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Speed Standard Issues: Regarding The Flight Speed Standards

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Well for one, the rule makes the effort in saying "reaction speed can still be scaled to travel speed, but by doing x things". Those said x things resulting in it not actually scaling, since no calculation in the world will ever allow both to be roughly the same or comparable
It's not impossible. There could be a case where the character is flying at MFTL+ speed across galaxies, and suddenly he notices obstacles or attacks only when they came very close to hitting him and reacts to avoid them. Is this situation unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No.

my issue is with the extreme caution applied into it.
This is not an issue. It's following the correct practice as opposed to doing things incorrectly. It's common sense, not extreme caution. Doing the opposite would be extremely illogical.

What says either happened in the particular case? What says the character did slow? What says the character did prepare prior? Do we have any reason to first assume those would happen?
Asking the wrong questions. That's also how common sense works and things happen normally. The burden of proof falls upon the claim that goes against the Occam's razor to claim higher results. The questions you need to be asking are:
What says the character did not slow down? What says the character did not see the destination and thought about landing there? What says that the character was flying at MFTL+ speed until he was 1 cm above the ground and stopped under a picoseond without crashing in the ground? Do we have any reason to assume such insanely illogical things?

This is a burden of proof the rule reverses
You should be knowing how burden of proof works by this point. You've been here for quite a while. This was unexpected from you.

And then on top of that, the rule doesn't make an attempt to make cases where slowing down or prepping aren't happening, separate from the standard. Or in other words, it doesn't attempt to say characters who don't slow down or prep for landing and just land at their average/full speeds can still scale their reactions.
The rule only states why flight speed through space does NOT normally scale to any other form of speed. It does not say that such a scaling is impossible. It's quite clear in that it mentions that it could still scale in some scenarios relating to "sudden obstacles while traveling at this speed" which already implies that the character was not prepared, and did not slow down. A case like this would need to be proven, rather than just assumed.
 
Like I said earlier, I think it's reasonable to call such downscaling "scaling". If you want it to be reworded without changing anything about the implementation, I'm fine with that. It's not the method that's inaccurate; you just don't like that it's called "scaling".
Being mislead into thinking one will be comparably scaled to the other because of inaccurate wording is annoying yes, so yes id like this reworded to be more clear at the least.

Hell, im not even against calculating reactions all in its entirety. But I am against it being the sole only required way of "scaling" them.
Flying at MFTL+ speed, having a character teleport 1m in front of you, and then dodging that character is reaction speed, actually. It's extremely easy to quantify too.

Reacting to an obstacle appearing is a level of reaction speed, yes, even if that object manifests through non-speed circumstances, such as teleportation or creation.
Oh. I think I misinterpreted what you meant on this then. I thought you meant a character teleporting in front of another character, and the opposing character then reacts to the teleportation.

Not that they'd react to the teleportation while flying at X speeds.
We just disagree on how far "very close" is, and I'm trying to demonstrate that it's probably reasonable from a moon's orbit away if one can perceive a planet from light years away.

Now that I think about it, it should be possible to calculate this. I'll put my cards on the table and say that whatever a calc-group approved calc for the following feat puts the detection for the following feat at (even if it's only at a distance of entering the atmosphere, so around 100km), I will accept that distance as valid for deriving reaction speed from:

The feat would be, for a character who can discern a planet in the nearest solar system (so 4.25 light years away) with their naked eye on Earth, how far away would they need to be to discern a city the size of NYC?

Are you willing to say you'd accept the calc'd distance from that for deriving reaction speed, even if it ends up being a distance as far away as the moon's orbit (405,696km)?
Well when putting it like this, if it's possible to actually calculate, I guess that would be fine? But wouldn't this only apply if the character actually physically sees their desired celestial body from whatever distance away? Not just knowing where it generally is, but actually seeing the planet?
"We didn't see/hear them prepare" isn't proof that they didn't prepare. You'd need to actually prove that to rule it out. And if you can't rule it out, you shouldn't default to the high-balled interpretation that they didn't prepare and they have high reaction speed.
And again, I disagree with that, since this is still a shift of the burden of proof being done. Preparation and slowing down are both things that can absolutely be shown to be the case if that is the case or implied before or during the flight. What you are doing here is asking me to prove something wasn't done. Aka, you're asking me to prove a negative. Which isn't how the burden of proof works.

Why do I need to prove they didn't do something, when the assumption that they in fact did do something, is what's the positive claim?
This is getting muddled at this point, so to restate my claim, I am saying that the distance they can see the planet from does matter when there's no deceleration or prep. If they don't notice it until they're close, they have less time to react (and thus a faster reaction speed) than if they noticed it earlier.
I see. Then I'll rephrase and say this.

Suppose the character zooms in at average / full speed towards a planet, with no deceleration or prep. However, in this scenario, they notice the planet but still zoom in at average / full speeds for a successful abrupt landing. In other words, even if they notice the planet from x distance away, them still continuing to fly in at the same speed still gives them less reaction time to make the safe landing, and they still land successfully.

