tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post2550086207849448960..comments2024-03-17T05:03:46.056-07:00Comments on xkcd sucks: Comic 774: Superiority ComplexCarlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01074589998141327538noreply@blogger.comBlogger123125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-70587107815524852602010-08-21T18:57:38.279-07:002010-08-21T18:57:38.279-07:00I don't want to stop and think about it, or el...I don't want to stop and think about it, or else i can't enjoy the comic.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-84454510553376527012010-08-06T14:54:51.036-07:002010-08-06T14:54:51.036-07:00And it was never clear to whom you were replying.And it was never clear to whom you were replying.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-6864507780701091602010-08-06T13:33:35.561-07:002010-08-06T13:33:35.561-07:00(hint: the problem isn't antecedents, it's...(hint: the problem isn't antecedents, it's the fact that none of your sentences or ideas flow into each other, at all)rshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15828938843801425383noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-75511835120968344762010-08-06T13:32:55.991-07:002010-08-06T13:32:55.991-07:00the more you explain, the less coherent your post ...the more you explain, the less coherent your post gets.rshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15828938843801425383noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-28199933204371722212010-08-06T13:19:06.299-07:002010-08-06T13:19:06.299-07:00learn2read compound sentences. Let me help you: Re...learn2read compound sentences. Let me help you: Replace conjunctions and commas with periods and substitute the appropriate values for the pronouns and subjects.<br /><br />"Bah (I am unhappy). I was hoping you would would interpret this (the comic that is the topic of this thread) as randal making fun of religious people. I was hoping that you thinking that randal was making fun of religious people would get you all incensed. I was hoping that getting all incensed would mean you would rant about it (the comic that is the subject of this thread). I was hoping that your ranting about how randal is making fun of religious people would cause me to laugh. Such laughter would be derivative of this comic (still the same one we've been talking about). However, you must have caught on to that (ok, perhaps it is my fault this part is unclear. "that" is referring to me laughing at you whining about randal picking on religious people). Realizing this you seem to have pretended to be bored with it (still the comic) instead. Well, you did a good job (with the post where you pretended to be bored with the comic, the post I am replying to here) but it wasn't nearly as entertaining for me. Filipe makes a good point. However, I'm not sure that (Filipe's point) means there is nothing to the joke. A lot of jokes can be repurposed like that and still potentially be contextually good. The twilight fan/hater one would probably get some laughs from the right audience. Similarly, oh you who isn't familiar enough with evolutionary psychology to recognize an abbreviation for it even when used in with plenty of context (i'm making fun of you for not being a geek here), a lot of geeks are agnostics and this is a hot topic with them. You can't complain that randal waters his stuff down to cater to everyone while also doing the opposite*. I do sympathise with this argument at times. When you also complain when a specific strip actually is targeted at geeks and isn't very funny to a non-geek like you you're just being wishy-washy."<br /><br />See how dumb it sounds and how much you have to repeat yourself when it's written it like that?<br /><br />How about a deal: I'll promise to work on not overdoing the compound sentences if you promise to throw a fit for my amusement the next time randal makes an atheist joke. I mean, why would anyone want to read a post where you don't make any strong points and just vaguely claim that xkcd is boring?Lexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03481351493492530191noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-4095641732309600772010-08-05T19:51:52.173-07:002010-08-05T19:51:52.173-07:00The lions comment was the best.The lions comment was the best.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-6810731887679181262010-08-05T16:39:23.585-07:002010-08-05T16:39:23.585-07:00I too can make no sense of that post.I too can make no sense of that post.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-19597621579994754142010-08-05T15:23:11.469-07:002010-08-05T15:23:11.469-07:00lexa were any of those words related to any of the...lexa were any of those words related to any of the other ones?rshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15828938843801425383noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-43401197363886575412010-08-05T15:22:05.879-07:002010-08-05T15:22:05.879-07:00bah, I was hoping you would would interpret this a...bah, I was hoping you would would interpret this as randal making fun of religious people and get all incensed and rant about it so I could have ANOTHER laugh because of this comic but you must have caught on to that so you pretended to be bored with it instead. Well, you did a good job but it wasn't nearly as entertaining for me. Filipe makes a good point but I'm not sure that means there's nothing to the joke. A lot of jokes can be repurposed like that and still potentially be contextually good. The twilight fan/hater one would probably get some laughs from the right audience. And, oh you who isn't familiar enough with evolutionary psychology to recognize an abbreviation for it when used in with plenty of context, a lot of geeks are agnostics and this is a hot topic with them. You can't complain that randal waters his stuff down to cater to everyone, an argument that I sympathize with at times, and then complain when a specific strip actually is targeted at geeks and isn't very funny to a non-geek like you.