explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1393: Timeghost

2015-12-18T15:22:32Z

Sedwick1024: Added reference to "That can't be right" line of MTV Generation comic

{{comic
| number = 1393
| date = July 11, 2014
| title = Timeghost
| image = timeghost.png
| titletext = 'Hello, Ghostbusters?' 'ooOOoooo people born years after that movie came out are having a second chiiiild right now ooOoooOoo'
}}

==Explanation==
[[Megan]] has been haunted by a ''Timeghost'' for some time. It is obviously not the first time the ghost arrives to let Megan know that "...ooOOOOOOOOooo... Tiiiime is passiiiing!" The ghost is dedicated to making people feel old by having them think about the passage of time. It is shown to reference time periods related to well-known people and events, such as famous actors and the release of movies and TV shows. Megan is just annoyed that it is back and wishes it to go away.

But then when [[Cueball]] ask "How long has it been doing this?" the ghost suddenly predicts that Megan and Cueball will die in a shorter amount of time than the time that has passed since the ghost began its hauntings. This disturbs Megan who stops her complaining and asks "'''What!?'''" This is not the first time she has been haunted by the ghost but it has probably not been that long, so this is a very scary thought to her (and Cueball).

We do, however, not know how long the ghost has been haunting Megan. Also the "staaaaart of my haunting" may refer to the first time the ghost haunted anyone, not just Megan. This could be a long time ago and thus be true for anyone it meets today. Or it could mean since the start of this particular manifestation, meaning their deaths are imminent! It is also possible Timeghost is being deliberately ambiguous in an effort to frighten them even more. This is of course only scary if you believe the ghost can predict the future, which is not what it has been doing so far. There is no example in the comic where it makes a prediction that we know is accurate - only comparing time spans we can look up - see below.

But one thing about the prediction is true - they will eventually '''die'''. And this is the scary part about realizing how old you are and that you are quickly getting older: You will die, and "soon" (for some value thereof).

The comic seems to be using "factoid" to mean a small fact. "{{w|Factoid}}" can also mean a "questionable or spurious statement presented as a fact", but this does not seem to be intended usage here. In this instance, some of the factoids are easily verifiable, while others are reasonable assumptions based on the number of years passed since the individual events. Several sources advocate the use of the word "factlet" to express a brief interesting fact, while using the word "factoid" for unverifiable or untrue statements passed as fact.

While ''factoids'' tend only to have mostly only entertainment value, the last ''fact'' from the ghost is a prediction of the future (Megan and Cueball's death) which is actually of some practical value if it can be trusted.

"Timeghost" might be a literal interpretation of {{w|Zeitgeist}}, which is a German term for "spirit of time" and refers to the school of thought that influences or dominates the art and culture of a time period. All the events and people mentioned in this comic may be considered influences on present day art and culture.

In the title text Megan calls {{w|Ghostbusters}} (from the 1984 movie) to help get rid of the Timeghost. This of course makes the ghost state that "people born years after that movie came out are having a second chiiiild right now" making her feel old once more.

[[Randall]] has covered making people feel old several times in [[647: Scary]], [[891: Movie Ages]], [[973: MTV Generation]] (in which White Hat utters Cueball's "That can't be right" line), and [[1477: Star Wars]]. Also see the blag post [http://blog.xkcd.com/2012/09/29/odd-temporal-milestones/ Odd Temporal Milestones]. This is, however, so far the only one that makes a prediction of anyone's death. A similar ghost with a much different agenda was seen in [[1108: Cautionary Ghost]]. Similarly annoying fact(oids) were given in [[1272: Shadowfacts]].

'''Timeline'''
{| class="wikitable"
!Year||Event
|-
|1955-1975||{{w|Vietnam War}}
|-
|colspan="2"|19 years
|-
|1994||{{w|Forrest Gump (film)|Forrest Gump}}
|-
|colspan="2"|20 years
|-
|2014||Year of this comic
|-
|colspan="2"|
|-
|1964||{{w|Keanu Reeves}} (Actor) born
|-
|colspan="2"|2 years
|-
|1966||Today's new grandparents born (Average age: 48 in the US)
|-
|colspan="2"|48 years
|-
|2014||Year of this comic
|-
|colspan="2"|
|-
|1990||[http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr051.pdf Today's new parents born] (Average age: 24 in the US)
|-
|colspan="2"|3 years
|-
|1993-1994||{{w|The Simpsons}} Season 5
|-
|colspan="2"|2 years (from '93 to '95)
|-
|1994-1995||{{w|The Simpsons}} Season 6
|-
|colspan="2"|4 years
|-
|1999||{{w|Eminem}} (Rapper) got big (second album)
|-
|colspan="2"|15 years
|-
|2014||Year of this comic
|-
|colspan="2"|
|-
|1984||{{w|Ghostbusters}}
|-
|colspan="2"|3 years
|-
|1987||[http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr051.pdf Today's people just having a second child born] (Average age at first childbirth (24) + average gap between first two births (3))
|-
|colspan="2"|27 years
|-
|2014||Year of this comic
|}

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan are approached by a floating ghost]
:Timeghost: ''...ooOOOOOOOOooo... Tiiiime is passiiiing!''
:Megan: Ugh. Timeghost.
:Cueball: Huh?
:Megan: Here come the factoids.