Would that not still give them less time to react, and thus, faster reaction speeds?
We just have different axioms on this. I require full evidence for claims of characters being superhuman, and you're content with assuming that they're strange in other ways if they're strange in some ways. I don't think there's room for discussion on this, only vote-counting.
Which means coming down to a popular vote and not proving what makes more reasonable sense to do. Different axioms? Sure. But your need to be spoon fed everything on every little detail is, no offense, a personal problem with how one views it.
And as I said when the conversation first branched off into this chain, that equally discredits both of our arguments. "They can see it from 1000 light years away mid-flight" and "They can see it from 1 meter away mid-flight" are both debunked by the wavelengths becoming imperceptible to human eyes when traveling at those speeds. What you're saying there is true, but it discredit one of our arguments more than the other. All it does is indicate that characters relativistic and above should have enhanced senses, which is a topic for a different thread.
Enhanced Sensing being a given may or may not be the case, but it doesn't debunk the needing of great perceptions at the end of the day. In other words, "should have this" =/= the only thing that would be granted.
I'd still rather have something indicating full scaling. If this was a different situation I could imagine your reasoning here lowering the burden of proof slightly for cases similar to humanoids, but I don't think there's a way to only lower it slightly. I think our standards are already as loose as they can be while still requiring evidence of scaling, they could only really be dropped to requiring evidence of contradiction to remove it, which isn't fine by me.
Something to indicate full scaling may be a recommendation to make, or some extra cautious thing you or someone else may want to do to be on the safe side, and thats entirely fine to do. But there's a difference between being extra cautious and getting more support for something, and getting something that is not needed. It may be better to have, but that doesn't mean it's required.

And it shouldn't be a requirement here since, like I said, unless the character is some being with a non-human and otherwise strange biology to have different disproportionally vast bodies, we have no reason to assume a human character or humanoid figure is disproportionally vast. Which is why it should be a case by case basis thing to go with since the kind of characters fiction gives us vary hugely in body type. It's not a universally treatable concept as characters differ from one another in this regard quite a lot.

Now if we were talking strictly about non-humans, like an alien, demon, etc., I'd be on your side to not first assume.
Maybe humanoid characters who have very close reaction speeds to flight speeds (within 1000x or something) could scale? That's about as far as I'm willing to go, but may not even change how any characters are rated.
Well like I said, if the character is human, a similar race to human or otherwise humanoid-like, there's really no reason to think they are disproportionally vast. So we shouldn't have an arbitrary speed cap of where they need to be to scale them.

Though if you want this for non-humans, that im open to do. But like I said, this would be included as more of a case by case basis thing to do.
Well, like I just said, I think there's such a gap in evidence that there's not much more the requirements can be dropped without barely having requirements in the first place. If we go to the requirements Zamasu outlined, the three ways of discounting scaling are all nigh-impossible to demonstrate with how the site's standards work:
  • Can’t reach said speeds in an atmosphere.
    • We'd need an actual statement from a character saying "Boy, it sure sucks that I can't fly at fast speeds in the atmosphere" for this to apply. Nothing else will work. Seeing them visually move at slower speeds in an atmosphere won't count since we don't consider that counter-evidence.
I don't think this is completely true though. Sure, a statement of that would definitely be better, but there's also the option that the character struggles to fly fast in a condensed setting. For example, take a character who's FTL, and have them fly from, say, one city to another far away city. If they're struggling to keep up their flight from between both points, that could be a fair indicator that they can't fly at those speeds at will in that instance. Or if they miss their intended target point.

Another example could be if the character tries flying fast in a condensed setting, like say a canyon, and they just go smack dab into things within the setting. That could be another indicator, since if they were able to fly at those speeds at will in a smaller setting, that wouldn't happen to them.

Of course, should we seriously consider alternatives like the ones Zamasu gave, there's probably more examples that could be named, but this is what I thought of on the fly.

  • Requires special needs to move said at said speed.
    • Again, you'd need an actual statement of "Damn, I wish it didn't take me 10 minutes to accelerate to my top flight speed" for this to apply.

Im pretty sure Zamasu's point here was by "special needs", the character would need some outside independent assistance in order to move at x speeds. As far as acceleration goes though? Im not sure.

But ofc, Zamasu should probably clarify this himself.

  • Has plenty of anti feats or consistent reaction feats on a far lower level.
    • Yet again, it's extremely tough to find anti-feats that people would actually take as anti-feats. You run and fight on a planet without flying off? That's just them sticking to the planet and the creators slowing down the fight so we can see it. They get tagged by or barely avoid attacks such as bullets and lightning? Those attacks just scale. You'd need many feats that are unarguably lower (having stated timeframes and speeds) to be able to apply this.
Well the point here wasn't just about anti-feats though, but also how consistent the level of reactions are from the character in relation to whatever higher reaction feat (which would enter the "it is or isn't an outlier" territory).

That being said, I don't disagree that it would be tough to find anti-feats from attacks. But I think a way around that would be dependent on what character is doing the attack against the other character.

Not to use a specific verse as the intention, but lets say for example, from DBS, we have Goku fighting someone in the Tournament of Power. This character is able to consistently keep up in battle with him, and part of their arsenal of attacks is lightning based. This character uses a lightning attack and hits Goku. It would be reasonable to say the lightning from the character scales since this character is consistently treated, in the context of DBS, to be of Goku's caliber. So it's reasonable to say the character is using a MFTL+ based lightning attacks.

Now as an example of the attack not scaling would be if a random, out of nowhere character who can manipulate lightning fought Goku and managed to hit him. Unlike the former example, in this latter one, this character has no pre established history of fighting Goku, being of his caliber or the caliber of other characters on his level. They have no feats for themselves beforehand, making them an unknown. The series also doesn't have any context to establish them as some big threat or powerful foe that someone of Goku's level would have trouble against. So in this case, the lightning attacks have no reason to be MFTL+ and the feat should be an anti feat against Goku.

Verse specific, I know, but for the sake of example, my point should be clear of what im trying to say. Using a characters background and how they're treated in the context of their series should make or break the speeds of their attacks like lightning-based ones. Also case by case, but it should give us a way out of the "tough to get anti-feats from attacks" issue.