<br /><br />Also, you let yourself be disarmed by the self-depreciating nature of this strip and for that I'm ashamed of you. There's totally smug superiority complex stuff going on here that you could bash. Who cares if randal was making fun of himself? Make fun of him more.Lexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03481351493492530191noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-71239790923986704102010-08-05T08:05:14.594-07:002010-08-05T08:05:14.594-07:00Nevermind, I counted it up again for 2010 and it&#...Nevermind, I counted it up again for 2010 and it's closer to 30% self deprecating, 20% smug, and 50% goofy/unrelated. That's a pretty high smug level comparatively. I maintain, though, that this one is undeniably self deprecating.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-13176172109450482812010-08-05T07:34:57.180-07:002010-08-05T07:34:57.180-07:00But mole, why do people say he is incapable of sel...But mole, why do people say he is incapable of self deprecation? I read like 80% of his comics as self deprecation. Some of them are pretty brutal too. I guess you could assume based on his dismissive attitude toward other fields of study that he's some kind of ultra jerk and extrapolate from there but that is a tremendous stretch. Is this why people here dislike him so much? Because they read a cartoon wherein two people basically say "nuh uh, no U" and think "I can't believe rando mims would make such an inflammatory political statement"?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-84379223159077919042010-08-05T06:49:34.556-07:002010-08-05T06:49:34.556-07:00"The problem here is that it's completely..."The problem here is that it's completely not true that it's just men who are promiscuous. In fact, human women are biologically promiscuous as well. One way to tell: the penis size of a species' males correlates strongly with female promiscuity, and humans have larger penises than apes. The complete silence of the Kanazawas and the Pinkers on this and similar issues is one of the big red flags showing that evo-psych is a political discipline and not a scientific one."<br /><br />Funny, my psychology course included some evo-psych and one of the major points was that women are clearly also promiscuous, but they are predisposed to be more secretive about it - as having one partner who thinks the kid is his and will raise it with you is better than havning none...<br /><br />There are some interesting experiments running in evo-psych. Unfortunately, most of what gets through to the (layperson) public is watered down by the reporting to a degree that throws a bad light on the whole discipline.<br /><br />For example, I recall a study (don't ask me to quote off the top of my head) which checked whether hormones had any effect on spatial perception in women. It turns out that they performed significantly better on spatial perception tasks when they were menstruating; otherwise, their mean performance was worse than the males' mean. It's an interesting study, and it's only sexist if you assume that women therefore <i>cannot</i> train their spatial perceptions. <br /><br />And you don't even want to know what women can do better than men... I tend to see it the same way as physical differences. I'm a martial artist and I know I can beat most women based on size and strength alone. Women who have trained well, though, will kick my ass consistently. Just because their average muscle mass is lower, doesn't mean I don't have a healthy respect for their skills. Same thing for spatial perception.<br /><br />Knowing that a sex has a biological predisposition is one thing. Basing your evaluation of another person solely on such predispositions is quite another, especially when you consider their relative strengths to other factors...J.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-3660441992307476322010-08-05T06:21:50.683-07:002010-08-05T06:21:50.683-07:00Has anyone else linked this yet?
http://questiona...Has anyone else linked this yet?<br /><br />http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1289Arthurhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04837322808525126354noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-87660843946778925222010-08-05T03:00:12.782-07:002010-08-05T03:00:12.782-07:00why do promiscious female speciaes have massive sc...why do promiscious female speciaes have massive schlongs?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-10751885309322705622010-08-05T01:37:35.112-07:002010-08-05T01:37:35.112-07:00Carter, one of the many problems with evo-psych is...Carter, one of the many problems with evo-psych is that it only looks at savanna explanations that fit current gender roles. So here you had a study with just two species, based on a guess that fits current gender stereotypes. It's verifiable, but not falsifiable; you could come up with other groups that do not have the same polygamy/navigation correlation.<br /><br />The problem here is that it's completely not true that it's just men who are promiscuous. In fact, human women are biologically promiscuous as well. One way to tell: the penis size of a species' males correlates strongly with female promiscuity, and humans have larger penises than apes. The complete silence of the Kanazawas and the Pinkers on this and similar issues is one of the big red flags showing that evo-psych is a political discipline and not a scientific one.Alon Levyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12195377309045184452noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-91857571897766006302010-08-04T23:30:27.953-07:002010-08-04T23:30:27.953-07:00China, Iran, Africa - all Western!
Who knew?