:[Timeghost floats around.]
:Timeghost: ''Forrest Gump'' came out closer to the Vietnam War than to the present daaay.
:Megan: Go ''away!''
:Timeghost: The average new grand-parents are younger than Keanu Reeeeves!
:Cueball: That can't be right...

:[Megan clutches her head, possibly attempting to cover her ears.]
:Timeghost: ''Today's new parents were ten when Eminem got big. Daaaaaad muuuuusic. They remember Simpsons season 5 or 6 at the '''earliest'''''.
:Megan: Argh!
:Cueball: How long has it been ''doing'' this?

:[Megan and Cueball looks up at the Timeghost as it delivers its most scary message.]
:Timeghost: ''The staaaaart of my haunting is now further away than your deaaaths!''
:Megan: Will you sto- -'''''WHAT!?'''''
:Timeghost: ''ooOOOOOOOoo''
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics to make one feel old]]

1588: Hardware Reductionism

2015-10-12T14:17:58Z

Sedwick1024: Reflects point in trivia note how "triathlon" was misspelled in the comic.

{{comic
| number = 1588
| date = October 9, 2015
| title = Hardware Reductionism
| image = hardware_reductionism.png
| titletext = My MRI research shows a clear correlation between the size of the parietal lobe--the part of the brain that handles spatial reasoning--and enjoyment of 3D Doritos®.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Reductionism}} is the belief that things can be explained by their smaller parts. It can be abused when complex phenomena with multiple causes are attributed to a single, simple cause.

{{w|Neurological}} reductionism is the attempt to explain people's behavior and personality by physical features of their brain. With advances in {{w|neuroscience}}, and especially in brain imaging, there's a fad to claim that brain types determine what the mind is. Examples of this kind of bad reductionism would be:

*Male brains have more grey matter than females. Therefore males are smarter. For an example of criticism of this kind of reasoning, see ''[http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/dec/04/male-female-brains-real-differences Male and female brains: the REAL differences]'' (4 December 2013).
*Brains of gay males are slightly more symmetrical, as are female brains, when compared to straight males. Therefore gay men are fated to be more effeminate. See [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080616-gay-brain.html Gay Men, Straight Women Have Similar Brains] (16 June 2008).
*The left side of the brain is associated with logical thinking, and the right, with visual and artistic thinking. Therefore people divide into "left-brain" or "right-brain" types, depending on how good they are at using each side. See {{w|lateralization of brain function}} on Wikipedia.

There are several problems with this kind of reasoning. First, most studies identify correlation, not causation (see {{w|correlation does not imply causation}}). Brains are plastic; they can be shaped by experience. For example, if, in a given society, the females are taught to mind their appearance, and the males are taught that aesthetic considerations are unmanly, then of course the female brains will end up with more developed aesthetic centers. In other words, behavior and capabilities aren't always ''determined'' by the brain. Sometimes it's the behavior that shapes the brain; sometimes a third factor (e.g., malnutrition) shapes both.

Second, even when the brain is actually a cause of the behavior, it's far from the only piece in the puzzle. Many studies on brain differences are correlation studies, often about very small effect sizes. Unfortunately, the popular science media tends to gloss over the statistical concept of "effect size". For example, imagine a study that says that males' brains are 0.1% more likely than females' brains to exhibit {{w|attention deficit hyperactivity disorder}} (ADHD). Journalists are prone to report it simply as '''Study Shows that Males Have More ADHD''', and this becomes a conversation sound-bite that neglects other factors, like genetics or pregnancy smoking. See also [[882: Significant]], which does not discuss effect size, but does raise other objections to writing soundbites based on a single study.

Another kind of excessive neuronal reductionism is the overemphasis on brain modules ("scientists identify brain area responsible for religious faith", and the like). Though it's true that the brain has specialized areas, it's also true that the processing is very complex, messy, and distributed all over. Some varieties of brain damage can often be overcome by learning to use undamaged areas of the brain.

