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The Thing About the Kobiyashi Maru
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this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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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.
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.
Maybe the Kobayashi Maru is really a test for engineers, not captains. I can imagine Rutherford coming in with a new transporter program that skews the odds in favor of saving the crew
I mean, the thing is literally a test. Isn't that just how a cadet fails it?
Don't cadets "fail" either way?
The scenario always ends with their simulated destruction, but that's not what I mean.
If every outcome is considered equal, then how would it be useful to Starfleet? Or said another way, if Starfleet doesn't care how cadets react to a no-win scenario, why does it need to know?
I always figured the failure conditions were things like cowardice or paralyzing indecision -- character flaws unwanted in a leader.
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,)
personally, I think my response would have been to try and take the Maru under tow using the tractor beams; then run like...uh... well... a fast waddle? It's presented as a binary choice. Either try and save the crew and get blown up, or try and fight and get blown up. it doesn't need to be binary- you have a massive crew and can get one detail working the problem of rescuing the Maru crew while you and the bridge crew work on fighting the ship. Failing towing... shuttles. Failing shuttles... maybe docking and merging shields of both ships...? Possibly, lowing shields in one side, while using the maru for cover on that side and beaming that way?
(side note, I forget if shields had to be lowered for shuttles. Inany case, in TNG, that was true. the real question I have is what kind of idiot engineer designed a ship's shield system that couldn't be turned off in a specific portion of the hull to allow beaming with a relatively small opening? Or, maybe, just hear me out, a sort of 'space lock'... like airlock hatches, that allow you to go out, but with shields.)
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.
No it’s not useful for that. Not even remotely true. They go into it knowing that it’s just something they have to get done. You do it once, get clobbered and move on.
It’s not useful to impart experience because it’s known you’re going to lose. In-universe, a captain would not have that knowledge.
That knowledge changes everything about how you approach it- and together with the knowledge that it’s “just a sim”
If you wanted to give that experience- as best you can without killing lots of cadets- then you remove that knowledge, slipping ezcercisss in that feel “normal” until they’re not.
As for how to score it? There’s plenty of ways. Number of ships you kill. How long you survive, not to mention tactical performance etc.
Do you really need a canon source to draw that inference? Of course they have a way to score an exam. (And every exam would have been scored. That’s the point of them. You have to evaluate how you perform before you can begin to improve.)
...is that James Carville?
The Ragin' Cajun himself!
Edit: To clarify, this is taken from Old School (2003), where Dean Pritchard (Jeremy Piven from PCU (1994) makes use of Carville for the debate portion of the challenge to the fledgling fraternity.