Brian Young's Death Star semantics video

[Nowhereman10]

Just when you thought that the old General Dodonna meant superlaser for the Death Star 1's firepower bit had been put to rest,Brian Young resurrects it back from the dead! :D

I find his battleship analogy to be highly flawed. Fighter pilots are not going to care about the 16" guns that are too too slow to track and shoot down their planes, only about the huge number of smaller caliber and much nimbler guns that can shoot them out of the skies!

[Mr. Oragahn]

Aw com'on, that's a joke. No?
It can't be!
The whole idea is ludicrous, plus we know heavy batteries have been seen used against small ships and the EU novel Death Star put that debate to rest in the bluntest way possible.
Perhaps he's just been pulled out of the cryotube. Someone tell him we're in 2013 for crying out loud, not '93!

[Mike DiCenso]

I...I'm flashing back to 1995!

Is Brian really clinging to that tired old argument? Perhaps in a desperate bid to justify the ICS which itself is falling apart under increasing scrutiny. The Death Star was shown to be literally covered with turbolasers of all sizes. How can Dodonna not be talking about them? And that battleship analogy... oy vey! That is the most flawed one yet, especially for the reason that Nowhereman already outlined and was brought up years ago by Robert Scott Anderson on his ST-v-SW.Net website.
-Mike

[2046]

Oy vey. How quaint.

I tried to download it the way one should download antiquated ideas but my dial-up was too slow and I am still waiting for my high-speed ISDN line to be installed. 128k should be enough bandwidth.

Of course, if he were broadcasting an analog TV signal, I could watch it that way. After all, the effective bandwidth of that is in the megabit/second range ... but of course, that is about as relevant to the concept of downloading as the Death Star superlaser would be to snubfighter pilots.

[Lucky]

Problems with Brian's video


1) Brian's voice is annoying. This stems mostly from how fast he talks in the video. It makes him sound like the stereo typical dishonest slimy used car salesman. He needs to slow down, and speak in an easily understood fashion.

2) Brian is still cherry picking by taking things out of context:

DEATH STAR INTERCOM VOICE: We are approaching the planet Yavin. The
Rebel base is on a moon on the far side. We are preparing to orbit the
planet.

EXTERIOR: YAVIN -- JUNGLE.

A lone guard stands in a tower high above the Yavin landscape,
surveying the countryside. A mist hangs over the jungle of
twisted green.

INTERIOR: MASSASSI -- WAR ROOM BRIEFING AREA.

Dodonna stands before a large electronic wall display. Leia
and several other senators are to one side of the giant
readout. The low-ceilinged room is filled with starpilots,
navigators, and a sprinkling of R2-type robots. Everyone is
listening intently to what Dodonna is saying. Han and
Chewbacca are standing near the back.

DODONNA: The battle station is heavily shielded and carries a
firepower greater than half the star fleet. It's defenses are designed
around a direct large-scale assault. A small one-man fighter should be
able to penetrate the outer defense.

Gold Leader, a rough looking man in his early thirties,
stands and addresses Dodonna.

GOLD LEADER: Pardon me for asking, sir, but what good are snub
fighters going to be against that?

DODONNA: Well, the Empire doesn't consider a small one-man fighter to
be any threat, or they'd have a tighter defense. An analysis of the
plans provided by Princess Leia has demonstrated a weakness in the
battle station.

Artoo-Detoo stands next to a similar robot, makes beeping
sounds, and turns his head from right to left.

DODONNA: The approach will not be easy. You are required to maneuver
straight down this trench and skim the surface to this point. The
target area is only two meters wide. It's a small thermal exhaust
port, right below the main port. The shaft leads directly to the
reactor system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction which should
destroy the station.

A murmer of disbelief runs through the room.

DODONNA: Only a precise hit will set up a chain reaction. The shaft is
ray-shielded, so you'll have to use proton torpedoes.

Luke is sitting next to Wedge Antilles, a hotshot pilot
about sixteen years old.

WEDGE: That's impossible, even for a computer.

LUKE: It's not impossible. I used to bull's-eye womp rats in my
T-sixteen back home. They're not much bigger than two meters.

DODONNA: Man your ships! And may the Force be with you!

The group rises and begins to leave.

EXTERIOR: SPACE.

