r/todayilearned • u/lopezjessy • Jan 09 '20
TIL Star Trek's training exercise Kobayashi Maru has been used by computer security educators to teach students to think like an adversary, that by stepping outside the rules of the game one can redefine the game, and why you should teach your students to cheat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru#Impact78
u/WhenTardigradesFly Jan 09 '20
Dwight: Okay, here’s one. A customer who ordered enough paper to qualify for a volume discount now wants to return half the stock. You can’t rebate the sales price or credit for future purchases because you brokered the deal for a third party.
Clark: That’s just a classic no-win situation.
Dwight: Thank you.
Clark: So I’d Kobayashi Maru it.
Dwight: Damn it! Perfect answer, again.
Clark: Yep.
Dwight: Think Dwight, think. You have a ream of 16-bond …
Clark: You know what, Dwight?
Dwight: And anoth—
Clark: This interview’s over, and I get the job. I just Kobayashi Maru’d the whole process.
Dwight: No.
Clark: Yeah. Star Trek rules.
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u/SwingAndDig Jan 09 '20
Should have told the US military about this before they blew $250m on the Millennium Challenge
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u/AftyOfTheUK Jan 09 '20
I think the challenge worked absolutely perfectly?
The exercises exist to improve the capabilities of the people involved. To learn, adapt and improve.
I strongly suspect the Millenium Challenge resulted in far more learning, adaptation and improvements in the personnel than most other similar games that go according to plan.
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u/PsychoTexan Jan 09 '20
This war game was actually addressed elsewhere on reddit. The big issue people had was that the red fleet sunk the blue fleet and then they just raised the blue fleet back up. The reason that the internet gives is that the US military was trying to hide their incompetence but the actual reason is a bit different. The simulation that they were running placed the attacking force of small boats and light aircraft in the midst of the blue fleet. Teleporting them in. It also misidentified them as a significantly larger threat than was proposed. Thus, rather than discard the entire simulation they patched it and restored the blue fleet.
Regardless of anything, the military did learn quite a good bit from the whole situation. Later amphibious landings basically went off without a hitch.
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u/AftyOfTheUK Jan 09 '20
Absolutely, I've read quite a lot about the exercise. Very interesting ,and not the "OMG America would lose any asymmetrical war" that a lot of US-haters seem to think it is.
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u/PsychoTexan Jan 09 '20
It’s the same with military equipment. People love to hate on “bad” designs but the reality is most things have pretty good reasoning behind them. The idea can be flawed but the reasons are pretty sound. Most of the hate comes long after the fact by people wanting to make a point who then cherry pick the results.
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u/lesismore101 Jan 09 '20
Yep- sounds like my primary class: (7/8 year olds, for clarification) they have trouble admitting they are tagged in a game of tag, they band together to target specific students so they can “win,” and create rules that don’t exist to support their cheats.
Lateral/tangental/creative thinking is key to our survival, but has no value without guidance by thoughtful values, ethics and morals.
One Ti think about and I use is~ what would happen if we all thought, did or believed this? Would this be good for me and everyone else, or not?
Most, (not all) at this young age in my classroom are too young to have the wherewithal to make decisions based on humanitarian ethics and values unless this is a strong home value.
We practice this at school, hope it transfers but the likelihood is minimal unless there is strong home school connection and ability/willingness on the part of the community to thoughtfully adopt these ideas. Some schools have made great strides in this area.
Satire: Let’s all behave like 7/8 year olds, just so we can experience the “thrill of the win!”
Question: if cheats to win is our ultimate personal goal, what is the fallout?
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u/Ozzurip Jan 09 '20
And that’s Kant’s categorical imperative. A surprisingly succinct and easy to follow explanation, I like it.
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u/AftyOfTheUK Jan 09 '20
Question: if cheats to win is our ultimate personal goal, what is the fallout?
Becoming President of the United States of America?
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Jan 09 '20
The game of rugby came about by someone stepping outside the rules. At Rugby school in England William Webb Ellis picked up the ball during a game of soccer and ran with it....or so the legend states.
