SW is a breath of fucking Fresh air. I WISH there had been more people like him (or Stofsk, or Chris O Farrell, or Alyeska - who is a Trekkie btw, and who is something of an opponent-turned-acquiantance over the years. Funny that.) it would have been more enjoyable and less frustrating (although many of those people also changed over time as well.. but even back in the day they weren't bad.)
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Re: On analysis methods

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Stofsk wrote:Speaking as someone who has been studying literature for years, author's intent is completely irrelevant to literary analysis. He shouldn't call it 'literary analysis' on that page anyway, since there are many different ways to analyse a text, and author's intent is only one and one that is very de-emphasised from my experience. Similarly, he also misappropriates the term suspension of disbelief as well - it's more apt to call it 'canon literalism', like Adam says.

Despite the above, Mike is generally right to dismiss author's intent anyway. I don't think Adam is advocating that at all.

As far as the SoD/canon literalism approach goes, sometimes it is superior, however I think a big pitfall with it is how it assumes the text is 'documentary evidence' and thus we pretend it actually existed for analysis purposes. The problem there is there are so many things we see onscreen which violate that principle, like vfx gaffes. Take the infamous example from TNG 'Darmok' where the Enterprise fires its phasers from out of its forward photorp launcher. This is a clear vfx mistake (out-of-universe they admitted it as such) but if we were to be strict in our canon literalist approach we would conclude that the Enterprise somehow has the ability to fire phasers where photorps shoot out from. In an earlier episode of TNG, maybe it was 'The Battle' in season one, another similar mistake was made when a tractor beam was fired from the same location!

That's a pretty extraordinary element of the ship's design. Or, they were vfx mistakes which should be dismissed. Ironically, mistakes of this sort tend to violate people's suspension of disbelief so it is natural to try and find an explanation for it, but I think the canon literalist approach wouldn't be valuable in such a situation. I honestly couldn't account for it any other way than to use an out-of-universe explanation like the vfx guys screwed up. Other examples would be in assuming what we hear is just as correct as what we see. So does that mean all the people in SW are actually speaking English and by some extraordinary coincidence Basic is the exact same language? Don't laugh, because that's precisely what taking the canon literalist approach entails (everything we see and hear is true and factual documentary evidence). But we don't assume that, so therefore there are already implicit limitations in that approach. (incidentally I am reminded of the theatrical cut of Star Wars which showed english words if I'm not mistaken in the Death Star when Ben goes to shut down the tractor beam; of course this was changed in the special edition)

What about sound in space? :D
You're right in that authorial intent is only one method of literary analysis and that most other forms subscribe to the "death of the author" ideal. However, those forms of literary analysis have a different set of problems:

1. Most literary analysis boils down to personal interpretation, which has a subjective element that makes debates difficult if not impossible to resolve. I might see an element of something as symbolic while another person might just see it as what it looks like on the surface. I might see something as obvious while someone else might see it as profound. Who is right? We might both be-- texts often have multiple meanings embedded into them. Is the ending of Sunshine, where the character Capa stands trapped in time between the sun and a manmade explosion a purely symbolic event (and if so, symbolic of what?), or does the fact that the film repeatedly foreshadowed it as a scientific possibility mean it actually happened that way? Or are we going to just dismiss both possibilities and say it was just a pretty special effects show? Is it even necessary to take only one interpretation of the imagery?

To make things clear, which method leads to the more correct conclusions about, say, Star Wars: a Suspension of Disbelief consideration of how the internal world works, a look the film's historical impact and cultural context, a formalist deconstruction of how the plot and characters were put together, an analysis of the emotional responses it elicits from audiences, a look at how it was effected by and in turn changed its genre(s), an in depth look at the conflicts and themes of the work, or a TvTropes TvTraps Easter egg hunt for all the cliche's you can find (or make up on the spot)? None are better-- though some may seem immature (you know which one I'm referring to :P ), each method suits a different purpose and to say that one is "better" than another would be like saying chainsaws are better than knives at spreading bread on toast or knives are better at cutting down trees.

2. As you might have noticed, most literary analysis techniques suit purposes irrelevant to the VS debate. There are methods for comparing and contrasting texts, but even most of those are primarily interested in what the texts mean, what messages are inside or what we can take from them. The idea that the two worlds inside unrelated media might interact is one I don't think most academics would have thought of, because the concept makes no sense when you are talking about Shakespeare, Asimov, or Tolstoy. The idea is blatantly fanfictional. In order to do that kind of analysis you have to look at the plot devices and setting in detail-- you can't simply treat the material as an idea or a message to be deciphered. You have to look at it as a window into a reality that isn't.

3. A literal approach to understanding the text's plot and themes can dramatically change the meaning-- for example the destruction of the Death Star II and the fate of Endor. Simple, extreme, but obvious. Another, more common yet subtle example would be analyses of characters and their behavior. The Joker in The Dark Knight can be taken in several different ways all depending on whether or not you accept his claims of being an agent of chaos or decide that was another lie like his stories about how his face got scarred. Hell, you get a different interpretation based on whether or not you trust those stories about how he got his scars have any basis in truth, as Roger Ebert does ("Now it is the Joker’s turn, although his past is handled entirely with dialogue, not flashbacks. There are no references to Batman’s childhood, but we certainly remember it, and we realize that this conflict is between two adults who were twisted by childhood cruelty — one compensating by trying to do good, the other by trying to do evil. Perhaps they instinctively understand that themselves.").
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Re: On analysis methods

Post by Connor MacLeod »

What Mike called "literary analysis" was a particular brand of "vs-" style analysis, which isn't what one would normally call "normal" analysis. One has to remember that (as I noted) things were different back then. Vs debate was more like a sporting event than anything, and that encouraged quite a bit of Tribalism on both sides (or hell, anyone who was involved), and that tended to influence things quite a bit.

