Ironik

Hey, he's your hero. I actually shouldn't let you use it, because I'm mad at you. I followed the link by the picture and spent 2-1/2 hours on Deviant Art. Grr grr.

Actually, you're the only one who doesn't know what it means. Everyone else is in complete agreement.

The opposite is actually true: you seem utterly incapable of understanding the simplest terms and explanations. You apparently think that objects are comprised of such things as "inside" and "outside" and little else. In that simplistic, childlike view of the universe, then yes, your assertion that "big" things are no more complex than "small" things is true. The fact that you used rope as an example of this underscores that you do, indeed, view the world as a bunch of Lego bricks and nothing more. So in your simplistic, toy box world, where cars have only insides and outsides and nothing else, then sure, everything is equal.

Something has suddenly occurred to me...

Your arguments remind me of my cousin who has Down's Syndrome. He can function in regular life and can even use the computer to send email, but his understanding of the world is similar to Rain Man's: "How much is a candy bar?" "About a hundred dollars." "How much is a compact car?" "About a hundred dollars." I'm curious, Durakken, and I'm just going to ask this straight out, do you also have Down's Syndrome or a similar affliction? I'm not judging you if you do have DS, I'm just looking for an explanation as to why you post things like this.

I love her, too. When you're out.

Best chest in the west, best of the rest, you can have my chest when you wrest it from me in my final rest. But then I'll move to Test.

No there isn't.

Then why did you bring up cars? And are you incapable of looking this stuff up? Go look at a 1965 Mustang and compare its features to a 2010 Mustang. There's so much more stuff in a modern car that it's vastly more complex.

And I didn't say remove the windshield on the Jeep, I said replace the windshield. A folding windshield has hinges and locks and pins. A regular windshield doesn't. Ergo, more complex. At this point I'd say you're trolling, because I find it impossible to believe that someone could be this ignorant about... well, everything... and still remember to breathe.

Fine. Same engine. Stupid, but okay.

Let's make it simple for you: a large spaceship is the same as 50 small spaceships. All else being equal -- using the exact same components, just more of them stuffed into one place instead of distributed among many places -- then what you have is a large spaceship which is more complex than all the smaller ships combined. Others have explained this to you again and again, but the reason is that doing things like ramping up from having 20 toilets to having 2,000 toilets means that you have to have fr more complex subsystems in order to deal with everything about those toilets. Even if it's the exact same wiring there is more wiring for the lights and fans, which means more complicated circuit breaker boxes, more complicated junction boxes, more powerful (and therefore more complicated) generator systems. Even if they are the exact same generators used in the smaller ships, you still need more things to control them. That increases complexity.

At this point you have to imagine me just staring at you as if I had just caught you chewing on the little white hockey puck in a urinal, wondering what the hell you're thinking. Because seriously, man, WTH?

Complexity is *not* a vague concept. It's a very concrete concept. More stuff = increased complexity. Period. You put more stuff in a car, then the overall car is more complex. How do you not get that?

A car is a collection of components -- subsystems -- which all work together. If you substitute an engine which has 100 moving parts and 100 non-moving parts with an engine that has 200 moving parts and 150 non-moving parts, then you've increased the complexity of the car by adding that more complicated subsystem.

Based on this discussion and others that you've initiated, it really seems to me as if you've never moved beyond the finger-painting stage of understanding how the real world works. Real cars don't run by twisting a giant rubber band and letting it unwind the way your childhood toy cars did. A car is a complex assembly of complex components all working together to create what we colloquially call a car.

I have a question for you: is a 2010 Ford Mustang more complex than a 1965 Ford Mustang? If you say "no" then you are completely wrong.

Maybe, maybe not. We'd have to get someone in here who actually designs real-world analogues to officially make the call for us.

If the standard we're measuring things by is moving people around, then I would venture to say that a battleship uses more material than the equivalent number of destroyers required to move the same number of people. Let me go check....

The battleship USS New Hampshire weighed 70,965 tons and had a crew of 2,355. The destroyer USS Cushing weighed 2,050 tons and had a crew of 329. So you would need 7 destroyers to move the same number of people as one battleship. But 7 destroyers would only weigh 14,000 tons, a full 56,000 tons less than a battleship. So the answer to the question of whether a larger ship would be less of a draw on materiel and use less material in its construction, the answer is probably "no".

You have to stop saying silly things like this. An engine is not a "part" that's somehow separate from the rest of the vehicle. It's an integral component that makes up a car. Putting a more complex engine in a car certainly does make the car more complex, because you've added more parts and more complexity.

If your Jeep has a solid windshield and you substituted one of the old Army Jeep windshields which folds down, you've added more complexity to the car. If you change from manual windows to power windows, you've added more complexity to the car. All of these pieces are part and parcel of the vehicle, so changing to a more complex version of them is a de facto increase in complexity to the vehicle.

I kind of think he meant something along the lines of substituting Duplo bricks for Lego bricks. If that's the case, then sure, the structure would not be any more complex. However, that's not how the real world works. An aircraft carrier isn't made out of larger bits than a battleship. In reality, everything is made out of Lego bricks (metaphorically speaking). There aren't any Duplos in life. Well, outside the toy box, that is.

Just to drive it home, this model of Serenity used 3,000 Lego bricks. Whereas this much larger ship, Admiral Ackbar's Home One uses more than 35,000. Bigger size equals more complexity.

If you're saying that Darth Vader's Superstar Destroyer and all of its attendant fleet of escort vessels combined are more complex than the Death Star, that may be the case. (Or in the real world, an aircraft carrier versus its flotilla of escort ships.) However, what I understood you to be saying was that a Rebel Blockade Runner was just as complex as the Star Destroyer that was chasing it. I think that's how most of us took it. I'd go back to verify it but I don't really care to.

You're living the dream my friend.

My cousin has 11, so I'm familiar with that. After 5 they start taking care of each other, so you just kick them back into play when one goes out of bounds. I'm just thinking that going to get the laptop -- or going over to a desktop -- to play a game so soon after childbirth is impressive.