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Jul. 8th, 2009 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stillaneOkay. So. Got a Star Trek question for you all:
How does one fail the Kobayashi Maru?
It is entirely possible that I'm missing something very obvious here, but... what is it? My Trek background is kind of spotty and strange, a weird combo of cultural osmosis and active pursuit over the years, but it's left me with some bizarrely detailed knowledge in certain areas and some truly crappy gaps in others.
Ergo, the Kobayashi Maru. I get the mechanics of it, I do, along with the ideologies it brings into play. As a storytelling device, it's neat; as a method of gauging cadet responses, also neat. The student in me, though, really wants to know what it means in terms of a grade. At least in this latest movie, this thing isn't set up as just a training exercise, it's actively represented as an exam of some kind. Granted, more of a pass/fail, notes-on-your-report-card type than the standard A through F scale, but still. How do you fail a test that's designed to be failed?
Are there two levels of 'failure' involved here? Bones says that everyone fails it, and I'm assuming that means that for the students, failure entails watching everything virtually crash and burn around you, but it has to be something else from the instructors' point of view, because otherwise nobody would ever get commissioned. Is the simple act of not accepting your helplessness enough, or do you have to do some pretty drastic flaily-hands mid simulation to 'fail'? Like, so long as you don't stroke out or start talking about the Jabberwocky or something mid-battle, is that considered okay?
Which is another question, really... How do you definitively pass it? Is it enough just to keep your head and make rational decisions right up until the end, or is there something else you should do? I know from Kirk's perspective anything less than victory is a failure, but what does everybody else consider 'doing well'? I get that the whole point of the test is a thought exercise for the student, but there has to be some element of it that is actually, well, a test. Otherwise the concept of being able to cheat on it doesn't make much sense. If you can get hauled on the carpet for doing something the wrong way, it stands to reason it can't be a "there are no right or wrong answers" kind of deal.
What I really wonder is, is the very act of coming back and taking this thing repeatedly a failure?
Also, what happened when Kirk failed those other two times?
Feel free to tell me I am full of nonsense and point and laugh at the holes in my Trek canon. Like I said, there might be a really easy answer I'm missing here, but I would go batshit insane if I were being graded this heavily on something this arbitrary.
In other news: meme! Appropriately scifi flavored meme, even!
Inspired by Doctor Who's "Turn Left:" Pick one of my stories and tell me a point in the tale that you'd change -- something tiny or big -- and I'll tell you how that one difference would have altered the course of the entire story.
Everything in my arsenal can be found here, if you wanted to play.
How does one fail the Kobayashi Maru?
It is entirely possible that I'm missing something very obvious here, but... what is it? My Trek background is kind of spotty and strange, a weird combo of cultural osmosis and active pursuit over the years, but it's left me with some bizarrely detailed knowledge in certain areas and some truly crappy gaps in others.
Ergo, the Kobayashi Maru. I get the mechanics of it, I do, along with the ideologies it brings into play. As a storytelling device, it's neat; as a method of gauging cadet responses, also neat. The student in me, though, really wants to know what it means in terms of a grade. At least in this latest movie, this thing isn't set up as just a training exercise, it's actively represented as an exam of some kind. Granted, more of a pass/fail, notes-on-your-report-card type than the standard A through F scale, but still. How do you fail a test that's designed to be failed?
Are there two levels of 'failure' involved here? Bones says that everyone fails it, and I'm assuming that means that for the students, failure entails watching everything virtually crash and burn around you, but it has to be something else from the instructors' point of view, because otherwise nobody would ever get commissioned. Is the simple act of not accepting your helplessness enough, or do you have to do some pretty drastic flaily-hands mid simulation to 'fail'? Like, so long as you don't stroke out or start talking about the Jabberwocky or something mid-battle, is that considered okay?
Which is another question, really... How do you definitively pass it? Is it enough just to keep your head and make rational decisions right up until the end, or is there something else you should do? I know from Kirk's perspective anything less than victory is a failure, but what does everybody else consider 'doing well'? I get that the whole point of the test is a thought exercise for the student, but there has to be some element of it that is actually, well, a test. Otherwise the concept of being able to cheat on it doesn't make much sense. If you can get hauled on the carpet for doing something the wrong way, it stands to reason it can't be a "there are no right or wrong answers" kind of deal.
What I really wonder is, is the very act of coming back and taking this thing repeatedly a failure?
Also, what happened when Kirk failed those other two times?
Feel free to tell me I am full of nonsense and point and laugh at the holes in my Trek canon. Like I said, there might be a really easy answer I'm missing here, but I would go batshit insane if I were being graded this heavily on something this arbitrary.
In other news: meme! Appropriately scifi flavored meme, even!
Inspired by Doctor Who's "Turn Left:" Pick one of my stories and tell me a point in the tale that you'd change -- something tiny or big -- and I'll tell you how that one difference would have altered the course of the entire story.
Everything in my arsenal can be found here, if you wanted to play.
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 12:45 am (UTC)I always took it that he was just the programmer, not the one in charge of evaluating the cadets' responses. I know in TOS he was meant to be some computing specialist.
That does not sound disturbingly familiar.
Nope, not at all :)