Conclusions

Mr. Anderson's reports on his web page are primarily designed around a core group of errors that he makes repeatedly:

  1. By far Anderson's most annoying method of debating is claiming that he only uses canon, but then not using examples from Star Wars canon when they make Star Wars seem powerful. Look at the way he examines the FTL drives in Star Wars. He missed the only canonical reference we have to a distance, and the implied speed of that journey. Look at how he ignores the STL speed of the transport ship in AotC. Look at how he claims that Star Wars ships do not have the ability to target different parts of another starship, or how he claims that the Imperial Navy only has two capital ship classes. With regards to the FTL speed, he then had the gall to announce that there was "nothing in canon to support [figures shown in the EU]," even though the numbers were very consistent with some EU demonstrations of speed, and the rest could easily be attributed to differing hyperdrive capabilities. This blatant disregard for canonical evidence is particularly horrible in light of the small amount of Star Wars canon information that Mr. Anderson needs to learn. There are simply five books, five movies, and five radio dramatizations and scripts. Compared with Star Trek, that is a miniscule amount of information to understand. Since he constantly uses references to semantics from varying parts of Star Wars novelizations, and since he digs through Star Wars films, the only conclusion possible is that Mr. Anderson's disregard for certain parts of Star Wars canon are not accidents, but are in fact parts of a careful plan to purposely show low technology levels in Star Wars.

  2. Anderson ignores common sense when assessing different universes. For example, he concludes that unless starfighters have a reasonable chance of damaging shielded capital ships, there is no reason to have them at all. This is not true, as anyone can easily figure out with a simple thought experiment. He then uses this "fact" of his to discredit the ICS, which he could simply ignore under his "canon only" rule, anyway.

  3. When in doubt, Anderson contradicts himself by ignoring conclusions he draws in other sections of his page. This method of analysis is generally seen as being incredibly dishonest or unintelligent, and is one of the most serious mistakes someone can make while creating a web page, or just thinking things through in real life. Anderson would apparently be a model citizen (goodthinkful) in the Oceania of George Orwell's 1984 due to his tremendous talent with doublethink, but the fact remains that in our world 2+2=4 and self-contradiction is generally seen as a leading indicator of madness; not sanity.

  4. Anderson frequently proclaims, "victory" for Star Trek by using strawman fallacies and ignoring his opponents. This is most noticeable when he alters the context in which his opponents say things in order to prove his points, and when he claims that lower limits for Star Wars are actually upper limits. He appears to have toned down this particular behavior since his tenure amongst bulletin boards and forums, but this is still a tactic that he appears to use frequently.

  5. Anderson uses numerous tautologies while attacking his rarely named detractors. This is particularly true when he is using appeal to motive fallacies in order to cast doubt upon his opponents.

  6. One of Anderson's most powerful techniques is his use of the double standard. This tactic, when combined with the smoke screens that will be shown below, are a staple of dishonest debating methods. Anderson uses double-standards in a number of different things, but primarily he uses them to paint his opponents in a poor manner while doing the same things he criticizes them for, or he boasts of different groups in Star Trek being able to do things, but simultaneously uses a second standard for judging different groups in Star Wars.

  7. Anderson is adept at marginalizing critics without openly insulting them. While he constantly complains during his debate with Mike Wong about the "smoke-screens" that Mr. Wong was allegedly raising to avoid answering his criticisms, it becomes clear from an examination of Mr. Anderson's site that Anderson is excellent in distracting people from the main points of an argument. Note the way that he carefully crafts his page on "Warp Core Power Generation" so that it appears as if he is correct in his continuation of Data's sentence. In fact, Anderson's complete sentence was only one of numerous possible conclusions, if one assumes as Anderson did, that Data was mistaking watts for joules. While this is also, evidently, one of the double-standards that Anderson repeatedly employs, it is more important as an example of his ability to mask the truth behind a cloud of apparent rationality.

  8. Anderson is also prone to ignoring alternative ways of examining evidence in favor of his own. This is particularly noticeable in his "Overview" page, and in his section dealing with the competing theories for the Death Star's firepower. This makes him a particular fan of "semantics" style debating. That is, take one ambiguous or vague statement and then assume that it means something, refusing to budge in the case of alternative presented interpretations of the quote.

  9. Anderson also has a habit of examining the same thing in both universes in completely different ways. Ordinarily, this could be chalked up to simple carelessness, but the fact that each time he does this he leans his interpretations to favor Star Trek ships over Star Wars vessels reveals it as something else entirely. Anderson has clearly come to a conclusion before examining the evidence, and is then coming up with evidence to support his conclusion. Obviously this is an incorrect application of the scientific method, and a horribly biasing method of generating results.

[Editor's note: in summation of all the above points, RSA is one of the few debaters who does not even make a real pretense of honesty. He simply lies wherever and whenever he can, applies differing standards when convenient, adopts the maddening debate tactic of simply ignoring anything that he doesn't like, and covers it all up by pre-emptively accusing everyone else of doing the same thing.

As Wayne Poe once noted, you have to be careful what words and phrases you use around him because he'll copy everything you say and over-use it until you're sick of it. After I accused him of sophistry and grandstanding, he started using the words "sophistry" and "grandstanding" everywhere, all over the Internet and in literally every single post he made during our debate. After I used the phrase "deal with it", he started ending every single post with it. After various debaters introduced him to the word "fallacy", he started using it everywhere (half the pages on his website have the word "fallacy" in the title or somewhere in the text where it does not belong; the word "fallacy" refers specifically to logical errors, and does not apply to disagreements over the accuracy of source data, for example).

In the end, the best disproof of a typical RSA argument is to go look at whatever he's talking about for yourself, because it's invariably almost guaranteed that he's misrepresenting it in some fashion]


Epilogue