I don't think you can make coherent standards that, say, cut out 20% of characters from having reaction speed scale while having 80% scale, at least with the way most people here interpret anti-feats and consistency. You'll either end up having 99% not scale, or have 99% scale. And to me, I'd prefer not scaling if there's a coherent real-world argument for it not scaling, and there's not sufficient evidence to overcome those real-world reasons.
See above pretty much. I understand the sentiment that your saying here Agnaa, but it sounds like this would just be more dependent on how we generally view anti feats and such and how to deal with them. The stuff I typed above could be an alternative to that, but again, if we're to seriously consider it, more of a discussion is obviously needed for it.
 
It's not impossible. There could be a case where the character is flying at MFTL+ speed across galaxies, and suddenly he notices obstacles or attacks only when they came very close to hitting him and reacts to avoid them. Is this situation unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No.
Well as I mentioned to DontTalk earlier about attacks, getting hit by attacks reaching you would be a different case from what this is, since involving attacks immediately puts attacking speed on the table for the user, and depending on how the given series treats that attack when others react, an attack that would match the travel speed, that would be grounds for scaling the reactions right there.

And yes, it may not be impossible, but it is practically borderline that when this expectation is one that hardly any series, 9/10, will do. Which is why I blievethere should be a middle ground to shorten the expectations we’re giving universally.
This is not an issue. It's following the correct practice as opposed to doing things incorrectly. It's common sense, not extreme caution. Doing the opposite would be extremely illogical.
Being skeptical of every single detail at every single step of the way is not common sense. That is nitpicking. And practically next to nothing would be acceptable if we did that.

There’s such a thing as being too cautious for a reason, and I argue that some aspects of this rule is doing precisely that.

Asking the wrong questions. That's also how common sense works and things happen normally. The burden of proof falls upon the claim that goes against the Occam's razor to claim higher results.
That’s not explicitly how the burden of proof works. Burden of proof always first goes for the claim that is the positive. Not the negative, as we don’t have to prove a negative until a positive is first established with evidence backing it. And claiming that something isn’t being done (like claiming one didn’t do this or didn’t do that) is not a positive.

To start off against the feat by first insinuating that the character did something, therefore the feat isn’t as good as people give it credit for, your claiming they did something the opposite of the higher interpretation. Meaning, you are the one making a positive first and foremost.

So unless my memory is foggy, burden of proof always has the positive be proven first before anything else needs to be provided against that.

The questions you need to be asking are:
What says the character did not slow down? What says the character did not see the destination and thought about landing there? What says that the character was flying at MFTL+ speed until he was 1 cm above the ground and stopped under a picoseond without crashing in the ground? Do we have any reason to assume such insanely illogical things?
See above
You should be knowing how burden of proof works by this point. You've been here for quite a while. This was unexpected from you.
Yes. And again, see above please. Unless I’m missing something, we’ve always had, and always do, have the burden of proof first be put on the one making the positive claim, that something was done.

And in this particular case, please explain how claiming factors were done to go against a feat, isnt the positive here.
The rule only states why flight speed through space does NOT normally scale to any other form of speed. It does not say that such a scaling is impossible. It's quite clear in that it mentions that it could still scale in some scenarios relating to "sudden obstacles while traveling at this speed" which already implies that the character was not prepared, and did not slow down. A case like this would need to be proven, rather than just assumed.
Okay and if a character still flies straight in at their desired location at average / full speed and still lands safely? As in without any deceleration or preparation?
 
Not replying to stuff I don't really have anything to say to.

Well when putting it like this, if it's possible to actually calculate, I guess that would be fine? But wouldn't this only apply if the character actually physically sees their desired celestial body from whatever distance away? Not just knowing where it generally is, but actually seeing the planet?

I guess. The only other explanation would be some sort of cosmic awareness. It would be possible for this method to not apply in that situation, if that cosmic awareness only lets the character know where planet-sized objects are and never has a resolution smaller than that. I wouldn't expect such a thing to be specified, but if it is then I'd be fine using how far away the ordinary human eye could discern the target location.

And again, I disagree with that, since this is still a shift of the burden of proof being done. Preparation and slowing down are both things that can absolutely be shown to be the case if that is the case or implied before or during the flight. What you are doing here is asking me to prove something wasn't done. Aka, you're asking me to prove a negative. Which isn't how the burden of proof works.

And you, by baselessly claiming that they're instead reacting absurdly fast, are asking me to prove that them reacting fast wasn't done. Aka, you're asking me to prove a negative.

Like I keep saying over and over and over, both of our arguments can be framed in terms of assuming something and asking the other to prove it didn't happen. The only claim here without a burden of proof is that their reaction speed is Unknown.

Suppose the character zooms in at average / full speed towards a planet, with no deceleration or prep. However, in this scenario, they notice the planet but still zoom in at average / full speeds for a successful abrupt landing. In other words, even if they notice the planet from x distance away, them still continuing to fly in at the same speed still gives them less reaction time to make the safe landing, and they still land successfully.

Would that not still give them less time to react, and thus, faster reaction speeds?


I don't think we treat reaction speeds that way. I wouldn't expect seeing something from far away and then taking an action at the last cm to mean you have reaction speed over the 1cm range, but I could be wrong, I'm not calc group.
 
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I got asked to opine here on the matter of "I don't think we treat reaction speeds that way. I wouldn't expect seeing something from far away and then taking an action at the last cm to mean you have reaction speed over the 1cm range, but I could be wrong, I'm not calc group."