St...<i>China, Iran, Africa - all Western!<br /><br />Who knew? </i><br /><br />Stop being an idiot. The fact that they're the norm in the west doesn't automatically make other places where they're also the norm western. Now go away.Frednoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-36061596310879932012010-08-04T21:29:55.669-07:002010-08-04T21:29:55.669-07:00"Sometimes there's also something about h..."Sometimes there's also something about how women are bad at spatial reasoning. The actual explanations tend to be all over - typically, whatever could justify the current situation. Typically, the evo-psych method is to explain how something could have arisen in the savanna; the actual studies don't try to argue why it's in fact the correct explanation."<br /><br />That's not entirely true. I haven't looked into Evo-Psych, but I studied some Evo-Sociology for one of my classes (I minored in soc), and there were some studies to test this hypothesis. For example, one group of sociologist guessed that men are better at directions (spatial reasoning) than women because they needed to be able to move between small groups of women to reproduce. If this is true, we should see that all things being equal, a monogamous animal is less able to navigate than a polygamous animal. So, they found two species of voles: one monogamous and one not, and they subjected them to a series of tests involving a maze. Sure enough, the polygamous animals were better able to run the maze than the voles that had only a single partner.<br /><br />One experiment doesn't mean this is a natural law set in stone, but it does illustrate my point than the discipline is more than people sitting around and saying whatever sounds good.Carternoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-80322262417159884632010-08-04T17:34:40.977-07:002010-08-04T17:34:40.977-07:00Oh look, a troll. How quaint.Oh look, a troll. How quaint.Graynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-71478853709484461002010-08-04T17:14:13.565-07:002010-08-04T17:14:13.565-07:00I think that, by reading the comments on the most ...I think that, by reading the comments on the most recent comic in the XKCD forums, I have officially stripped myself of the desire to ever do that again.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-55916012756973339752010-08-04T16:54:57.230-07:002010-08-04T16:54:57.230-07:00"I think I may have added 'western' b..."I think I may have added 'western' by habit. In literature classes (where I work at earning my fake, intellectually inferior degree) we spend a lot of time talking about gender, so 'traditional western gender roles' becomes a rapid short hand for a large group of traits which it would be a serious, inconvenient pain to spell out each time."<br /><br />Yes, literature classes are hotbeds of ignorant hesperophobia. I mean, they have to occupy themselves with something while their field shrinks in the face of more intelligent, more empirical fields like hard science.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-59718464011749355012010-08-04T16:50:55.107-07:002010-08-04T16:50:55.107-07:00"Uh, that's pretty much exactly what trad..."Uh, that's pretty much exactly what traditional western gender norms are."<br /><br />China, Iran, Africa - all Western!<br /><br />Who knew?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-74418029664109100972010-08-04T15:45:22.652-07:002010-08-04T15:45:22.652-07:00Someone should tell Randall that the Savannah/Sava...Someone should tell Randall that the Savannah/Savanna pun only works when told verbally.Yokel Ononoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-29471157877871126652010-08-04T15:08:53.165-07:002010-08-04T15:08:53.165-07:00For the anon claiming last comic was self-deprecat...For the anon claiming last comic was self-deprecation: I thing I commented this on the last thread, but, again, Rob was trollifying everything... anyway, the problem is, we take for grantes that the only way to put "Randall Munroe" and "self-deprecation" in the same sentence is if said sentence is about how Randall has none of it.<br /><br />Also, LOL at the lions comment. Also LOL at Anon 10:12 going all "non sequitur tract". Seriously, what does that have to do with Anon 9:12's comment?<br /><br />Puzzled and misguided,<br /><br />MoleAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-6426258752065738812010-08-04T15:07:33.869-07:002010-08-04T15:07:33.869-07:00From the thread on the forums:
"I have to sa...From the thread on the forums:<br /><br />"I have to say I agree with the guy in the comic, minus the sexism (and the pun). I don't for a moment believe that men are biologically predisposed to be better at abstract math than women, but I do believe that all of us are handicapped by our evolution to be not very good at math.<br /><br />For example, I see no reason other than evolutionary exigency that it should be so much easier to visualize a 2-manifold that can be embedded in R3 compared to one which can't be. By any objective standard, RP2 and S2 are about equally complicated as topological spaces; so why is it that the latter is so much easier for humans to understand? I'll wager good money that the reason is evolution: we are wired to think in 3d, because that's what you need to swing from tree limb to tree limb, and accurately place predators and food sources. My signature speaks to how easy mathematics really is. The corollary is that since simple things are hard for us to understand, we must really not be very good at math."<br /><br />I'm fairly certain that guy masturbates to MRIs of his brain.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714810984552499396.post-35447507940310500832010-08-04T14:58:16.622-07:002010-08-04T14:58:16.622-07:00The savanna ancestor theory is a little more compl...The savanna ancestor theory is a little more complex, but still not especially rigorous. What it says is human social norms, including gender roles, are all hardwired based on what happened in the savanna. This means among other things male dominance and male promiscuity; the evo-psych people are pretty adamant on saying that it's natural for men to fuck around.<br /><br />This is supposed to translate to women being bad at technical or abstract thinking. Sometimes there's also something about how women are bad at spatial reasoning. The actual explanations tend to be all over - typically, whatever could justify the current situation. Typically, the evo-psych method is to explain how something could have arisen in the savanna; the actual studies don't try to argue why it's in fact the correct explanation. Thus, they'd explain the fact that girls do worse on spatial tasks than boys, such as geometry problems, by talking about things hardwired back when men were hunters; they'd never stop to ask whether it's relevant that the gender gap fell as girls started to play sports and then reopened as boys started to play video games.<br /><br />The biggest irony is that usually, the evo-psych people's sin is that they ignore or mangle sociology and anthropology. They're usually very explicit in saying that social scientists don't do real science.Alon Levyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12195377309045184452noreply@blogger.com