explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2620: Health Data

2022-05-18T17:24:10Z

Anthony11:

Did a basefor the setup[[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.34|108.162.246.34]] 23:51, 16 May 2022 (UTC)a

"Cure for Causality" sounds like a pretty good band name. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.4|141.101.104.4]] 07:13, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Panel 1 reminds me of a conversation I had with one of my docs. I'd had some blood work done and the doc said, "The numbers look good. For a man your age." I mean, really; for a man my age? I didn't think we'd been talking about some teenager . . . . [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.161|172.70.130.161]] 08:40, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
:Yeah, but it's possibly even worse when a gynacologist says those exact words... ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.77|172.70.162.77]] 11:23, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Is poisoning other than drug overdoses that rare? The linked source states:
"1. Poisoning
Due in large part to the opioid epidemic, poisoning has overtaken car crashes as the country’s leading cause of accidental death, with 64,795 poisoning deaths in 2017, 22,000 of them from opioid painkillers. Additionally, people can be poisoned by common household substances, including:

Carbon monoxide
Pesticides and cleaning products
Lead"

even without the 22,000 opoid painkiller deaths posioning would still be number 1.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.50.68|162.158.50.68]] 09:25, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

:Yeah, I've re-checked that source and it doesn't actually seem that accurate in its numbers. I've replaced it with one that seems better. Wait, actually, that one's also pretty questionable. [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/poisoning/poisoning.htm This one] seems accurate but not really all the information we're looking for—maybe the CDC has a better article? If someone could find one that is accurate and relevant, that would be a big help. [[User:Ncpenguin|Ncpenguin]] ([[User talk:Ncpenguin|talk]]) 02:24, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

:Well, there are other drugs you can overdose with. However, the most obvious problem with that statistics is that many people would assume that "poisoning" means "being deliberate poisoned", but most of those deaths from poisoning are accidents. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 21:39, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Should we also link 1471 Gut Fauna wich shows another ewemple of Dr Ponytail practicing a weird form of medicine ?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.50.68|162.158.50.68]] 09:25, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

It is meant as a joke here, but ultimately life might just achieve this one day, uncoupling action from harm.

'Vagueness' is really an insufficient description for the absolute insanity that is blaming the passage of time for your problems. Almost to the point of being humorous in its own right. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.199|172.69.33.199]] 10:13, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
: My nice little homo sapiens is turning into robots and they haven't even solved war. Curse evolution! I should have given them long distance communication thousands of years ago! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.143|172.70.230.143]] 15:35, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Can it be also a pun: 'causality' vs 'casualty'? [[User:Tkopec|Tkopec]] ([[User talk:Tkopec|talk]]) 10:32, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

I think I might be covering up existing advantages with my description of a cold war from my dynamic ip. Be great if somebody could add cited material around that, but of course it's very hard to relate around norms of suppressed discussion. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.65|172.70.110.65]] 16:21, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Check your family tree for any incidence of death. If all your forbears at any past generation are mortal, then science shows that with a high level of confidence that you are mortal.

The Inheritance Pattern of Death by Joseph Eastern, M.D., Carol Drucker, M.D. and John E. Wolf, Jr., M.D., 1982, J.I.R. Volume 28, Issue 22
[[http://www.linkedin.com/in/Comet Comet]] 17:40, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
:Sounds legit, although technically family history is not needed: statistically, everyone is mortal. The leading cause of death is being alive. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 21:39, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

If you have a lot of doctor visits, it's probably the case that you have some chronic illness, and also that you have a lot of measurements. Nevertheless, how many measurements you've had is not a good metric of health. Robert Carnegie rja.carnegie@gmail.com [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.145|172.70.90.145]] 19:34, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm convinced this particular comic is a snipe at poor control of {{w|availability bias}} and {{w|base rate fallacy}} in family medicine, (perhaps even involving the roots of the opioid crisis and similar scandals) so I added those and did a lot of copy-editing including adding some overlooked comic dialog and trimming about six or seven sentences of proposed possible explanations which were entirely unconvincing to me. If you put one of your potential explanations that I deleted back in, please try to flesh it out a little showing how it might relate to the actual comic instead of just sharing vague abstract philosophical similarities. Thank you! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.183|162.158.166.183]] 01:55, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

This reminds me a bit of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF2ZhY8xX_w The United Appeal for the Dead] in "Kentucky Fried Movie" [[User:Kimmerin|Kimmerin]] ([[User talk:Kimmerin|talk]]) 08:56, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Is it really 'technically correct' to say that 'causality is the leading cause of death'? This seems like a category error to me. 'Causality' refers to the chain of events - it's not, in itself, a thing that can be a cause. I would say rather that this has the appearance of an obviously tautological statement, but in fact is meaningless nonsense. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.211|172.70.85.211]] 09:04, 18 May 2022 (UTC)
:Death is a change of state, not a state in itself (being dead prerequires having been alive, or at least at one point being possibly thought to have once been alive*). This cannot happen (have happened, be potentially happening) in a causation-free static existence.
:: (*) - With caveats for, say, "a dead planet" which is more about hopes (or lack of them) for the possibility of life under a different chain of circumstances... But I suppose that just supports this interpretation more.
: As such, without a causality, nothing of a death can occur. However finely you cut the moment of your universally static diorama, you can never have a death frozen, merely something that might lead to death, if allowed to play, or would have been a death if not constructed as 'dead' already.
: I.e. To have a death needs a causal chain (of ''any'' concoction) and that obviously cannot happen outside of a causality itself.
: Also, 100% of known deaths happen where there is causality (and the claim is only that it's a ''leading'' cause, so far more cautious!). Whether that means that "causation implies correlation" is left as an excercise to the reader. ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.64|172.70.86.64]] 16:00, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