The Death Star begins to move around the planet toward the
tiny green moon.

The Context of the scene:
Dodonna is giving a mission briefing to fighter pilots and is pressed for time. There is only one topic being covered, and that is the up coming mission.

Dodonna is not giving a detailed analysis of what the Deathstar can do. He is only giving the pilots mission relevant information, and is therefor ignoring the superlaser. The Superlaser is irrelevant to the fighter pilot's mission, and is therefor not being talked about.

[2046]

I should probably have left my commentary at the point of analog broadcast downloading (a post which I believe to be a shockingly non-verbose and pointed one given my usual standards of verbose over-completeness), but alas . . .

Being senile, I was looking to see what I actually had on the site in reference to the Dodonna quote. I skimmed the Death Star Research Project area and didn't see it at all. Applying Google-fu, I found that discussion of that quote is on the page about Imperial Fleet Size in Star Wars.

Basically, both logic and the lesser canon (most especially the novelization) point to the use of "firepower" in reference to not-the-superlaser.

I then made the mistake of deciding to see what he said, even though I was smart enough to know better the other day. Yep, bad plan on my part.

For starters, he just argues from personal incredulity for the first little bit, repeating that the aforementioned logic and canon "makes no sense" (to him). He then gets ridiculously semantic by noting that there is a period between "firepower greater than half the starfleet" and "it's defenses are designed around", as if somehow the whole topic changed in mid-stride.

Then he finally uses a battleship as an example, an analogy which Nowhereman already pointed out the issues with, but which I wish to expand upon.

I have used a WW2 analogy before on this topic, to wit:

Dodonna is briefing his pilots in regards to the defenses of the Death Star. Superlaser info would be tactically irrelevant during a such a tactical briefing. The situation would be analogous to telling a 1940's Luftwaffe pilot about the total yield of a bomb load of a B-17, or a Japanese pilot sent against the plane that bombed Nagasaki about the yield of the "Fat Man" bomb. The pilots already knew the superlaser could destroy a planet, just as the Axis pilots would know that the B-17 could wax a bridge, or that the B-29's atomic bomb could blast a city to rubble. What a pilot would need to know about is the number and calibre of guns aboard, since the whole idea is to survive and shoot the enemy down. "The B-17 carries a firepower greater than half a fighter squadron" (or some such similar phrasing) would make the most sense, by analogy.

The view that by "firepower" Dodonna refers to the Death Star's turbolasers is also supported by chapter 11 of the ANH novelization. Later in the briefing, Dodonna makes the following comment . . . note the usage of the term:

"Take special note of these emplacements. There's a heavy concentration of firepower on the latitudinal axes, was well as several dense circumpolar clusters."

If Dodonna were referring to the superlaser along with the Death Star's defensive weapons when he referred to firepower earlier, then this use of "heavy concentration of firepower" would be akin to referring to a dense concentration of water vapor or a thick cloud, while ignoring the hurricane sitting beside it. It is obvious that he refers to the defensive turbolasers of the Death Star.

The question is, which is a better analogy . . . a bomber armed also with defensive weapons, or a battleship loaded with guns of many sizes, from the large primary artillery-style cannons to the smaller anti-aircraft weapons.

I consider it fairly obvious that the bomber is the preferred analogy. Or, if you prefer to keep it naval, then a guided missile cruiser which can launch missiles against surface targets but which also has other anti-ship (and anti-air) weaponry aboard. If you have to take out this boat, you don't need to know the yield of her cruise missiles in reference to your attack.

Witness further the military doctrines of the Clone Wars, in which planetary attack is exclusively accomplished by landing troops, with landing craft and fighters being deployed from vessels in orbit or even within the atmosphere.

Or, I'll simply quote myself again, this time from the Superlaser Effect synthesis page, written long before we saw the Clone Wars depicted:

The Death Stars attacked worlds in an entirely new way. Not only was capture of the planet no longer a goal, but in addition the ranges and energies involved were of a level never before seen.

Instead of enemy attack ships, fighters, bombers, and landing craft (carrying soldiers and occupation personnel) trying to fight their way into orbit or onto the surface, the Death Star simply fired its superweapon from long range. As a result, the common forms of planetary defense . . . fighters, defense fleets, surface-based weapons installations, orbital platforms, and small theater shields . . . were rendered wholly obsolete.

