https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=141.101.98.32explain xkcd - User contributions [en]2026-05-31T14:55:02ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2916:_Machine&diff=3395742916: Machine2024-04-13T11:16:05Z<p>141.101.98.32: /* Toolbox items */ Tweaks and more practical info.</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 2916<br />
| date = April 5, 2024<br />
| title = Machine<br />
| image = machine_2x.png<br />
| imagesize = 740x740px<br />
| noexpand = true<br />
| titletext = The Credible Machine<br />
}}<br />
* To experience the interactivity, visit the [https://xkcd.com/2916/ original comic].<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Created by a WELL OILED ROBOT. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
This interactive game is the 14th [[:Category:April fools' comics|April fools' comic]] released by [[Randall]]. The previous April fools' comic was [[2765: Escape Speed]] from 2023, which was released on Wednesday, April 19, 2023.<br />
<br />
As referenced in the title text, this game is a spiritual successor to the 1990s and early 2000s PC puzzle game series {{w|The Incredible Machine}}, a game Randall played as a kid. Both games have several objects in common:<br />
* fan<br />
* cat<br />
* ramps<br />
* balls of various density<br />
<br />
The comic starts in a main screen where the user can create a {{w|Rube Goldberg machine}} in a "Cell" where the goal is to route a constant stream of colored balls from inputs on the ceiling or walls to outputs of matching colors on the walls or floor. After the comic is first opened a window pops up over the machine where Cueball in a lab coat tells you to route the balls from the inputs to the outputs. A button opens a “tool panel” where there are large and small boards available for use, as well as some gimmicky stuff like prisms<!-- that sort marbles by color SEEM TO 'RANDOMLY' REFRACT/DEFLECT, IF SORTING IS TRUE THEN EXPLAIN IN NEW/RELOCATED SECTION? --> (which deflect marbles) and fans (which blow marbles around), as well as decorative elements which have no effect on the balls.<br />
<br />
Typically, inputs and outputs only accept balls of a single color. However, some outputs accept multiple colors, indicated by a double arrow, and some inputs produce multiple colors. When the player is designing their 'machine', this will involve multiple full streams merged into one (supplied by a double-exit on the adjacent submission). Machines now working in the full grid may, however, find that their sources now contain stray balls of other types that were not handled properly, but there is no way to force a re-edit of the machine to alter its behavior to account for this.<br />
<br />
If any balls are left in your cell for more than 30 seconds, they fade away. The first time a ball fades away another popup informs you that the balls are removed for security reasons. A counter increases for each ball of the correct color that passes through an exit, and reduces when no balls pass through, or if balls of the wrong color pass through it. An indicator next to each exit shows whether that exit is not properly supplied (with a cross) or is receiving above its required threshold (a tick). The first time you have built a machine which succeeds in routing enough balls of the correct color to ''all'' relevent outputs, a popup will prompt you to submit your cell to be added to the public machine. (Subsequently, the submit button will quietly change from 'inactive' (pale) to clickable (dark). This will change back again if any ball transfers again dip back below the required threshold for any reason, such as further editing or an end to a 'fluke' glut of accumulated balls.)<br />
<br />
Choosing to submit your cell will give you a textbox to give this cell a name. Proceeding through that, you will now see your cell within the 'grid' and a 'live' feed of balls from any relevent neighboring cells (which may be more sporadic then the feed you designed your cell with, and contain stray balls of different types). If any supplying-neighbors are still marked as "under construction", they ''may'' provide the balls as if perfectly routed from their own (eventual) source, but will eventually dry up.<br />
<br />
It is unknown exactly how and why a particular submission becomes a permanent part of the grid<!-- conceivably many interesting criteria could be used *other* than pure randomness, but only the dev-team will know for sure; I doubt that the userbase can ever extract this information without access to the server-side code -->, but your solution may not remain the one used in future refreshes of the grid (e.g. after you choose to edit another randomly allocated cell-in-waiting). The cell you have worked on may even be seen to be an "Under construction" cell in future grid-views and/or given back to you as an (empty) editable area when you choose to change back to the construction-mode. Given the number of 'bottom-layer' cells that are likely primed ready to be completed (e.g. the grid-width of twelve, perhaps staggered across adjacent rows) and the many possible worldwide contributors at any one time, it may be that the chances of being picked for permanence is low; and certainly would have been early on in the comic's existence during the initial frantic rush to participate. <br />
<br />
<gallery heights="200" widths="150"><br />
File:2916_popup_intro.png|Introduction popup<br />
File:2916_popup_time.png|Time limit popup<br />
File:2916_popup_submit.png|Submission popup<br />
</gallery><br />
<br />
The button in the bottom right corner allows you to toggle between editing your own machine and a page where you can drag around to view all of the machines that have been submitted and accepted, with a title for each in the upper left corner. In this view you can see that all of the outputs are also inputs for another cell, except for the top row where the inputs come from off screen and the lowest row which output through a launcher of some kind to a set of four colored-coded containers far below. Any empty cells are marked off by yellow tape with the words "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" as well as "DJIA ↑ 31415" once in each cell. "DJIA" stands for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, with "DJIA ↑ 31415" indicating that it rose to 31415 points, 31415 being the first five digits of pi, without the period. This would often be displayed on a yellow 'ticker', which might look superficially similar to the yellow barrier tape.<br />
<br />
When viewing the whole machine, a button in the bottom left corner, added later, allows you to follow the path of the nearest ball as it passes from cell to cell. This will also make the ball you are following immortal - not subject to the 30s timeout rule. Another later addition was a button in the top left corner which copies a URL that will take you directly to the current cell that you are viewing. However, the link that is created will always show you the version of the machine at the time that you were viewing it, without any subsequent additions.<br />
<br />
Whenever balls reach the bottom of the grid, they are directed towards four containers, one of each color. Most balls are accurately sent to their appropriate container, though there are some misfires. These containers are above a pit, and periodically dump their contents. Balls in the pit are subject to the same 30s culling rule as balls in the cells above. If no balls are directed towards the containers, the pit will be empty. If one or two streams of balls are making it, Cueball and Megan sit in a small boat named the USS Buoyancy, and when sufficient balls are being deposited, the boat begins to float and move. More streams of balls are likely to add more changes. Balls which miss or overspill the pit fall out of the bottom of the frame.<br />
<br />
Under construction cells will feed balls of the appropriate color into neighboring cells so long as you are not looking at them. Once you scroll to look at them, the supply of balls stops and subsequent cells in the chain will not receive any; scroll away from them again and the supply will resume.<br />
<br />
When you press submit, you will see your creation placed on the grid. However if you refresh that cell will likely be under construction or replaced with someone else's machine. However, other people's machines are consistently placed, so it appears that there is some moderation process selecting a machine for each cell out of the machines submitted by users. If your newly submitted creation is placed in the lowest row of cells, balls will be dispensed through the exit at the bottom, but there will be no launcher to propel them towards the pit, and they will vanish as they leave the exit.<br />
<br />
The grid is 12 cells wide, and grows in height. The largest size observed so far is 12x65, for a total of 780 cells. The machine's height is determined by the lowest cell; This can be either your submitted cell, or a cell created by another user.<br />
<br />
Imperfections in the machines (whether accidental or by design) and the impossibility of entirely avoiding collisions when crossing streams inevitably lead to significant levels of losses and pollution with the wrong color balls. Indeed, using the follow ball trick (see Trivia) appears to show that it is quite rare for a ball to survive more than several machines without getting stuck somewhere. This implies that there is some 'creative accounting' going on to ensure that cells lower in the grid still have balls to process - simulating flow only for a few nearby cells, while assuming that those cells themselves have pure, steady inputs.<br />
<br />
There is a hard limit of 100 items (both physically interactive and purely decorative) that can be placed in any given arena. If you have placed 75 items, a count will appear in the component bar of your piece-count ("''##''/100"), which will go away again if you delete items to below the limit. The count text turns red at "100/100", at which point no more items can be added, only existing ones moved (or removed, to lower the count again).<br />
