Discussion on valid debating tactics

For all your discussion of canon policies, evidentiary standards, and other meta-debate issues.

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Nonamer
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Discussion on valid debating tactics

Post by Nonamer » Wed Sep 20, 2006 3:35 am

Since this is an issue that has come up a lot recently, we should have this one too.

Science:
This one is tricky. For one thing we are usually discussion Science Fiction and not fact, so we must accept leeway regarding what is valid and what isn't. However, for things that are not obvious violations of physical laws, we should accept science as the prime measuring stick of events and phenomenon.

That leads to the problem of what is valid science. It's not always clear what claims are actually science and what are quacks. We need a yardstick for what constitute valid science.

Canon:
We also of course need a discussion on valid canon. The board policy states that we need to decide on our own, and the OP can define what is canon and what isn't.

Evidence:
Of perhaps the most importance is what constitutes evidence. There's quite a bit of disagreement here, since what is evidence to some is a VFX error to others. Also, some things are considered good evidence by some but crap by others.

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Post by Socar » Wed Sep 20, 2006 3:00 pm

And of course, the issue of visuals vs dialogue is also a valid one. Of course this somewhat leans over into the discussion of literary analysis vs suspension of disbelief. The simple fact is, there is sometimes just a lack of communication between the writers and the VFX people (just take a TNG script and follow along in the episode and read the descriptions for what we're -supposed- to see, and then watch what actually happens). I mean, if the officer at ops says there is a 200 meter asteroid in front of them, and every bridge officer confirms it, but when you scale it, it only comes to 150 meters for whatever reason, do you just assume that the crew is incompetent, or do you pretend that whoever was filming it (remember, supposedly we're supposed to treat the movies and TV episodes as documentary footage) messed up somewhere along the way somehow. How far do we take either approach, etc.

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Wed Sep 20, 2006 7:55 pm

There is also another fallacy that keeps coming up here, but is seldom mentioned. The fallacy of the incompetent expert. That is trying to portray every expert character, be it an ST or SW expert, as incompentant and not knowing what they are talking about.

We must assume that the character knows what they are talking until proven otherwise. In many cases, we also have connected to this the fallacy of hasty generalizations. This usually takes the form of someone stating that a character didn't know what they were talking about in one instance, and so they automatically dismiss everything that character ever says or will say, except when the character says something that might be in their favor in the debate.

This leads in turn to the next problem often occuring in these debates...

Picking and choosing the evidence. I think we all know what this is; the picking of the evidence most favorable to one's arguement and ignoring or dismissing of all other evidence that may work against it, even if that evidence is more prevalent than the evidence they have choosen. This occurs quite frequently on both sides of the STvSW debate, but I think moreso on the SW side.
-Mike

Nonamer
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Post by Nonamer » Thu Sep 21, 2006 6:05 pm

I must add that it should not detract from the actual dialog errors or other errata that can occur. Ultimately, all statements must be weighed against the larger body of evidence and not accepted in isolation.
Last edited by Nonamer on Thu Sep 21, 2006 9:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Thu Sep 21, 2006 6:45 pm

Nonamer wrote:I must add that it should not detract from the actually dialog errors or other errata that can occur. Ultimately, all statements must be weighed against the larger body of evidence and not accepted in isolation.
This is where we get most of the problems in VS debates.

Since we're analyzing fiction, we have an inconsistent body of evidence to deal with. What we choose to throw out and what we choose to take as accurate determines to a very large degree our conclusions.

In the end, we have to make a subjective judgement call - and there is where the not-so-common element of common sense comes into play.

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Fri Sep 22, 2006 9:46 pm

Oh, I forgot one thing - not only is it important that we carefully judge inconsistent bodies of evidence, but we should deal with evidence consistently.

For example, what some may have seen recently regarding Traviss and Saxton. There are very few fans that are willing to whole-heartedly accept the EU works of both, although there are plenty espousing one or the other. Some has to do with the social split between Fandalorians and Saxtonites, but others have to do with the specific data they lend to the VS debate:

Saxton gives an enormous droid army (quadrillions or quintillions, IIRC) meant to occupy millions of worlds, while Traviss gives a relatively small clone army, only 2.5x what the AOTC movie suggests, meant to fight key tactical actions on hundreds of worlds.

The dissonance between the two is an example of inconsistent evidence - if you accept the EU, you must find some way of dealing with this - but at the same time, how the VS community has handled it has been a dramatic example in inconsistent behavior.

In and of themselves, the 3 million of the clone army should be subject to exactly the same standards as the 200 gigatons of the Acclamator guns - but few have treated them in the same fashion.

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Post by AnonymousRedShirtEnsign » Mon Sep 25, 2006 6:57 am

I agree. I think that the work of both Traviss and Saxton ought to be compared to the films for accuracy and what stands up to scrutiny of common sense and science stays and the rest goes. Honestly, 3,000,000 clones seems pretty small to run a war on a galactic scale with, but it is based on higher canon, and RotS shows that local militias can cover most of the fighting with the clones being moved around to strengthen vulnerable positions and attack. So 3,000,000 clones is reasonable if you make a few assumptions. A prequel trilogy transport ship being able to best the world's entire nucleat arsenal in two shots requires a bit more faith. That is because it is based on non and/or low level canon, not the films. After all, it's only about 10,000,000 times stronger than we've ever seen a SW capitol ship's weapons demonstrate (why couldn't Saxton just say 10 or 100 MT? You could still make the claim for 10+ GT ISD guns). So basically I'm saying, it is unreasonable to assume that the republic can only field 3 million troops in total, but more reasonable than saying an Acclamator can dish out 200 GTs per shot.

The same standards apply the Star Trek. The Final Frontier trip vs. Voyager's journey, neither should be used for a ship's maximum velocity. This applies to other catagories as well, all of them in fact.

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