Atheists

by Berg

Image Text: 'But you're using that same tactic to try to feel superior to me, too!' 'Sorry, that accusation expires after one use per conversation'

Evenhandedness is an important conversational tool. When an opinion is presented, demonstrating how broadly it can be applied implies that said opinion was reached logically and given thought, rather than being the result of some impassioned rant. In today's xkcd, Cueball deftly dances around taking sides with either Atheists or fundamentalist Christians by disparaging them both equally.

'Annoying' is a subjective term. Whether or not something is annoying can not always be agreed upon by two different observers, in that the state of annoyingness depends as much on the observers themselves as it does on the observos (no, that's not a real word, but I think you get what I mean and it's fun to say). However, by claiming that two groups as philosophically opposed as Atheists and fundamentalist Christians both exhibit the trait of annoyingness, the suggestion is made that annoyingness isn't correlated with any particular stance. Instead, annoyingness must be some fundamental property of both of the observos in question, not merely an artifact of a mismatch of philosophies between the observers and the observos. Cueball has now taken his stance on annoyingness from the hazy, uncertain world of subjectivity and placed it in the magical land of objectivity, where science is king and every question has a correct answer. Point: Cueball.

But then, Cutie reveals Cueball's ruse of objectivity to still be subjective at it's core, thus drop-kicking his stance on annoyingness all the way back to the world of subjectivity, where The Secret built a sprawling condominium complex. Annoyingness isn't an objective quality that Cueball measured in both groups, Cueball's subjective criteria for annoyingness are merely broad enough to engulf both groups entire. Presuming that Cueball isn't annoyed by himself, we can infer that Cueball must not exhibit the property of annoyingness as defined by Cueball. Given that annoyingness is a negative quality (4th Ed: CHA 8, no training in diplomacy), Cueball must be better than an observo exhitbiting annoyingness. Point: Cutie. Win: Cutie.

In the image text, Cueball tries to steal victory from Cutie, but Cutie points out that the argument for superiority can have only one use per conversation. Otherwise, a feedback loop of potentially infinite length would derail the conversation about the observos to a back and forth exchange of arguments of superiority. Using Gricean conversational maxims to help derive meaning and intent from utterances, we can see how Cutie's investment in the conversation at hand as a participant wouldn't lead her to say something that would create a conversation destroying feedback loop. In order for the argument for superiority to be conversationally relevant, it must be being used in such a way that a feedback loop would not be created, which can only happen if it is used only once. Extra Point: Cutie.