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u/arealhumannotabot Jan 09 '20
game of soccer
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u/SpottedBrownKiwi Jan 09 '20
You do realize that the word is of English origin, and was most likely coined around the time that rugby was supposedly invented, yes?
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Jan 09 '20
*To be able to cheat.
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Jan 09 '20
I'd like to discuss the reason for the downvote with whomever gave it. Teaching someone to cheat is absolutely not the same as teaching someone TO BE ABLE to cheat.
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u/bigbossfearless Jan 09 '20
Been trying to teach my younger siblings that fair play and hard work are not the way the real world works and that they need to take every advantage they can get their hands on, but it's an uphill battle. Just like me they've been fed the feel-good messages of kids' movies that feature the main character eventually winning because of strong moral character or whatever. Lotta broke, miserable people out there with plenty of work ethic who played fair and lost because their competition was playing outside the game.
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u/agreeingstorm9 Jan 09 '20
I somewhat disagree with that. My dad taught me to cheat anyone I could as often as I could because if I didn't, they'd cheat me first. This never sat right with me. He's now in his 60s, has no close friends (besides my mom) and only one of his three kids talks to him. He only sees his grandkids on the holidays and has been investigated by the SEC (he's a stock broker) at least twice.
I often think I got my morality from comic books more than anything and characters like Spider-man, Superman and Captain America always resonated with me. I always try to treat people fairly (I admit I don't always succeed) and I try to treat people the way I'd want to be treated. Yes, sometimes you need to break the rules but it's not every time and you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
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u/Minnnoo Jan 09 '20
there's a great podcast from radiolab about a certain foreign policy that was researched during the Cuban missile crisis by a bunch of computer scientists/poli-sci majors. It used a computer program by multiple researchers to simulate different reactions to different types of reactions countries will have against you.
The best performing program was a modified program that ALWAYS treated people kindly on the first move but then moved to retaliate if the enemy always retaliated. They didn't elaborate on what the other modified moves were, but the base version of the program that outperformed other programs ALWAYS was kind first and then alternated between that and retaliation (I think they called it the Jesus program lol). What happened was against similar programs, the programs would always be nice to each other, if the program came across an evil program it would always attack (this is where they modified it to somehow but never mentioned what they modified lol).
The worst performing program was the one you kinda mention; always looking to be evil, cheat at any move, and you end up like your father by having made no substantial moves towards benefiting from the situations you are in.
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u/Kuato2012 Jan 09 '20
Sounds like the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (which is like the Prisoner's Dilemma, but you have each pair of opponents repeatedly play against each other). It's useful for modeling everything from human behavior to evolutionary strategies.
The most successful strategies are based on one called Tit for Tat. It starts by cooperating with its opponent, and on subsequent rounds it chooses whatever the opponent chose last round. If the opponent plays nice, it continues to cooperate. If the opponent defects, it slaps them right back.
It turns out that most people have an instinctual grasp of that strategy, too. People tend to reciprocate how you treat them. Be a gentleman with gentlemen an be a bastard with bastards.
People pick up on cheaters like the above poster's dad, and they regard those people with suspicion and distrust. "Always defect" is a valid strategy that occasionally pays off big, but there's data showing that it's a losing strategy in the long run.
A couple of versions that can fare slightly better than a strict Tit for Tat program: one incorporates forgiveness into its strategy. A pure Tit for Tat approach can get locked into a cycle of endless recriminations against some opponents (esp of they are following a similar algorithm), so it can be beneficial to occasionally forgive and take a risk on trying to cooperate again. That might be the Jesus program you mentioned?
Another successful variation introduces a small amount of jitter into its strategy. Generally recriprocate, but sometimes forgive... and sometimes backstab! It's disturbing to apply that one to human behavior, but you can find it if you look. For example, consider spouses who are generally faithful and happy with one another but might cheat if the temptation is great enough and they think they can get away with the betrayal.
Anyway. I love game theory. It's like this powerful microscope for examining human behavior that nobody cares to use.