Also, back then when you got involved with certain rabid groups you tended to form longstanding opinions and judge other people by that. I had my run-ins with rabid B5 fans and that's left a longstanding distaste of B5 debates (and to a certain extent, dealing with Rabid trekkies of that era has coloured my future perceptions and dealings with others. I imagine that the same would be true of dealing with "rabid warsies" I also imagine Mike's attitudes towards Trekkies has been coloured by having to deal with those "past" rabid fanboys. )

Nowadays those sorts of fans are more of a minority (and are the sorts prone to screaming about "conspiracies" and obsess about nothing BUT the vs debates and "the good old days' - amazingly enough there's a good bit of nostalgia for those days among some. I can't understand why, honestly.)
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Re: On analysis methods

Post by Norade »

Destructionator XIII wrote:
Norade wrote:Are phasers somehow limited to being the worthless hard to aim shape they are?
Obviously not, since they changed the shape three times (I think) in the TNG era. (there was season 1 tng, rest of tng, most of ds9, and the Nemesis film all using different props)

Then, there were four props IIRC in Kirk's time. (the show, the Star Trek 2 gun, a different gun in Star Trek 3, and yet another gun in Star Trek 6. The props from TWOK and TSFS were also reused in TNG by time traveling or minor civilian characters from time to time, leading us to believe in-universe, the designs were used for a long time and became quite widespread.)

So, the question becomes: why did they go with that early TNG design in the first place? Discounting "because they're all stupid lol", we can get some commentary on Starfleet's mission and public appearance, and who knows what else.

Then, it turned out to not work so well, but they liked the basic idea, so they evolved the design rather than throwing it out.
Even if they had some notion of making the phaser look like a kids toy that nailed a dustbuster they could have simply used that as a show weapon keeping more logical weapons for on duty security teams. Hell, they could have even made a slip cover for a more ergonomic weapon. You can't even say they stuck with the design out of any sort of laziness because TOS had better designed hand weapons.
The setting can be internally consistent while having characters that wouldn't understand the term if it were the only thing that could save their lives.
Not when we're told those characters are experts in their field and are actually treated by everyone else as experts.

Contradictions aren't always something you can find by pitting two quotes against each other. Big picture issues ought to be considered too.
Were told many things but how often are we actually shown that they have this level of expertise that they claim to have? For all we know they were blue bloods that got in because daddy said so, or star fleet has a problem with recruitment numbers and let standards slip here and there. I say this because for all they're supposed to know they fuck a ton of really simple shit up on a regular basis and frankly wouldn't be qualified to run much simpler modern technology if their frequency of error is as high as we see on screen.
Could you pick a worse example than putting an unarmed shuttle against an entirely different unit? This example distorts the entire reason why we go into details.
You're missing the forest for the trees - exactly what I'm talking about here!

There's two aspects:

1) Those specs are irrelevant even if it were a space shuttle vs space shuttle. That 10 GW is peak the output of all the engines during blast off. Yeah, it's being generated in a loose sense, but it doesn't say much of anything relevant to this discussion since it burns fuel so fast. Similarly, the 11 km/s is it's speed around the Earth when in orbit - something it can only achieve, like the peak output, in a special scenario. The shuttle needs good weather, it gets a boost from the Earth's rotation, it needs to get above the atmosphere to do it, etc.

So, even if you get into a spec battle, there's so many things that need to be considered to see if they're applicable that the numbers are almost useless! It just gets worse the more you think about it. Does engine output have any meaning at all in the result? What good does it actually do toward the goal?


2) The specs are definitely irrelevant here, since there's bigger issues to deal with. Why are they fighting at all? If the shuttle is in orbit, how could the tanks reach it? (analogous to intergalactic invasions)

Let's say the shuttle does attack. It's one vs many. That opens up all kinds of strategies, and makes the one on one matter a lot less, since it's not one on one. (in ST vs SW, it's pitting a galaxy against an interstellar group. Overwhelming outnumberings are possible, so what difference does it make if it's megajoules or gigajoules?)

Do the tanks need to reach it at all, or would shelling mission control or it's runway do the job? Do they have enough gasoline to make that trip? (the size of their gas tank doesn't matter. They'd use fuel trucks or gas stations.)
You're also missing my point which is people do small scale analysis all the time and while the specs you've chosen to focus on might not be the most useful for determining things delta-v, fuel capacity, crew space, endurance, payload and other seemingly small stats would make a difference in the outcome on both a smaller and, depending on other factors, larger scale. Everybody understands that you dislike the small scale detailed analysis but trying to claim that it rarely fits the big picture is a really stupid thing to say when most often it fits pretty well and it has to bend for the same things every other method does like plot holes and VFX errors.
School requires more work than I remember it taking...
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