explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2092: Consensus New Year

2019-01-03T18:00:33Z

108.162.212.215: /* Time zones */ Clarifying the Brazilian time zone situation

{{comic
| number = 2092
| date = December 31, 2018
| title = Consensus New Year
| image = consensus_new_year.png
| titletext = The biggest jump is at 11:00am EST (4:00pm UTC) when midnight reaches the UTC+8 time zone. That time zone, which includes China, is home to a quarter of the world's population. India and Sri Lanka (UTC+5:30) put us over the 50% mark soon after.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT. Please complete this explanation once everyone has entered the new year. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In this [[:Category:New Year|New Year comic]], [[Randall]] is proposing a compromise for when to celebrate, or recognize, {{w|New Year's Day}}. These celebrations traditionally take place at the stroke of midnight between Dec. 31st and Jan. 1st, at the local time of the event's location. With "Consensus New Year", these celebrations would happen at the same time, world over, and would be at exactly 1:30 pm {{w|Eastern Time Zone|EST}} (6:30 pm {{w|Coordinated Universal Time|UTC}}). At this time, about half the world's population would be in 2018 local time and the other half would be in 2019. This is due to the various time zones throughout the world, and the graph is based on the proportion of the population in these zones.

This is based on the assumption that the entire world uses the same calendar system. Randall's graph shows the year starting on the same day for the entire world. While the Gregorian calendar is used as the civil calendar in most countries of the world, the Eastern Orthodox churches uses the Julian calendar, on which the year will begin 13 days later, and the year (as of December 2018-January 2019) is 1440 on the Muslim calendar and 5779 on the Hebrew calendar. Other countries have the same New Year as the Gregorian calendar but count years differently; for example, 2019 is the year 108 in Taiwan and 2562 in Thailand.

The Wiktionary entry for "{{Wiktionary|consensus}}" includes multiple definitions, including these two meanings:

* (attributive) Average projected value
* General agreement among the members of a given group or community

In an attributive grammar structure, a noun is placed before another noun to assign an attribute to it. When "consensus" is used this way, it's a statistical term which means the average projected value of the modified noun.

Randall properly uses this first definition for both the title of the comic and the graph itself, where the graph represents the average projected value of the percentage of the world population reaching the new year at any given time.

Randall may be purposefully misusing the second definition of the word "consensus" to reflect the common misuse of the term {{Wikipedia|consensus}} for the practice of {{Wikipedia|majority vote}}.

In scenarios involving group decision-making, consensus means that all or almost all members of the group will accept the decision. Depending on how it is done, this generally results in a slower decision-making process due to discussion, but decisions that many more people are happy with. Consensus can scale to large groups of people using approaches such as the [https://seedsforchange.org.uk/spokescouncil spokescouncil model] to speed dialogue. By this definition, Consensus New Year happens at one of the last four time zones as the last to "agree" enter 2019, so (nearly full consensus definition) 4:00 am, 5:00 am, 6:00 am, or (full consensus definition) 7:00 am EST on January 1, 2019.

Consensus lies in contrast to majority vote, where a decision passes when over 50% of the people desire it. Majority vote is used in most current large democracies and is what most people are familiar with. It is quick to describe and implement, but can result in polarized political parties and a stark lack of minority rights, unless enough people develop concern for the issues that they are tempered with constitutions and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logrolling logrolling].

The leftmost horizontal axis label (10am EST Dec 31st) was an error. The point marked as 0% should be 5am EST (see table below).

Additionally, some of the lines are shown with a slope, which is inaccurate. Since sun time is not used anywhere, a correct graph line would only consist of horizontal and vertical lines.