The comic illustrates the problem by analogy to some better-understood general-purpose computing hardware: the {{w|CPU}} in a smartphone. [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] have used their smartphones to take pictures of the same event: a {{w|triathlon}}, that is, an athletic competition comprising three modalities (e.g., swimming, cycling, and running). Cueball wonders why is it that Megan's photos are more popular, and Megan gives a reductionist explanation: She tells that her phone is quad-core (four cores) whereas Cueball's phone only has two cores (here she even throws in the typical sentence "research shows that" to make her claim sound more valid. A {{w|Multi-core processor|core}} is a part of a CPU that is, roughly speaking, capable of acting as an independent computer. Megan thinks that this means Cueball's smartphone can only capture two events at the same time; she misunderstands how the specialized modules work and fails to realize that the number of cores is unrelated to how many events can be captured. Her claim is like saying that male brains are better at spatial reasoning, and therefore males are better triathlon photographers, or that females are better at multitasking, and therefore females are better triathlon photographers.

A CPU with more cores could process pictures faster, speeding up facial recognition or color filters. So it's true that Megan's CPU makes it slightly easier for her to take pictures. However, this has, at best, an extremely small effect on the number of "likes". There's a lot more going on with photography than the CPU of the phone: Megan's photographing skills, her luck in capturing interesting scenes, the number of on-line friends she has, etc.

So Megan misunderstands many things: the modularity of CPUs, the small effect of the CPU on the quality of her photography, and the actual causes of her success, much like people who reduce ability to structural features of the brain.

The title text is mocking reductionist explanations based on [[Randall|Randall's]] MRI ({{w|Magnetic resonance imaging|magnetic resonance imaging}}) research. One of the most famous (and [http://arstechnica.com/science/2011/08/gender-gap-in-spatial-reasoning-mia-in-matrilineal-society/ disputed]) claims about gendered brains is that women's brains are (slightly) worse at spatial reasoning. {{w|Doritos}} is a popular junk-food brand of {{w|tortilla chips}} that are typically so flat that they can called a 2D snack. In the 1990s Frito-Lay (PepsiCo) introduced a special 3D version, the {{w|Doritos#Doritos_3D.27s|3D Doritos}}. (These [http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/10/25-junk-foods-we-wish-still-existed/3d-doritos bloated snacks] took up more surface area in one's mouth, and had a hollow center filled with cheese-flavored air). So title text associates a larger spatial reasoning brain area with enjoyment of this three-dimensional variation of the popular junk-food snack; the conclusion could be that men like these 3D snacks more than women because of their better spatial reasoning, although there could obviously be several other reasons for such gender specific choice of junk-food. 3D Doritos were discontinued, but reintroduced in 2015, the year of this comic's release.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball hold his smartphone looking at it while talking to Megan who is holding her smartphone in her hand.]
:Cueball: Your photos from the triatholon (sic) got so many more likes than mine.
:Megan: Yeah - My phone is quad-core. Research shows that iPhones like yours have just two cores, so they have a hard time capturing scenes with three different events in them.

:[Caption below the frame:]
:If we talked about phone hardware the way we talk about brain hardware

==Trivia==
*There is an error in Cueball's comment where he says triath'''o'''lon instead of triathlon.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

1588: Hardware Reductionism

2015-10-12T14:15:12Z

Sedwick1024: Minor grammar/punctuation/missing word corrections

{{comic
| number = 1588
| date = October 9, 2015
| title = Hardware Reductionism
| image = hardware_reductionism.png
| titletext = My MRI research shows a clear correlation between the size of the parietal lobe--the part of the brain that handles spatial reasoning--and enjoyment of 3D Doritos®.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Reductionism}} is the belief that things can be explained by their smaller parts. It can be abused when complex phenomena with multiple causes are attributed to a single, simple cause.

{{w|Neurological}} reductionism is the attempt to explain people's behavior and personality by physical features of their brain. With advances in {{w|neuroscience}}, and especially in brain imaging, there's a fad to claim that brain types determine what the mind is. Examples of this kind of bad reductionism would be:

*Male brains have more grey matter than females. Therefore males are smarter. For an example of criticism of this kind of reasoning, see ''[http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/dec/04/male-female-brains-real-differences Male and female brains: the REAL differences]'' (4 December 2013).
*Brains of gay males are slightly more symmetrical, as are female brains, when compared to straight males. Therefore gay men are fated to be more effeminate. See [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080616-gay-brain.html Gay Men, Straight Women Have Similar Brains] (16 June 2008).
*The left side of the brain is associated with logical thinking, and the right, with visual and artistic thinking. Therefore people divide into "left-brain" or "right-brain" types, depending on how good they are at using each side. See {{w|lateralization of brain function}} on Wikipedia.

