explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2167: Motivated Reasoning Olympics

2019-06-25T10:32:39Z

141.101.105.192: /* Explain "Motivated Reasoning"? */

Reminds me of the Monty Python Argument Clinic :) [[User:Hawthorn|Hawthorn]] ([[User talk:Hawthorn|talk]]) 16:50, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

It certainly DOESN'T remind you of the Monty Python Argument Clinic, you gormless git! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.214.28|162.158.214.28]] 17:46, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
:Yes it DOES![[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.192|141.101.105.192]] 17:57, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
::No it doesn’t.
:::You're just being contrary. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.214.136|162.158.214.136]] 20:14, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
::::No I'm not. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.54.141|172.69.54.141]] 08:25, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

== Explain "Motivated Reasoning"? ==

Shouldn't the explanation include some contextual explanation of "[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning Motivated Reasoning]" as pertaining to Cueball's behavior shown in the comic?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning
[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 20:37, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

: I added a Wikipedia link to Motivated Reasoning in the title text explanation earlier, but I'm wondering if some of that detail should be moved earlier in the explanation. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 23:10, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

:: Yeah, I'd never heard of "Motivated Reasoning" before, so came here expecting the explanation to begin "Motivated reasoning is ...", before going into the details of the comic. A lot of the text at the moment feels more like an extended transcript than an explanation (e.g. "Ponytail rightly points out that the trophy says he only got second place."). It would be great if someone who's familiar with the term could add a better summary. - (too lazy to create an account right now) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.192|141.101.105.192]] 10:32, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

== Better quality images? ==

This probably isn't the right place but I figured this would get the most visibility. I noticed that the image here made it really hard for me to see the "2" engraved on the trophy, but the image on xkcd.com was much clearer. Yada yada yada, turns out there's much higher quality images on xkcd.com for all comics starting with [[1084]], for example for this comic:

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/motivated_reasoning_olympics.png is the normal image,

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/motivated_reasoning_olympics_2x.png is the higher resolution image.

Shouldn't the wiki start using the higher quality images?

--[[User:NeatNit|NeatNit]] ([[User talk:NeatNit|talk]]) 17:53, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

: While there is a higher quality image available on the XKCD site, it's not the one displayed on the comic on xkcd.com. The same lower-quality image is displayed on both sites by default. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 18:44, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

:: I am seeing the higher-quality image on xkcd.com. I guess it has to do with screen DPI. The HTML on xkcd.com is:
:: <pre><img src="//imgs.xkcd.com/comics/motivated_reasoning_olympics.png" title="..." srcset="//imgs.xkcd.com/comics/motivated_reasoning_olympics_2x.png 2x"/></pre>
:: So it probably selects it automatically only when it'd be useful. This wiki doesn't, obviously, since it doesn't have the higher-quality image and, best I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a way to make a template do this.

:: I'm trying to figure this out right now on [[User:NeatNit/Template/comic]] but I can't find a way to make it display an image at half of its resolution, without me knowing its resolution in advance. I also can't find any parser function that returns an image's dimensions. So annoying. --[[User:NeatNit|NeatNit]] ([[User talk:NeatNit|talk]]) 18:52, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

:::I would expect this can't work correctly without support for srcset in mediawiki itself. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 22:13, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

:I have also noticed that this wiki displays lower resolution images than the official xkcd site, when viewing at high DPI. I had previously assumed it was just a moderate resolution copy chosen to conserve explainxkcd server resources. I would love to see a higher resolution when available. [[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 20:18, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Talk:2167: Motivated Reasoning Olympics

2019-06-24T17:57:13Z

141.101.105.192:

Talk:2086: History Department

2018-12-18T10:06:22Z

141.101.105.192:

The business about the 1750s probably has something to do with the British doing their changeover from Julian to Gregorian calendars then, but you can't look too carefully at the details. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.16|108.162.219.16]] 18:51, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm confused. Is there any joke apart from the obvious "haha, studying history by fully covering time slices instead of topics"? [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 19:05, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
: There's also the joke about taking longer to study a period of time than that time took to pass. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.208|108.162.216.208]] 19:31, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
: I think it's also a reference to the fact that we are creating more and more data in the digital age, leading to the problem of there being too much data to keep up with. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.202|108.162.241.202]] 01:13, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
::Anything created will became part of history almost immediately. Taken literally, study of history means to study EVERYTHING, and it's obviously impossible to be done due to self-reference. Digital data are just subset of it. In reality, historians try to focus just on important things and hope they don't miss anything ; for digital data, it often involves algorithms automatically analyzing data and finding "interesting" ones.
::In not-so-distant future, archaeologists won't be digging in mud to find physical artefacts from past periods (any mud would be already covered by buildings or roads anyway). They would be digging in digital archives and searching for stuff which didn't seemed important when fresh, but in hindsight turned out to be more important and require to be better indexed or correlated with other data. Sometimes, they would be able to find newsworthy discoveries without ever setting foot from their home.
Or, well, sometimes they will find a piece of entertainment, say, a webcomics, which they realize can easily be turned out to blockbuster ; I mean, seriously, major movie studios could already learn from webcomics ... -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 06:20, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Two sides to the same coin? We normally think about historians studying time periods on the order of years, decades, or even longer periods (e.g. the Dark Ages), which naturally takes less time than the original era. Another joke is the idea that an entire department is devoted to such narrow periods, but maybe it's a really small college.
[[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 20:04, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

It seems to me that the humor is based on the incongruity of thinking in business-like terms of productivity and gains and losses in a history department.

