Illogical decisions

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.

bigrunt wrote: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)

Philip Stanley wrote:This post is not a discussion of illogical decisions - it is a question regarding what seems to me to be a failure by Merlin to take a logical action.
...
My question is: why didn't he use OWL's resources to identify the colonies where the other 208 reprogrammed colonists were placed? That seems like such an obvious next step: to find out which other colonies had been seeded with Pei Shan-wei's "arrows" and if any of these colonies showed any sign of their influence.
Not to take this obvious step is not logical, and I can't help wondering why the omnipotent AUTHOR did not have Merlin do this. We're only finding out NOW (6 volumes later!) that one of the groups was placed in Zion, and even now we learn this not because of Merlin's researches, but because that group revealed themselves him.
I can only conclude that the AUTHOR has plans for these revelations of group locations in future plot arcs, and deliberately had Merlin fail to do the obvious research. IMHO it's a little manipulative, but what the heck, it's his universe.
Philip Stanley

Philip Stanley wrote:This post is not a discussion of illogical decisions - it is a question regarding what seems to me to be a failure by Merlin to take a logical action.
In BSRA Merlin returns from the Monastery of Saint Zherneau and learns from OWL about the 212 colonists reprogrammed by Pei Shan-wei. He knows that four of these are Jeremiah and Evelyn Knowles and Kayleb and Jennifer Sarmac, the four who were placed in the Tellesberg colony.
My question is: why didn't he use OWL's resources to identify the colonies where the other 208 reprogrammed colonists were placed? That seems like such an obvious next step: to find out which other colonies had been seeded with Pei Shan-wei's "arrows" and if any of these colonies showed any sign of their influence.
Not to take this obvious step is not logical, and I can't help wondering why the omnipotent AUTHOR did not have Merlin do this. We're only finding out NOW (6 volumes later!) that one of the groups was placed in Zion, and even now we learn this not because of Merlin's researches, but because that group revealed themselves him.
I can only conclude that the AUTHOR has plans for these revelations of group locations in future plot arcs, and deliberately had Merlin fail to do the obvious research. IMHO it's a little manipulative, but what the heck, it's his universe.
Philip Stanley

runsforcelery wrote:

Philip Stanley wrote:This post is not a discussion of illogical decisions - it is a question regarding what seems to me to be a failure by Merlin to take a logical action.
In BSRA Merlin returns from the Monastery of Saint Zherneau and learns from OWL about the 212 colonists reprogrammed by Pei Shan-wei. He knows that four of these are Jeremiah and Evelyn Knowles and Kayleb and Jennifer Sarmac, the four who were placed in the Tellesberg colony.
My question is: why didn't he use OWL's resources to identify the colonies where the other 208 reprogrammed colonists were placed? That seems like such an obvious next step: to find out which other colonies had been seeded with Pei Shan-wei's "arrows" and if any of these colonies showed any sign of their influence.
Not to take this obvious step is not logical, and I can't help wondering why the omnipotent AUTHOR did not have Merlin do this. We're only finding out NOW (6 volumes later!) that one of the groups was placed in Zion, and even now we learn this not because of Merlin's researches, but because that group revealed themselves him.
I can only conclude that the AUTHOR has plans for these revelations of group locations in future plot arcs, and deliberately had Merlin fail to do the obvious research. IMHO it's a little manipulative, but what the heck, it's his universe.
Philip Stanley

What makes you think he didn't do exactly that?

Philip Stanley wrote:When I posted earlier in this thread regarding Merlin's failure to research the other 208 reprogrammed colonists, I wasn't thinking of identifying the specific organization or location they may have established. It is probable that any organization or group they may have initially established would have been secret and concealed to prevent suppression by the Temple.
What I was thinking of was rather of a group's influence on the culture or beliefs of their region of Safehold by it's influence applied over the hundreds of years since the colonization of the planet. The group might have been clandestine, but it's influence might be more discerned.
Why, for instance, did Siddermark develop a republican form of government? Or Harchong or Desnair a slave/serf based culture (not all of the groups would necessarily influence a culture in the same direction)? This is what I meant when I said that Merlin should look for their "influences"
Philip Stanley