<br />
===Toolbox items===<br />
{| class="wikitable" style="margin:auto"<br />
|+ List of objects<br />
|-<br />
! Description !! Effect !! Image<br />
|-<br />
| Plank || Static obstacle || [[File:2916_plank.png|frameless|upright=0.25]]<br />
|-<br />
| Hammer || Static obstacle || [[File:2916_hammer.png|frameless|upright=0.25]]<br />
|-<br />
| Sword || Static obstacle || [[File:2916_sword.png|frameless|upright=0.25]]<br />
|-<br />
| Hinged scoop<sup>&dagger;</sup> || Rotates around its hinge, tries to stay horizontal with a springy effect || [[File:2916_scoop.png|frameless|upright=0.25]]<br>[[File:2916_scoop_mirrored.png|frameless|upright=0.25]]<br />
|-<br />
| Anvil || Static obstacle || [[File:2916_anvil.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Brick || Static obstacle || [[File:2916_brick.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Fan || Blows away balls in front of it. Different colors are affected by differing amounts (yellow balls are lightest, and can be levitated above an upward-facing fan).|| [[File:2916_fan.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Pillow || Balls will not bounce if they hit it || [[File:2916_pillow.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Bumper || Bounces balls away at significantly higher speed || [[File:2916_round_bumper.png|frameless|upright=0.125]] [[File:2916_bumper_left.png|frameless|upright=0.125]] [[File:2916_bumper_right.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Attractor/Black Hole<sup>*</sup> || Pulls balls toward center || [[File:2916_attractor.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Repulsor/White hole<sup>*</sup> || Repels balls away from center || [[File:2916_repulsor.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Prism || "Refracts" and internally-reflects balls as they otherwise pass through the object, the color of the ball ''may'' cause them to react (as much as possible) according to the respective color across the element.<!-- Benefit of the doubt, but it hasn't seemed to work that well for me, either. --> || [[File:2916_prism.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Wheel<sup>&Dagger;</sup> || Spins, deflects balls, can jam with enough resistance (e.g. glut of balls or against other elements). || [[File:2916_wheel.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| "Good job" trophy || Static obstacle || [[File:2916_trophy.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Glass cup || Static obstacle. Container, with a nominal capacity of up to four balls (in whole or in part) within it. || [[File:2916_cup.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Cat || Swats away balls in front of itself (was added later) || [[File:2916_cat_new.png|frameless|upright=0.25]]<br />
|-<br />
! colspan="3" style="text-align:center" | Non-physical items<br />
|-<br />
| Right-facing Ponytail, with raised arms || Intangible decoration || [[File:2916_ponytail_arms.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Right-facing Ponytail, standing || Intangible decoration || [[File:2916_ponytail.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Left-facing Cueball, with raised arms || Intangible decoration || [[File:2916_cueball_arms.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Left-facing White Hat, standing || Intangible decoration || [[File:2916_whitehat.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Rightwards-facing Knit Cap, in an 'action' pose || Intangible decoration || [[File:2916_knitcap_resting.png|frameless|upright=0.25]]<br />
|-<br />
| Right-facing Knit Cap, standing || Intangible decoration || [[File:2916_knitcap.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Helmet-wearing figure, standing || Intangible decoration || [[File:2916_helmet.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Squirrel || Intangible decoration || [[File:2916_squirrel.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| "Probably Deterministic" sign || Intangible decoration || [[File:2916_deterministic.png|frameless|upright=0.25]]<br />
|-<br />
| [[1682: Bun|Bun]] || Intangible decoration || [[File:2916_rabbit.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|-<br />
| Cat || Intangible decoration || [[File:2916_cat.png|frameless|upright=0.125]]<br />
|}<br />
<br />
:<nowiki/>* &mdash; The Attractor and Repulsor are omnidirectional, but the area of effect can be resized to extend or restrict its influence. You do this by way of its bounding box with corner and mid-edged 'drag nodes' and a circular area that shows the current extent, which are only visible when the element is actively selected. This resize can be no larger than will make the box/circle touch the edges, no smaller than the fixed graphic and will always be identically proportioned in both axes.<br />
<br />
:&dagger; &mdash; The hinged scoops are strictly horizontal, on building. They will rotate away from and (spring back to) horizontal according to interactions with balls or other non-decorative items that may be placed to disturb their balance, sometimes with further interesting interactions (that may or may not be intentional or useful). There are two selectable versions of this item. (The only ''other'' object class with a clear (and practical) asymmetry, for which a mirrored chirality can be chosen from the sidebar, are the two versions of triangular "Bonk"-bumpers.)<br />
<br />
:&Dagger; &mdash; The wheel is an actively rotating element that starts off, by default, spinning anticlockwise. Pressing or tapping left/right arrow keys, when a placed wheel is selected, will adjust that wheel's rotation rate to be more/less anticlockwise. Adjusting it beyond zero rotation allows you to make it spin in the opposite direction.<br />
:Rotation can be increased well beyond the point at which the {{w|wagon-wheel effect}} occurs<!-- does it depend upon browser rendering frequency, or is there a convenient refresh-cap-rate built into the rendering engine? -->, which may make it difficult to work out the spin direction of an overspeed wheel element (and thus which arrow keys will slow or speed up its rotation, if you have forgotten), though observing its impact upon any balls that strike it ''should'' make its current spin-direction obvious.<br />
:The 'bounding editing box' will usually appear rotated, possibly according to the spinning graphic's current orientation upon selection, but remains at that (often non-orthagonal) angle even as the wheel spins (if it can) during this period of selection for editing. <br />
<br />
All other items can be manually re-angled by a 'loop node' arm extending from the bounding box. If you cannot see the 'angle node' for such a selected item, which is normally at the top of any freshly placed item but follows any re-angling that may have already applied, it could be that you have placed the item too close to the edge in which direction the node extends. To rotate it, move the object away from the edge to access the construction node (after which, you can drag the object back if required – but see below).<br />
<br />
Rotation may be limited by the {{w|minimum bounding box}} thst is the 'selection box', this is not necessarily the more flush {{w|convex hull}} of the collision-map built into the graphic. Should a corner of the bounding box need to move across the edge of the build-area, it will do nothing more than touch the edge until there is sufficient angle-drag to snap it to the angle from which that corner now comes back away from the edge; or, when it has a long straight edge currently flush with the edge boundary, it may snap to exactly 180°, in rotation, whereupon the opposite long straight edge is flush to the construction area edge. All objects that are drag-moved, similarly, cannot be moved any further than their current bounding box touching the construction-area edging. The bounding box for the rotating wheel is a notable exception to this, being not under any direct angle-control by the player. Instead, it seems to use the bounding inscribed circle that defines the wheel edge iteslf.<br />
<br />
Apart from some interactions between the hinged scoops and any element (including other hinged scoops), there is no preventative 'collision detection' between objects during user-placement, which may overlap/cover each other (the most recently spawned item graphically overlays any earlier one). The wheel object will only spin if not constrained by other physical elements (including the spokes of an adjacent wheel, not in counter-rotation) but can still be dragged and placed anywhere within the boundary of the construction area.<br />
<br />
The continuous stream(s) of balls respect all ''tangible'' objects, which includes any currently being dragged/rotated, though may prematurely vanish if forced between two items moved to touch/overlap each other. It is possible to to indirectly nudge balls by carefully moving a tangible object's surface into them (or holding them within it, e.g. the "cup"). This may be useful for rescuing temporarily stray balls (before they time-out anyway), unjamming an area with a construction-induced glut ''or'' for testing a ball-path that is not currently being fed 'naturally'. Doing so ''can'' then conceivably fulfil all the exit-gate requirements (temporarily), as it might also transiently spoil some required routing, but the manual intervention will not be possible once a 'machine' has been submit.<br />
<br />
===Non-player items===<br />
<br />
Ball containers at the bottom of the machine<br />
{|<br />
|[[File:2916_container_red.png|thumb|center|50px]]<br />
|[[File:2916_container_yellow.png|thumb|center|50px]]<br />
|[[File:2916_container_blue.png|thumb|center|50px]]<br />
|[[File:2916_container_green.png|thumb|center|50px]]<br />
|}<br />
<br />
Cueball and Megan in the ''USS Buoyancy''<br />
[[File:4d425c.png|thumb|left|150px]]<br />
<br clear=all><br />
<br />
