I'm not 100% sure this is the right thread for this but it mostly concerns the discussions in this forum, if it's better somewhere else please movie it. Seems like most debates put more emphaisis on fan made calculations done second hand than on actual showings in the media itself. For example, let's say there was a thread about a single unarmed Space Marine vs Captain America. I may be totally off but I'd estimate most people would argue for the space marine based entirely on quantifiable measures like strength, durability, and even time spent training; despite Cap having demonstrated the ability to fight effectively against similar or more powerful threats in the past.
I find the latter example interesting, since it directly calls into question character fiat. Take a match featuring the Hulk vs. Spiderman for example, on occasion (where the story demands it) Spiderman has defeated the Hulk in hand to hand combat. However quantifiable data will always empirically favor the Hulk since he's also been demonstrated to be faster, excessively stronger (capable of lifting hundreds of billions of tons) has harmlessly shrugged off close proximity nuclear detonations and has demonstrated that he can never succumb to attrition or fatal wounds (even being stripped down to the bone on one occasion, and returning to full health in seconds). And yet despite every quantification favoring the Hulk in almost every category, historically he has lost to a lesser "super" on occasion. Likewise Voyager has gone toe-to-toe with a Borg Cube on more than one occasion, when every quantifiable and empirically observed feat states that a lone Federation vessel will be trounced by said Cube in practically every scenario. Quantifiable measures are generally preferred because they're simplified, predictable and can be argued on clear, defined and parsimonious merits whilst allowing for creative contextualization for as long as the evidence supports it. They don't require some extraneous X factor and certainly don't account for luck or some other nebulous narrative fixture, whilst at the same time it prevents unrelated factors or character motivations being involved in some contrived rebuttal. Thus whilst canon Master Chief may have luck on his side, a clear quantifiable analysis still says that the Shrike would open him up like a can of blood soaked ribbons - and so forth.
While this is obviously not always the case, in say, Spidey vs the Hulk, it can be argued that while the Hulk massively outclasses Spiderman in terms of stats, Spidey is simply a better fighter, strategically, while the Hulk is a mindless brute. Brains over brawn, if you will.
I haven't read every hulk vs spiderman fight, but doesn't he generally not rely on brute strength at all against the hulk? That's where things that are real but hard to quantify, like natural talent and skill (which isn't the same as experience, which is quantifiable), come into play. There's also the factor of precognition that works in Spidey's favor. Generally though Spider-man is fairly consistently written as not in the Hulk's league. He does talk about his plan for killing the Hulk at one point, I can't remember where but he mentions to someone that he (like Batman) has contingency plans against more powerful heroes. It also doesn't allow for factors like natural talent. There are probably many basketball players that are quantifiably better than Michael Jordan when you just account for size, strength, jumping height, field goal percentage, etc.
There are things in fiction that are considered outliers. For example, the episode TDiC is such one. Ship board weapons are simply waaay too powerful in that episode. You need to use a bit of common sense and good judgement when it comes to series, especially when they have sandbox writers like 40k, Star Trek, and Forgotten Realms and what not.
'Calculations' are almost invariably based on a very limited set of data and very often do not jive with the context of the entire piece of media in question. It's the classic argument that you've seen a thousand times on this board: how do you jive hundreds or thousands of gigatons casually being thrown around with a setting which predominantly deals with relatively normal dudes running around doing relatively normal things with relatively normal assault rifles? This isn't just about inconsistency as such (though often it stems from inconsistency), but rather on people constructing very large numbers which do not fit with the 'reality' of the media which those numbers are being derived from. I could, for example, look at certain episodes of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam and show the titular giant robot pulling thousands of gees of acceleration ... but that in no way meshes with the context of UC Gundam, so I would reject it. Generally speaking, if you have to jump through hoops to justify a number, the number is almost certainly worthless.