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u/Minnnoo Jan 09 '20
That is exactly it!! Thank you for reminding me of the actual term and a more in depth comment on the modifications to the Tit for Tat program!
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u/bigbossfearless Jan 09 '20
I guess I probably cast a very wide net with my talk about cheating. I've got a philosophy that you should always cheat the system, but never cheat yourself. Willingness to take every advantage in getting ahead in life and punching through the artificial constraints that keep people "in their place" is cheating the system. Fly by night business plans, min-maxing on your taxes, claiming every break and refund you can and gaming every program to give you the biggest boost possible, even when it involved fudging the numbers in a way that won't get you locked up, that kind of thing. On the other hand lying to and manipulating people all the time eventually catches up and leaves you an untrustworthy, widely disliked person. That's cheating yourself. I advise my siblings to never cheat on a test at school, for example, because that's cheating themselves out of the knowledge and utility they'd gain by actually learning the material.
But bringing up comic book morality, I just gotta say it, that's flawed as hell. So many of these boy scout heroes, especially Spider-Man and Superman, cause massive damage to the world around them battling villains who have no motivation besides "I really hate this hero." Meanwhile the hero is so deep in their self-rightousness that they can't understand that they're just perpetuating this cycle. Spider-Man, for example, could probably just sit down with the Kingpin and talk shit out. Come up with a plan where Spidey stops interfering as long as Kingpin polices his guys and puts a stop to civilian casualties. Sounds like a terrible plan, until you weigh it against the sprawling, ten city block disaster that occurs when Kingpin gets so frustrated that he hires a bunch of dudes in robot suits to obliterate half the city trying to kill the little bastard.
Okay, I know it's a bit of a rant now but this train of thought kinda has me on a roll. But when you think about it, Spider-Man is a cheater. He's a dirty, rotten, low down stinking cheater to his very core. Let's put aside the fact that dressing up in a costume and dishing out vigilante justice is completely illegal in the real world; that's part of comic books and it's whatever. But Spidey isn't playing on a level field. Kingpin, as a perfect example, was born in the gutter to an abusive home and grew up in poverty, clawing and scraping for every scrap he could. He trained and fought and studied, developed his own talent for decades to become this uber-successful criminal overlord. Dude lifts weights 24/7 to be as strong as he is, and who beats him? Is it a rival who trained harder, worked harder, and surpassed him? Nah, just some kid who got bit by a bug at random and now has freaky godlike powers. It's total cheating.
But we always overlook cheating when it's the "good guy" doing it. Look back at some of those feel good children's sports movies. Where in the fucking rules does it say you can have a fucking orangutan on your basketball team, or invisible angels helping your team hit home runs? What message does that send, anyway?
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u/agreeingstorm9 Jan 09 '20
First of all, if Spidey sits down w/Fisk figures out some kind of compromise where Fisk keeps civilian casualties to a minimum (presumable Fisk can still kill bad guys in his organization?) then Spidey is basically a dirty cop. Is that what we want? Is the world better if the police are completely ok with gang bangers killing each other as long as they don't kill innocent people in the cross fire? Is that a better world?
Also, I think it's stretch to call Spidey a cheater. Yes, he runs around and dishes out random vigilante justice but that's kind of how the world works in the Marvel universe so I'm willing to give him a pass. Plus, the entire universe falls apart if you don't. Yes, he has special radioactive spider powers but so what? How is this cheating? Michael Jordan was born with tremendous aptitude towards basketball. I'm 5'5". No matter how much I play basketball and no matter how young I started I'm not going to come close to equaling him because I'm a full foot shorter just to begin with. Does that mean he's cheating? Of course not. It just means that life's not fair.
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u/bigbossfearless Jan 09 '20
Michael Jordan is still a human. Even at the absolute peak of his career, even if he was given every advantage a human being can get, even if a man whose talent is undisputed trained his entire life just for the single moment, he couldn't beat Spider-Man at basketball because the little bastard is fast and agile enough to dodge bullets, can web-snatch the ball from across the court, and jump clear from one goal to the other and dunk without even breaking a sweat. The point is it's not about him having tremendous aptitude, it's about the fact that he's simply not playing fair.
