Talk:1489: Fundamental Forces

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 11:57, 20 February 2015 by Davidy22 (talk | contribs) (so i still have to do this huh)
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«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). --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. 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 -- Brettpeirce (talk) 11:46, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

I knew from the title, "Fundamental Horses", that this was going to be a great one. 199.27.128.200 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)