After going back through this page, I understand the other side's arguments a bit more.
It is being argued that since Luffy called the Pacifista's attack "
Too slow." that this is defacto the same as a statement of "Luffy's perception speed is 0.000000003336 seconds." The same way that a statement on someone's attack speed being "Supersonic" can be assumed that their value is at least 343 m/s.
Things aren't that simple unfortunately. A perception timeframe has
speed and distance components. It isn't enough that Luffy is calling a lightspeed attack too slow because the distance is a factor in it as well. If a character claims that a bullet is too slow to hit them, it is a big deal if the bullet they're referring to is being shot from a hundred meters away or just half a meter away.
From our
Reactions and Perceptions page:
- To calculate perception time, the timeframe in which a character was able to process some information or perform some kind of mental reaction needs to be estimated. The most common way of doing so requires distance and speed components. The two distances being the distance an object has when it is first in the perception of the character, and then the distance where the character starts to react. The speed can be something calculated or assumed, but preferably it should be a reliable statement stating how fast a projectile, object, or even another character is. Be careful to avoid Calc Stacking, though. To find perception time, you divide the distance (in meters) by the speed (in meters per second), and you will get the timeframe of the perceptions of the character (in seconds).
Even if the speed of the projectile in question is known (lightspeed), there are still distance factors that have to be taken into account. A speed alone does not give you a timeframe.
The same page states that 1 meter cannot be assumed arbitrarily whether you're trying to find out
reaction speed or
perception timeframe.
- Reaction speed has both a distance and a timeframe component, so all calculations that are completed for reaction speed cannot simply be a timeframe by itself. Do not randomly assume a 1 meter distance for each timeframe and use that speed for the reaction speed. Other way around, perception time is just a timeframe and by that not proportional to a speed value alone. Do not assume that a character with a certain speed will have a perception time of 1 meter divided by that speed. Such calculations need a feat that demonstrates perception time and a suitable distance determined from that feat.
Perception timeframe is not proportional to a speed value
alone. Just because Luffy is calling the Pacifista's attack too slow to hit him does not mean we can just use 1 meter. Where does the "1 meter" come from? Nowhere in Luffy's statement or on the page of the feat. We need a "suitable distance" as specified in the bolded section above. That distance comes from the feat, not just an arbitrary assumption.
Now, I know the objections are "
We're not calculating Luffy's perception timeframe. Luffy called the attack slow, which means lightspeed perceptions, which our table says is at least 0.000000003336 seconds. Where's the calc there?"
Our
Calc Stacking page takes this into account with the section on
Hiding Calculations:
- Hiding calculations is the practice of trying to avoid calculating a feat in order to be able to use the result in another calculation. In other words it is the practice of trying to fool people into not noticing that calc stacking is being used.
- This usually occurs if a feat is quantified per a rule of thumb instead of precisely calculated. A typical example would be a character dodging a bullet from a short distance being ranked as "Supersonic" and then using that ranking to calculate the speed of another character, whose speed one can compare to the former in some feat.
- While it is acceptable to rank a character by such a self-evident feat without a calculation, one should keep in mind that the unwritten calculation is only skipped due to being trivial, but is still the justification for the ranking. Hence calc stacking will still be an issue for such feats.
This is what is happening here.
Luffy calling the attack "Too slow." is the equivalent of a character dodging a bullet from a short distance. It would not be wrong to quantify by rule of thumb an
estimate of Luffy's perception speed as being "lightspeed perceptions" just as you'd not be wrong to estimate that a character who can dodge bullets from close range could be Supersonic in reaction/combat speed.
But just because this character is ranked as Supersonic for a feat like this does not mean that in an unrelated calculation you can assume the speed of their attacks as being this fast in order to calculate a different character's speed. You skipped over calculating their
actual speed by making an estimate. This is what is meant by "Hiding Calculations". You don't get to say "
We're not calculating Character A's speed. Character A dodged the bullet which means Supersonic movement, which our table says is at least 343 m/s. Therefore we can use that speed in another calc."
Yes, "
it is acceptable to rank a character by such a self-evident feat without a calculation" as per our page, but it is also says "
one should keep in mind that the unwritten calculation is only skipped due to being trivial".
The unwritten trivial calculation here is "
1 m / 299,792,458 m/s"
. It is being
hidden by claiming that "we're not actually calcing Luffy's perception timeframe, we're just getting it from the table.
"
Simply put, if distance
wasn't a factor,
why would we have a section on calculating Perception Timeframes that requires distance values? If we didn't need them, we'd just say "Take the speed of the object they're reacting to and divide 1 meter by it." but we don't.