To me, this doesn't give them less time to react, it just means they can stop on a dime. If you've flying towards an obstruction and you see it 10 seconds before you hit it and then just press the button late to flex, that's just you being precise. If you're flying and then suddenly you have 0.1 seconds to react to a sudden obstruction and stop, then that's reacting really quickly. Stopping all at once is really just a prediction/timing thing.
 
And yes, it may not be impossible, but it is practically borderline that when this expectation is one that hardly any series, 9/10, will do. Which is why I blievethere should be a middle ground to shorten the expectations we’re giving universally.
This is quite honestly a non-issue. So I don't know what to say here. You're basically saying that "oh shit now we won't be able to inaccurately scale MFTL+ travel speed to other forms of speed and my characters will be slower now".

Being skeptical of every single detail at every single step of the way is not common sense. That is nitpicking. And practically next to nothing would be acceptable if we did that.
Agree to disagree there. Doing something correctly is not nitpicking and it's not being skeptical. Doing something incorrectly is not a middle ground.

Burden of proof always first goes for the claim that is the positive
The positive claim here would be "my character has MFTL+ reactions/combat speed because he did not slow down while landing on a planet". This is talking about doing something differently, entirely opposite of Occam's razor, logic and common sense.

Okay and if a character still flies straight in at their desired location at average / full speed and still lands safely? As in without any deceleration or preparation?
Wok's point covers this.

Don't know what else to say at this point. It's getting circular with the same repeated arguments.
 
Not replying to stuff I don't really have anything to say to.

Well when putting it like this, if it's possible to actually calculate, I guess that would be fine? But wouldn't this only apply if the character actually physically sees their desired celestial body from whatever distance away? Not just knowing where it generally is, but actually seeing the planet?

I guess. The only other explanation would be some sort of cosmic awareness. It would be possible for this method to not apply in that situation, if that cosmic awareness only lets the character know where planet-sized objects are and never has a resolution smaller than that. I wouldn't expect such a thing to be specified, but if it is then I'd be fine using how far away the ordinary human eye could discern the target location.
Hmm. Going by that, I don’t think I have anything else to say for this point then.
And again, I disagree with that, since this is still a shift of the burden of proof being done. Preparation and slowing down are both things that can absolutely be shown to be the case if that is the case or implied before or during the flight. What you are doing here is asking me to prove something wasn't done. Aka, you're asking me to prove a negative. Which isn't how the burden of proof works.

And you, by baselessly claiming that they're instead reacting absurdly fast, are asking me to prove that them reacting fast wasn't done. Aka, you're asking me to prove a negative.
Uh, no, I’m not asking that if you? That’s twisting what I actually asked of you so you can give it the form of a negative, when it should be a positive.

I wouldn’t be asking you to prove they didn’t react fast. I would be asking you to prove if the factors you claim go against the level of reaction speed actually happened. There’s a difference.

Basically:

Me: This character does X feat to give them Y reaction speed.

You: They could have done X or Y thing, so the reaction speed isn't as good as given credit for.

Me: Okay, do you have any evidence of either X or Y happening?

The feat of them "not reacting fast" only exists if the existence of the factors you claim to go against it actually exists. Those are positives by insisting they existed to make the feat lower.

And no to the "baselessly claiming" when the feat in and of itself is what gives the basis for it to begin with.
This is quite honestly a non-issue. So I don't know what to say here. You're basically saying that "oh shit now we won't be able to inaccurately scale MFTL+ travel speed to other forms of speed and my characters will be slower now".
That is not what I said. My point is that the standard should not be placed so high up on the expectations scale as this, with reversing the burden of proof along with it.

Agree to disagree there. Doing something correctly is not nitpicking and it's not being skeptical. Doing something incorrectly is not a middle ground.
So no actual counter point. Got it.
The positive claim here would be "my character has MFTL+ reactions/combat speed because he did not slow down while landing on a planet". This is talking about doing something differently, entirely opposite of Occam's razor, logic and common sense.
And as I explained earlier, it is not. The positive claim is already fulfilled by the feat itself bringing that basis. The opposition suggesting something that could have happened to lessen the value of the feat is them insisting those factors exist in order for that to happen.

And insisting something exists is the positive claim. Henceforth, your burden of proof.
Wok's point covers this.
Going to respond to him.
 
To me, this doesn't give them less time to react, it just means they can stop on a dime. If you've flying towards an obstruction and you see it 10 seconds before you hit it and then just press the button late to flex, that's just you being precise. If you're flying and then suddenly you have 0.1 seconds to react to a sudden obstruction and stop, then that's reacting really quickly. Stopping all at once is really just a prediction/timing thing.
Im not really understanding the difference between this, other than one being suddenly unexpected and the other not being suddenly expected. To be precise with stopping yourself at the last moment would still require you to actively react before you just go smack dab into whatever you're about to collide with.

I can run in a direction that has a wall as an obstacle, see the wall before I run face plant into it, and purposely wait until extremely close to it before jumping over it or running around it. That still requires me to react at the later moment to avoid it.

Also, as one of my friends pointed out to me, the timeframe of the whole ordeal is also a very important factor as well. If only having a few second timeframe (or smaller) to land/avoid something during high speed travel, this has to give you relative reactions by default. Otherwise, your brain would literally not be able to process it otherwise. The discrepancy between the speed of your own thoughts and your flight speed wouldn't allow it. Having a bigger timeframe though, like a few minutes or an hour, wouldn't make it true reactions (since in timeframes like those, you should be able to have a reference to think it out).
 
Here's an example. Talks about car crashes, as this is a thing that gets differentiated irl.