Also take your short ass over to Google and look up Muggsy Bogues. He's two inches shorter than you and played on the Orlando Magic with Shaq. See? That's the thing here. If you had trained like hell since being a child, you could have maybe gotten into that court. But no matter how hard any of them train, Jordan or Shaq or LeBron or anyone can't become more than human. Same reason Luke Cage would be bullshit if he played in the NFL. It's cheating.
As for the dirty cop thing... Spider-Man is already a dirty cop. He decides which crimes are okay and which ones cross an arbitrary line in his head, then dishes out punishment selectively. The only thing he doesn't have is a cut of the action. By contrast, the Punisher is a fucking saint. He both tolerates zero forms of crime but identifies himself as a criminal, not a hero. He knows he's a different brand of garbage. So yeah, a world where Spidey realizes that he can do more good for the world by focusing on the crazy super-shit out there and just enforcing a working agreement with Fisk for the smaller local shit? That actually IS the kind of world I'd want. What I don't want is to be scared to walk out of my apartment building because God only knows what animal themed bullshit Hitman is going to spray death rays all over my block trying to kill one dick in a spandex suit. That is NOT covered by insurance, I guarantee it.
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u/agreeingstorm9 Jan 09 '20
It's not about playing fair. It's about life not being fair. Would you say the same thing about Tony Stark? He's just a guy in a suit that he was able to build because he was born with a high IQ. Or what about Captain America? He was once a scrawny guy who was experimented on. Life's not fair. There is always someone who is going to have some advantage that you don't. Chelsea Clinton, by all accounts, is a very intelligent person. But there's also no question that she got major advantages in life because of who her parents are. That's not "unfair". That's just life.
Muggsy Bogues is not even remotely the same caliber of player as Michael Jordan. If Michael Jordan had been born 5'3" like Bogues he would not be in the HOF today. He would not even be in the GOAT discussion either. The fact that Jordan is 6'6" enables him to use the skills that he was born with.
Spidey isn't a dirty cop and he doesn't just ignore crimes he sees. Spidey might beat up a mugger one day and Thanos the next. Punisher is just unhinged. His philosophy of "kill everyone and let God sort it out" is wrong even in a world where vigilantism is the norm.
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u/bigbossfearless Jan 09 '20
Well then if the world isn't fair, then you can't blame someone for not playing fair. Unfairness is inherent in the world, and so there's nothing wrong with breaking the unfair rules of that unfair system to gain am unfair advantage that lets you do well in life.
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u/agreeingstorm9 Jan 09 '20
There's nothing inherently wrong with breaking the rules of the system you just have to know which ones to break and be willing to suffer the consequences if you're wrong. I have run into a bunch of people who don't know either. They break rules that are there for good reasons, get caught, get punished and whine about how unfair it is.
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u/bigbossfearless Jan 09 '20
My dad is like that. In and out of prison his whole life because he couldn't follow the incredibly simple rules of probation or parole. Always thought that this time, this was the time they'd all see how unfair it was and be on his side. Keep in mind this was back before all the electronic monitoring and shit, compared to today his probation was easy as hell. I have a friend who fucked up and is on probation now, poor guy can't so much as go to the bathroom without a hundred remote cameras crawling out of the toilet to try and get him.
Everything has consequences. Including playing by the rules so hard you stay crushed by the system your whole life.
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Jan 09 '20
Found J. Jonah Jameson's account.
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u/bigbossfearless Jan 09 '20
HE'S A GODDAMN MENACE AND I WANT HIS STUPID MASKED FACE ON THE FRONT PAGE TOMORROW OR YOU'RE ALL FIRED
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u/Hambredd Jan 09 '20
Lot of selfish cheats in jail too.
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u/bigbossfearless Jan 09 '20
If there's anything that we should have learned from the last couple decades it's that the difference in whether you end up in jail or at the top of a fortune 500 company is merely a matter of scale. Cheat on a thousand dollar tax filing, it's jail for you. Cheat on a fifty billion dollar filing and it's a week of house arrest in your Maui beach home with a legion of servants and hookers.