===Time zones===

{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Time EST !! Time UTC !! %Population in 2019 !! Regions entering 2019
|-
| 5:00 AM || 10:00 || 0 || Pacific Islands
|-
| 6:00 AM || 11:00 || 0 || Pacific Islands
|-
| 7:00 AM || 12:00 || 0 || Kamchatka (Russia), Fiji, New Zealand
|-
| 8:00 AM || 13:00 || 0 || Magadan (Russia), Pacific Islands, Eastern Australia (Excluding Queensland)
|-
| 8:30 AM || 13:30 || 0 || South Australia
|-
| 9:00 AM || 14:00 || 0 || Vladivostok (Russia), Queensland (Australia)
|-
| 9:30 AM || 14:30 || 0 || Northern Territory (Australia)
|-
| 10:00 AM || 15:00 || 5 || Yakutsk (Russia), Japan, Korea, Eastern Indonesia
|-
| 11:00 AM || 16:00 || 25 || China, Irkutsk (Russia), Taiwan, Western Australia, Malaysia
|-
| 12:00 PM || 17:00 || 30 || Krasnoyarsk (Russia), Vietnam, Thailand
|-
| 1:00 PM || 18:00 || 35 || Omsk (Russia), Kazakhstan, Bangladesh
|-
| 1:30 PM || 18:30 || 55 || India, Sri Lanka
|-
| 2:00 PM || 19:00 || 60 || Yekaterinburg (Russia), Pakistan
|-
| 3:00 PM || 20:00 || 60 || Samara (Russia), Georgia, Oman, UAE
|-
| 4:00 PM || 21:00 || 70 || Moscow (Russia), Turkey, Saudi Arabia, East Africa
|-
| 5:00 PM || 22:00 || 75 || Eastern Europe, Egypt, Central & Southern Africa
|-
| 6:00 PM || 23:00 || 85 || Central Europe, Africa
|-
| 7:00 PM || 00:00 || 90 || (GMT) UK, Portugal, Ireland, Western Africa
|-
| 8:00 PM || 01:00 || 90 || Azores (Portugal), parts of Greenland
|-
| 9:00 PM || 02:00 || 90 || Parts of Greenland, Southern Brazil
|-
| 10:00 PM || 03:00 || 90 || Northeastern and Central Brazil, Argentina, Chile
|-
| 11:00 PM || 04:00 || 90 || Atlantic Canada, Venezuela
|-
| 12:00 AM || 05:00 || 95 || (EST) Eastern USA, Peru
|-
| 1:00 AM || 06:00 || 100 || (CT) Central USA, Mexico, Central America
|-
| 2:00 AM || 07:00 || 100 || (MT) Central USA, Western Mexico
|-
| 3:00 AM || 08:00 || 100 || (PST) Western USA
|-
| 4:00 AM || 09:00 || 100 || Alaska
|-
| 5:00 AM || 10:00 || 100 || Pacific Islands
|-
| 6:00 AM || 11:00 || 100 || Pacific Islands
|-
| 7:00 AM || 12:00 || 100 || Pacific Islands
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A graph labeled “Percentage of the world's population living in 2019” with Y-axis markers at 0%, 50%, and 100%, and X-axis markers at 10:00 AM EST Dec 31st, 1:30 PM EST, 7:00 PM EST, Midnight EST, 3:00 AM EST Jan 1st, and 7:00 AM EST.]
:[The line graph shows the percentage increasing from 0 to 100% in several steps, with 50% reached at 1:30 PM EST.]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Consensus New Year: as of 1:30PM Eastern Time (6:30PM UTC) a majority of the world's population will be living in 2019.

==Trivia==
Randall has mislabeled the leftmost point of the graph: the Earth's earliest time zone ({{w|UTC+14:00}}) should have the midnight at 5:00 AM EST rather than 10:00 AM EST. The number of one-hour increments on the x-axis does not match Randall's label.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:New Year]]
[[Category:Time]]

1112: Think Logically

2017-11-06T22:40:21Z

108.162.212.215: The text I replaced made no sense. It implied that the game could continue beyond checkmate, or something

{{comic
| number = 1112
| date = September 24, 2012
| title = Think Logically
| image = think logically.png
| titletext = I've developed a more logical set of rules but the people on the chess community have a bunch of stupid emotional biases and won't reply to my posts.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Chess}} is a centuries-old board game in which two players take turns moving one of their 16 pieces to try and checkmate the other player's king (one of the pieces). When one player is in a position to capture his or her opponent's king on their next move, and the opponent has no legal move available to avoid such capture, the opponent is said to be in "checkmate", and by definition immediately loses.

The game, with origins around the 6th century, and with the modern rules being essentially set in the late 15th century, has a significant amount of history. The rules and traditions are well established. The knight is a piece that can only move in an L-shaped pattern (two squares in one direction, and one square perpendicular), but has the unique ability to jump over other pieces.

The comic highlights two mistakes players often make in chess: complete fixation on the king at the cost of their other pieces, and failure to take advantage of the knight's movement patterns. At the same time this is a jab at how people sometimes oversimplify an argument when confronted with a topic they are not familiar with. Previously this was depicted in [[675: Revolutionary]] and [[793: Physicists]]. See also the {{w|Dunning–Kruger effect}}. The units in chess are widely agreed to be well-balanced, and [[Cueball|Cueball's]] criticism of the knight shows an obvious lack of knowledge of the knight's potential.

Given the long history of chess, a significant amount of writing and research has been dedicated to the game and its strategies. This is inadvertently mocked by Cueball who naively suggests it would be trivial to make a list of all situations in which a piece would move backwards (called a "retreat" in chess). Such a list — at least a partial one — certainly does exist, as do lists of numerous other chess moves and situations.