  1. Reaction Distance. First. Suppose the reaction time is 1.5 seconds. This means that the car will travel 1.5 x80.67 or 120.9 feet before the brakes are even applied.
  2. Brake Engagement Distance. Most reaction time studies consider the response completed at the moment the foot touches the brake pedal. However, brakes do not engage instantaneously. There is an additional time required for the pedal to depress and for the brakes to engage. This is variable and difficult to summarize in a single number because it depends on urgency and braking style. In an emergency, a reasonable estimate is .3 second, adding another 24.2 feet3.
  3. Physical Force Distance. Once the brakes engage, the stopping distance is determined by physical forces (D=S²/(30*f) where S is mph) as 134.4 feet.
Note how the reaction time is longer than both of the other steps combined. Having the advanced knowledge entirely cuts that part out. Not to mention, quick stops like that are often more just prediction and muscle memory than reaction when people know what they're doing.
 
Here's an example. Talks about car crashes, as this is a thing that gets differentiated irl.

  1. Reaction Distance. First. Suppose the reaction time is 1.5 seconds. This means that the car will travel 1.5 x80.67 or 120.9 feet before the brakes are even applied.
  2. Brake Engagement Distance. Most reaction time studies consider the response completed at the moment the foot touches the brake pedal. However, brakes do not engage instantaneously. There is an additional time required for the pedal to depress and for the brakes to engage. This is variable and difficult to summarize in a single number because it depends on urgency and braking style. In an emergency, a reasonable estimate is .3 second, adding another 24.2 feet3.
  3. Physical Force Distance. Once the brakes engage, the stopping distance is determined by physical forces (D=S²/(30*f) where S is mph) as 134.4 feet.
Note how the reaction time is longer than both of the other steps combined. Having the advanced knowledge entirely cuts that part out. Not to mention, quick stops like that are often more just prediction and muscle memory than reaction when people know what they're doing.
Unless im reading this incorrectly, isn't this example the way it happens because the car itself is mechanically unable to provide the stop once hitting the breaks? The passage notes that brakes don't activate instantly. They need more additional time to do that, so that already makes it longer for the car to actually stop prior to a crash.

On top of that, fictional characters and their reactions for the most part don't operate like a car. Unless the character is someone who uses some kind of vehicle as their means of transportation for travel or fighting. And as someone above put it, most characters are also capable of controlling their speeds to stop themselves immediately without additional stoppage factors like cars need to have.

Not to mention, muscle memory comes from the repetition of doing that very action many times over until the point where its very easy for the user. If someones doing MHS, FTL, or MFTL landing over and over and over again until it's just something repetitive for them, isn't that just more of a reason for it to be reactions?
 
And no to the "baselessly claiming" when the feat in and of itself is what gives the basis for it to begin with.

The feat in itself does not give reaction speed because there are other possible explanations than reaction speed. Selecting one of those explanations over the others is a positive claim.

What is the difference between you saying "This character does X feat to give them Y reaction speed." and me saying "This character does X feat to give them Y precision."?

Also, as one of my friends pointed out to me, the timeframe of the whole ordeal is also a very important factor as well. If only having a few second timeframe (or smaller) to land/avoid something during high speed travel, this has to give you relative reactions by default. Otherwise, your brain would literally not be able to process it otherwise. The discrepancy between the speed of your own thoughts and your flight speed wouldn't allow it.


I don't know what you're talking about here, where does this idea come from?
 
And no to the "baselessly claiming" when the feat in and of itself is what gives the basis for it to begin with.

The feat in itself does not give reaction speed because there are other possible explanations than reaction speed. Selecting one of those explanations over the others is a positive claim.
No, suggesting those possible explanations exist in the first place is what becomes the positive claim.
What is the difference between you saying "This character does X feat to give them Y reaction speed." and me saying "This character does X feat to give them Y precision."?
The difference is that my basis to claim reaction speed is coming from the provided feat, making my burden of proof already fulfilled. You are then coming in suggesting the existence of other details that may or may not be the case to undercut the feat.

You making those suggestions is the positive claim.
Also, as one of my friends pointed out to me, the timeframe of the whole ordeal is also a very important factor as well. If only having a few second timeframe (or smaller) to land/avoid something during high speed travel, this has to give you relative reactions by default. Otherwise, your brain would literally not be able to process it otherwise. The discrepancy between the speed of your own thoughts and your flight speed wouldn't allow it.

I don't know what you're talking about here, where does this idea come from?
Simple. If there's very very little time to think before you arrive at your destination, you're not going to have a moment to process what you will do for the landing, unless the speed of your own thoughts = the speed of your own flight.

This would only be the case if the timeframe for the feat is considerably bigger.
 
The difference is that my basis to claim reaction speed is coming from the provided feat, making my burden of proof already fulfilled.

If it was we wouldn't be needing to have this discussion. The character is not shown reacting, they are shown flying. You are inferring reaction speed from this. Which is a positive claim that proof is not provided for.

The only thing proven by those feats are that they can fly quickly. We don't see them quickly reacting.

Simple. If there's very very little time to think before you arrive at your destination, you're not going to have a moment to process what you will do for the landing, unless the speed of your own thoughts = the speed of your own flight.

This would only be the case if the timeframe for the feat is considerably bigger.


What?Thought speed is determined in terms of time, so if you have seconds before landing you'll be able to process that with normal human speeds.
 
The difference is that my basis to claim reaction speed is coming from the provided feat, making my burden of proof already fulfilled.

If it was we wouldn't be needing to have this discussion. The character is not shown reacting, they are shown flying. You are inferring reaction speed from this. Which is a positive claim that proof is not provided for.