There are several problems with this kind of reasoning. First, most studies identify correlation, not causation (see {{w|correlation does not imply causation}}). Brains are plastic; they can be shaped by experience. For example, if, in a given society, the females are taught to mind their appearance, and the males are taught that aesthetic considerations are unmanly, then of course the female brains will end up with more developed aesthetic centers. In other words, behavior and capabilities aren't always ''determined'' by the brain. Sometimes it's the behavior that shapes the brain; sometimes a third factor (e.g., malnutrition) shapes both.

Second, even when the brain is actually a cause of the behavior, it's far from the only piece in the puzzle. Many studies on brain differences are correlation studies, often about very small effect sizes. Unfortunately, the popular science media tends to gloss over the statistical concept of "effect size". For example, imagine a study that says that males' brains are 0.1% more likely than females' brains to exhibit {{w|attention deficit hyperactivity disorder}} (ADHD). Journalists are prone to report it simply as '''Study Shows that Males Have More ADHD''', and this becomes a conversation sound-bite that neglects other factors, like genetics or pregnancy smoking; see [[882: Significant]].

Another kind of excessive neuronal reductionism is the overemphasis on brain modules ("scientists identify brain area responsible for religious faith", and the like). Though it's true that the brain has specialized areas, it's also true that the processing is very complex, messy, and distributed all over. Some varieties of brain damage can often be overcome by learning to use undamaged areas of the brain.

The comic illustrates the problem by analogy to some better-understood general-purpose computing hardware: the {{w|CPU}} in a smartphone. [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] have used their smartphones to take pictures of the same event: a {{w|triathlon}}, that is, an athletic competition comprising three modalities (e.g., swimming, cycling, and running). Cueball wonders why is it that Megan's photos are more popular, and Megan gives a reductionist explanation: She tells that her phone is quad-core (four cores) whereas Cueball's phone only has two cores (here she even throws in the typical sentence "research shows that" to make her claim sound more valid. A {{w|Multi-core processor|core}} is a part of a CPU that is, roughly speaking, capable of acting as an independent computer. Megan thinks that this means Cueball's smartphone can only capture two events at the same time; she misunderstands how the specialized modules work and fails to realize that the number of cores is unrelated to how many events can be captured. Her claim is like saying that male brains are better at spatial reasoning, and therefore males are better triathlon photographers, or that females are better at multitasking, and therefore females are better triathlon photographers.

A CPU with more cores could process pictures faster, speeding up facial recognition or color filters. So it's true that Megan's CPU makes it slightly easier for her to take pictures. However, this has, at best, a very small effect in the number of "likes". There's a lot more going on with photography than the CPU of the phone: Megan's photographing skills, her luck in capturing interesting scenes, the number of on-line friends she has, etc.

So Megan misunderstands many things: the modularity of CPUs, the small effect of the CPU on the quality of her photography, and the actual causes of her success, much like people who reduce ability to structural features of the brain.

The title text is mocking reductionist explanations based on [[Randall|Randall's]] MRI ({{w|Magnetic resonance imaging|magnetic resonance imaging}}) research. One of the most famous (and [http://arstechnica.com/science/2011/08/gender-gap-in-spatial-reasoning-mia-in-matrilineal-society/ disputed]) claims about gendered brains is that women's brains are (slightly) worse at spatial reasoning. {{w|Doritos}} is a popular junk food brand of {{w|tortilla chip}} which are typically so flat that they can be called a 2D snack. In the 1990s they introduced a special 3D version, the {{w|Doritos#Doritos_3D.27s|3D Doritos®}}. (These [http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/10/25-junk-foods-we-wish-still-existed/3d-doritos bloated snacks] took up more surface area in your mouth, and had a hollow center filled with cheese-flavored air). A larger spatial reasoning brain area is thus associated with greater enjoyment of this three-dimensional variation of the popular junk food snack. So the conclusion could be that men like these 3D snacks more than women because of their better spatial reasoning, although there could be several other reasons for such gender specific choice of junk food. The 3D Doritos has for a long time been discontinued, but was reintroduced in 2015, the year of this comic's release.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball hold his smartphone looking at it while talking to Megan who is holding her smartphone in her hand.]
:Cueball: Your photos from the triatholon got so many more likes than mine.
:Megan: Yeah - My phone is quad-core. Research shows that iPhones like yours have just two cores, so they have a hard time capturing scenes with three different events in them.

:[Caption below the frame:]
:If we talked about phone hardware the way we talk about brain hardware

==Trivia==
*There is an error in Cueball's comment where he says triath'''o'''lon instead of triathlon.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]