Cueball's friend, a guy with {{w|knit cap}} (see the [http://xkcd.com/1112/info.0.json official transcript]) proceeds to demonstrate Cueball's lack of knowledge by beating him in four moves, which typically would only occur when an experienced player plays a novice. The checkmate depicted is likely the {{w|Scholar's mate|scholar's mate}} and is one of the classic checkmates in chess.

Cueball, instead of admitting he underestimated the game, believes the failure is in the game itself. The title text indicates that Cueball attempted to suggest revisions to the rules of chess. Given that Cueball has no experience as a chess player, it is likely many of the changes are illogical or ridiculous. In the face of hundreds of years of history, it is not surprising that the chess community is ignoring them. The last major changes to the rules of chess occurred more than 400 years ago when, among other things, the pawn was given its two-space starting move and the queen was made into the most powerful piece (previously it was the weakest). The chess community's ties to the traditions of the game and their refusal to accept Cueball's suggestions are written off by Cueball as "{{w|emotional bias}}" suggesting his changes are logical, but that the community is letting their emotions cloud their rational decision making abilities.

The comic may also be a jab at competitive online games whose fans call for "buffs" (power additions) and "nerfs" (power reductions) to characters they believe to be underpowered or overpowered, often with inadequate knowledge of those characters. On the other hand, some online games and multiplayer computer games in general are unbalanced since they lack centuries of history to balance themselves, unlike chess.

The guy with the knit cap could either have been a man or a woman as from the drawing, but the [http://xkcd.com/1112/info.0.json official transcript] calls him ''knit hat guy''. In the two other cases (after this comic) were a person with hair have been shown with a knit cap it has been women. The first was [[Randall|Randall's]] wife after chemotherapy in [[1141: Two Years]] and the second time it was [[1350:_Lorenz#Knit_Cap_Girl|Knit Cap Girl]] in [[1350: Lorenz]]. Two Cueballs have also been shown using knit caps in [[1321: Cold]].

==Transcript==
:[A guy wearing a knit cap over short black hair is sitting down at a computer touching the keyboard with one hand. Cueball is standing behind watching the screen.]
:Laptop: ''*Move*''
:Cueball: Why'd you move your knight away?

:[Knit cap turns around and rests an arm on the chair looking at Cueball who holds out both arms.]
:Cueball: Just think ''logically''. The goal is checkmate, so you should always move pieces ''toward'' the other player's king.

:[Closeup of Cueball holding a hand to his chin.]
:Cueball: I guess occasionally you need to move backward, but it'd be trivial to make a list of those circumstances and-

:[Knit cap is leaning back in chair facing Cueball, panel is so slim that the lap top is not included.]
:Knit cap: Have you ever ''played'' chess?
:Cueball: Not much, but—
:Knit cap: Wanna?
:Cueball: Uh, ok.

:[Knit cap sitting and Cueball standing is playing chess with a board standing between them on a very small table or a four legged stool. The board extends quite far out on either side. Their moves are indicated above with four towards knit cap and three towards Cueball. It is clear both from this and from the pieces visible on the board that knit cap is playing white]
:<nowiki>*Move*</nowiki>
: _____<nowiki>*Move*</nowiki>
:<nowiki>*Move*</nowiki>
: _____<nowiki>*Move*</nowiki>
:<nowiki>*Move*</nowiki>
: _____<nowiki>*Move*</nowiki>
:<nowiki>*Move*</nowiki>
:Knit cap: Checkmate.

:[In a panel without frame Cueball is standing staring at the chess board, where there clearly are more pieces on his side of the board.]

:[Knit cap has turned back to the laptop with both hands on the keyboard. Cueball is standing behind the chess board holding a finger up in the air.]
:Cueball: This game isn't very well-designed. For starters, knights are too weak...

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Characters with Hats]] 
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Chess]]

Talk:1392: Dominant Players

2014-07-15T16:45:44Z

108.162.212.215:

This may be related to the recent MOBA segregation controversy: http://www.pcgamer.com/uk/2014/07/02/hearthstone-tournament/ {{unsigned ip|108.162.229.25}}

What is the significance of the line colors? {{unsigned ip|108.162.215.78}}
:I think the red lines are those players that were undisputed #1 for a significant period. [[Special:Contributions/103.22.201.239|103.22.201.239]] 08:02, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
: But Petrosian has no colored line, although he was world champion. Maybe he did not have the highest ELO rating despite being WC?[[User:Jkrstrt|Jkrstrt]] ([[User talk:Jkrstrt|talk]]) 09:23, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
:Ya, this line colouring thing is bugging me. :P [[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 14:22, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
:The lack of explanation of the red lines bugs me too. Makes me think this comic was rushed, or never finished. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.216|108.162.250.216]] 22:18, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Dashed lines are apparently for the period before ELO ratings existed, taking 1965 as a start point (midway between the point in time when ELO rating was adopted by USCF and FIDE, respectively. There seems to be an exception for Alekhine -or is that a very long dash? [[User:Jkrstrt|Jkrstrt]] ([[User talk:Jkrstrt|talk]]) 09:23, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Naughty Randall, always label your axes! [[User:Kaa-ching|Kaa-ching]] ([[User talk:Kaa-ching|talk]]) 08:00, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