Pit below the ''USS Buoyancy'' (not to scale)<br />
[[File:2916_pit_bottom.png|thumb|left|300px]]<br />
<br clear=all><br />
<br />
=== Color routing ===<br />
The different ball colors have different physical properties. Red balls are more bouncy than other balls, green balls are heavier, and yellow balls are lighter and slightly bouncy. The following values were extracted from the code:<br />
{| class="wikitable sortable"<br />
! Color<br />
! Mass<br />
! Density<br />
! Restitution (bounciness)<br />
! Linear damping (drag)<br />
|-<br />
! data-sort-key="00F" | Blue<br />
| 0.08<br />
| 1<br />
| 0<br />
| 0<br />
|-<br />
! data-sort-key="F00" | Red<br />
| 0.08<br />
| 1<br />
| 0.8<br />
| 0<br />
|-<br />
! data-sort-key="0F0" | Green<br />
| 0.75<br />
| 9.325<br />
| 0<br />
| 0<br />
|-<br />
! data-sort-key="FF0" | Yellow<br />
| 0.024<br />
| 0.3<br />
| 0.6<br />
| 2<br />
|}<br />
<br />
For certain combinations of inlet and outlet 'gates', it is necessary to 'cross the streams'. e.g. to direct righthand-entry balls to a lefthand-exit and vice-versa. It is possible to just construct the field to send two (or more!) sets of balls to fly across a common gap, to land on an appropriate reception area that leads to the chosen exit. But, though this is not {{w|Proton pack#Crossing the streams|completely inadvised}}, the timing of the balls cannot be guaranteed to be in sync (or, rather, anti-sync) with each other and collisions ''will'' occur, especially under the variations of delivery that might significantly alter the ballistic path across the gap. Even if the trial machine works, in isolation with a steady stream of all balls entering the field of play, once submitted it will inevitably be fed by a more chaotically-routed preceeding construction.<br />
<br />
In order to maintain sufficient correct arrivals at exits<!-- and, I believe, sufficiently few ''wrong'' arrivals... does it enumerate the 'net correct delivery rate' to establish the validity of the output? ...needs more research -->, it may be necessary to add a method of filtering the hues.<br />
<br />
This could just mean introducing a 'wrong hue trap' beyond any crossing point(s) that send the occasionally wrong ball back to the cross point (or let them time-out in a dead-end, relying upon few enough failures from the rest of the balls, along with all colliding balls that subsequently missed ''any'' chance of reaching an exit). Alternatively, two (or more) feeds of marbles could be fed through a deliberate 'sorter' that does a sufficiently reasonable job of separating the combined sets out towards their intended target-exits.<br />
<br />
The various physical qualities of the balls suggest a number of methods for redirecting separate hues to separate onward journeys. This can be done by isolating a hue from every other hue, then passing on (if necessary) to a setup extracting a different one from the remainder, and perhaps also a third time. It may also be possible to merge 'arrangements' of sorting mechanics to efficiently distribute straight into three ''or even four'' onward tracks towards the desired outputs, but that is left as an exercise to the reader.<br />
<br />
<!-- This may not be the most efficient depiction (with just four/less 'core methods', after following "See X/Y"s) but if the Prism or some other item actually adds zignificantly practical pre-"See" differences then the all-vs-all format (with the reversals/same-to-sames still there to be abbreviated/redirected) will come into its own.<br />
If you so wish, redo. e.g. as ";header + :paragraph"s or table of "!Combo(s)!!Methodology"<br />
NB:<br />
1x ! Row-start Style= | Row-start 'header'<br />
4x | *Unwikiparsable key just for editors' benefit* + optional Style= | Contents<br />
...right now, I've mostly added "vertical fan" experiences (which I find useful for all but R/B differentiation), but more about bumpers (including fan-/wheel-collisions), the positive/negative 'force objects' and of course horizontal/angled fans could also be added.<br />
--><br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
! style="background-color:black; color:white" | To separate !! style="background-color:lightblue" | Blue !! style="background-color:lightgreen" | Green !! style="background-color:yellow" | Yellow !! style="background-color:red" | Red<br />
|-<br />
! style="background-color:red" | Red<br />
| *R/B* | '''Use 'bounce''''<br />
The sole difference is how much balls will rebound from objects. Well managed and constrained ricochets should allow a sorting action.<br />
| *R/G* | '''Use mass or 'bounce''''<br />
Green balls cannot be levitated by a vertical fan. An incline across any such fan(s) will levitate only non-Greens.<br/>Green, like Blue, rebounds differently to Red. Green balls are also affected by black holes much less than all other balls.<br />
| *R/Y* | ''See Y/B''<br />
| *R/R* style="text-align: center; background-color:black; color:white" | n/a <br />
|-<br />
! style="background-color:yellow" | Yellow<br />
| *Y/B* | '''All methods'''<br />
Yellow, alone, exhibits high drag against any unforced motion.<br/>It is also unique in all other ways; e.g. can be levitated highest, against all other hues (though most profoundly against Green).<br />
| *Y/G* | ''See Y/B''<br />
| *Y/Y* style="text-align: center; background-color:black; color:white" | n/a<br />
| *Y/R* style="text-align: center; background-color:gray" | ''See Y/B'' <!-- R/Y->Y/B --><br />
|-<br />
! style="background-color:lightgreen" | Green<br />
| *G/B* | '''Use mass'''<br />
Green balls cannot be levitated by a vertical fan.<br/>There is also a not so marginal difference in density that might be exploited, such as by using black holes, which only minimally effects Green (perhaps showing an effective difference between mass of attraction and mass of inertia).<br />
| *G/G* style="text-align: center; background-color:black; color:white" | n/a<br />
| *G/Y* style="text-align: center; background-color:gray" | ''See Y/B'' <!-- Y/G->Y/B --><br />
| *G/R* style="text-align: center; background-color:gray" | See R/G<br />
|-<br />
! style="background-color:lightblue" | Blue<br />
| *B/B* style="text-align: center; background-color:black; color:white" | n/a<br />
| *B/G* style="text-align: center; background-color:gray" | See G/B<br />
| *B/Y* style="text-align: center; background-color:gray" | See Y/B<br />
| *B/R* style="text-align: center; background-color:gray" | See R/B<br />
|}<br />
<br />
Even when not strictly necessary for one's own submission, once submitted into the full playing grid the player's own contribution may find itself working with less 'pure' delivered ball-streams (from an imperfectly separating feed-in contribution). It is possible that this more interactive disruption can make the new setup behave erratically or even entirely incorrectly.<br />
<br />
It might be thought good practice (but not ''necessary'') to deliberately combine any or all inputs and do a full job of splitting them again, just in anticipation of possibly having to deal with such cross-contamination and being able to 'clean up' the onward stream(s) for the benefit of others. This would of course be particularly difficult if the isolated building-phase does not provide all four hues to 'test' against, so any speculatively added filtering would have to be added 'blind' (and only on the offchance that any anticipated incorrect balls will actually enter the arena) and without any legitimate exits to which such rejects could be shunted (therefore could accumulate, up until any 'time out' that might apply to any ball once operational as part of the combined grid).<br />
<br />
Single-input/single-output designs might not particularly require ''any'' sorting mechanism, in theory, though the unexpected 'contamination' of the system with balls of different masses/etc could perhaps introduce malfunctioning passage from the added chaos it might succumb to.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br />
<br />
:[The placeholder image shows four balls, colored red, green, yellow and blue, bouncing on top of three white blocks. Text in the center: "[visit xkcd.com to view]"]<br />
<br />
:[Cueball with lab coat, intro popup]<br />
:Cueball: Balls falling into your cell should be routed to the outputs at a steady rate.<br />
<br />
:[Cueball with lab coat, warning popup]<br />
:Cueball: For security reasons, balls that remain in your device for more than 30 seconds will be removed and destroyed.<br />
<br />
:[Cueball with lab coat, submit popup]<br />
:Cueball: Congratulations! Your contraption has passed all tests. Press [submit button] to submit it to be added to the machine!<br />
<br />
==Trivia==<br />
Once again an April Fool's Day Comic came out late, as Randall did not release this on April 1st, even though April 1st did fall on a Monday, a normal release day. It first came four days later with the Friday release on April 5th. That this is to be considered an April fools' comic, in spite of the later release, was confirmed on the xkcd Facebook page.<br />
<br />
*Randall acknowledges the people who helped him create this comic in a [[Header_text#Machine|comic-specific header text]]. <br />
**With 11 different involved apart from Randall this is by far the comic with most people involved.<br />
*Some hidden keyboard shortcuts have been found:<br />
** Follow balls: Ctrl + Alt/Option + B (now also accessible by using the button provided)<br />
** Show debug overlay: Ctrl + Shift + Win/Cmd + D<br />
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[[File:2916 Machine Facebook April fools' confirmation.png]]<br />
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{{comic discussion}}<br />
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[[Category:Cats]]</div>141.101.98.32https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1576:_I_Could_Care_Less&diff=101560Talk:1576: I Could Care Less2015-09-11T15:52:11Z<p>141.101.98.32: </p>
<hr />
