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Straw Vulcan: Difference between revisions
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* The story assumes that anything which doesn't fit a particular mathematical model of logic isn't "logical".
** For instance, assuming that "logic" means "using syllogisms". Even speculation and testing hypotheses can then be called "illogical", despite being the foundation of modern science. Heck, even logicians don't use syllogisms all the time.
** Or assuming that all logical choices must make one side better off on an individual basis, without considering cooperation; this is known as a [
* The Straw Vulcan, and by extension all logical thinkers, will be uncreative, or at least less so than [[Hot
* A Straw Vulcan will have to consider everything about the problem in full detail even in time-critical situations, while the emotional person will make the snap decisions necessary in this sort of situation. This will demonstrate how the "logical" Straw Vulcan is useless under pressure and therefore inferior to the emotional protagonist.
* There's also the case where the emotional person suggests a course that shouldn't work, period, but the Straw Vulcan's ideas all involve some aspect that the "non-logical" character find objectionable. So Straw Vulcan is outvoted, they go with the dumb emotional plan, and lo, it works... due to sheer dumb luck. This is then lauded as a victory for emotion, when in fact it's a victory for the [[Million-to-One Chance]] principle.
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*** To be exact {{spoiler|V.I.K.I.'s}} motivations are logical for her premise, it's her premise/goal that is wrong. She is looking to save lives at all costs, if that is her goal then she took quasi-logical action (one could argue there was a much better way to go about the coup that wouldn't set up an us-vs-them mentality that would encourage humans to fight to the death. The problem is that most humans don't want to have maximum life at all costs. We would rather accept small risk if it means enjoyment, and we couldn't be happy in a world dictated by robots. If she had started out with the premis of "I must preserve human happiness" instead of "I must preserve human life" things would have been far different.
* Roy calls Deckard's leap of faith near the end of ''[[Blade Runner]]'' "irrational"; Deckard himself immediately agrees. Considering it was his only real hope of survival, clearly neither of them knows what "irrational" means.
* Used in the 2009 ''[[Star Trek (Film)|Star Trek]]'' film (probably as an intentional [[Shout
** Both subverted and played out straight in ''[[Star Trek VI]]''. At one point Spock answers an appeal to logic from his protege Valeris by saying, "Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end." During the remainder of the film, Spock is often telling outright lies or asking crewmembers to do so (acts that certainly go against what Vulcans traditionally consider logical) and describing the lies as "a miscommunication" and other euphemisms...anything but "a lie." But in the end, we find that {{spoiler|for reasons she considers "logical," Valeris has conspired to assassinate Klingon Chancellor Gorkon and frame Kirk for his murder. When she says she doesn't recall the names of her fellow conspirators, Spock asks, "A lie?" She replies, "A choice."}}
* I don't know that they use the word "logical," but the computer in ''[[War Games]]'' is supposed to have mastered all sorts of game theory, without ever having realized that there could possibly be a game in which neither player could win {{spoiler|(until, of course at the end, they introduce it to tic-tac-toe, and have it play against itself)}}.
** Hmm. The message isn't so much that you can't win a nuclear war but that the ''correct'' move is not to "play the game" at all. At least that seems to be the Aesop. In any case, WOPPER's "logic" is sound and subverts the notion that one can rationally plan a nuclear war, so this may count as a subversion of the trope.
* Dr. Ellie Arroway in ''[[Contact (Film)|Contact]]'' is a SETI researcher who argues that Occam's Razor makes it more likely that humans invented the idea of God rather than God creating the world without a shred of proof pointing to his existence. During the hearing in which Ellie claimed she had a trip through the Stargate and encountered an alien (when all the witnesses and recorded data indicates the Stargate was a complete failure and nothing happened), Occam's Razor is flung back in her face: is it more likely that she hallucinated the journey or that the aliens sent her through the Stargate without leaving a shred of proof? Ellie concedes this but refuses to withdraw her position because her experience was too monumental for humanity's future to dismiss on logic alone. '''The kicker:''' the Christian philosopher whose personal religious awakening she (politely) dismissed as a psychological phenomenon is the first person to believe her: not because [[If Jesus, Then Aliens]] but because [[Not So Different|they're both committed to the truth]]. She ultimately continues her SETI research in hopes of finding more signs of extra-terrestrial life, proving that (at least where aliens are concerned) faith and logic can coexist.
** Of course that's based on a popular but flawed understanding of exactly what Occam's Razor is. It doesn't say that the simpler an explanation is the more likely it is to be true. Rather, it says that the simpler the explanation the easier it is to disprove. In other words, it's a model for efficiently testing competing theories. You start with the simplest and thus easiest to disprove and move up through increasingly complex theories until you find the correct one.
