SW "Wankers" and minimalism

[Master of Ossus]

I would still say that as long as people know and understand their own limitations they can still contribute, not with calculations but perhaps with other aspects or point of views.

Oh, I agree. If you read through this thread, you'll see how ridiculous some people get, though. One guy even tried to pass off the line that "30-80% of the damage" involved in a Base Delta Zero could be accomplished just by shooting at a couple of volcanoes. He apparently didn't realize that this was the equivalent of 60 million Krakatoa eruptions.

[Darth Servo]

I would still say that as long as people know and understand their own limitations they can still contribute, not with calculations but perhaps with other aspects or point of views.

Sure. The problem is that such people do NOT limit themselves as you describe. They charge in head first screaming that the calculations are too big. The tendency is, the bigger the ignoramous, the MORE they think they know.

[Adrian Laguna]

I'm reminded of Socrates. He would ask everyone he met if they knew anything. He himself proclaimed to know nothing. Thus, the Oracle of Delphi proclaimed him the wisest man in Hellas, for at least he was aware of his ignorance. Shakespeare put it in one of his plays too, something like: "The fool thinks himself a wise man, while the wise man knows himself a fool."

It is rather consistent that the greatest fools and biggest idiots act as if they know everything. While the truly knowledgeable are not afraid to admit the vastness of their ignorance.

[Darth Wong]

Part of the problem here is that you need to reach a certain level of education before the light goes on and you realize that you can model reality with equations. For most people, who never get past basic math and the superficial facsimile of science that they teach in high school, they never really get this. For them, equations and reality are not really related to each other. So when they see someone accepting counter-intuitive conclusions based on what looks to them like a lot of gobbledygook, they roll their eyes and think that he's just fooling himself.

The situation is exacerbated by the sheer number of posers on the Internet who are just faking it, and who really are just fooling themselves. This helps the no-math people to justify their attitude to themselves. I'd guess that for every person out there who talks about science and actually knows what he's talking about, there's a hundred who talk about science with just as much air of authority, but haven't got a clue. Like Sarli.

[Sarevok]

I suppose it is because smaller numbers are easier to understand and for some like me more aestheticaly pleasing. Effects of a 200 gigaton turbolaser blasts are beyond the understanding of an average person and they defy the computer space sim feel many assosiate with Star Wars. Can you imagine playing a SW sim with accurate stats ? That wont be fun. With fighters and ships accelerating at 5000 gees you cant hit a thing. I guess some SW fans want SW to be like WW 2 naval warfare in space with space battleships, space carriers, dog fights between fighters etc. Well I cant speak for other minimalists but thats how I feel. I completly agree witht the analysis performed here and elsewhere by knowledgeable people but personaly I wish SW was weaker.

[Stark]

A glaring example of this is basic, everyday items expressed numerically. For a laugh I once did the numbers on the volume of the swimming pool I was in: nobody believed the resulting volume in litres. It was far, far too large, they said: it couldn't be thousands and thousands of litres! Even though a litre is a unit of volume, and we know the dimensions of the pool, the result didn't match their intuitive expectations and it was rejected.

[Darth Wong]

A glaring example of this is basic, everyday items expressed numerically. For a laugh I once did the numbers on the volume of the swimming pool I was in: nobody believed the resulting volume in litres. It was far, far too large, they said: it couldn't be thousands and thousands of litres! Even though a litre is a unit of volume, and we know the dimensions of the pool, the result didn't match their intuitive expectations and it was rejected.

Express it as kilograms of water and watch them freak out

[Covenant]

I suppose it is because smaller numbers are easier to understand and for some like me more aestheticaly pleasing. Effects of a 200 gigaton turbolaser blasts are beyond the understanding of an average person and they defy the computer space sim feel many assosiate with Star Wars. Can you imagine playing a SW sim with accurate stats ? That wont be fun. With fighters and ships accelerating at 5000 gees you cant hit a thing. I guess some SW fans want SW to be like WW 2 naval warfare in space with space battleships, space carriers, dog fights between fighters etc. Well I cant speak for other minimalists but thats how I feel. I completly agree witht the analysis performed here and elsewhere by knowledgeable people but personaly I wish SW was weaker.

In defense of sim-makers, the movies themselves rarely demonstrate the kind of warfare that you're discussing. The problem with minimalists is that they look at the fighters buzzing along and go "Aha! That's about, what, 70 miles per hour there?" and then make that the accepted velocity of a ship. Same with weapons and such--Star Wars rarely looks like much is going on until someone blows up a planet or you see an ISD tearing off after the Falcon and sit down with a calculator. So, when you have the TIE vs. X-Wing battles being modelled after WWI bipline combats, it's hard to fault a sim-maker for replicating a WWI combat as well.

The difference is, however, that there's no reason to need SW combat and such to be 'weaker' since the SW we see is already in accordance with the canon numbers. You need to step back and realize that though the numbers are baffling, you end up the same way. The astoundingly high numbers are created to match what we see--the low numbers are done to match what we think.

[K. A. Pital]

In defense of sim-makers, the movies themselves rarely demonstrate the kind of warfare that you're discussing. The problem with minimalists is that they look at the fighters buzzing along and go "Aha! That's about, what, 70 miles per hour there?" and then make that the accepted velocity of a ship.