The comment in the women's rankings about Kira Zvorykina is a little odd. One would hope she continued playing in tournaments into the 20th century, given that the first 81 years of her life were in the 20th century. {{unsigned ip|108.162.250.220}}

While at the time, the V-1 was called a "Flying Bomb", wikipedia indeed calls it an early pulse-jet ancestor of the modern cruise missile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb . I built a model of one in an 8th grade rocketry club, replacing the pulse jet with an Estes D-6-0. Mine took off, but sure enough, yes, the stubby wings stalled easily, the flight path was a weird s curve as the wings stalled out twice while under thrust.[[User:Seebert|Seebert]] ([[User talk:Seebert|talk]]) 09:03, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Link to the game against Deep Blue, anybody? Also, shouldn't the title text be at least mentioned? [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.71|199.27.128.71]] 09:13, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Kasparov-Deep Blue Games: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1014770 {{unsigned ip|141.101.64.131}}

The explanation says in the first sentence that for chess there's an overall rating and a woman's rating in the comic. All I see is a men's rating and a woman's rating, no overall rating, however. {{unsigned ip|108.162.254.24}}
: As Judith Polgar is present in the first chart, it appears to be an overall, not specifically a men's chart.[[User:Jkrstrt|Jkrstrt]] ([[User talk:Jkrstrt|talk]]) 11:37, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
:: My impression is that the above is the Men's Chart but with Judit added (hence the note), because (although unsure because of the curse of unlabelled axes) some of the other top-ranking-women-but-not-top-ranking-overall would still earn a position on the above 'graph'.
:: (Also, something in me wanted a reference to Chess-Boxing, but it appears that was not the aim.) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.233|141.101.99.233]] 13:16, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
:There is no "woman" ranking.[[User:Chvsanchez|Chvsanchez]] ([[User talk:Chvsanchez|talk]]) 05:11, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Anyone knows why Viswanathan Anand is not included (or am I blind?) Marty / [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.43|141.101.104.43]]
I had the exact same question. It appears that this is a West and Russian centric view of the world [[User:Indianrediff|Indianrediff]] ([[User talk:Indianrediff|talk]]) 13:23, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
:No. Koneru Humpy is mentioned. He's a big Carlson fan and I think he doesn't like Anand. One of his old comics suggested that. Probably never realised Anand met and beat Carlson back in 2008. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.222.78|108.162.222.78]] 16:37, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
:Out of pure curiosity, could anyone please upload an image/link of how Anand's curve might look, if it was added to the graph? I'm not a huge chess fan, but I am interested in seeing the extent of Randall's possible bias in this regard. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.62.62|173.245.62.62]] 05:21, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

For me it feels weirder to see Stefanova there, but not Topalov. Then again, for some reason Bulgarian media keep a low profile of her. {{unsigned ip|141.101.104.107}}
It's Julius Erving not Irving. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.151|173.245.54.151]] 13:27, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

The choice of basketball and chess is something to think about. This mostly is about chess, and basketball represents the physical sports. It immediately stands out that chess players have much longer careers than basketball players. [[User:Jim E|Jim E]] ([[User talk:Jim E|talk]]) 15:55, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

:Something else I think someone needs to look at is the line of best fit. For basketball it's basically horizontal, but for chess it tends to curve upwards. I'd add it myself, but I feel like there's more than just that and I'm missing something. [[User:Athang|Athang]] ([[User talk:Athang|talk]]) 16:53, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

I haven't seen any mention of this interpretation, so it might be just me, but I immediately read the juxtaposition of basketball to chess as a contrast of how skill at the top level of basketball is essentially stagnant, whereas the best chess players have been outstripping their predecessors for decades. {{unsigned ip|173.245.52.157}}

The y-axis is unlabelled, that's annoying --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.93.222|141.101.93.222]] 19:53, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

A couple points;
1) I would interpret the Basketball vs. Chess dichotomy as a slam against basketball, with the (largely) serious comments about chess vs. pointing out movies on BB. There are a jillion things he could have chosen to comment on - why highlight the embarassing career moves of BB players?
(2) The rating system for BB has an (essentially) static upper limit, whereas these chess rating systems have larger upper bounds as the player pool grows, so comparisons of upper bounds are unfair. That may be part of the point, or a dishonest comparison. Not sure of Randall's motivations. (not that I like BB anyways...)
(3) No comparison to women's BB is made - so this further inclines me to think that there are two separate agendas here: (i) physical BB vs. mental chess and (ii) women's rights in chess. An honest comparison would include women's BB as well.
(4) The vertical axis on the graphs do not start at zero, so the scaling could be correct... just somewhat deceiving by violating fundmental rules of creating graphs (no labels, inconsistent scales and they have non-zero bases).
(5) Red lines are *generally* the top person at some point in their career for more than 5(?) years (David Robinson seems like the tell)

