Illogical decisions

One individual has been complaining that one of David Weber's characters (Merlin) has ignored/won't do things that the individual thinks are logical actions.

I hope the following isn't taken as an attack on him or anybody else. It's just my thoughts on "logical or illogical decisions" of people and characters.

First and foremost, many people see the actions of others as "illogical" because they operate on different assumptions than the other person.

In any logical debate there are "premises" that the person based their arguments on. The problem is often that the other person may not accept the "premises" that the first person starts from. Even worse, in informal discussions, the premises may not be expressly stated and the person may not consciously realize what premises he is starting from. So another person operating with different premises, will find the statements as illogical.

Of course, there's also the problem of "incomplete" information. IE we think that a person's actions are illogical because the other person knows something we don't.

In addition, there's the problem that even intelligent people do stupid things. Sometimes the person realizes that "he did an idiot thing" but other times the person may try to blame others on his mistakes.

In an article on another site, David Weber talked about a historical person who by all accounts was very smart but took actions that afterwards seem very stupid. David Weber said that if he were to base a character on this person, many of his readers would find the character unbelievable.

Of course, people doing "idiot things" also involves the person's emotional state. Depressed people do idiot things because of their depression (I speak here from personal experience). Our emotional state strongly influences how we think so it's not surprising that we can make illogical decisions.

To bring things back to the Safehold-universe, let's consider the situation at the time of Project Ark. Mankind had been fighting a losing war for its survival for about thirty years. That is not going to be a positive influence on how well people were thinking.

For all of Nimue's life and military service, war was seen as being done to protect human life. While military personnel, in the past and currently, are painfully aware that their actions will cause the deaths of innocents on the "other side", Nimue's war was different. The Gbaba were aliens and at the time of Project Ark, no "innocent" Gbaba could be harmed by the Federation's actions.

So here's Merlin carrying all the emotional baggage of the original Nimue involved in a war where no matter what he does, human lives will be lost. It is not surprising to me that Merlin may make less than logical decisions. He has never thought about "collateral damage" in times of war.

Finally David Weber has said (in my words) that everybody in the Federation was slightly insane. This explains (but not excuses) the actions of Langhorne and the command staff. This also explains Merlin's less than rational feelings/thoughts when it comes to collateral damage.

DrakBibliophile wrote:One individual has been complaining that one of David Weber's characters (Merlin) has ignored/won't do things that the individual thinks are logical actions.

I hope the following isn't taken as an attack on him or anybody else. It's just my thoughts on "logical or illogical decisions" of people and characters.

First and foremost, many people see the actions of others as "illogical" because they operate on different assumptions than the other person.

In any logical debate there are "premises" that the person based their arguments on. The problem is often that the other person may not accept the "premises" that the first person starts from. Even worse, in informal discussions, the premises may not be expressly stated and the person may not consciously realize what premises he is starting from. So another person operating with different premises, will find the statements as illogical.

Of course, there's also the problem of "incomplete" information. IE we think that a person's actions are illogical because the other person knows something we don't.

In Merlin's case though, many of the premises HAVE been stated in text. Among others...

1) The Temple is pretty much immune to anything short of a major nuclear strike or something of equivalent power.

2) Merlin wants to avoid any public appearance of being supernatural or supernatural events (like making whole fleets vanish without a trace) because such things would suppress the very spirit of Inquiry and Innovation that he wants to encourage.

3) Merlin doesn't have any weapon capable of harming the OBS, nor any capacity for building one. This just enforces the policy in point 2.

4) He's VERY paranoid about being detected by any automated security systems the "Angels" may have left behind to the point where he doesn't let anything of his get close to the Temple, and even SNARCs operating in Zion are operating in "no transmit" mode (they have to physically carry any intel out of what Merlin thinks is the Temple's detection radius before transmitting).

5) Merlin doesn't want to murder anyone he doesn't absolutely have to. This includes enemy spies and their messengers when it would be inconvenient to let them go. WHY he doesn't want to goes unstated, but it's generally left to the reader to assume that it's just because Merlin is a Good person. For that matter, one of the differences between the Good Guys and Bad Guys in this series is that the Bag Guys will do bad things to eliminate every little inconvenience (which often result in even bigger inconveniences, a commentary on why it's bad, no?) while the Good Guys will do the Right Thing even when it's inconvenient for them (like sending Rayjis Dragoner home instead of retaining him as Siddarmarkian ambassador).