<div>Another excellent comic by Randall. In case of interest to anyone a different perspective, David Mitchell did a wonder rant on this... "Dear America... | David Mitchell's SoapBox" <br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.100}}<br />
<br />
The only people who complain about this phrase are pedantic morons who have never heard such things as "head over heels". <br />
<br />
Here, I've composed a list of common vernacular/slang idioms which are valid, clear, and diametrically opposed to their original meaning:<br />
* "Head over heels"<br />
* "Break a leg"<br />
* "It's the shit"<br />
* "That's bad"<br />
* "She's phat"<br />
* "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"<br />
* "Irregardless"{{unsigned|Cwallenpoole}}<br />
:The reason I dislike "I could care less" is because it just grates me. It disrupts the flow of parsing language in my brain, throwing up a "wait, what?" exception that I have to expend far more mental energy than usual to correctly interpret the meaning of something in my head. I'm not being pedantic for the sake of uptight rule adherence and feeling superior (I play around with language and use it in non-standard forms all the time), I'm pedantic because it causes my brain real difficulties in processing the meaning of what a person's said. I mean I'm a woman with Asperger's (and a British one at that) so maybe things are a little different for me, but that's just why I personally strongly dislike this usage. The things on your list though are all different in some way to "I could care less", at least for me, for example:<br />
:* "Head over heels" - How is this an opposite meaning, exactly? Doesn't it give a rather nice metaphor for being giddy about something? Being hyperbolic and metaphorical doesn't make it an opposite meaning.<br />
:* "Break a leg" - This is closer to being an opposite, but the exact opposite to wishing an actor good luck would be to wish them bad luck. The mutation to a slightly absurdist statement marks it out as having a different meaning, especially as "break a leg" isn't really used in any other context than to wish a person good luck. While it may be the case that "I could care less" is rarely (if at all) used in its literal form, there's still nothing to mutate it and obviously mark it out as a linguistic special usage case. It's also still how I'd expect someone to phrase it if they were actually telling me they could care less about something.<br />
::: The "Vaudeville theory" on this page is where I got my understanding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_a_leg --EE [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.135|108.162.216.135]] 13:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:* "It's the shit" - Again, this is mutated. People aren't saying "it's shit", the word "the" handily tags it for my brain parser to handle differently.<br />
:* "That's bad" - Well, you've got me here actually. I mean, context (and tone) makes the meaning obvious but I can't objectively understand why this phrase doesn't cause me the same sort of difficulties at all. Perhaps because I grew up in the 80s, and a big part of my musical upbringing was Michael Jackson. ''♬ A-hee-hee! Hoo! ♬''<br />
:* "She's phat" - This is completely literal, "phat" is a slang term meaning excellent or attractive. It may be a mutation of the word "fat" or not, its etymology is uncertain, but it is indisputably a very different word now (much like how "orchids" means a species of flower rather than testicles, and "sinister" hasn't meant left in centuries).<br />
::: I understand it's an acronym: Pretty Hot And Tempting. --EE [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.135|108.162.216.135]] 13:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:* "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" - This is also completely literal, Freud meant that while he believed many things ''could'' have hidden, psychosexual meanings... that while sometimes a person might be puffing on a cigar due to some suppressed phallic desires... they could also just be puffing on a cigar because they're enjoying a nice cigar. That is to say, not everything has a hidden subconscious meaning, and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not a substitute object to fellate.<br />
:* "Irregardless" - Well yes, the suffix added to "regardless" here would usually invert its meaning, but "irregardless" isn't actually a word that existed before it came into use with its current meaning so it's not like saying a previously established and defined word (or phrase).<br />
: Anyway, while I do believe language is flexible and mutable, this particular phrase fails the easily interpretable test for my brain. I try not to be too uptight about it, but it really does irritate me in a way I can't help. Obviously my opinion is not the only one, so that's just my 1.29587 British pence on the matter :D [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.195|141.101.98.195]] 12:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
::(In response to Cwallenpoole, not 141.101.98.195, who makes good points that I didn't actually read first!) "Head over heels" is of course "head over (and down), heels (upwards) (...and continue this rotation to its logical conclusion)"; "Break a leg" has {{w|Break_a_leg|a number of possible origins}} (I always assumed wishing luck was unlucky, thus the inverse, but several "the leg not being yours" versions also ring true); "It's the shit" is using a somewhat unfortunate object (certainly if you miss out the "the") that is a short-cut off-colour superlative like "the dog's bollocks"; "bad==good" I always assumed was "what's bad to the establishment is good for our own clique"; "phat" is far too modern for me, but probably arises a similar positive superlative with some counter-culture anti-standard spelling; Cigars being cigars don't sound diametrically opposed, to me, although who knows ''what'' went on in Freud's head!; "Irregardless" is an obvious portmanteau/malapropism blend that is so easy to create. - Or so I would personally explain these.<br />
:: Here's an additional one, though, if you care for it: "Cheap at half the price". It sounds wrong if you dig deep and work out that it must mean "It is not more than or equal to twice the actually fair price you should have been asking" (i.e. it's less than double the price). But I've always internally rationalised it as really saying "If this figure you mention actually were only half of the full price you are ''truly'' asking for, the real price would still be considered cheap" (i.e. it's less than half price). Or it could just be obfuscated salesman patter, i.e. telling the truth (still making a profit, but less than a 100% mark-up) but using weasel-words and terminology that create misleading imagery in the listener's mind. i.e. No crime, no foul, should Trading Standards happen to come-a-visiting, one day... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:21, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:::''Actually'', to follow-up on myself: "It's cheap(, it being in this instance) at half the price (I would normally charge)" works best. Why has that only just occured to me? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:33, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
'I couldn't care less' is the standard formulation in the UK, for one. I always assumed that the US version was originally a variant on this which was later contracted, eg 'I could care less, but not much'.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.106|141.101.99.106]] 07:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Given that xkcd is so pro-science, I don't think the analysis here should endorse the peeve that there's anything wrong with "I could care less" (or use of "literally" as an intensifier), since most actual linguists, experts on how language works, think it's fine. See for example the list of posts dealing with the question here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21170#more-21170 And of course, the comic itself points out how petty an besides the point this kind of "correction" is. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 07:43, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
: As a linguist, regarding the claim that most actual linguists think it's fine, I'd have to respectfully say HELL NO! There is a difference between acknowledging the pragmatic implementation of the phrase, that is, its use in common parlance and the general acceptance and understanding of it, and the question wether or not it is "fine". The comic exemplifies a rather extreme version of the idea "Whatever people use is proper language" - in other words, as long as everybody involved in a conversation gets what is meant, there is no point in arguing semantics, grammer, etc. This is, however, neither the only, nor the dominant approach to language and linguistics. For exapmle, it doesn't answer the question how such an ostensibly paradox use of this phrase came to happen, where (geographically, socially, etc.) the phrase might have originated, and other puzzless regarding the origin of the phrase; this attitude also dismisses any inquiry into how humans process (or ignore) such discrepancies between literal meaning and actual use, and in general, how humans organise, structure, and conecptualise language. Additionally, this comic adds a radical deconstructional (and maybe existential) twist to this perspective by basically saying, "We're all alone, and can never really know or understand anybody else".<br />
: Such an attitude of total relativism ("Every experience ist entirely subjective and unique") makes my skin crawl. It is by far more presumptious than being a little pedantic about grammar and the use of expressions.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.176|162.158.114.176]] 11:35, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:: Agreed. Words have meanings and reducing the amount of trust you can place in those meanings decreases the value of the language. "You could never understand me, so I might as well not even try to make myself understood" is a cop-out. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.23|108.162.219.23]] 15:22, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