All in all, rather disappointed in the seemingly conflicting political agendas and poorly represented graphs.
[[User:Chorb|Chorb]] ([[User talk:Chorb|talk]]) 21:36, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Also, please note that player efficiency ratings and similar "aggregate scores" are the subject of much discussion in basketball due to inherent biases, and their performance is particularly poor when comparing players from different eras. Attempts at adjusting for pace and game styles have not been too successful so far. {{unsigned ip|108.162.229.87}}

Statistician Jeff Sonas produced his famous research in 2005. You can find his graph here: http://www.chessmetrics.com/cm/CM2/Summary.asp.[[User:Chvsanchez|Chvsanchez]] ([[User talk:Chvsanchez|talk]]) 05:11, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

I have more or less included all the info and thoughts above, and added data tables, and links to a graph of another sources paths. I have thus completed the comic. But feel free to improve or add more (or if still not complete enough please note why and mark it as incomplete again.) ;-) [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 18:31, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

This comic had the potential to be really cool, but Randall just ''had'' to go all social justice soldier and shit it up with benevolent-sexist feminism. "Here's the 'regular' graph: '''Chess'''. And here's the ''other'' graph: '''Chess (''Women!'')''' (''They're different'') (''They're special'') (''I'm not reinforcing social inequality by doing this, I'm changing it for the better!'')." Yeah, eat shit, Randall. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.215|108.162.212.215]] 16:45, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Talk:1386: People are Stupid

2014-06-30T14:39:00Z

108.162.212.215:

On average yes, an individual is of average intelligence. But taken as a population of a whole, well, that's a different story entirely. Randall needs a vacation, ever since he jumped the shark with the dead baby it just feels like the downward trend is getting steeper. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.135|108.162.210.135]] 13:20, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
:I don't really think that he jumped the shark. I don't quite get what you are trying to say, and individual can't be of average intelligence. You must first define the average, if we take the mean intelligence of the whole population, then take a person from the sample, then we say that the individual is of average intelligence. You can't say people is stupid while referring to the whole population, because of the definition of stupid, if we take a sample of low IQ people then those people are going to be of average intelligence within the sample, the same goes to the whole population. So this comic is perfectly valid. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.192|108.162.212.192]] 04:50, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Isn't that a reference to the Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence? [[Special:Contributions/103.22.200.119|103.22.200.119]] 04:49, 25 June 2014 (UTC)krayZpaving

White Hat being burned? This certainly will not end here.--[[Special:Contributions/141.101.102.208|141.101.102.208]] 04:52, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

'''''Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.''''' This wiki is founded on the very principle that people are stupid. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.223.29|108.162.223.29]] 05:35, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
: You make an intelligent point, which I both appreciate and like. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.222.50|108.162.222.50]] 13:41, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
::Awww, it's just a joke, it's not personal or anything! '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 13:43, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

This comment is one that makes me scratch my head and wonder... surely Randall is able to see that intelligence is not a relative but rather an absolute thing (if one were to kill the 10% most intelligent people the rest wouldn't get dumber, nor smarter). Surely intelligence is not to be measured in units of the common denominator. Surely it is obvious that 2nd panel is a pure strawman. Sigh...
Oh and btw an IQ of 100 is the median, not the average. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.17|141.101.104.17]] 09:18, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
: I am wondering if the explanation should not include a mention of the Median/Mean problem because it is entirely possible for a majority of a population to be above or below some mean (average) statistic depending on the distribution. Also stupidity is a standard that is not dependent on either median or mean.[[User:Sturmovik|Sturmovik]] ([[User talk:Sturmovik|talk]]) 11:46, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
: The IQ of 100 is actually defined to be the median AND the average (and also the mode). It is also defined that the distibution around the IQ of 100 is a perfect bell curve. The IQ just tells you how many people in the world have your IQ (It is also defined that two values that have same distance from hundred, e.g. 80 and 120 have the same amount of people, 'cause it's a perfect bell curve (this means that there are as many people with IQ 120 as people with IQ 80). If the overall population gets more intelligent they have to make the IQ tests harder, so that 100 is again the average and median (This really happened). This and some other things are reasons why I think that IQ tests are BS. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.93.219|141.101.93.219]] 14:01, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
:: "A test device with numerous correlates measures an amount of environmental influences beside innate determinants, therefore bullshit"... What are your other objections to I.Q. testing? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.89.221|141.101.89.221]] 14:17, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