As analogy, ponder the age of castles. Long ago, a castle was thought to be an impenetrable fortress . . . you couldn't hope to destroy it, and that wasn't your goal anyway . . . you wanted its defenses and riches for yourself. Now imagine that you have decided to get hardcore on the castle occupants, and no longer want their castle . . . just their deaths. Further, you have acquired an F-15 with a full suite of bombs. The castle will be destroyed in short order. It defeats the castle defenses by attacking in a totally new way . . . i.e. from the air. The defenders of the castle would be totally unprepared for this . . . they'd have men in the battlements with arrows, stones, and hot oil to rain down upon you. They'd be prepared for seige engines and wall-breaking. A fighter dropping death from above would blow their minds, not only for the technology but also for the change of tactics and goals.

A more sci-fi analogy would be to refer to planetary bombardment versus invasion with troops and tanks. Or, one could ponder the Battle of Britain or V-2 rockets, which showed air power nullifying Britain's defensive advantages of a powerful navy and separation from the continent by water by utterly bypassing those surface-based advantages.

Similarly, the ion cannons, orbital platforms, fighters, starships, and so on that would logically comprise the majority of a major world's defenses in Star Wars are rendered useless by the long-range, one-shot-billions-killed superlaser. It lacks the finesse of a well-coordinated fleet assault on an enemy world, but makes up for it by sheer utility. If I were the F-15 pilot, I'd certainly conclude that my demonstration "was as impressive as it was thorough", especially to those residing in other castles.

The Death Star was a weapon of sheer terror . . . there was no defense against it, and that was the point.

The Death Star was not to planets as an F-15 would be to Medieval-equipped castles, however. Instead, it is more like if the atomic bomb had required a much larger aircraft to carry it, something on par with an airship in scale. If you are part of a Japanese fighter squadron that already knows this new aircraft carries a weapon capable of annihilating a city, and you are tasked with bringing this airship down, then when briefed you do not need to know that has sufficient firepower to destroy a city . . . you need to be told of its air defenses. That is precisely what Dodonna is doing.

As for the rest of the video? Well, to be honest, the absurdity up to that point, plus his feigned incredulity and exasperation on the topic, were simply too much to bear, so I didn't get any further than the battleship picture.

[2046]

Or, if you prefer to keep it naval, then a guided missile cruiser which can launch missiles against surface targets but which also has other anti-ship (and anti-air) weaponry aboard. If you have to take out this boat, you don't need to know the yield of her cruise missiles in reference to your attack.

Actually after further review, I actually prefer the idea of submarines. Ballistic missiles on submarines are irrelevant if you are a submarine trying to shoot down another submarine. However, saying that the ballistic missile equipped submarine carries a fire power greater than 20 u-boats might be very relevant if you are a u-boat or similar.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Oy vey. How quaint.

I tried to download it the way one should download antiquated ideas but my dial-up was too slow and I am still waiting for my high-speed ISDN line to be installed. 128k should be enough bandwidth.

I heard he planned to produce two bandwidth friendly versions. One in morse code, the other in smoke puffs, both streamed 24/7. Totally today!

[Mr. Oragahn]

Funny, I'd have suggested subs as well.
They also particularly fit well the idea of 3d naval warfare, as in space.
Plus they're the prime deployment platform of nuclear ordnance today.
Yet they carry their own torpedoes and I think some of them even sport some concealed anti-air guns for surface navigation. Classic.

On another note...

Or, I'll simply quote myself again, this time from the Superlaser Effect synthesis page, written long before we saw the Clone Wars depicted:

The Death Stars attacked worlds in an entirely new way. Not only was capture of the planet no longer a goal, but in addition the ranges and energies involved were of a level never before seen.

Instead of enemy attack ships, fighters, bombers, and landing craft (carrying soldiers and occupation personnel) trying to fight their way into orbit or onto the surface, the Death Star simply fired its superweapon from long range. As a result, the common forms of planetary defense . . . fighters, defense fleets, surface-based weapons installations, orbital platforms, and small theater shields . . . were rendered wholly obsolete.