The only thing proven by those feats are that they can fly quickly. We don't see them quickly reacting.
I’m taking about flying and landing here. Not just the former.


Simple. If there's very very little time to think before you arrive at your destination, you're not going to have a moment to process what you will do for the landing, unless the speed of your own thoughts = the speed of your own flight.

This would only be the case if the timeframe for the feat is considerably bigger.


What?Thought speed is determined in terms of time, so if you have seconds before landing you'll be able to process that with normal human speeds.
And if the entire journey from start to finish is only a few seconds? That is what the point on timeframe being important was referring to.
 
I’m taking about flying and landing here. Not just the former.

There is nothing inherent about landing that implies reaction speed, that's the point of bringing up alternate explanations.

Flying from one planet to another in a short timeframe requires being able to travel from one planet to another in a short timeframe. Creating a massive crater with a punch requires being able to create a crater with a punch.

Even alternate explanations for those (such as secretly teleporting to shorten the flight, or creating a crater with EE, earth manip, or magic-amped fists) still allow those same things to be done in the future. We'd say that character can still fly to other planets, and similar amounts of material. The feat is the feat, and it stands on its own and is able to be replicated.

But when a character flies from one planet to another, explanations of that feat do not require being able to dodge at MFTL+ speeds. The feat is the flying, you're inferring an additional ability from it. You're trying to claim reaction speed is an inherent part of these sorts of flying feats, but it isn't, it's nothing like other cases. Flying is an inherent part of flying, being able to make large craters with punches is and inherent part of being able to make large craters with punches.

That is why the evidence we're asking for is not flipping the burden of proof. This is not like giving an esoteric explanation for another type of feat. Here, the "feat" is flight speed, and everything added on, whether it's reaction speed, precision, cosmic awareness, or perception, is something added onto it. Thus, the position with no burden of proof, is to assume none of them until evidence is provided for them. NOT to assume reaction speed out of all of them without evidence, and then ask for proof for any other explanations.

And if the entire journey from start to finish is only a few seconds? That is what the point on timeframe being important was referring to.

Human beings can think on the timescale of seconds.
 
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This thread is starting to feel like a repeated loop of arguments that Agnaa, AKM, Wokistan and I have already responded too. Still in agreement with Agnaa and AKM, on this, I simply don't have anything left to add.
 
This thread is starting to feel like a repeated loop of arguments that Agnaa, AKM, Wokistan and I have already responded too. Still in agreement with Agnaa and AKM, on this, I simply don't have anything left to add.
My thoughts are the exact same.
 
Sorry for being late to respond to this. Was very busy.
There is nothing inherent about landing that implies reaction speed, that's the point of bringing up alternate explanations.

Flying from one planet to another in a short timeframe requires being able to travel from one planet to another in a short timeframe. Creating a massive crater with a punch requires being able to create a crater with a punch.

Even alternate explanations for those (such as secretly teleporting to shorten the flight, or creating a crater with EE, earth manip, or magic-amped fists) still allow those same things to be done in the future. We'd say that character can still fly to other planets, and similar amounts of material. The feat is the feat, and it stands on its own and is able to be replicated.

But when a character flies from one planet to another, explanations of that feat do not require being able to dodge at MFTL+ speeds. The feat is the flying, you're inferring an additional ability from it. You're trying to claim reaction speed is an inherent part of these sorts of flying feats, but it isn't, it's nothing like other cases. Flying is an inherent part of flying, being able to make large craters with punches is and inherent part of being able to make large craters with punches.

That is why the evidence we're asking for is not flipping the burden of proof. This is not like giving an esoteric explanation for another type of feat. Here, the "feat" is flight speed, and everything added on, whether it's reaction speed, precision, cosmic awareness, or perception, is something added onto it. Thus, the position with no burden of proof, is to assume none of them until evidence is provided for them. NOT to assume reaction speed out of all of them without evidence, and then ask for proof for any other explanations.
Hmm. Fair enough then on this I guess? I largely still don't understand why suggesting the existence of possible alternate explanations towards a feat would not be any more of a positive claim to make than to claim reaction speed is happening, but so be it then.
Human beings can think on the timescale of seconds.
While traveling at FTL, MFTL and so on in speed on the timescale of seconds?

Anyway, at this point, I guess most of the complaints I had before are fine now at this point? The one thing I know I definitely am still woefully against doing as far as speed goes is treating characters as disproportionally vast be default (you've seen what I had to say on why earlier and why it should be case by case.)
 
The one thing I know I definitely am still woefully against doing as far as speed goes is treating characters as disproportionally vast be default (you've seen what I had to say on why earlier and why it should be case by case.)
The issue is this is just a legitimate author mindset: 1 2

Plenty of authors treat interstellar, or even inter continental flight speeds as completely separate speeds compared to their reflexes or quick reaction speeds.
 
The issue is this is just a legitimate author mindset: 1 2

Plenty of authors treat interstellar, or even inter continental flight speeds as completely separate speeds compared to their reflexes or quick reaction speeds.
This isn't what I meant Qawsed. Im not talking about reaction speed on my point on disproportion.
 
While traveling at FTL, MFTL and so on in speed on the timescale of seconds?

As long as they can still perceive the thing over that window of seconds, then yeah. Ignoring the stuff about the doppler effect making the light imperceptible, and ignoring how we can't look directly at the sun without frying our eyes, if we were to fly to the sun at the speed of light and needed to stop (wherever we were in space) within 1 second of it magically being turned green, we would be able to do that.

