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Quite possibly the nerdiest office debate ever

By Michael Mahler, on December 23rd, 2009

Jim, one of the other programmers just asked me a “point of geek”: when James Kirk beat the Kobiyashi Maru test, did he beat the test or cheat? I opined that since the test was designed to measure how someone reacted to an insoluble problem and since Kirk won by changing the rules, it really counts as cheating. (Since in a real world example, there would be no simulator to reprogram.) A spirited debate followed.

I later realized that the test probably would not have existed for very long before it would be too likely to be known to be useful. With enough people taking the test, it would be likely that the nature of the test would have gotten out, and therefore, it wouldn’t have been a useful measure of how someone faces a situation that is unwinnable, since knowing that one can’t win would doubtless change how someone reacted.

One of the other programmers asked if we were talking about Jean-Luc Picard. Jim did the geek equivalent of the gay gasp. (Would that be clutching the abacus, rather than clutching the pearls?) I teased further that maybe if Kirk had just used the Force and his light saber, he might have been legitimately able to win.

Yeah, that was quite a geek fest. ;)

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  • http://www.rowley-design.com/kahler/ Scott k

    I don’t feel that it is…. changing the rules, or changing one’s environment is always a valid response to an imposable situation. It is really the only option one has. Is it “cheating” for someone to leave a partner because it is impossible to change their destructive habits?
    In the most extreme cases throughout history the rules where broken to serve the better good. “We walk in the dark to serve the light”
    Assassin’s Creed 2 (because all of the best and most intellectual quotes come from video games)
    “This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.
    Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.”
    Hackers :P

  • http://www.rowley-design/kahler Scott k

    “With enough people taking the test, it would be likely that the nature of the test would have gotten out, and therefore, it wouldn’t have been a useful measure of how someone faces a situation that is unwinnable, since knowing that one can’t win would doubtless change how someone reacted.”
    I don’t think so. I am sure they could randomly assign this test among the many other tests that the officer needed to take. Any one of them could be the “imposable situation test”. However, the fact that Spoke knew it was that test broke the scientific convention of a double blind test.

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