From: tlynch@cco.caltech.edu (Timothy W. Lynch)
Subject: Re: Kobyashi and Kirk
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 01:08:33 GMT

kyle@uunet.uu.net (Kyle Jones) writes:

>What?  Now my diction is not good enough for you? :-)

Nothin' wrong with your diction; it's the *content* I'm having trouble
with.  :-)

>kyle@uunet.uu.net (Kyle Jones) writes:
> > How about this interpretation: Kirk thought the situation as
> > presented wasn't really a no-win situation, and thought that if
> > the situation were real there ought to be a way a cagey starship
> > captain could to get out of it.  

>tlynch@cco.caltech.edu (Timothy W. Lynch) writes:
> > In other words, he *refused to accept the validity of the
> > concept of the no-win scenario*.  Thank you.

>"Lucy, Lucy, lemme splain!" :)

You're certainly welcome to try.

>Imagine for instance the supposed no-win scenario was just four
>Klingon cruisers closing on the Enterprise from all sides.  Maybe
>Kirk figured a way to dupe them long enough for him to escape.
>But if the simulator wasn't simulating what any thinking being
>would call reality, then he couldn't win.

Fine here, but it doesn't seem relevant to the issue at hand.

> > That is precisely what we've been arguing all along; that Kirk
> > doesn't believe a no-win scenario exists, and that its reality
> > was thrown at him in TWOK.

>My belief is that Kirk didn't beleive the scenario as presented
>in the Kobiyashi Maru was a no-win.  No fair dragging God into
>the test.

I wouldn't dare drag someone so alien to my own beliefs in.  :-)

And given that belief, your arguments hold together internally, but I've 
never seen the *slightest* evidence that Kirk believed the KM test somehow
failed to get across a no-win scenario accurately, and I've seen plenty
of evidence that suggests he believed it was very accurate.  He defended the
KM to Saavik, after all; had he thought "well, it doesn't really represent the
no-win scenario properly", I can't imagine he'd have said what he said to 
her.  Nor do I believe any of that plot wrt Spock's death and David could
have worked without Kirk believing the no-win scenario *itself* was wrong.

>I'll admit that he clearly skirted the issue of the no-win
>scenario.  But I don't think all that happened to him on the
>Enterprise in TOS left him unaware of that he could be beaten.

Sure.  By his own error or bad choices.  That's not a no-win scenario, that's
his fault.  Think of Data in "Peak Performance", and his inability to figure
out that he could make no mistakes and yet lose.  It's just that sort of 
leap that I believe Kirk didn't make until TWOK, and I think the evidence
supports it.

>kyle@uunet.uu.net (Kyle Jones) writes:
> > Given a truly unbeatable enemy Kirk would back down as quickly
> > as any man.  You didn't see him trying to attack V'ger did
> > you?

>tlynch@cco.caltech.edu (Timothy W. Lynch) writes:
> > I saw him prepared to blow up his own ship in an attempt to
> > save all and go down the posthumous saviour of Earth.  Doesn't
> > look like he thought V'ger was unbeatable to me, Kyle.

>This was a last resort measure.  

And *still* a possible victory.  Pyrrhic, sure, but Kirk *had an option*.

Tim Lynch
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.misc