There is also the distinction between Visual feats, Dialogue, and needs of the plot(Along with universal consistency between them all). Unfortunately the majority of fiction does not bother with consistency nor fact checking, Which is why we get visual range whale fights with star trek ships, flashy pew pew turbolasers from ISD's, and things like cars exploding from minor collisions in every hollywood film out there. Though one could make a separation of Visuals and Dialogue, Take a index of all events, and average them out to match the majority minimum required for the median feats but that would be silly here
And yet the Hulk has tossed far superior opponents in terms of talent, skill, intelligence or agility through the mantle of the planet. Again, where fictional constraints are concerned author fiat is the biggest deciding factor. It's why the Hulk can punch out the Silver Surfer or have his tissue stripped down to the skeleton in one issue, but get whooped by regulars in another. It's why the Hulk violently juggled every member of the X-Men in one issue, but has issues with relatively unknown low powered no names in another. Quantifiable baselines are preferable because they eliminate outliers and nebulous, often esoteric factors such as motivation, character impairment, luck or outright stupidity (unless stupidity is guaranteed to be a consistent trait). Remember, harmonization is superior to outright rejection. Again, author fiat. Batman for example has demonstrably gone toe-to-toe with Superman, but without initially stacking the deck in his favor in some outright unpredictable fashion I doubt there's many individuals who would argue that a naked Batman and a naked Superman dumped in an empty room would be much of a fight. Natural talent and ingenuity with the resources available only goes so far when your opponent can effortlessly rip your arms loose and stuff them in otherwise non-existent orifices before you can blink. The problem is that talent can only be relied on for so far, and in a debate (this is a situation where we simply cannot grab a hundred Death Stars and realistically simulate the same battle to determine a favorable result) it's another one of those strictly nebulous concepts that cannot be measured and argued with any parsimony. Micheal Jordan has an excellent track record as an athlete, but without a predictable frame of reference that can be consistently and objectively measured in an empirical fashion there's very little room for debate. That's why quantification is generally superior, it eliminates subjective or otherwise overly-anthropomorphic objections (power of the human spirit and other such silly narrative concepts) and creates a consistent, predictable and far more widely accepted outcome. That's why yields, velocity and industrial capacity (etc.) are always more generally appreciated as points of contention in Vs. debates rather than skill, natural talent or ingenuity.
Your example would be more relevant with other comic book characters, but The Hulk has a very valid reason for having showings all over the place. EDIT: Then there's also the fact that quantified calcs often come from these (generally outlying) demonstrated feats, and are somehow considered actually more relevant after a second party does some rarely checked math then they are in-context and straight from the source.
Apparently I need to learn the difference between the edit button and the quote button in this new forum
It can be the Hulk, an ISD, a CCS-Battlecruiser or Micheal Jordan, the example is irrelevant to the point. And as an aside, quantification, harmonization and discrimination are not mutually exclusive facets of debate; in fact it's all tied to and descends from the same process. Even the OP (concerning the example given in Captain America) is merely a redundant simplification of the former process.
When we can quantify random shit a author wrote that he usually has no idea how impressive/unimpressive the feat is I don't see the problem. In character battles your almost always dealing with some kind of plot or other device, in a vs debate it should about capabilities not how that character feels at that particular moment or if he had a bad day before the fight, obviously those are not the best of examples but I think you know what I mean.
Good question. Well, I tend to prefer feats, while calculations based on those feats are acceptable. I generally reject arguments of "ABC Logic" where a character defeating another character implies powers that are not demonstrated. The Blade movies are a good example of this. I view a calculation of "character does this, and this means he is this fast or durable" to be quite acceptable, but that's really just examining a feat. I do believe in the old "PIS" and "Spider-Man vs Firelord" rules. Plot Induced Stupidity is where characters do not use their full capabilities for no logical reason. SMvFL is when a character has a wildly inconsistent feat that can be safely ignored based on their normal feats. Note that I generally prefer character battles to ship battles, which may color my perception of events. Characters are probably easier to use feats for than space ships, where they usually only fight each other.
The irony is they are probably the least important aspects in the real world. 'My planes are faster' is a lot less relevant than 'I know what do with my planes'.
Of course, but 99% of the discussions in this very forum is only even tangentially related to the real world through the interpretation of externally observed mechanics and suspension of disbelief. Debating the hypothetical invasion of North Korea in our world for example can yield some fairly tangible results (the wealth of information and historical contrasts are readily available through the medium we currently occupy), but on a forum where most of the combatants are often separated by entire realities (as opposed to mere cultural paradigms) the difficulty imposed requires a more rigid, less pliable framework to use as a baseline.
