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Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Kobayshi Maru



 From Wikipedia article on Kobayashi Maru:

"In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the simulation takes place on a replica of a starship bridge, with the test-taker as captain and other Starfleet members, officers or other cadets, in other key positions. In the scenario of the 2280s, the cadet receives a distress signal stating that the Kobayashi Maru has struck a "gravitic mine" in the Klingon Neutral Zone and is rapidly losing power, hull integrity and life support. There are no other vessels nearby. The cadet is faced with a decision:

Attempt to rescue the Kobayashi Maru's crew and passengers, which involves violating the Neutral Zone and potentially provoking the Klingons into hostile action or an all-out war; or
Abandon the Kobayashi Maru, potentially preventing war but leaving the crew and passengers to die.

If the cadet chooses to save the Kobayashi Maru, the scenario progresses quickly. The bridge officers notify the cadet that they are in violation of the treaty. As the starship enters the Neutral Zone, the communications officer loses contact with the crippled vessel. Klingon starships then appear on an intercept course. Attempts to contact them are met with radio silence; indeed, their only response is to open fire with devastating results. There is no way to win the resulting battle, especially since the computer is allowed to "cheat" to guarantee defeat; the simulation ends with the understanding that the cadet's ship has been lost with all hands. The objective of the test is not for the cadet to outfight the opponent but rather to test the cadet's reaction to a no-win situation."
If you recall, Cadet James T. Kirk managed to "win" the Kobayashi Maru simulation by gaining access to the program code, and then re-writing it, so that the next day he was able to beat the program. Captain Kirk said he did not like "no-win" situations.
 
To step outside the program is to place oneself in a position where one has a privileged viewpoint; i.e., above the fracas going on at Starfleet Academy simulation laboratory, and to take advantage of being "outside" to re-write the program.
To move oneself "above" the world is to move super naturam, or supernatural.

Our religious geniuses have talked to us about that which is above the world. We have taken their words and turned them into "beliefs" which we immediately feed back into our intelligence, and use these beliefs as short-cuts to decision making in moral situations. In the context of Kobayashi Maru, we have only added options within the no-win scenario, which might put off the inevitable outcome, but cannot change it.

However, it is obvious our religious geniuses meant their teachings to point us to somewhere outside the confines of daily life with its repetitive communications with the environment; they meant for us to re-program our lives from a standpoint "outside the box", or "supernatural"!

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