1592: Overthinking

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Overthinking
On the other hand, it took us embarrassingly long to clue in to the lung cancer/cigarette thing, so I guess the real lesson is "figuring out which ideas are true is hard."
Title text: On the other hand, it took us embarrassingly long to clue in to the lung cancer/cigarette thing, so I guess the real lesson is "figuring out which ideas are true is hard."

Explanation

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If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Actually, what this proves is that what studies "show" is often wrong. There was one study that looked at other foods that had been previously studied to see whether they caused or prevented cancer. They found that if the effect of a food on cancer was studied enough times, there would be at least one study showing it caused cancer and at least study showing it prevented cancer. The studies were never consistent. Which means not all the studies could be right.

A look at what each of the studies as represented by the "Digital Object Identifier" (DOI) in each of the first three panels shows that what the characters are talking about and what the topics describe in the referenced documents is off by one panel. It's possible that Randall intended to show that results are sometimes thrown off simply by not having all the facts properly organized.

Panel Transcript Links

Note that Randall (deliberately?) placed the references out of order. Perhaps we are supposed to overthink the reason why.

Transcript

[Cueball and White Hat are walking together.]
Cueball: I found a study[1] that said water is good for you, but you should just drink it when you feel thirsty and not go overboard.
White Hat: Uh huh?
[More walking.]
Cueball: Another study[2] found that prolonged sitting isn't necessarily bad for you, as long as you're also getting exercise.
White Hat: Okay...
[A borderless panel, but still walking.]
Cueball:Now a study[3] claims that humans in pre-industrial societies stay up late and sleep 6 or 7 hours a night, just like most people today.
White Hat: Huh. So what you're saying is...
[Cueball and White Hat walking, in silhouette.]
Cueball: Maybe we're overthinking it.
White Hat: But what caused our modern epidemic of overthinking?! Plumbing? Or is it email?
Cueball: Modern? I bet the wheel was invented by someone overthinking "pushing."

<references> /* Yes, I am overthinking this reference list, rather than just using plain text with asterisks. */


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Discussion

First Panel: DOI: 10.1097/JSM.0000000000000221 Title: Statement of the Third International Exercise-Associated Hyponatremia Consensus Development Conference, Carlsbad, California, 2015. Tamara HB, Mitchell HR, Sandra FG et al. Link: journals.lww.com/cjsportsmed/Fulltext/2015/07000/Statement_of_the_Third_International.2.aspx

Second Panel: DOI: 10.1093/ije/dyv191 Title: Associations of sitting behaviours with all-cause mortality over a 16-year follow-up: the Whitehall II study. Richard MP, Emmanuel S., Annie RB et al. Link: ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/10/09/ije.dyv191

Third Panel: DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.09.046 Natural Sleep and Its Seasonal Variations in Three Pre-industrial Societies. G. Yetish, H. Kaplan, B. Wood et al. Link: cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2815%2901157-4

Full Text links: goo.gl/kc8cSs 162.158.34.206 13:17, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

DOI's

Doh, after I added the links and noticed they were off by a panel I went to add a blurb in the comic description likely at the same time someone else did so in the references section I had just created. :P lol Jarod997 (talk) 13:38, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Linking "Digital Object Identifier" to www.doi.org is not helpful. Even their FAQ doesn't tell you what a DOI is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier will be more informative to most people, assuming wikipedia is correct. 198.41.235.101 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Shifted DOI

The Image provided here does not match with the one given at [1]. At xkcd.com the DOIs are shifted to match the corresponding text. 162.158.92.167 14:22, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Indeed you are correct. It would appear that Randall didn't intend to confuse us this way. ;) Problem is the comic panel on this page is auto-grabbed by a bot. Someone with more experience than me is going to have to look into this. Once the panel is updated, we can update the DOI link references. Jarod997 (talk) 14:26, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
0000000000000221 ???

The Journal of Sports Medicine seems to think that someday they might have over a quadrillion articles indexed by DOI. I dunno, maybe that's a tiny bit overly optimistic? - Frankie (talk) 16:09, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

"Figuring out which ideas are true is hard."

Verification is hard? Maybe as hard as finding a solution? OMG it's a hidden message: Randall found a proof for P=NP! 162.158.91.213 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I'm not convinced that's hard. It seems to me more likely that accepting the consequences is hard. For example, telling people they can no longer smoke because they are harming themselves and others would likely impinge on their personal freedom or hurt their poor little feelings. 198.41.238.33 22:12, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Figuring out which ideas are true is just science. -- Ima420r (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Am I going to offend someone if I point out that religion is a great example of "figuring out which ideas are true is hard" ??? 108.162.249.163 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The text says "being the character with an odd "surreal" way of thinking" about White Hat, but isn't that Beret Guy? 141.101.105.211

"Plumbing"

Can someone explain why White Hat suggests plumbing could cause overthinking? Thanks. 141.101.66.23 11:24, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

My guess when I read it was: you should understand "overthinking" as "over sink-ing", hence the plumbing suggestion. 162.158.6.222 16:14, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
I take it as a reference to lead piping, which can be blamed for all manner of physical and metal "epidemics" with no obvious vector--Laverock (talk) 10:31, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
I took it as water being easily available (how much should you drink?). As for e-mail, I think because it made ideas (wrong or right) really easy to spread. 108.162.210.205 15:48, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
LOL! I think (ironically) you guys are overthinking this. It seems that "plumbing" and "email" are just examples of ubiquitous modern technology. Atreides (talk) 05:05, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

I thought it is a reference to the fact/claim that Romans had plumbing system with lead, which might have caused them much health problems, (pushing it) make people dumb, and hence also "the Fall" of the Empire.

It seems to me that the current explanation is overthinking the significance of the studies. They're not things that challenge commonly held (mis)perceptions, but things that would usually be seen as self-evident yet people are doing research to formally verify them. 141.101.80.57 16:18, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Er, no. Every single panel makes a statement that is surprising not because it's so self-evident that we shouldn't need a study about it, but for the exact opposite reason: Because while these issues might seem to have common sense solutions, the research suggests that they're actually quite complex and difficult to solve. There's a lot of debate and conflicting research about [how much water you should drink], whether prolonged sitting on a regular basis is bad for you (and what we should do about it if it is), and which sleep patterns are the most natural or healthy. The studies cited challenge the prevailing idea that these issues are complex, by claiming that the real answer is either common sense after all ("get enough exercise"), or is just what we naturally do already when we aren't thinking about it too hard (drinking when you're thirsty, staying up late and sleeping 6-7 hours). NoriMori (talk) 18:16, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
  1. DOI:10.1093/ije/dyv191
  2. DOI:10.1016/j.cub.2015.09.046
  3. DOI:10.1097/JSM.0000000000000221