6) As Cayleb himself stated, just having Merlin's SNARCs for recon and espionage is already the biggest advantage Charis has. There's no need for more cheats because Charis is already winning. Trying to use more cheats, ACTIVE cheats like using recon skimmers against the enemy risks flubbing the whole thing Dick Dastardly style (the guy's already well ahead of everyone else, why is he stopping to cheat?) and losing the war. Any and all direct intervention by high tech methods has always been done with pains taken to make sure it looked like it was done with mundane means by mundane (if hugely capable) people.

No argument with your points from me.

Still one of the individual's statement concerning "not using high tech weapons" against enemy fleets involved the "saving of lives" on Merlin's side.

So my points on Merlin's past experience of war are intended to show that Merlin has always fought in defense of humans against non-humans.

His major premise is "humans are to be protected". The fact that his actions or inactions will cause the death of humans strikes hard at his very core.

Cayleb and other Safeholdians have a more realistic view of war than Merlin.

Your points strongly reflect their views of the proper tactics.

Merlin on the other hand, rejects the very idea of collateral damage which is in many ways insane but that's the way he is.

evilauthor wrote:

DrakBibliophile wrote:One individual has been complaining that one of David Weber's characters (Merlin) has ignored/won't do things that the individual thinks are logical actions.

I hope the following isn't taken as an attack on him or anybody else. It's just my thoughts on "logical or illogical decisions" of people and characters.

First and foremost, many people see the actions of others as "illogical" because they operate on different assumptions than the other person.

In any logical debate there are "premises" that the person based their arguments on. The problem is often that the other person may not accept the "premises" that the first person starts from. Even worse, in informal discussions, the premises may not be expressly stated and the person may not consciously realize what premises he is starting from. So another person operating with different premises, will find the statements as illogical.

Of course, there's also the problem of "incomplete" information. IE we think that a person's actions are illogical because the other person knows something we don't.

In Merlin's case though, many of the premises HAVE been stated in text. Among others...

1) The Temple is pretty much immune to anything short of a major nuclear strike or something of equivalent power.

2) Merlin wants to avoid any public appearance of being supernatural or supernatural events (like making whole fleets vanish without a trace) because such things would suppress the very spirit of Inquiry and Innovation that he wants to encourage.

3) Merlin doesn't have any weapon capable of harming the OBS, nor any capacity for building one. This just enforces the policy in point 2.

4) He's VERY paranoid about being detected by any automated security systems the "Angels" may have left behind to the point where he doesn't let anything of his get close to the Temple, and even SNARCs operating in Zion are operating in "no transmit" mode (they have to physically carry any intel out of what Merlin thinks is the Temple's detection radius before transmitting).

5) Merlin doesn't want to murder anyone he doesn't absolutely have to. This includes enemy spies and their messengers when it would be inconvenient to let them go. WHY he doesn't want to goes unstated, but it's generally left to the reader to assume that it's just because Merlin is a Good person. For that matter, one of the differences between the Good Guys and Bad Guys in this series is that the Bag Guys will do bad things to eliminate every little inconvenience (which often result in even bigger inconveniences, a commentary on why it's bad, no?) while the Good Guys will do the Right Thing even when it's inconvenient for them (like sending Rayjis Dragoner home instead of retaining him as Siddarmarkian ambassador).

6) As Cayleb himself stated, just having Merlin's SNARCs for recon and espionage is already the biggest advantage Charis has. There's no need for more cheats because Charis is already winning. Trying to use more cheats, ACTIVE cheats like using recon skimmers against the enemy risks flubbing the whole thing Dick Dastardly style (the guy's already well ahead of everyone else, why is he stopping to cheat?) and losing the war. Any and all direct intervention by high tech methods has always been done with pains taken to make sure it looked like it was done with mundane means by mundane (if hugely capable) people.

The point is also that if a Fed tech level AI or equivalent is hidden under the temple, the collateral can be as extreme as you can think or worse. After all, those who implemented that were quite insane in the first place.

Problem with fanatics is that they are always ready to kill everyone if they know they will lose.

Just discharging the bombardement system would be bad enough, but there is no insurance that there is not a more powerfull system too. The fact we know there is a one time use system, means either a PICA with 10 days limit or some quite big bombs.

My guts say the latter, and at fed tech level a planet buster is probably not a problem.