The part that makes "Humans can think on the timescale of seconds, even at MFTL+ speeds" unintuitive, is that for everyday-sized objects, we don't have perception better than a few kilometers, so going more than a few kilometers a second would reach us before we can react. And light travels just under 300,000 kilometers per second. But when we start getting to stellar distances, the sun being 150,000,000 kilometers away, these intuitions become misleading.

This isn't what I meant Qawsed. Im not talking about reaction speed on my point on disproportion.


What speeds are you talking about then, if not flight to reaction?
 
Basically, traveling at even near light speed will not allow us to actually see anything during mid-flight, except for fuzzines from bright light. Otherwise called leftover cosmic background radiation from the Big Bang. And this is just for near light speed travel. Which must make one imagine going AT light speeds, or the ridiculous degrees of MFTL+ that a large number of characters on this site are accepted as moving at. To even be capable of seeing anything from any given distance during travel, much less be capable of dodging something during travel, would have to make ones perceptions and reactions extremely impressive to scale here.
Bruh
 
While traveling at FTL, MFTL and so on in speed on the timescale of seconds?

As long as they can still perceive the thing over that window of seconds, then yeah. Ignoring the stuff about the doppler effect making the light imperceptible, and ignoring how we can't look directly at the sun without frying our eyes, if we were to fly to the sun at the speed of light and needed to stop (wherever we were in space) within 1 second of it magically being turned green, we would be able to do that.
I hardly see how. Like I said, the speed of their thoughts should need to be relative to the speed they are traveling at for this, especially in a window of seconds that the whole feat is being done at (or if it's in even smaller timeframes like a single second). Otherwise, they'd go smack dab into what they're traveling into before they even process the landing or how they'll do it, since they'd reach it before reacting. If a feat is done in, say, a matter of minutes and they are seconds away before approaching their destination, that's one thing. But if only have a few seconds from start to finish? Or A second from start to finish?

Im also not understanding why this example is "ignoring" basic science like the Doppler effect in order to have a point for the sake of convenience here either.
The part that makes "Humans can think on the timescale of seconds, even at MFTL+ speeds" unintuitive, is that for everyday-sized objects, we don't have perception better than a few kilometers, so going more than a few kilometers a second would reach us before we can react. And light travels just under 300,000 kilometers per second. But when we start getting to stellar distances, the sun being 150,000,000 kilometers away, these intuitions become misleading.
You kind of lost me on this point here. Isn't this just giving more reason that normal human speeds would not be able to think in such small windows while in FTL/MFTL travel?
This isn't what I meant Qawsed. Im not talking about reaction speed on my point on disproportion.

What speeds are you talking about then, if not flight to reaction?
Flight to flight is what im moreso referring to here. Or travel to travel in other words. Moving across [insert here distance] from one point to the other.
 
I hardly see how.

I don't know how to convince you otherwise, I think I laid out a pretty basic and clear case of how it's possible, and you're not giving me much of a response to work with.

Like I said, the speed of their thoughts should need to be relative to the speed they are traveling at for this, especially in a window of seconds that the whole feat is being done at (or if it's in even smaller timeframes like a single second). Otherwise, they'd go smack dab into what they're traveling into before they even process the landing or how they'll do it, since they'd reach it before reacting.


This is not true. You only need the time necessary to think. Speed is only relevant in as much as that it creates the timeframe, but reacting to something 30 meters away when traveling 10 meters per second requires the same reaction speed as reacting to something 3 light years away when traveling 1 light year per second. You won't smack into it because you have 3 seconds to think either way.

Im also not understanding why this example is "ignoring" basic science like the Doppler effect in order to have a point for the sake of convenience here either.


Because the only difference that makes is that we'd have to give these sorts of characters enhanced senses, which is irrelevant to the reaction speed part of the discussion that's actually important.

You kind of lost me on this point here. Isn't this just giving more reason that normal human speeds would not be able to think in such small windows while in FTL/MFTL travel?


I don't know how I lost you. I don't know how you could have gotten that impression, so I can't clarify.

Flight to flight is what im moreso referring to here. Or travel to travel in other words. Moving across [insert here distance] from one point to the other.


I don't remember this being a point of contention tho? We generally assume a statistic is the same across scenes as long as calc stacking isn't attempted with it, and as long as there aren't extenuating circumstances such as powerups or limitations. I don't think anyone was suggesting that characters should by default have two vastly different flight speeds.
 
This is not true. You only need the time necessary to think. Speed is only relevant in as much as that it creates the timeframe, but reacting to something 30 meters away when traveling 10 meters per second requires the same reaction speed as reacting to something 3 light years away when traveling 1 light year per second. You won't smack into it because you have 3 seconds to think either way.
Okay, but isn't this so largely dependent on what the timeframe and the distance together is then if thats the case?
Because the only difference that makes is that we'd have to give these sorts of characters enhanced senses, which is irrelevant to the reaction speed part of the discussion that's actually important.
Sure, but my thing is that im not seeing why it's just enhanced senses and that anything bigger couldn't be attributed.
I don't know how I lost you. I don't know how you could have gotten that impression, so I can't clarify.
You said that for everyday-sized things, a few kilometers is the best our perception is going allow us to see up to, so speed that goes farther than a few kilometers a second will reach us before we can react in time.

The distance light can travel in a second is far far above this, so would this not mean light speeds and higher would be beyond what human perceptions and thoughts can operate at?
Flight to flight is what im moreso referring to here. Or travel to travel in other words. Moving across [insert here distance] from one point to the other.