No, with Star Trek, it's typically an example of rule of cool over what the show tries to portray. Ships are at spitting ranges because the audience needs to see whose fighting and in order to fill the entire battle in one shot, the most you would see would be brief flashes of light or cut switches between the two sides...and audiences don't typically enjoy that sort of thing. Hence why ships tend to be shown moving much slower and engaging at much closer ranges than is at all rational or even consistent with the actual dialogue.
I don't think I can agree. If the rigid framework regularly creates outcomes which are simply nonsensical when regarding the individual media as a whole, then the rigid framework seems pretty clearly flawed.
That's assuming we can derive the actual results in the first place. However unlike reality we don't have a wealth of information to draw upon, ergo the framework itself is the only reliable and parsimonious mechanism we have to come to any conclusion and thus any statements of the outcome being nonsensical are themselves utterly nonsensical. As I pointed out, this is a debate, unless we can reliably replicate a fleet battle between several dozen UFP vessels and a Borg Cube a thousand times over we have no means of gauging an outcome without an analytic framework (nebulous variables in fiction are just that). Until corporations start satisfying our fringe demands by overlapping separate franchises and trademarked properties we're stuck using the same debating style we've been using since this whole sci-fi debating thing started.
Then it's just begging the question. If it's the only mechanism, then you obviously can't know whether or not it's reliable. So the confidence in the method is based purely on its performance when it's not the only mechanism of deriving results, with an argument by induction to cases when there is nothing else (i.e.,"if it works when we can verify it, it probably still works where we can't"). But Ford Prefect's point is that when actual results are available, the method does poorly, which undermines that inductive argument.
This is probably true for a good many other Sci Fi properties as well, except AFAIK most of them tend to avoid giving out any numbers at all in dialogue. If there are any numbers at all, they're usually found in secondary or tertiary canon, not primary. Well, except for written works (novels and the like), in which case their very formats preclude the use of visuals at all in which case we usually have plenty of numbers.
Unfortunately, for many posters around here, "outcomes which are simply nonsensical when regarding the individual media as a whole" aren't a problem. The hardcore devotees to a particular series are often bigger fans of the version of the show they've constructed themselves than they are in the original work. I once came up with a definition of "fanboy" than I think applies here: When somebody's love of their own fandom exceeds their love of the original work it's based off of. Some people don't care how out of whack their numbers are, because it's more about defending the fandom than it is discussing the work. One of the big problems (or, for some people, advantages) with the calculation-heavy methods is that they're good for arguing away from a character or army's weaknesses and limitations. When you can reduce fights to "we've got 2,000 bigatons, and you've only got 1,999" you can ignore a consistent record of poor tactical decisions and tech that doesn't quite work as well as advertised. You can ignore all of the intangibles that conspire to make your side a less effective fighting force. A>B>C is really good for observing a lot of those intangibles. Yeah, the outcomes of a lot of fights (especially in American comic books) are pure writer fiat, but so are a lot of the feats that you're basing your calcs off of. At the end of the day, the fact that your empire's superweapons keep getting destroyed before they can be used is at least as important as the fact that they can build said superweapons.
You're probably spot on about the diagnosis. Though if such posters actually attempted to apply an honest analogue of scientific quantification, then "the individual media as a whole" cannot be disregarded. Scientists don't get to cherry-pick data. So if your method gives wildly varying results, that restricts the kinds of conclusions one can reasonably draw from that data. Though that's an attitude that's far from exclusive to quantification-leaning fanboys, of course. It's just extra ironic there. ETA: In a partial defense of fanboys, if you have a vs debate with whatever agreed-upon methods about such things, there's absolutely no shame in having fun with such exercises, if it floats your boat. I'm simply doubtful that a reasonable case of the objective superiority of whatever method can be made.
It's more along the lines of that kind of fanboy tending toward that behavior, since it's often the easiest way to get and defend the results he wants.