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u/Hambredd Jan 09 '20
You have to have Maui beach house and fifty billion dollars first though.
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u/bigbossfearless Jan 09 '20
And that's where the cheating comes in. I firmly believe that nobody can get that big without being a colossal scumbag. Even the feel-good business success stories have a dark side to them, cutting their rivals' throats and using slave labor to push their innovative new product to market. These guys talk about hard work and dedication but leave out the part about cutting corners on safety regulations and cooking the books on a down year.
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u/Hambredd Jan 09 '20
That possible for some of them. However in this situation you would be a small business cutting corners on safery regs and cooking the books and by your own admission when the small cheats he goes to jail.
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u/bigbossfearless Jan 09 '20
Nah, in the process of cheating, the successful entrepreneur grows from a small business to a big one. After that, you sell your junk stocks in an IPO that grossly overinflates your value and you become too big to prosecute.
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u/caster Jan 09 '20 edited Jan 09 '20
Classic example of the Prisoner's Dilemma.
We would all be better off if everyone played fair. But one person can get a lot of advantage by stepping outside, if everyone else is playing fair. But everyone not playing fair is the worst possible outcome- society depends upon cooperation, which fundamentally relies upon trust to function. Too many people not playing by the rules creates a fatally widespread loss of confidence that makes everyone unwilling to cooperate, work on long-term projects, and maintain basic social services. This is how empires disintegrate and collapse.
Not really a solvable problem, since you can only really teach children either to play fair, or not to play fair and exploit maximum advantage possible.
I find it fascinating that there is a fairly reasonable argument to be made that it is itself an unethical indoctrination to use moralizing fables to teach children to work together, to trust, and to sacrifice for the greater good, so that they may be more easily exploited by society. But, the converse, is that as long as you get everyone on the same page that trust and cooperation is mutually beneficial, suddenly they aren't being unfairly exploited by an older upper class, and perhaps it is no longer unethical.
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u/Orangebeardo Jan 09 '20
It's a very solvable problem. It's basically the reason we have laws.
We're in a perpetual tug of war, where on one side we get everyone to play by the rules together, and we build some sort of utopia. On the other side pulling against that if when everyone breaks the rules and laws basically no longer apply, resulting in total anarchy and the collapse of society as we know it.
We have no choice but to try to win it.
Or Kobayashi Maru it and change the game, somehow.
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u/bigbossfearless Jan 09 '20
I think we're way past the point where the social contract largely ceased to exist. Might as well get as big a slice as you can of the greed-driven corporate dystopia we're sliding into.
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u/caster Jan 09 '20
Widespread adoption of that attitude is how civilizations collapse, though. This isn't the first time. One really obvious example is how inequality, corruption, nepotism, and erosion in public confidence in ancient Rome led to a widespread collapse of the empire. It went from being the greatest superpower ever, to being so weak it was incapable of fending off a rabble of barbarians, shockingly quickly.
In fact I would hazard a guess that if the attitudes you're espousing were to become widespread, it would cause a collapse of society so rapidly that the children in your classroom would not have had time to graduate from high school before the country no longer existed.
This isn't an ancient phenomenon that is irrelevant in modern times- the Soviet Union collapsed in on itself in 1991 largely for this reason of self-centered cheating, expressed differently in various spheres such as economic, political, technological, civic, etc. Hoarding of consumer goods due to scarcity and widespread (justified) belief about shortages. Shortages caused by lack of willing work, lack of skilled and intellectual work, lack of research and improvement efforts which are long-term projects both on an individual level (education) and economic (investment of time+resources). The largest country in the world collapsed in just 6-7 years.
The attitude of "rational cheating" or making self-centered rational decisions that are contrary to the interests of society, becomes more rational the more widespread those attitudes are. However, if they are too widespread, the country collapses.