And... they what, hyperjumped from Yavin VI to the Death Star? No, they made the flight on sublight and then decelerated. Same with Endor - fast approach to the Death Star, then deceleartion, then again acceleration as they closed in with the Imperial fleet which was at first almost a 100 km away). Again it's people who aren't watching the fucking movie.

[Darth Wong]

Indeed. Fans who can't get that are like people who know that a car drove from Toronto to Buffalo in two hours but can't figure out that it must be faster than a guy on a bicycle because they only saw the car when it was negotiating tight turns.

[Darth Servo]

Its the fans who need everything spelled out for them. Its the same reason there are so many "dialogue over visual" fanwhores out there. No thinking required.

[Nova Andromeda]

The situation is exacerbated by the sheer number of posers on the Internet who are just faking it, and who really are just fooling themselves. This helps the no-math people to justify their attitude to themselves. I'd guess that for every person out there who talks about science and actually knows what he's talking about, there's a hundred who talk about science with just as much air of authority, but haven't got a clue. Like Sarli.

-Sadly, there probably are a hundred idiots or more for every person who knows what he's talking about. In fact, some of those idiots have very impressive degrees, but are trying to talk about stuff completely out of their field or disregard everything they know because they subscribe to fairy dust. From the perspective of joe regular guy, how's he susposed to know who's right: gut instinct that's how. It's not like he can go around saying he doesn't know about anything, has no opinion, or isn't smart enough to figure it out. That sort of position is just to hard on his ego. It's not like he's necessarily proven himself and has some fancy degree or something....

[glass]

For most people, who never get past basic math and the superficial facsimile of science that they teach in high school, they never really get this. For them, equations and reality are not really related to each other. So when they see someone accepting counter-intuitive conclusions based on what looks to them like a lot of gobbledygook, they roll their eyes and think that he's just fooling himself.

So how do they think, say, real nuclear engineers (to pick an example at random ) do their design work? Just stick their fingers in the air and hope for the best?

Not that I doubt what you are saying, but you would think that they would realise that they teach something on science/engineering courses that they (having not been on such courses) would not know.


glass.

[Vympel]

For sheer comedy value, that stupid moron, GStone, did in fact argue that the Imperial fleet got from Endor to behind the Rebel Fleet in a matter of seconds with a hyperjump.

I kid you not.

BigHairyMountainMoron's approach was to simply deny it happened through the "stamp my feet and insist it is so" school of reasoning. He was banned from SB.com soon thereafter, though unfortunately not for that reason.

[Aquatain]

In defense of sim-makers, the movies themselves rarely demonstrate the kind of warfare that you're discussing. The problem with minimalists is that they look at the fighters buzzing along and go "Aha! That's about, what, 70 miles per hour there?" and then make that the accepted velocity of a ship.

And... they what, hyperjumped from Yavin VI to the Death Star? No, they made the flight on sublight and then decelerated. Same with Endor - fast approach to the Death Star, then deceleartion, then again acceleration as they closed in with the Imperial fleet which was at first almost a 100 km away). Again it's people who aren't watching the fucking movie.

In the old version of ANH (before the special edition's) you could see the X-wings an Ywing take of from the surface of Yavin with at Velocity that far exceeds (I'm sure one of you could calculate the speed or already has.) anything the minimalists claim to be possible by Rebel star fighters.. and that's inside the atmosphere.

Edit: i have also been thinking if it's possible to calculate the the amount of energy needed to have a moving object like the [Millenium falcon] almost make a barrelroll when hit by a ISD's (Turbo laser?) in ESB.

[Kane Starkiller]

Edit: i have also been thinking if it's possible to calculate the the amount of energy needed to have a moving object like the [Millenium falcon] almost make a barrelroll when hit by a ISD's (Turbo laser?) in ESB.

Yes

[Aquatain]

Edit: i have also been thinking if it's possible to calculate the the amount of energy needed to have a moving object like the [Millenium falcon] almost make a barrelroll when hit by a ISD's (Turbo laser?) in ESB.

Yes

Ahh thanks i will try to wrap my brain around it.

[D.Turtle]

So how do they think, say, real nuclear engineers (to pick an example at random ) do their design work? Just stick their fingers in the air and hope for the best?

Not that I doubt what you are saying, but you would think that they would realize that they teach something on science/engineering courses that they (having not been on such courses) would not know.

Your idea is probably not too far off.
People like that look at all the humongous buildings people built hundreds of years ago without any calculations - simply based on experience and trial and error.
The thing is (as my Technical Mechanics professor told us): You just see the buildings that survived - you don't see the massive numbers of collapsed buildings where experience or gut instinct wasn't enough.
So yes, people look at these old buildings (castles, cathedrals, colosseums, pyramids, etc) and they think (if they think about it at all that is): They did that without calculations, and it survived hundreds of years - you don't need all this math, physics, chemistry, etc. stuff.
Being in my first semester of mechanical engineering, I have to admit I'm at the stage where I just try to do those calculations I'm supposed to do, but don't ask me how all this stuff relates to the real thing.