The mocking "award", which is an analogy of saying "intelligence isn't everything" (an EXTREMELY common cliche), reflects the fact that Randall, like just about anyone, is oblivious to the magnitude of the totality of positive correlates of intelligence, and even (TRIGGER WARNING, TABOO CONCEPT AHEAD) I.Q. Intelligence, I.Q., not only makes you happier, it also makes you more helpful to other people, more creative, more socially stable, better-to-do, less susceptible to mental illnesses, more likely to remember events in your life, etc. etc. etc... Basically, there isn't a positive trait or quality of life with which intelligence doesn't correlate. But people positively LOATHE awareness of how highly intelligence, in fact, matters. Hence the vehement denial whenever someone indicates its importance, all the "I know an intelligent person who is miserable/mean/...", all stressing of exceptions, all ridicule of the notion of intelligence in general, all the "don't think about it"-mentality, all writing off of I.Q. as "antiquated, grossly limited, racist, metric" rather than the extremely potent predictor that it is. tl;dr Randall at all, take time to actually STUDY intelligence or the g factor before you mock it like that. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.89.211|141.101.89.211]] 09:25, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
: In other words (and this is going to be my last addendum to this note, because it is a vast subject), whenever people say (or imply, as in the comic's case) that "intelligence isn't everything", the question to ask in return is, "okay, now what is the degree to which intelligence enables, facilitates, contributes to, 'the rest' to which you're opposing intelligence here?". People minimise the depth and breadth of the intellectual substrate of achievement. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.89.211|141.101.89.211]] 09:33, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
: Also, Randall (and everyone saying that) is being highly unjust in equating "people aren't smart" with "people aren't as smart as me". A perfectly valid alternative sense is, "people aren't as smart as to be rationally expected to contribute to rather than damage the discussion/situation/position at hand"--having the objective good, the objective recognition that certain situations (for instance, a certain online conversation which is expected to be competent) require certain minimal intellectual thresholds (for instance, an I.Q. of 120), in mind rather than egotic comparison. Lower intelligence, deny it all you please, comes with temperamental problems for instance. Selection for intelligence will largely filter them out. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.89.211|141.101.89.211]] 09:46, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
:: tl;dr of my entire production here: people must learn that BOTH situations of the Dunning-Kruger are equally harmful, the one that's less often considered perhaps actually even more so. Mistaken self-perception as intelligent is bad for the individual, but refusal to acknowledge the importance of one's own cognitive capacity (which is as good as universal in intelligent people--"I am not that smart" (who hasn't heard that one innumerable times?), "I just like doing thing x, my proficiency in it has nothing to do with my intelligence or I.Q.", "I have areas in which I'm 'stupid' too", "effort counts too") has societal consequences, of contributing to erroneous dismissal of the notions of intelligence & I.Q. & g etc. Shutting up for good now. Night. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.89.211|141.101.89.211]] 10:11, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
::: GAHHHHH just one more thing. Consider this: the fact that people dismiss I.Q. is the best indicator of how important a trait it really is. Thing is, people would not feel compelled by modesty to deny its importance had it not been vitally integral to many, many things. We deny what we value, so to give hope to those who lack that thing (to comfort those who lack intelligence). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.89.211|141.101.89.211]] 10:15, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
:::: Hey 141.101.89.211... I wonder if you have something to say, but despite my best efforts, I'm having trouble following everything you're saying - I have a feeling you were a bit emotional (perhaps tired?) when writing that, or you might have had fewer "more things" immediately following "I'm done" statements. If you're up for it, I'd appreciate you taking the time to make sure you're saying what you want to say, and ''then'' say it, because you seem to at least have good grammar (though there ''were'' a few British spellings... :-D), so I suspect you probably have a good point. It's also conceivable that I'm just not smart enough to get what you're saying (?) or perhaps it's just too ''early'' for me. BTW the best way of making sure I see what you're saying would probably be to let me know on my [[User talk:Brettpeirce|talk page]]... might even have the conversation there if you'd prefer. Thanks for your time. [[User:Brettpeirce|Brettpeirce]] ([[User talk:Brettpeirce|talk]]) 11:25, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
: I don't know why you think that 141.101.89.211... No where does the comic say that. The mocking award is simply mocking people who '''may or may not''' have higher intelligence than the people they're addressing taking a Better Than Thou attitude because they think they do. In other words: "Higher intelligence doesn't give you an excuse to act like a jerk." I'm sure you can agree with that too [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.218|108.162.245.218]] 04:42, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I would add one "people are stupid" angle not yet mentioned: judging by behavior, most groups of people are less intelligent that any member of that group individually. This is valid even for the "all people" group - just look at the planet. Surprisingly, judging by content of most wikis, the "editors of wiki" groups seems to immune. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:05, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
: Good point--conforming to pressures of one's group or one's position to the detriment of one's judgment is a separate personality trait. The phenomenon is remedied by intelligence, but independent from it. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.89.211|141.101.89.211]] 10:11, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
: Beat me to it. I'd like to add that even individual people have their occasional stupid and intelligent moments, with the stupid ones typically being of greater magnitude. Thus, it's not unreasonable to say that the average actions of people are at least slightly less intelligent than the average intelligence of most people on most days. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.83|173.245.55.83]] 12:13, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
: Similar to the statement in the film "Men In Black". Agent J says, "Why the big secret [about the aliens among us]? People are smart. They can handle it." Agent K responds, "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.45|108.162.221.45]] 01:15, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I can't believe people say things like that, man, people are stupid [[User:Halfhat|Halfhat]] ([[User talk:Halfhat|talk]]) 10:52, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the Lake Wobegon references. Not only is it on-target, but I take personal joy seeing mentions of uniquely Minnesotan culture anywhere I can find them. --BigMal27, Minnesota-born, Minnesotan-raised // [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.88|173.245.55.88]] 11:53, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Instead of saying, "People are stupid," we would do better to say "People make poor decisions / statements / judgments." And this, for multiple reasons, few of them I suspect tied to basal intelligence. Stage of life, level of health and stress, experience relative to the topic, level of education and the quality of that education, cultural idiotic beliefs that interfere with optimal choices, and a zillion others. Plus, as a large percentage of humans are either just coming online in experience and education, or are winding down in health and mental function, we are guaranteed to see a large percentage of stupid decisions right across the IQ landscape. No help for it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.217|108.162.246.217]] 13:04, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
: I.Q. affects level of health and stress, rate of acquisition of experience, level of education, quality of education obtained, preference of cultural beliefs. It doesn't seem to defy reason that it affects the zillion other factors, too. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.89.221|141.101.89.221]] 13:17, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
: Remember, in interaction between psychological and social factors, the question is never of *existence* of a connection, but of its magnitude. It is fine to posit a multitude of environmental factors that determine (ir)rationality, but as long as such position keeps people from connecting I.Q. with those factors' actual occurrence (how much I.Q. does it take to finish a good school? to develop a habit of reading a book every month? this is not at all trivial question, and it needs to be resolved with more than anecdotal evidence of "I know an intelligent illiterate person"), there might be an elephant buried underneath the room which no one knows about. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.89.221|141.101.89.221]] 13:25, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