So not waking up Dad is I think quite a good idea

DrakBibliophile wrote:
Merlin on the other hand, rejects the very idea of collateral damage which is in many ways insane but that's the way he is.

I appreciate and agree with the points made here. KEWs on the Temple are definitely a bad idea and ain't gonna happen.

My concern is that there is no known way to avoid 'Dad' wakening up in 18-19 years or so and no character seems to be thinking about how to deal with the situation when he does wake up. If they could be assured he would stay asleep for that length time that might be reasonable, but the more uncertain they are about what might wake him, the more urgent a contingency plan becomes. Not waking Dad up, i.e. waiting till it just happens, is much more likely to give him the initiative, which sounds like an illogical decision to me.

On an entirely different illogical decision. Now that RFC has described in another thread the extensive and exhaustive vetting everyone on the mission had to go through, how on earth did a nutjob like Langhorne manage to even get along far less be put in charge? NTM getting a senior command crew where so many would go along with him?

Randomiser wrote:

My concern is that there is no known way to avoid 'Dad' wakening up in 18-19 years or so and no character seems to be thinking about how to deal with the situation when he does wake up. If they could be assured he would stay asleep for that length time that might be reasonable, but the more uncertain they are about what might wake him, the more urgent a contingency plan becomes. Not waking Dad up, i.e. waiting till it just happens, is much more likely to give him the initiative, which sounds like an illogical decision to me.

At the moment they are very busy with winning the war. But I always expected them to conquer the temple in conventional ways at some point and have a look for themselves what lies in the basement. They need more information for a good contingency plan I think. Who knows what Aivah or her organisation knows...

Randomiser wrote:I appreciate and agree with the points made here. KEWs on the Temple are definitely a bad idea and ain't gonna happen.

My concern is that there is no known way to avoid 'Dad' wakening up in 18-19 years or so and no character seems to be thinking about how to deal with the situation when he does wake up. If they could be assured he would stay asleep for that length time that might be reasonable, but the more uncertain they are about what might wake him, the more urgent a contingency plan becomes. Not waking Dad up, i.e. waiting till it just happens, is much more likely to give him the initiative, which sounds like an illogical decision to me.

On an entirely different illogical decision. Now that RFC has described in another thread the extensive and exhaustive vetting everyone on the mission had to go through, how on earth did a nutjob like Langhorne manage to even get along far less be put in charge? NTM getting a senior command crew where so many would go along with him?

Sometimes politcs overrides good sense; for example, why do so many people continue to ignore the accepted laws of war regarding the acknowledged (by some) government in the Gaza strip? Or explain the workings of the UN Human Rights council, with such stellar examples as China and North Korea taking turns denouncing the US for our immigration policy (such as it is, and considering their border policy of shoot first, second, and until it is dead for their own boundaries).

Sorry to go real-world, but that's how things sometimes go. Langhorne was charismatic, but so was Hitler...

Just my 2 bits
Dave

These have all been great posts. My only thing is I doubt that Langhorne's antitech biases can all be accounted for by pressure from the Gbaba. We have lots of neoLuddites out there in our world without that kind of pressure.

Don

Randomiser wrote:I appreciate and agree with the points made here. KEWs on the Temple are definitely a bad idea and ain't gonna happen.

My concern is that there is no known way to avoid 'Dad' wakening up in 18-19 years or so and no character seems to be thinking about how to deal with the situation when he does wake up. If they could be assured he would stay asleep for that length time that might be reasonable, but the more uncertain they are about what might wake him, the more urgent a contingency plan becomes. Not waking Dad up, i.e. waiting till it just happens, is much more likely to give him the initiative, which sounds like an illogical decision to me.

I think it was mentioned in LAMA that their best plan right now is to make enough changes in Safeholdian society over the next two decades that it would be impossible for any "Angel" to turn back the clock.

Although the characters haven't planned for it yet (mostly because the conditions to do it aren't present yet), I suspect a lightning raid on the Temple using Merlin's hoarded weapons, assault shuttles, and enough recruited Safeholdians to use them all (which is the condition not currently existing in the present) is the most likely response to a returned "Archangel". And even then, it'd only be because of a do or die situation; take the "Archangel" down or the Empire of Charis (and possibly the rest of Safehold) is going to die.

I recall RFC saying the equipment in the cave would be used at some point. evilauthor you are probably correct, but RFC has a habit of taking the story into directions that none of us would have imagined. (like the snipets to start HFQ)