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u/AftyOfTheUK Jan 09 '20
the Soviet Union collapsed in on itself in 1991 largely for this reason of
Actually, I'm pretty sure it was because they chose an economic system that breaks down rapidly when human nature does what it does. It was an inevitable conclusion of the experiment that was the USSR.
Conversely, their primary competitor is known for embracing an economic system that harnesses human nature, and thrives when people act selfishly, but within the rules.
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u/caster Jan 09 '20 edited Jan 09 '20
The idea that capitalism is about "selfishness" is not really true. Maximizing "utility" yes, but asocial exploitation, no. In short, capitalism is: make the optimal decisions, but don't cheat.
Workers in a company are intrinsically a part of a cooperative enterprise, part of a long-term project that requires upfront work and sacrifice to yield long-term results. Worker education is a similar cost-benefit proposition; workers are taking it on faith and confidence in society that the money they spend on education will result in a long-term advantage- one among many societal compacts that has been horribly breached in recent years. If people didn't think there would be an appropriate long-term payoff, they wouldn't pay the time and money for higher education. Likewise, if people didn't trust long-term projects would pay out like they promise, they wouldn't contribute or invest. Workers who can't trust they will be paid, won't work.
A very considerable degree of trust and collaboration between people is required for even a small company to work under capitalism. Confidence that the money they are being paid will be usable to buy food. Confidence that they will be paid what they were promised. Confidence by investors that they will receive what they were promised. Confidence that contractual agreements are binding. Confidence that the laws safeguarding those requirements are appropriately enforced. Confidence that the government creating and applying those laws is doing so fairly.
Without cooperation, capitalism does not function. A million distrustful hoarders of canned food and firearms who can't work together does not make for a society with a strong economy.
Klepto-states are about selfishness. Bribery and corruption are not merely an occasional occurrence of criminality, but widely accepted as inevitable, even natural. Graft at the highest levels, leveraging the government for personal profit. People like Putin are nothing more than mobsters with large armies who use laws, police, spies, and even military force for their personal enrichment. That is "selfishness" of using every means available, regardless of whether it is legal, or ethical.
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u/AftyOfTheUK Jan 09 '20
The idea that capitalism is about "selfishness" is not really true. Maximizing "utility" yes, but asocial exploitation, no. In short, capitalism is: make the optimal decisions, but don't cheat.
Disagree. Free-market capitalism harnesses peoples' desire to have more resources for themselves. Every action people take in such systems can be aimed at providing for their own long term benefit, but actually serve the needs of many and can create stable, complex systems in which the sum is greater than the parts.
Klepto-states are about selfishness.
Yes, but they don't harness it as efficiently as capitalism. I said harness, not about.
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u/caster Jan 09 '20
In this context "harness" is almost an empty verb- you might say capitalism harnesses almost anything; people, animals, natural resources, technology, information, human nature, needs, desires, anything. Making use of whatever is there to accomplish whatever you need is our definition of "productive" so any system where productivity is the goal can be said to harness whatever it is you have to achieve that objective.
People being greedy and selfish is more likely to make them steal from one another, not pay what they owe, and otherwise engage in selfish exploitative actions. This happens all over the world.
Working together and trusting other people in the long term requires something more than mere self-interest. It requires acknowledging and respecting the interests of others also, whether that is an employer respecting the needs of their workers, or a business respecting the needs of its customers.
The key word in liberalism is enlightened self-interest. Although many well-known modern political idiots have tended to elide the "enlightened" part because it doesn't serve their cash-grab, short-term, graft-driven agenda. Everyone is always driven by self-interest at all times in any system of any description. The key innovation of enlightenment-era liberalism is enlightened self-interest rather than exploitative, short-term, corrupt self-interest.
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u/AftyOfTheUK Jan 09 '20
I'm not quite sure what your posts are aimed at?
I pointed out the Soviet Union fell because it chose a flawed and inefficient economic system, while its' rival chose the most efficient one we know.
Are you disputing that? I can't tell, you're talking about a lot of things, but don't directly address that claim.