I know Cueball's explanation can be construed to illustrate otherwise; but I doubt the comic was meant to be a comment on the relative intelligence of humanity. It seems more likely, to me, that the purpose of the comic was to comment on the stonewalling that the mindset, "I'm better than you," induces. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.35|108.162.216.35]] 15:12, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

The cartoon never mentions I.Q. at all, Just "Average Intelligence", so the Mean/Median discussion is moot. As for the other discussion on this page, I'm just going to quote Blaise Pascal: "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time" [[User:Jim E|Jim E]] ([[User talk:Jim E|talk]]) 16:00, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

As mentioned above, in other comments that it's hard to find a way to indent from, there's a difference between different 'average's. (To compare "the median" with "the average" is not a good way of doing it, because one needn't know whether you're talking mean or mode in the second sense. I could even say that I have more than the average number of arms, for a human.) The assumption that the median [i]and[/i] mean (and, perhaps, also mode) are a single location at which 100IQ can be placed is dependant upon the bell curve being symmetrical. Just one hyper-intelligent could skew the mean well above the median. (Ok, so we're talking about comic-book "hyper"ness, to make it significant, in a world's worth of population, but the principle still stands for any more manageable population.) And about IQ tests being recalibrated... there is already a common convention that there's a score-adjuster (or a look-up table, based on this) that gives you different IQs for the same number of correct answers but for people of different ages (and sometimes male/female). Which seems to me like "we give up trying to be demographically neutral, let's just find how well different people answer in our test and then work out where their own arbitrary sub-group's bell-curve stradles". That said, I like IQ tests. I do well in them, and have fun doing them, even if I don't actually believe in them any more than I believe in Sudoku puzzles! And, sorry, I ended up typing far more than I had intended... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.193|141.101.99.193]] 16:31, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

I see a lot of discussion on intelligence, but nothing on "losing faith in humanity". The way I see it everywhere is not in response to stupid people, but to acts of inhumanity. Random acts of violence and hate, for example. Or not random, but large scale. "Restored my faith in humanity" comments often refer to the opposite (in my experience) which involve random acts of kindness, or large-scale altruism. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.161|108.162.237.161]] 08:48, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

What about people using Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and any other "social network web 2.0" thing? They certainly aren't an individual or small group, they are stupid and I've lost my faith in them. :) {{unsigned ip|173.245.56.166}}