I don't remember this being a point of contention tho? We generally assume a statistic is the same across scenes as long as calc stacking isn't attempted with it, and as long as there aren't extenuating circumstances such as powerups or limitations. I don't think anyone was suggesting that characters should by default have two vastly different flight speeds.
Okay then, thanks for clarifying this. Let me ask 2 things for this then. So if we do with the idea that a characters travel speed or flight speed is the same across their instances of flight / travel, so long as no extenuating circumstances happen that suggest the speed is altered in some way

1.) The character then dodges obstacles while traveling/flying, we can begin scaling their reactions from that point?

2.) An opponent reacts to the characters flight or travel movement, we can begin scaling their reactions from that point?
 
Okay, but isn't this so largely dependent on what the timeframe and the distance together is then if thats the case?

Not really, it's the speed and distance together that gives us the timeframe, which is the important part.

Sure, but my thing is that im not seeing why it's just enhanced senses and that anything bigger couldn't be attributed.


...Because there's no reason for anything bigger than that?

You said that for everyday-sized things, a few kilometers is the best our perception is going allow us to see up to, so speed that goes farther than a few kilometers a second will reach us before we can react in time.

The distance light can travel in a second is far far above this, so would this not mean light speeds and higher would be beyond what human perceptions and thoughts can operate at?


But stellar objects are not everyday. They can be seen from millions of kilometers away.

1.) The character then dodges obstacles while traveling/flying, we can begin scaling their reactions from that point?


We can scale them to their calculated speed in that moment, but taking it from another scene would be textbook calc-stacking.

2.) An opponent reacts to the characters flight or travel movement, we can begin scaling their reactions from that point?


Probably, but I'm not sure exactly how calc stacking issues get avoided.
 
Okay, but isn't this so largely dependent on what the timeframe and the distance together is then if thats the case?

Not really, it's the speed and distance together that gives us the timeframe, which is the important part.
Yes, but suppose the character travels a larger distance in a shorter timespan, or an astronomically bigger distance in a shorter timespan? Thats what I meant when asking this.
You said that for everyday-sized things, a few kilometers is the best our perception is going allow us to see up to, so speed that goes farther than a few kilometers a second will reach us before we can react in time.

The distance light can travel in a second is far far above this, so would this not mean light speeds and higher would be beyond what human perceptions and thoughts can operate at?


But stellar objects are not everyday. They can be seen from millions of kilometers away.
See above pretty much for this. And hypothetically speaking, if the character wasn't seeing their desired celestial object from that distance? Or couldn't see them? Whichever case happens, what happens then if you're able to say?
1.) The character then dodges obstacles while traveling/flying, we can begin scaling their reactions from that point?

We can scale them to their calculated speed in that moment, but taking it from another scene would be textbook calc-stacking.
Why would it be calc-stacking?
2.) An opponent reacts to the characters flight or travel movement, we can begin scaling their reactions from that point?

Probably, but I'm not sure exactly how calc stacking issues get avoided.
See above.
 
Yes, but suppose the character travels a larger distance in a shorter timespan, or an astronomically bigger distance in a shorter timespan? Thats what I meant when asking this.

See above pretty much for this. And hypothetically speaking, if the character wasn't seeing their desired celestial object from that distance? Or couldn't see them? Whichever case happens, what happens then if you're able to say?


If the timespan's shorter then it requires higher reaction speeds, although these aren't necessarily within the same order of magnitude as the flight speed itself.

Why would it be calc-stacking?


Taking a character's calculated speed in one scene, and using that as a parameter in a calculation for another speed is the definition of Calc Stacking.

Calc stacking refers to the practice of using results from one calculation in order to calculate other feats.

Only parameters that can't change between calculations can be re-purposed.

Examples of calc-stacking that can not be applied


Character A moved so fast that character B couldn't react to him. So character A needs to have crossed the distance until he could be seen by character B again in the time that character B requires to react. Since we know from a calculation how long character B needs to react we can calculate the speed of character A based on that.

Character A has a certain speed through a calculation. He can not dodge the projectiles from character B from 2 meter distance. But Character C can dodge them from 1 meter distance, so character C has to be twice as fast as character A.
 
Yes, but suppose the character travels a larger distance in a shorter timespan, or an astronomically bigger distance in a shorter timespan? Thats what I meant when asking this.

See above pretty much for this. And hypothetically speaking, if the character wasn't seeing their desired celestial object from that distance? Or couldn't see them? Whichever case happens, what happens then if you're able to say?


If the timespan's shorter then it requires higher reaction speeds, although these aren't necessarily within the same order of magnitude as the flight speed itself.
Not automatically being in the exact same order of magnitude I can agree on, just wanted to ask what would happen if the timeframe for a feat over an astronomically big distance was extremely small.

And would this be the same thing going for characters that wouldn't see their desired destination from a distance then too?
Why would it be calc-stacking?

Taking a character's calculated speed in one scene, and using that as a parameter in a calculation for another speed is the definition of Calc Stacking.
Except, the calc stacking page explicitly says this is only the case because of a character's speeds having variations, which doesn't match up with what you and I recently discussed here regarding variation for speed (that a character wouldn't have 2 completely different levels of speed.)
 
And would this be the same thing going for characters that wouldn't see their desired destination from a distance then too?

Yeah, their reaction timeframe would only really "start" when they can see their destination.

Except, the calc stacking page explicitly says this is only the case because of a character's speeds having variations, which doesn't match up with what you and I recently discussed here regarding variation for speed (that a character wouldn't have 2 completely different levels of speed.)


If you want to make calculations involving speed to never be considered calc stacking, then you can try, but I'm just gonna stick to the page as-is which seems to take speed as one of the main concern areas for calc stacking.
 
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