*** Actually, in its canonical form Occam's Razor simply advises "Do not multiply entities needlessly" - meaning, do not assume the existence of anything as an explanation for anything else, unless there is no possible explanation that does not require that assumption. For instance, if certain physics results could be explained by an undiscovered particle, you should only hypothesize that particle if there is no other way to explain those results. This is not technically the same thing as claiming that simpler explanations are always better, or even more likely to be true, or more or less easy to disprove. It simply posits that an ungrounded assumption - especially regarding the existence of a thing for which there is no other evidence - adds nothing to a theory if the theory can be made to work without that assumption. (In many cases, theories with fewer "entities" will in fact be easier to test, since there are fewer points to control for, but that is not the immediate implication of Occam's Razor.) In other words, "simplest" means "least extra assumptions," not "easiest to explain to a three year old."
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* ''[[Farscape (TV)|Farscape]]'' takes delight in simultaneously subverting and playing this trope straight whenever a protagonist's crazy plan ''works'' despite the logical objections of others, but also leads to lasting consequences which ''always'' come back to bite them in the arse. Characters will continually point out this trend, but usually concede to the fact that they're screwed either way and really don't have a choice.
** Played painfully straight in the episode "My Three Crichtons," in which the three Crichtons in question are the original, a primitive caveman-like creature, and an advanced version with a brain so big it has distended his skull. The advanced Crichton is explicitly stated at several points to run on pure logic, which in practice means that he's a gigantic, backstabbing [[Jerkass]].
* ''[[
** This one is especially weird because the Daleks are shown elsewhere to be anything but a "perfectly logical" race, being very emotional indeed (albeit the usual emotion being "hate"). And they don't even have the excuse, such as it is, of falling into [[Did Not Do the Research]]; this story was written by Terry Nation, the Daleks' creator and the writer of over half the other Dalek stories to this point.
** The prime directive of the Daleks is not Omnicidal destruction, it's the survival of the Dalek race, as seen in the Victory of the Daleks. They will do anything to complete their mission of destroying all life as long as they themselves dont get completely wiped out. That seems to me like being very logical.
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** The more recent episode, ''Evolution of the Daleks'', works the logic/emotion debate more realistically, as Sec's newly acquired ability to feel emotions other than hate makes him far more "logical". This is a genuine [[Heel Face Turn]] (considering {{spoiler|his [[Heroic Sacrifice]]}}), but there was pragmatism here, as the recurring flaw of the Daleks, especially in the post-time-war era, is their tendency to let genocidal xenophobia trump their logic. Sec reasoned, quite logically, that the best way to ensure the survival of your race was not to carry the [[Villain Ball]] everywhere.
** The Cybermen in particular suffer from this trope; they've removed all of their emotions and are supposed to function completely by logic, as according to them, emotion is weakness; the fact that they don't have any emotions often completely scuttles them, because their logic is thus totally flawed.
*** It's cruelly subverted, however, in a ''[[
*** Also, in most of their 80s appearances, it was heavily implied that they hadn't been entirely successful with the removal of emotion. While this was never used to its full extent, it was recurring enough to not just feel like bad writing, and some of their defeats can, partially, be attributed to emotional Cyber Leaders. Excellent, indeed. In ''Earthshock'' in particular, the Cyber Leader takes a curiously gloating pleasure in Tegan's pain at the possibility of her planet's entire destruction for a supposedly 'emotionless' being.
**** The New Model Cybermen don't seem to have worked all the emotional kinks out either, judging from {{spoiler|Yvonne Hartman's [[Heroic Sacrifice]]}}.
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* The act of actually going through and evaluating matters assuming that everybody will act perfectly according to logic [[You Fail Logic Forever|is a logical fallacy for a very good reason]].
* [[A Beautiful Mind|John Nash]] considered the game of [[Go]] to be flawed, since a player who makes the first move and places all their pieces perfectly from then on can still lose. He responded by creating his own board game, later marketed as Hex, in which first move and perfect play will guarantee a win. Rather overlooking the fact that Go is a tremendously complex and subtle game with numerous valid strategies.
** And probably also the fact that the game would be uninteresting to two perfect players, as the winner is just determined when determining who goes first. A good example of this is ''Nim'', especially the [
*** This is true of any game without chance. It's just that a few, such as Nim, are humanly possible to play perfectly.
**** Perhaps the simplest example is Tic-Tac-Toe. Unless someone makes a mistake, the game will always end in a draw.
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[[Category:Emotion Tropes]]
[[Category:Straw Vulcan]]
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