As it's currently written, the explanation seems to suggest that "I could care less" is the American form and "I couldn't care less" British. In fact, both forms are in use in the US, and it wouldn't surprise me if "I could care less" occurs occasionally in British English as well. There are also other English-speaking countries in the world. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 07:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:As a Brit, I can't think of any time I've heard a fellow Briton say "I could care less", it's always seemed very much an American phenomenon. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.195|141.101.98.195]] 12:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Another American chiming in here to say that I never, ever, ever say "I could care less" when I mean "I couldn't care less". Characterizing it as "*the* American form" is incorrect. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.56.167|173.245.56.167]] 15:20, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
As for the title text, I'd disagree with "The sentence is also ambiguous, as it may mean that literally or figuratively, the speaker could or couldn't care less." I think that Randall is pretty clear here: he ''should'' ('could' as in polite request) care less about irrational idioms instead of wasting time drawing comics about it. But he just can't resist. And without him doing so, we wouldn't be here. So in fact, it is nonsense for Randall to care less, and this contradiction is the point of the title text joke. But then again, I'm not native English speaker, and even less of a thought reader to understand what was on his mind. -- kavol, [[Special:Contributions/141.101.96.224|141.101.96.224]] 08:30, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:I had an alternate take on the title text. Since I could care less literally means I care some but could stand not to care as much, I took it to mean that for all the comic says about the true spirit and nature of communication and the evils of forcing linguistic absolutism onto other people, at the end of the day Randall still does care about people using correct phraseology. Yes, language is so much more than words and sounds but without clear grammatical usage rules communication could descend into chaos. This is actually one of the pivotal points in Jet Li's movie Hero which is a great commentary on this comic's profundity. The deep resonating pools of meaning that communication stores is only useful for peace and coexistence if we can all understand each other and come together as one. --[[User:R0hrshach|R0hrshach]] ([[User talk:R0hrshach|talk]]) 15:48, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I think "I could care less" is completely unheard of in Britain - I had to come here to find out what this was all about! In the UK the correction wouldn't be seen as pedantic, but rather that you had said something really rather odd, possibly for effect. I'm guessing in the US this doesn't stand out, and the phrase is "familiar" so the brain will run with it, but it just sounds really weird and jarring to me. That's not being pedantic, we toss double negatives around all over the place. Randall's point is that it how you interpret the words, rather than exact rules. So if ponytail is British then she is genuinely just trying to check that it wasn't a slip of the tongue and not meant for effect. To experience how odd it sounds its like a similar phrase "I don't give a s**t", but someone saying "I do give a s**t" (unless you guy's say that as well?!). {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.205}}<br />
<br />
: You're right, the British National Corpus has essentially no hits for "could care less" [http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/]. However, Ponytail's "correction" doesn't sound like she's unfamiliar with the expression, but more like the common pedantic objection to it, so I doubt that she's intended to be British, or that it's anything other than "showing off how well she knows some mental checklist." The Lawler link above ([http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/giveadamn.html]) discusses the example "They could give a damn about Whitewater" (as in they '''don't''' actually give a damn about it). I think you could get away with "I give a shit?" or "[Like] I give a shit!" (with the "like" elided) as implicitly negative, but no, you can't put in an affirmative "do." [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 10:05, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I'm fighting a long lost battle, I know, but can I mention my fight against the (long-standing) misuse of Decimation when the speaker/writer probably means Devastation? These days it's often assumed to be its own mathematical complement (around ~10% survival, rather than the intended ~10% depletion). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I am right with you on this one. Although I don't think the users are mistaking the Dev- for the Dec-, they have just forgotten or never learned that "decimate" had anything to with percentages. Heck, many English speakers don't grasp that percent has anything to do with percentages. [[User:NoniMausa|NoniMausa]] ([[User talk:NoniMausa|talk]]) 15:20, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Either one works, depending on how the sentence is finished:<br />
* I could care less...about this than other things.<br />
* I couldn't care less...about this than I already do.<br />
--EE [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.135|108.162.216.135]] 13:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Indeed, but "I could..." also begs the question "...but will I?" and so does not actually affirms that "I ''will'' care less (than with other things)", whilst "I couldn't..." is more imperative as in "...and therefore I wouldn't". (Unless you want to read the latter as "I couldn't care less because I actually care quite a lot already and I know that this will never change", I suppose! Oh dear, we uregently need to start using one of those totally-umambiguous ConLangs based upon predicate logic!) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 15:48, 11 September 2015 (UTC)</div>141.101.98.32https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1576:_I_Could_Care_Less&diff=101559Talk:1576: I Could Care Less2015-09-11T15:48:45Z<p>141.101.98.32: </p>
<hr />
<div>Another excellent comic by Randall. In case of interest to anyone a different perspective, David Mitchell did a wonder rant on this... "Dear America... | David Mitchell's SoapBox" <br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.100}}<br />
<br />
The only people who complain about this phrase are pedantic morons who have never heard such things as "head over heels". <br />
<br />
Here, I've composed a list of common vernacular/slang idioms which are valid, clear, and diametrically opposed to their original meaning:<br />
* "Head over heels"<br />
* "Break a leg"<br />
* "It's the shit"<br />
* "That's bad"<br />
* "She's phat"<br />
* "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"<br />
* "Irregardless"{{unsigned|Cwallenpoole}}<br />
:The reason I dislike "I could care less" is because it just grates me. It disrupts the flow of parsing language in my brain, throwing up a "wait, what?" exception that I have to expend far more mental energy than usual to correctly interpret the meaning of something in my head. I'm not being pedantic for the sake of uptight rule adherence and feeling superior (I play around with language and use it in non-standard forms all the time), I'm pedantic because it causes my brain real difficulties in processing the meaning of what a person's said. I mean I'm a woman with Asperger's (and a British one at that) so maybe things are a little different for me, but that's just why I personally strongly dislike this usage. The things on your list though are all different in some way to "I could care less", at least for me, for example:<br />
:* "Head over heels" - How is this an opposite meaning, exactly? Doesn't it give a rather nice metaphor for being giddy about something? Being hyperbolic and metaphorical doesn't make it an opposite meaning.<br />
:* "Break a leg" - This is closer to being an opposite, but the exact opposite to wishing an actor good luck would be to wish them bad luck. The mutation to a slightly absurdist statement marks it out as having a different meaning, especially as "break a leg" isn't really used in any other context than to wish a person good luck. While it may be the case that "I could care less" is rarely (if at all) used in its literal form, there's still nothing to mutate it and obviously mark it out as a linguistic special usage case. It's also still how I'd expect someone to phrase it if they were actually telling me they could care less about something.<br />
::: The "Vaudeville theory" on this page is where I got my understanding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_a_leg --EE [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.135|108.162.216.135]] 13:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:* "It's the shit" - Again, this is mutated. People aren't saying "it's shit", the word "the" handily tags it for my brain parser to handle differently.<br />
:* "That's bad" - Well, you've got me here actually. I mean, context (and tone) makes the meaning obvious but I can't objectively understand why this phrase doesn't cause me the same sort of difficulties at all. Perhaps because I grew up in the 80s, and a big part of my musical upbringing was Michael Jackson. ''♬ A-hee-hee! Hoo! ♬''<br />