I think the 1750s reference is to Tristram Shandy.

The last Animorphs novel was published in May 2001. Given the number of times Randall's brought up Animorphs in comics, is it possible that May 16, 2001 refers to that? I think it would be very much in line with comic 1380 for him to strangely emphasize an Animorphs-related date. [[User:Gman314|Gman314]] ([[User talk:Gman314|talk]]) 02:36, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm sure he meant this as a joke, But there's a real phenomena when covering ongoing wars where day-by-day front line maps like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN5ylBNvqic this one] have to be produced faster than the war actually happened, in order for them to be released while the war is still relevant. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.192|141.101.105.192]] 10:06, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Talk:1489: Fundamental Forces

2015-02-20T22:23:42Z

141.101.105.192:

«The off-panel audience, probably a student or class, is interested, but quickly begins to realize Cueball's lack of understanding. Instead of acknowledging the problem directly, Cueball simply blusters onwards.»

My interpretation is rather different. It looks like Cueball is a physicist who knows that the distinction of "four fundamental forces" is basically wrong/obsolete (the term "force" is not even used anymore in theoretical physics), but since his audience are high school students, he can't go into the many complex details underlying the fundamental interactions, and therefore is forced to gloss over it. This is confirmed by the title text (if Cueball didn't understand the theory of fundamental interactions, he wouldn't give that answer). --[[Special:Contributions/188.114.101.78|188.114.101.78]] 10:31, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

To me it appeared as a typical exam situation for Cueball with '''him''' being the pupil. And ironically that situation looks similar to the real scientific understanding of the topic. [[User:Renormalist|Renormalist]] ([[User talk:Renormalist|talk]]) 11:12, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
: I could see that, to an extent - it doesn't jive with the title text IMO, and it's less funny that a student would be glossing over this stuff than a someone in an instructive role, but I could see it -- [[User:Brettpeirce|Brettpeirce]] ([[User talk:Brettpeirce|talk]]) 11:46, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Irony like this is not uncommon in physics. What was the first encounter with electric phenomena? Triboelectricity. What don't we understand at all? Right. Or take Zenos paradoxon. Or the divisibility paradoxon. The oldest nuts tend to be the toughest. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.230.221|108.162.230.221]] 12:26, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I knew from the title, "Fundamental Horses", that this was going to be a great one. {{unsigned ip|199.27.128.200}}

I prefer Chromatic Horse and Flavor Horse. Why use weak names when we have new strong ones? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.98|108.162.254.98]] 11:58, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

In high school Physics, my class was taught that physicists had recently combined the Electromagnetic and Weak Nuclear forces into the Electro-Weak Force, so there were only three and if we were to find the Higgs Boson, there might be just two or one. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.11|108.162.241.11]] 21:55, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
:Actually, it is the Higgs Boson, that combines the electromagnetic and the weak nuclear interaction into the electroweak interaction, so it's still 3. But actually, even if electromagnetism and the weak interaction can be described in one theory, they are still viewed as two different phenomena, so it actually will always be 4. (Unless we discover other interactions). --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.192|141.101.105.192]] 22:23, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Talk:1070: Words for Small Sets

2014-12-25T13:14:30Z

141.101.105.192:

I disagree on "A Handful" and "Several". A Handful should be about 4 to 7 and several should be 6 to 8, averaging about 7, which sounds just like several. The other two are within the range that makes sense to me. Also, check out how he sneaks "a couple of friends" and "all three of them" into the image text very sneakily. [[User:Jeff]] - From the blog
:Dude, that's the point. You've been trolled. --[[User:Castriff|Jimmy C]] ([[User talk:Castriff|talk]]) 11:43, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Several is two or more.

A handful to me is just that. A dozen berries, one hand grenade, 2-3 sticks of TNT, a bird (2 in a bush else where gives 3) or a wild blonde (more than 1 way to be a handful I guess). [[User:DruidDriver|DruidDriver]] ([[User talk:DruidDriver|talk]]) 07:09, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

English isn't my natural language, but how common is the word "acrimonious"? Should it be explained? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.56|108.162.254.56]] 03:40, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
:Online dictionaries should help. I'm using some addons to my Firefox to help me. The simplest meaning for "acrimonious" should be "bitter", but this is still one of those words hard to describe. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 21:56, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm inclined to interpret the hover text as him saying that a couple does mean more than two. A couple of friends, and then all three of them. However, the entry does not agree with me. Thoughts? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.28|173.245.52.28]] 09:10, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
: My guess is that the entry interpreted "all three of them agree" as "your couple of friends agree with you". I think Randell would sooner troll than use inconsistent grammar so, I also think Randell was using couple to mean 3 friends. [[User:Who PhD|Who PhD]] ([[User talk:Who PhD|talk]]) 13:58, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

There is a similar ambiguity in German, where "ein paar", which literally means "a couple", is used to say "a few". In Italian the ambiguity is even stronger, as certain regions tend to use "un paio" only in the literal sense, while others mean it figuratively. A friend of mine came from Tuscany to Sardinia and one day told me: "I asked for a couple of cigarette packs, and the clerk said ok, how many? and I said, a couple, and he answered yes, how many precisely, and I had to say, uh, two? What an idiot". I had to explain to her that where I live it was not THAT straightforward that couple == 2 --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.31|108.162.229.31]] 08:01, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

This question has been settled before. A few = 1—4, several = 5—9, a pack = 10—19, a lot = 20—49, … --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.192|141.101.105.192]] 13:14, 25 December 2014 (UTC)