As analogy, ponder the age of castles. Long ago, a castle was thought to be an impenetrable fortress . . . you couldn't hope to destroy it, and that wasn't your goal anyway . . . you wanted its defenses and riches for yourself. Now imagine that you have decided to get hardcore on the castle occupants, and no longer want their castle . . . just their deaths. Further, you have acquired an F-15 with a full suite of bombs. The castle will be destroyed in short order. It defeats the castle defenses by attacking in a totally new way . . . i.e. from the air. The defenders of the castle would be totally unprepared for this . . . they'd have men in the battlements with arrows, stones, and hot oil to rain down upon you. They'd be prepared for seige engines and wall-breaking. A fighter dropping death from above would blow their minds, not only for the technology but also for the change of tactics and goals.

A more sci-fi analogy would be to refer to planetary bombardment versus invasion with troops and tanks. Or, one could ponder the Battle of Britain or V-2 rockets, which showed air power nullifying Britain's defensive advantages of a powerful navy and separation from the continent by water by utterly bypassing those surface-based advantages.

Similarly, the ion cannons, orbital platforms, fighters, starships, and so on that would logically comprise the majority of a major world's defenses in Star Wars are rendered useless by the long-range, one-shot-billions-killed superlaser. It lacks the finesse of a well-coordinated fleet assault on an enemy world, but makes up for it by sheer utility. If I were the F-15 pilot, I'd certainly conclude that my demonstration "was as impressive as it was thorough", especially to those residing in other castles.

The Death Star was a weapon of sheer terror . . . there was no defense against it, and that was the point.

The Death Star was not to planets as an F-15 would be to Medieval-equipped castles, however. Instead, it is more like if the atomic bomb had required a much larger aircraft to carry it, something on par with an airship in scale. If you are part of a Japanese fighter squadron that already knows this new aircraft carries a weapon capable of annihilating a city, and you are tasked with bringing this airship down, then when briefed you do not need to know that has sufficient firepower to destroy a city . . . you need to be told of its air defenses. That is precisely what Dodonna is doing.

As for the rest of the video? Well, to be honest, the absurdity up to that point, plus his feigned incredulity and exasperation on the topic, were simply too much to bear, so I didn't get any further than the battleship picture.

That soooo reminds me of a similar point I raised during a very old argument. Perhaps at the Strek boards or spacebattles. Or either here in ye early years.
The most important elements to note about the Death Star were superior range and insane firepower. It totally changed the game. There were no rules anymore, no ethics of battle whatsoever. The new big bully, that fancy toy, and its total, complete, overkill firepower. Just for the sake of it. Silly Johnny.
Your planteary shield? Even if you had one, ZAP! Gone, with your planet too.
Just took the press of a button. A big red button. Any questions?

"The Death Star does not make peace. The Death Star doesn't even make war. It makes total destruction. Annihilation. Armageddon. People make peace."

[2046]

Precisely.

And recognizing the game-change is the sort of detail that folks just don't commonly think about in regards to this stuff, because they don't really ponder the fictional universe at all . . . for want of a better term, they do not "mentally embed" and consider it like a real thing.

This has afflicted the writers of it, as well, so it isn't some sort of thoughtcrime . . . it's just a peril of dealing with a fictional universe, and to my mind it is the price of doing so.

[Praeothmin]

I really like your bomber analogy, Robert, and it fits the DS attack briefing to a T, way more than the Battleship one... :)

[Picard]

Or, if you prefer to keep it naval, then a guided missile cruiser which can launch missiles against surface targets but which also has other anti-ship (and anti-air) weaponry aboard. If you have to take out this boat, you don't need to know the yield of her cruise missiles in reference to your attack.

Actually after further review, I actually prefer the idea of submarines. Ballistic missiles on submarines are irrelevant if you are a submarine trying to shoot down another submarine. However, saying that the ballistic missile equipped submarine carries a fire power greater than 20 u-boats might be very relevant if you are a u-boat or similar.

There are many analogies, you can also use Dassault Rafale carrying a nuclear missile... if you want to shoot it down, you need to know capabilities of its air-to-air missiles, EW suite and maneuvering performance of aircraft itself, exact yield of a nuclear missile is irrelevant.

Of course, quite few people don't go see evidence > make a conclusion based on the evidence route but rather make a conclusion > reinterpret evidence to fit the conclusion route.