[Master of Ossus]

The thing is (as my Technical Mechanics professor told us): You just see the buildings that survived - you don't see the massive numbers of collapsed buildings where experience or gut instinct wasn't enough.

Oh, very occasionally you do. The point is well-taken, though. This happens in statistics, too: most people don't understand that mathematics is a critical aspect of data analysis, either. They just cut to the graphs and the pretty stuff, at the end, with no understanding of the underlying tables and data. This leads to a tremendous variety of mistaken conclusions, and really lets people get taken for a ride by the data.

[Darth Servo]

For sheer comedy value, that stupid moron, GStone, did in fact argue that the Imperial fleet got from Endor to behind the Rebel Fleet in a matter of seconds with a hyperjump.

I kid you not.

BigHairyMountainMoron's approach was to simply deny it happened through the "stamp my feet and insist it is so" school of reasoning. He was banned from SB.com soon thereafter, though unfortunately not for that reason.

Thats not new. One of the classic trolls from ASVS (Elim Garak IIRC) tried to say the same with the X-wings at the Battle of Yavin.

[Aquatain]

So how do they think, say, real nuclear engineers (to pick an example at random ) do their design work? Just stick their fingers in the air and hope for the best?

Not that I doubt what you are saying, but you would think that they would realize that they teach something on science/engineering courses that they (having not been on such courses) would not know.

Your idea is probably not too far off.
People like that look at all the humongous buildings people built hundreds of years ago without any calculations - simply based on experience and trial and error.
The thing is (as my Technical Mechanics professor told us): You just see the buildings that survived - you don't see the massive numbers of collapsed buildings where experience or gut instinct wasn't enough.
So yes, people look at these old buildings (castles, cathedrals, colosseums, pyramids, etc) and they think (if they think about it at all that is): They did that without calculations, and it survived hundreds of years - you don't need all this math, physics, chemistry, etc. stuff.
Being in my first semester of mechanical engineering, I have to admit I'm at the stage where I just try to do those calculations I'm supposed to do, but don't ask me how all this stuff relates to the real thing.

Of cause those people doesn't take into account the millions of buildings that didn't withstood the trial of time, monuments of old tend to be highly overengineered (one of the reasons they are so fascinating),The pyramids are essentially a huge chuck of granite placed with utmost precision yes but the reason that it stands yet is simply the fact of the material and the quality of material used.

[nightmare]

So how do they think, say, real nuclear engineers (to pick an example at random ) do their design work? Just stick their fingers in the air and hope for the best?

Not that I doubt what you are saying, but you would think that they would realize that they teach something on science/engineering courses that they (having not been on such courses) would not know.

Your idea is probably not too far off.
People like that look at all the humongous buildings people built hundreds of years ago without any calculations - simply based on experience and trial and error.
The thing is (as my Technical Mechanics professor told us): You just see the buildings that survived - you don't see the massive numbers of collapsed buildings where experience or gut instinct wasn't enough.
So yes, people look at these old buildings (castles, cathedrals, colosseums, pyramids, etc) and they think (if they think about it at all that is): They did that without calculations, and it survived hundreds of years - you don't need all this math, physics, chemistry, etc. stuff.
Being in my first semester of mechanical engineering, I have to admit I'm at the stage where I just try to do those calculations I'm supposed to do, but don't ask me how all this stuff relates to the real thing.

Of cause those people doesn't take into account the millions of buildings that didn't withstood the trial of time, monuments of old tend to be highly overengineered (one of the reasons they are so fascinating),The pyramids are essentially a huge chuck of granite placed with utmost precision yes but the reason that it stands yet is simply the fact of the material and the quality of material used.

They were also all well calculated, because it's simply not possible to build such large scale buildings without proper maths. You can't just chuck 200-ton stone blocks in a heap and call it a pyramid. Hell, just try to get the right size tv bench without measuring it. Mathematics is ancient, and the ancient peoples knew most of what we know today. They also had surprisingly accurate ways for measuring time and angles.

The building itself aside, you also have to calculate the resources you need, the cost of them, the number of workers, the transportation time with slaves/oxes/boats, and so on. The difficulty of such a large scale contstruction project means that certain people are more prone to contribute the pyramids to aliens... or suggest that the Egyptians used sci-fi tach from Atlantis rather than building them by hand. Stargate is the modern format of this popular myth... well, I think we've derailed the thread enough now with this particular offshoot.

[PainRack]

For sheer comedy value, that stupid moron, GStone, did in fact argue that the Imperial fleet got from Endor to behind the Rebel Fleet in a matter of seconds with a hyperjump.

I kid you not.

BigHairyMountainMoron's approach was to simply deny it happened through the "stamp my feet and insist it is so" school of reasoning. He was banned from SB.com soon thereafter, though unfortunately not for that reason.

Thats not new. One of the classic trolls from ASVS (Elim Garak IIRC) tried to say the same with the X-wings at the Battle of Yavin.

And the list goes on....... Darkstar argued the very same thing..... and in a mind-boggling maneveur, attempted to argue that Mach isn't a valid unit of speed because sound doesn't travel in space and ergo, X-wings aren't that fast..........