:* "She's phat" - This is completely literal, "phat" is a slang term meaning excellent or attractive. It may be a mutation of the word "fat" or not, its etymology is uncertain, but it is indisputably a very different word now (much like how "orchids" means a species of flower rather than testicles, and "sinister" hasn't meant left in centuries).<br />
::: I understand it's an acronym: Pretty Hot And Tempting. --EE [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.135|108.162.216.135]] 13:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:* "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" - This is also completely literal, Freud meant that while he believed many things ''could'' have hidden, psychosexual meanings... that while sometimes a person might be puffing on a cigar due to some suppressed phallic desires... they could also just be puffing on a cigar because they're enjoying a nice cigar. That is to say, not everything has a hidden subconscious meaning, and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not a substitute object to fellate.<br />
:* "Irregardless" - Well yes, the suffix added to "regardless" here would usually invert its meaning, but "irregardless" isn't actually a word that existed before it came into use with its current meaning so it's not like saying a previously established and defined word (or phrase).<br />
: Anyway, while I do believe language is flexible and mutable, this particular phrase fails the easily interpretable test for my brain. I try not to be too uptight about it, but it really does irritate me in a way I can't help. Obviously my opinion is not the only one, so that's just my 1.29587 British pence on the matter :D [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.195|141.101.98.195]] 12:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
::(In response to Cwallenpoole, not 141.101.98.195, who makes good points that I didn't actually read first!) "Head over heels" is of course "head over (and down), heels (upwards) (...and continue this rotation to its logical conclusion)"; "Break a leg" has {{w|Break_a_leg|a number of possible origins}} (I always assumed wishing luck was unlucky, thus the inverse, but several "the leg not being yours" versions also ring true); "It's the shit" is using a somewhat unfortunate object (certainly if you miss out the "the") that is a short-cut off-colour superlative like "the dog's bollocks"; "bad==good" I always assumed was "what's bad to the establishment is good for our own clique"; "phat" is far too modern for me, but probably arises a similar positive superlative with some counter-culture anti-standard spelling; Cigars being cigars don't sound diametrically opposed, to me, although who knows ''what'' went on in Freud's head!; "Irregardless" is an obvious portmanteau/malapropism blend that is so easy to create. - Or so I would personally explain these.<br />
:: Here's an additional one, though, if you care for it: "Cheap at half the price". It sounds wrong if you dig deep and work out that it must mean "It is not more than or equal to twice the actually fair price you should have been asking" (i.e. it's less than double the price). But I've always internally rationalised it as really saying "If this figure you mention actually were only half of the full price you are ''truly'' asking for, the real price would still be considered cheap" (i.e. it's less than half price). Or it could just be obfuscated salesman patter, i.e. telling the truth (still making a profit, but less than a 100% mark-up) but using weasel-words and terminology that create misleading imagery in the listener's mind. i.e. No crime, no foul, should Trading Standards happen to come-a-visiting, one day... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:21, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:::''Actually'', to follow-up on myself: "It's cheap(, it being in this instance) at half the price (I would normally charge)" works best. Why has that only just occured to me? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:33, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
'I couldn't care less' is the standard formulation in the UK, for one. I always assumed that the US version was originally a variant on this which was later contracted, eg 'I could care less, but not much'.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.106|141.101.99.106]] 07:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Given that xkcd is so pro-science, I don't think the analysis here should endorse the peeve that there's anything wrong with "I could care less" (or use of "literally" as an intensifier), since most actual linguists, experts on how language works, think it's fine. See for example the list of posts dealing with the question here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21170#more-21170 And of course, the comic itself points out how petty an besides the point this kind of "correction" is. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 07:43, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
: As a linguist, regarding the claim that most actual linguists think it's fine, I'd have to respectfully say HELL NO! There is a difference between acknowledging the pragmatic implementation of the phrase, that is, its use in common parlance and the general acceptance and understanding of it, and the question wether or not it is "fine". The comic exemplifies a rather extreme version of the idea "Whatever people use is proper language" - in other words, as long as everybody involved in a conversation gets what is meant, there is no point in arguing semantics, grammer, etc. This is, however, neither the only, nor the dominant approach to language and linguistics. For exapmle, it doesn't answer the question how such an ostensibly paradox use of this phrase came to happen, where (geographically, socially, etc.) the phrase might have originated, and other puzzless regarding the origin of the phrase; this attitude also dismisses any inquiry into how humans process (or ignore) such discrepancies between literal meaning and actual use, and in general, how humans organise, structure, and conecptualise language. Additionally, this comic adds a radical deconstructional (and maybe existential) twist to this perspective by basically saying, "We're all alone, and can never really know or understand anybody else".<br />
: Such an attitude of total relativism ("Every experience ist entirely subjective and unique") makes my skin crawl. It is by far more presumptious than being a little pedantic about grammar and the use of expressions.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.176|162.158.114.176]] 11:35, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:: Agreed. Words have meanings and reducing the amount of trust you can place in those meanings decreases the value of the language. "You could never understand me, so I might as well not even try to make myself understood" is a cop-out. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.23|108.162.219.23]] 15:22, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
As it's currently written, the explanation seems to suggest that "I could care less" is the American form and "I couldn't care less" British. In fact, both forms are in use in the US, and it wouldn't surprise me if "I could care less" occurs occasionally in British English as well. There are also other English-speaking countries in the world. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 07:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:As a Brit, I can't think of any time I've heard a fellow Briton say "I could care less", it's always seemed very much an American phenomenon. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.195|141.101.98.195]] 12:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Another American chiming in here to say that I never, ever, ever say "I could care less" when I mean "I couldn't care less". Characterizing it as "*the* American form" is incorrect. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.56.167|173.245.56.167]] 15:20, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
As for the title text, I'd disagree with "The sentence is also ambiguous, as it may mean that literally or figuratively, the speaker could or couldn't care less." I think that Randall is pretty clear here: he ''should'' ('could' as in polite request) care less about irrational idioms instead of wasting time drawing comics about it. But he just can't resist. And without him doing so, we wouldn't be here. So in fact, it is nonsense for Randall to care less, and this contradiction is the point of the title text joke. But then again, I'm not native English speaker, and even less of a thought reader to understand what was on his mind. -- kavol, [[Special:Contributions/141.101.96.224|141.101.96.224]] 08:30, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:I had an alternate take on the title text. Since I could care less literally means I care some but could stand not to care as much, I took it to mean that for all the comic says about the true spirit and nature of communication and the evils of forcing linguistic absolutism onto other people, at the end of the day Randall still does care about people using correct phraseology. Yes, language is so much more than words and sounds but without clear grammatical usage rules communication could descend into chaos. This is actually one of the pivotal points in Jet Li's movie Hero which is a great commentary on this comic's profundity. The deep resonating pools of meaning that communication stores is only useful for peace and coexistence if we can all understand each other and come together as one. --[[User:R0hrshach|R0hrshach]] ([[User talk:R0hrshach|talk]]) 15:48, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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I think "I could care less" is completely unheard of in Britain - I had to come here to find out what this was all about! In the UK the correction wouldn't be seen as pedantic, but rather that you had said something really rather odd, possibly for effect. I'm guessing in the US this doesn't stand out, and the phrase is "familiar" so the brain will run with it, but it just sounds really weird and jarring to me. That's not being pedantic, we toss double negatives around all over the place. Randall's point is that it how you interpret the words, rather than exact rules. So if ponytail is British then she is genuinely just trying to check that it wasn't a slip of the tongue and not meant for effect. To experience how odd it sounds its like a similar phrase "I don't give a s**t", but someone saying "I do give a s**t" (unless you guy's say that as well?!). {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.205}}<br />
