The information environment in the US is conducive to exactly that, so yeah you’re right.

Honestly, the scenario here is illuminating more for seeing how the cadet would respond. it’s also a great way to develop new tactics. In that sense, setting a "new high score"is a “Win”, even if you get blown up in the scenario. I still stand by saying that the excercise was a recruitment tool for selecting possible operatives for Section 31 (or whatever the agency was called then,)

I agree that it could be, but is there any canon evidence that they even assign scores? What would the score even be based on? If you take any action other than leaving the ship to its fate, you’re destined to die anyways. So is it based on how long you survive?

I’m sure starfleet officers go through hundreds or thousands of tactical sims to train tactics and encourage tactical creativity etc. From what I know, Kobayashi Maru is specifically not for that purpose. It’s useful in getting cadets to see what it feels like to be in a no-win situation, and to get them to think about it, but this purpose for it and the specific way its framed opens it up to Kirk criticism in this post.

Don’t cadets “fail” either way?

…is that James Carville?

The imagined reasons for this war - Russian security concerns will still exist even if Russia is officially given the Ukrainian territories it currently occupies.

A concept doesn’t become acceptable just because the French have a term for it. Usually that’s a red flag.

It’s an interesting discussion. Not really what I expect from a meme sub but something out of r/daystrominstitute .

I think Kirk’s argument (essentially that there’s no ethical or moral justification for not even attempting to save them) is predicated on the fact that no-win situations of that specific type don’t exist in reality.

That kind of situations happen, Jim”

Kirk takes a sip.

“Do they, Bones? We’ve been at this for three years. Tell me bones, how many times have we faced a real no-win situation? A certain death in face of helping people? I write the logs, Bones. The answer is never. Not once. Sure, we lost feathers, and couldn’t always save everybody. But each time we made it, Bones, and each time, we saved people. The only reason the Maru is a no-win situation is because someone decided it should be. To make a point.”

He is of course right in that if you attempt rescue, the Kobayashi Maru sim will literally keep spawning enemy ships until you’re dead. So it was designed to be unwinnable in logical sense that goes beyond the practicalities of tactics and crew competence.

Kirk’s argument is that making the pragmatic choice of just leaving the ship to it’s fate is not justifiable because such scenarios (infinitely spawning enemies) don’t exist, and even making cadets take this course and conditioning them to make the pragmatic choice is therefore immoral.

I think there’s more detail that can be added to this though - in the Kobayashi Maru sim every cadet knows what the sim is before they go in there. It’s not some secret - they all know it’s unwinnable. If you somehow knew that it was unwinnable then the ethics of leaving them are tenable depending on your beliefs. But in reality you can’t know. You shouldn’t pretend to know.

I think a key part of what Kirk is trying argue here is that in reality, you cannot ever truly know that the situation is completely hopeless, and your duty as a Starfleet officer should be to try. Try your hardest. Do what you can. Save who you can. Fight. Try.

The thing that offends Kirk so much about this scenario is that it gives officers a ethical license to not even try, something that is completely antithetical to his conception of being a Starfleet officer.

On that count, I think he’s right.

One day your Internet search history is going to traumatize a police officer.

Meanwhile, every single other news outlet is Left. Just to give you a perspective on things.

Literally just fiction that someone smarter than your came up with and convinced you of.

Scapegoating them is one thing. Actually deporting them is another. The people who employ illegal immigrants are doing it so they can pay them a pittance and have leverage over them. They’re not going go want their cheap workforce deported simply because it’ll increase costs.

Say that again but this time put some stank on it.

It’s a better opinion than “US in decline because TOO MUCH democracy”.

Literally no one said that. Read better. It’s not the amount of democracy that was the problem, it was the actual choices made.

Lmao. You just witnessed this last election Dems suing third parties to stop them from running, Dems not even pretending to hold a primary, republicans saying its the last election ever.

What did the voters who actually voted for Trump choose?

This logic is going to keep getting trotted out throughout the trump presidency. In some cases it’ll be true. In this case I think it could be. In many cases it won’t be , simply because destroying things is easier than building things and they’re mostly there to destroy .

Is commander in chief an active military position?

I think it’s specifically not a military position. The president being a civilian is how in theory the military must operate under civilian control.

Because people vote ghouls like this into office so he doesn’t have to. They do it repeatedly.

The US isn’t a democracy though, it is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, where every election we get to select which group of oppressors will wield state power against us until the next one.

Yes that truly one of the opinions of all time.

No, I really have no clue what you mean by that because you’re implying Putin’s role is far larger than it actually is.

I’m asking a very simple question. Were there words in there that you didn’t understand?

When he steps down, it’s most likely that it’s going to be Medvedev that replaces him.

This already happened. Putin was still in charge, and came back when the pretense of not being in charge was no longer necessary. What reason is there to believe Medvedev is next in line and that everyone else will just go with that when Putin is dead? Yes I’m saying dead because dictators don’t have retirement plans lol.

You evidently have absolutely no clue about Russian politics.

Ah yes, the last refuge of the loser who can’t answer a simple question. You’re dancing around the question because your ridiculous claim that Russia is “stable” falls apart immediately when the fact that this question has no clear answer is considered. It’s your ridiculous opinion dude. You can change it for free.

Not sure what you mean by that.

You know exactly what I mean by that. Who runs Russia after he dies and how will that person be selected? Until you can answer that question, your claims of Russia’s “stability” will remain ridiculous.

Here’s my plan to stop the war in Ukraine. Start up a massive industrial effort to mass produce printed copies of that photo. Absolutely absurd numbers of them. Cut down forests if necessary. Load them into B52s and drop them on the front lines from high altitude to get a good scatter. Keep doing this every day for 6 months. Like 50 tones of that photo dropped every day.

I will now take exactly zero questions.

This argument is dependent on Putin being immortal.