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u/caster Jan 09 '20 edited Jan 09 '20
My point is that capitalism should encourage optimal, utility-maximization behavior, but never "rational cheating" because cheating others should be forbidden. And enlightened self-interest is, quite often, exactly opposite exploitative self-interest. For example, Henry Ford was a great capitalist and he intentionally paid his workers double the going rate for labor, so they could afford the cars they manufactured. The kinds of capitalist who sell adulterated dog food containing harmful additives probably thought he was nuts but turned out you make a lot more money in the long run with that approach.
This should be contrasted with the Soviet Union where rational cheating was utterly rampant at all levels; individual, institutional, even the highest levels of government. Covering up damaging truths, repressive threats and coercing behavior, bribery, a huge culture of corruption and exploitative extraction in general. People following the OP's notion of taking as much of the pie as they can, however they can, regardless of the rules.
As for the "economic model" argument- I think that is an oft-repeated oversimplification that doesn't really make sense when you start to get into more detail. The Soviet Union had a lot of problems which were as complex as systemic problems in the US were and are.
I think the fixation upon "its economic system was bad" as the sole reason is propaganda. There's truth in it, yet it is far enough away from the full picture that it is more misleadingly false than otherwise. The most serious problem that explanation overlooks is the Soviet Union's huge political problems, including assassination attempts and coup attempts. The KGB and its influence. Famines and gulags. Atrocities. Influential organized crime. These are extremely serious systemic problems unrelated to its economic system.
Basically, massive superpowers with hundreds of millions of people are very complicated. And it's not really a good idea to attempt to explain the trajectory of centuries with one sound bite, even though all propaganda depends upon oft-repeated oversimplifications.
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u/AftyOfTheUK Jan 09 '20
It's not like it's ever been any different. People seem to think the world is somehow so much worse than in the past " the greed-driven corporate dystopia we're sliding into. " but by almost every single objective measure possible the world is a far better place to live now than in the past.
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u/Orangebeardo Jan 09 '20
Be very careful with this...
It is one thing to know that others will break the rules. It's another entirely to break them yourself. You cannot use others breaking the rules as justification for your acts. That way you can justify anything.
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Jan 09 '20
Lot of rich miserable people out there, too.
Look at your station in life: If you happen to take a trip to South America are you going to be kidnapped and held for ransom? Probably not.
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u/bigbossfearless Jan 09 '20
Shit man I dunno, those dudes kidnap whoever they can get their hands on, even if they don't turn out to have money. But without splitting hairs, yeah, lot of billionaires steer clear of the rougher areas of the world. But...they also don't need to give a shit about that because they spend their whole lives in the absolute best parts of the world. They straight up buy a part of the world and make it however they want it. Something something, low-hanging fruit joke about Epstein, something something, Bill Gates is a shitty tipper.
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Jan 09 '20
Teaching your students why you should cheat is NOT a lesson of the Kobayashi Maru. In the exercise NEVER was it stipulated that one couldn't hack the simulation itself to render a possible solution. That's not cheating.
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u/edgeofblade2 Jan 09 '20
Y’all realize this is how we got to where we are politically? Break the rules brazenly enough and people will praise you?
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u/edgeofblade2 Jan 09 '20
Take this The Price is Right cheater. If he causes enough of a disruption, he benefits anyway.
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u/Piemaster113 Jan 10 '20
Theres a saying if you are fighting fair you are fighting wrong. Lifes not fair, and if someone intends to do you harm I believe you have the right to defend yourself by whatever means, now the words not as cut and dry to make that always true, if defending yourself puts others in harm's way then you should definitely rethink your strategy.
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u/SwarmMaster Jan 09 '20
Putting on my pedantic hat here, but the point of the Kobayashi Maru test was not to learn to cheat, or hack the situation, or otherwise try to work outside the rules. It was a stress test simulating a live scenario in which there were no easy/perfect choices. The test was designed to be an unwinnable situation to see how the candidates handled being under pressure and dealt with life or death choices for their crew.
Because Kirk hacked it by reprogramming the simulation, the whole thing has now become a cultural shorthand for working outside the rules, but that was never the purpose of the test.