17Feb/109
Honor Societies
by Jeff
Image text: Hey, why do YOU get to be the president of Tautology Clu-- wait, I can guess.
Tautology means to repeat the same phrase twice or two parts of a phrase that means the same thing. This comic is a take on the repetitive nature of "honor" in the Honor Society.
The answer to the image text would be: I'm the president of the Tautology Club because I'm the president of the Tautology Club.
February 17th, 2010
It’s not primary about repeating, it’s about explaining something with itself. It’s honourable if you do something honourable…
February 17th, 2010
The “If 1,000,000 people joined…” statement is also a jab at all those types of groups out there.
http://www.google.com/search?q=if+1000000+people+join
February 17th, 2010
Aside from its use in the English language, it’s also a term in Discreet Math where a “statement” is true for all possible inputs. It’s the opposite of a contradiction. For instance, the statement p == p is a tautology because it will always return true no matter what the value of p is. I would guess that Randall, with his comics being heavily inspired by math, probably came to knowing of a tautology from his math background.
February 17th, 2010
Tautologies are actually statements that are universally true, like “All bachelors are unmarried,” or, “I’m either at the movies or not at the movies, but not both.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology
February 18th, 2010
The latter one is actually a axiom in logic dating back to Aristotle.
Let P be a true/false statement.
Either P or not P is true, but not both at the same time, and there is no third option.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_logic
February 18th, 2010
Tautology can also reffer to an argument that proves itself of is its own explanation, or, like it can also be, both.
And, of course, thre is a nice circular logic in the fact that this strip is reffering to this group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=336707071150&ref=nf
Which reffers to the strip. Join!
February 18th, 2010
The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.
February 18th, 2010
Moreover, it may actually be also based on computer science’s propositional logic, taken directly from philosophy as stated above.
March 1st, 2010
So, did anyone besides me notice Jason Foxx in the third panel? Most of my friends don’t “get” it, because they never read Foxtrot.