My first thought was this classic Peanuts comic [https://www.pinterest.com/pin/302937512407585780/] [[User:Anthony11]]

Talk:1791: Telescopes: Refractor vs Reflector

2017-01-30T07:05:51Z

Anthony11:

Nitpick: The refracting telescope, drawn correctly, has a mirror in the optical path (image inverter), but it is made with a special vampire reflecting material Ichorium. {{unsigned ip|162.158.74.219}}
:Doesn't the one in this image have a mirror too? at the bottom to make the image come out at the side instead of the end? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.89.187|162.158.89.187]]

That's a good point: as drawn, the refracting telescope still has a mirror and also wouldn't be able to see space vampires. However, the refracting telescope doesn't have to have a secondary mirror, and there are plenty that don't, so it is more the drawing that is wrong rather than the text of the comic.[[User:Cmancone|Cmancone]] ([[User talk:Cmancone|talk]]) 14:31, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Typically refractors use a prism rather than a mirror at the end, though it does the same thing. Can vampires be seen in a prism? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.172|108.162.241.172]] 14:50, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
:Only if they're pink. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.219|162.158.74.219]] 14:57, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Every time I press submit, it blocks me and makes me start over. Kynde, rather than making a small change every 30 seconds, perhaps you could do them all at once? -- [[User:Frankie|Frankie]] ([[User talk:Frankie|talk]]) 15:26, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
:Well I'm sorry, I had the same problem as you. So I did not dare read it all through before I submitted, and thus so tried to fix the errors I found afterwards. That was also why I did not make the section for the real problems a subsection to the explanation so it (as the transcript) could be edited without conflicting with the other sections. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:30, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
::Ah, it's {{w|network congestion}}. Sending small packets more quickly is indeed one way to get your message through, but it can lead to a tragedy of the commons. Everyone switching to larger packets is the optimal answer, but it's not a stable equilibrium. -- [[User:Frankie|Frankie]] ([[User talk:Frankie|talk]]) 15:39, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
Does anybody on the wiki HAVE a major in optics???? At least anybody who will see this page before MONDAY, when it will no longer be the latest??? [[User:Jacky720|That's right, Jacky720 just signed this]] ([[User talk:Jacky720|talk]] | [[Special:Contributions/Jacky720|contribs]]) 15:54, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

A telescope mirror typically would have no chromatic aberration, as it's a front-surface mirror. The light doesn't pass through the glass to get to the reflective material; the glass is on the back of the mirror for support. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.129|162.158.62.129]] 16:15, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

I think where the commentary says "This means most reflector telescopes make do with narrow apertures" it should be "refractor telescopes". [[User:Rtanenbaum|Rtanenbaum]] ([[User talk:Rtanenbaum|talk]]) 16:18, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

FYI: Randall updated the comic, so that the refracting telescope doesn't have a mirror.--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.111|162.158.74.111]] 16:59, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

I would think that the main reason for Refractors over Reflectors is that it would be easier to make one with adjustable focus, so you would not need to wear glasses and – more importantly – you might be able to use the telescope as a binocular for things like birds. I don't know of any Reflectors with a significant adjustable focus, but I'm not an astronomer either. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.51.28|172.68.51.28]] 17:31, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Aren't there Space Vampires in Lovecraft somewhere? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.214.34|162.158.214.34]] 22:48, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
Not as such, but there are in the classic ''Queen of Blood'' [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060877/] and in the unfortunate "Lifeforce" [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089489/] . A refractor though should be able to see their interstellar umbrella [https://pluckyoutoo.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/lf17.jpg] [[User:Anthony11|Anthony11]] ([[User talk:Anthony11|talk]]) 07:05, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

An important advantage of refractors that keeps them popular is the very tiny amount of internal scattered light compared to reflectors. This really stands out when viewing planets and bright objects. Everybody loves that velvety black background field that refractors can provide. [[User:ExternalMonolog|ExternalMonolog]] ([[User talk:ExternalMonolog|talk]]) 09:59, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Another issue with reflecting telescopes (though not pertinent to the joke) is that when used as a lens in photography, the bokeh, or unfocused highlights beyond the depth of field in an image, are rendered as circular 'doughnut' shapes, instead of the fuzzy points of light created by refracting lens systems. Run-on sentences, FTW. [[User:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For]] ([[User talk:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|talk]]) 01:20, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, bokeh is the "quality" of the OOF areas, not the areas themselves. [[User:Anthony11|Anthony11]] ([[User talk:Anthony11|talk]]) 07:05, 30 January 2017 (UTC)