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: You're right, the British National Corpus has essentially no hits for "could care less" [http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/]. However, Ponytail's "correction" doesn't sound like she's unfamiliar with the expression, but more like the common pedantic objection to it, so I doubt that she's intended to be British, or that it's anything other than "showing off how well she knows some mental checklist." The Lawler link above ([http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/giveadamn.html]) discusses the example "They could give a damn about Whitewater" (as in they '''don't''' actually give a damn about it). I think you could get away with "I give a shit?" or "[Like] I give a shit!" (with the "like" elided) as implicitly negative, but no, you can't put in an affirmative "do." [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 10:05, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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I'm fighting a long lost battle, I know, but can I mention my fight against the (long-standing) misuse of Decimation when the speaker/writer probably means Devastation? These days it's often assumed to be its own mathematical complement (around ~10% survival, rather than the intended ~10% depletion). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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I am right with you on this one. Although I don't think the users are mistaking the Dev- for the Dec-, they have just forgotten or never learned that "decimate" had anything to with percentages. Heck, many English speakers don't grasp that percent has anything to do with percentages. [[User:NoniMausa|NoniMausa]] ([[User talk:NoniMausa|talk]]) 15:20, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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Either one works, depending on how the sentence is finished:<br />
* I could care less...about this than other things.<br />
* I couldn't care less...about this than I already do.<br />
--EE [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.135|108.162.216.135]] 13:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Indeed, but "I could..." also begs the question "...but will I?" and so does not affirms less than "I ''will'' care less (than with other things)", whilst "I couldn't..." is more imperative as in "...and therefore I wouldn't". (Unless you want to read the latter as "I couldn't care less because I actually care quite a lot already and I know that this will never change", I suppose! Oh dear, we uregently need to start using one of those totally-umambiguous ConLangs based upon predicate logic!) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 15:48, 11 September 2015 (UTC)</div>141.101.98.32https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1576:_I_Could_Care_Less&diff=101539Talk:1576: I Could Care Less2015-09-11T13:47:44Z<p>141.101.98.32: </p>
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<div>Another excellent comic by Randall. In case of interest to anyone a different perspective, David Mitchell did a wonder rant on this... "Dear America... | David Mitchell's SoapBox" <br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.100}}<br />
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The only people who complain about this phrase are pedantic morons who have never heard such things as "head over heels". <br />
<br />
Here, I've composed a list of common vernacular/slang idioms which are valid, clear, and diametrically opposed to their original meaning:<br />
* "Head over heels"<br />
* "Break a leg"<br />
* "It's the shit"<br />
* "That's bad"<br />
* "She's phat"<br />
* "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"<br />
* "Irregardless"{{unsigned|Cwallenpoole}}<br />
:The reason I dislike "I could care less" is because it just grates me. It disrupts the flow of parsing language in my brain, throwing up a "wait, what?" exception that I have to expend far more mental energy than usual to correctly interpret the meaning of something in my head. I'm not being pedantic for the sake of uptight rule adherence and feeling superior (I play around with language and use it in non-standard forms all the time), I'm pedantic because it causes my brain real difficulties in processing the meaning of what a person's said. I mean I'm a woman with Asperger's (and a British one at that) so maybe things are a little different for me, but that's just why I personally strongly dislike this usage. The things on your list though are all different in some way to "I could care less", at least for me, for example:<br />
:* "Head over heels" - How is this an opposite meaning, exactly? Doesn't it give a rather nice metaphor for being giddy about something? Being hyperbolic and metaphorical doesn't make it an opposite meaning.<br />
:* "Break a leg" - This is closer to being an opposite, but the exact opposite to wishing an actor good luck would be to wish them bad luck. The mutation to a slightly absurdist statement marks it out as having a different meaning, especially as "break a leg" isn't really used in any other context than to wish a person good luck. While it may be the case that "I could care less" is rarely (if at all) used in its literal form, there's still nothing to mutate it and obviously mark it out as a linguistic special usage case. It's also still how I'd expect someone to phrase it if they were actually telling me they could care less about something.<br />
:* "It's the shit" - Again, this is mutated. People aren't saying "it's shit", the word "the" handily tags it for my brain parser to handle differently.<br />
:* "That's bad" - Well, you've got me here actually. I mean, context (and tone) makes the meaning obvious but I can't objectively understand why this phrase doesn't cause me the same sort of difficulties at all. Perhaps because I grew up in the 80s, and a big part of my musical upbringing was Michael Jackson. ''♬ A-hee-hee! Hoo! ♬''<br />
:* "She's phat" - This is completely literal, "phat" is a slang term meaning excellent or attractive. It may be a mutation of the word "fat" or not, its etymology is uncertain, but it is indisputably a very different word now (much like how "orchids" means a species of flower rather than testicles, and "sinister" hasn't meant left in centuries).<br />
:* "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" - This is also completely literal, Freud meant that while he believed many things ''could'' have hidden, psychosexual meanings... that while sometimes a person might be puffing on a cigar due to some suppressed phallic desires... they could also just be puffing on a cigar because they're enjoying a nice cigar. That is to say, not everything has a hidden subconscious meaning, and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not a substitute object to fellate.<br />
:* "Irregardless" - Well yes, the suffix added to "regardless" here would usually invert its meaning, but "irregardless" isn't actually a word that existed before it came into use with its current meaning so it's not like saying a previously established and defined word (or phrase).<br />
: Anyway, while I do believe language is flexible and mutable, this particular phrase fails the easily interpretable test for my brain. I try not to be too uptight about it, but it really does irritate me in a way I can't help. Obviously my opinion is not the only one, so that's just my 1.29587 British pence on the matter :D [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.195|141.101.98.195]] 12:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
::(In response to Cwallenpoole, not 141.101.98.195, who makes good points that I didn't actually read first!) "Head over heels" is of course "head over (and down), heels (upwards) (...and continue this rotation to its logical conclusion)"; "Break a leg" has {{w|Break_a_leg|a number of possible origins}} (I always assumed wishing luck was unlucky, thus the inverse, but several "the leg not being yours" versions also ring true); "It's the shit" is using a somewhat unfortunate object (certainly if you miss out the "the") that is a short-cut off-colour superlative like "the dog's bollocks"; "bad==good" I always assumed was "what's bad to the establishment is good for our own clique"; "phat" is far too modern for me, but probably arises a similar positive superlative with some counter-culture anti-standard spelling; Cigars being cigars don't sound diametrically opposed, to me, although who knows ''what'' went on in Freud's head!; "Irregardless" is an obvious portmanteau/malapropism blend that is so easy to create. - Or so I would personally explain these.<br />