There are distributions where majority of the population would indeed be below average. Luckily for humanity, intelligence is on a bell curve! I am happy beyond words that this is the case. {{unsigned ip|108.162.216.31}}

This has to be one of the most entertaining boring conversations I've ever come across! Brilliant! (Or not.) [[User:Taibhse|Taibhse]] ([[User talk:Taibhse|talk]]) 14:12, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I think when someone says "people are stupid", they actually usually mean something like "people systematically make mistakes that I feel are readily avoidable", rather than making an actual judgement regarding general intelligence. So this comic feels rather off to me. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.48.113|173.245.48.113]] 08:01, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

:If you read xkcd long enough, you'll find a lot of Randall's comics feel "off."

Interestingly, the people making comments about average people being stupid tend to be, eh, below-average-smart themselves. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.217|108.162.246.217]] 00:47, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

:"Interestingly," huh? You sound smart. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.215|108.162.212.215]] 14:39, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

When I say "People are stupid" I mean that a group of people making a decision is much stupider than a person. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.215|108.162.246.215]] 04:33, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

'''"No, people aren't stupid. On average, people are of average intelligence."'''

Hey, guys. Consider that average intelligence ''is'' stupid. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.215|108.162.212.215]] 14:39, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Talk:1290: Syllable Planning

2013-11-18T20:07:36Z

108.162.212.215:

I remember my father telling me when I was a teenager about a scholarly paper that described this exact topic, namely the rules governing where 'fucking' can be injected into multi-syllable words. I still remember discussing the options for "fantastic" and "government". Decades later I had a dream about words like "uninstallable" (which can either mean something that can be uninstalled or something that can't be uninstalled), and discovering that someone had written a paper about that very subject (http://www.hum.au.dk/engelsk/engsv/papers/vikn08b.pdf). [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.127|199.27.128.127]] 06:00, 13 November 2013 (UTC) Toby Ovod-Everett
: Think you mean "... can be uninstalled or .... can't be installed". --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.51.227|173.245.51.227]] 06:42, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Surely the question is which words benefit from the effing emphasis? Fan-effing-tastic is a natural, but with 'government' I wouldn't try...I'd just say 'effing government (what a bunch of wankers, bastards, mongrels, etc)'.[[User:Anff59|Anff59]] ([[User talk:Anff59|talk]]) 07:37, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

This immediately made me think about "Legen -wait for it- dary", one of the key phrases that 'Barney' uses in {{w|How I Met Your Mother}}. [[User:Kaa-ching|Kaa-ching]] ([[User talk:Kaa-ching|talk]]) 08:31, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

In case you want to go hunting for papers, it's actually got a name in linguistics: "fucking insertion". Not a good Google word unfortunately. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.30|108.162.231.30]] 08:42, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

:The correct linguistical term is {{w|tmesis}}. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.208|141.101.98.208]] 09:58, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
::Darnit. Ninjaed. (With a note that this also includes phrasal infixings.) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.210|141.101.99.210]] 10:04, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

http://home.uchicago.edu/~vfriedm/Articles/020Friedman79.pdf for some good insight on the differences between Russian and American swearing. Including inserting fucking in between syllables.
--[[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.183|199.27.128.183]] 08:59, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the title text is referring to the word absolutely, which would mean he left only one syllable again. It just seems nonsensical to think that he was saying absolute and not absolutely. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.5|108.162.238.5]] 11:01, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
:Agreed, don't think anyone would ever make a tmesis out of the word 'absolute' as opposed to 'absolutely'. I've changed the explanation accordingly.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.228|141.101.98.228]] 12:58, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

It's generally pointless to argue as to what a "standard" pronunciation is, but I question how flatly "unbelievable" is pronounced in the general American population, as opposed to the robotic-voiced-pronunciation-aid-audio-file population. Especially when pronounced heatedly, there tends to be distinct stress placed on either the first or the third syllable - a regional difference or subtle denotative difference, maybe. I think the existence of both un-fucking-believable and unbe-fucking-lievable is simply a matter of one following the "insert between prefix and root" rule and the other following the "insert before stressed (in this case third) syllable" rule, rather than being because 'unbelievable' is somehow an abnormally flattened word. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.58|173.245.54.58]] 16:40, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

So, is it time to lift the Incomplete tag? [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.66|199.27.128.66]] 09:05, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

"This mistake, and realization of it, creates a humorous alternate meaning by saying "You absolute fucking shit!" - Uh, does it? Think that might be over-reaching for an interpretation there...[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.228|141.101.98.228]] 13:34, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
:Wouldn't be explainxkcd without a few of those each comic. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.215|108.162.212.215]] 20:07, 18 November 2013 (UTC)