:: Here's an additional one, though, if you care for it: "Cheap at half the price". It sounds wrong if you dig deep and work out that it must mean "It is not more than or equal to twice the actually fair price you should have been asking" (i.e. it's less than double the price). But I've always internally rationalised it as really saying "If this figure you mention actually were only half of the full price you are ''truly'' asking for, the real price would still be considered cheap" (i.e. it's less than half price). Or it could just be obfuscated salesman patter, i.e. telling the truth (still making a profit, but less than a 100% mark-up) but using weasel-words and terminology that create misleading imagery in the listener's mind. i.e. No crime, no foul, should Trading Standards happen to come-a-visiting, one day... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:21, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:::''Actually'', to follow-up on myself: "It's cheap(, it being in this instance) at half the price (I would normally charge)" works best. Why has that only just occured to me? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:33, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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'I couldn't care less' is the standard formulation in the UK, for one. I always assumed that the US version was originally a variant on this which was later contracted, eg 'I could care less, but not much'.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.106|141.101.99.106]] 07:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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Given that xkcd is so pro-science, I don't think the analysis here should endorse the peeve that there's anything wrong with "I could care less" (or use of "literally" as an intensifier), since most actual linguists, experts on how language works, think it's fine. See for example the list of posts dealing with the question here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21170#more-21170 And of course, the comic itself points out how petty an besides the point this kind of "correction" is. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 07:43, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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: As a linguist, regarding the claim that most actual linguists think it's fine, I'd have to respectfully say HELL NO! There is a difference between acknowledging the pragmatic implementation of the phrase, that is, its use in common parlance and the general acceptance and understanding of it, and the question wether or not it is "fine". The comic exemplifies a rather extreme version of the idea "Whatever people use is proper language" - in other words, as long as everybody involved in a conversation gets what is meant, there is no point in arguing semantics, grammer, etc. This is, however, neither the only, nor the dominant approach to language and linguistics. For exapmle, it doesn't answer the question how such an ostensibly paradox use of this phrase came to happen, where (geographically, socially, etc.) the phrase might have originated, and other puzzless regarding the origin of the phrase; this attitude also dismisses any inquiry into how humans process (or ignore) such discrepancies between literal meaning and actual use, and in general, how humans organise, structure, and conecptualise language. Additionally, this comic adds a radical deconstructional (and maybe existential) twist to this perspective by basically saying, "We're all alone, and can never really know or understand anybody else".<br />
: Such an attitude of total relativism ("Every experience ist entirely subjective and unique") makes my skin crawl. It is by far more presumptious than being a little pedantic about grammar and the use of expressions.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.176|162.158.114.176]] 11:35, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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As it's currently written, the explanation seems to suggest that "I could care less" is the American form and "I couldn't care less" British. In fact, both forms are in use in the US, and it wouldn't surprise me if "I could care less" occurs occasionally in British English as well. There are also other English-speaking countries in the world. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 07:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:As a Brit, I can't think of any time I've heard a fellow Briton say "I could care less", it's always seemed very much an American phenomenon. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.195|141.101.98.195]] 12:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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As for the title text, I'd disagree with "The sentence is also ambiguous, as it may mean that literally or figuratively, the speaker could or couldn't care less." I think that Randall is pretty clear here: he ''should'' ('could' as in polite request) care less about irrational idioms instead of wasting time drawing comics about it. But he just can't resist. And without him doing so, we wouldn't be here. So in fact, it is nonsense for Randall to care less, and this contradiction is the point of the title text joke. But then again, I'm not native English speaker, and even less of a thought reader to understand what was on his mind. -- kavol, [[Special:Contributions/141.101.96.224|141.101.96.224]] 08:30, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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I think "I could care less" is completely unheard of in Britain - I had to come here to find out what this was all about! In the UK the correction wouldn't be seen as pedantic, but rather that you had said something really rather odd, possibly for effect. I'm guessing in the US this doesn't stand out, and the phrase is "familiar" so the brain will run with it, but it just sounds really weird and jarring to me. That's not being pedantic, we toss double negatives around all over the place. Randall's point is that it how you interpret the words, rather than exact rules. So if ponytail is British then she is genuinely just trying to check that it wasn't a slip of the tongue and not meant for effect. To experience how odd it sounds its like a similar phrase "I don't give a s**t", but someone saying "I do give a s**t" (unless you guy's say that as well?!). {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.205}}<br />
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: You're right, the British National Corpus has essentially no hits for "could care less" [http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/]. However, Ponytail's "correction" doesn't sound like she's unfamiliar with the expression, but more like the common pedantic objection to it, so I doubt that she's intended to be British, or that it's anything other than "showing off how well she knows some mental checklist." The Lawler link above ([http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/giveadamn.html]) discusses the example "They could give a damn about Whitewater" (as in they '''don't''' actually give a damn about it). I think you could get away with "I give a shit?" or "[Like] I give a shit!" (with the "like" elided) as implicitly negative, but no, you can't put in an affirmative "do." [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 10:05, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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I'm fighting a long lost battle, I know, but can I mention my fight against the (long-standing) misuse of Decimation when the speaker/writer probably means Devastation? These days it's often assumed to be its own mathematical complement (around ~10% survival, rather than the intended ~10% depletion). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)</div>141.101.98.32https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1576:_I_Could_Care_Less&diff=101538Talk:1576: I Could Care Less2015-09-11T13:33:22Z<p>141.101.98.32: </p>
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<div>Another excellent comic by Randall. In case of interest to anyone a different perspective, David Mitchell did a wonder rant on this... "Dear America... | David Mitchell's SoapBox" <br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.100}}<br />
<br />
The only people who complain about this phrase are pedantic morons who have never heard such things as "head over heels". <br />
<br />
Here, I've composed a list of common vernacular/slang idioms which are valid, clear, and diametrically opposed to their original meaning:<br />
* "Head over heels"<br />
* "Break a leg"<br />
* "It's the shit"<br />
* "That's bad"<br />
* "She's phat"<br />
* "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"<br />
* "Irregardless"{{unsigned|Cwallenpoole}}<br />
:The reason I dislike "I could care less" is because it just grates me. It disrupts the flow of parsing language in my brain, throwing up a "wait, what?" exception that I have to expend far more mental energy than usual to correctly interpret the meaning of something in my head. I'm not being pedantic for the sake of uptight rule adherence and feeling superior (I play around with language and use it in non-standard forms all the time), I'm pedantic because it causes my brain real difficulties in processing the meaning of what a person's said. I mean I'm a woman with Asperger's (and a British one at that) so maybe things are a little different for me, but that's just why I personally strongly dislike this usage. The things on your list though are all different in some way to "I could care less", at least for me, for example:<br />
:* "Head over heels" - How is this an opposite meaning, exactly? Doesn't it give a rather nice metaphor for being giddy about something? Being hyperbolic and metaphorical doesn't make it an opposite meaning.<br />
:* "Break a leg" - This is closer to being an opposite, but the exact opposite to wishing an actor good luck would be to wish them bad luck. The mutation to a slightly absurdist statement marks it out as having a different meaning, especially as "break a leg" isn't really used in any other context than to wish a person good luck. While it may be the case that "I could care less" is rarely (if at all) used in its literal form, there's still nothing to mutate it and obviously mark it out as a linguistic special usage case. It's also still how I'd expect someone to phrase it if they were actually telling me they could care less about something.<br />
:* "It's the shit" - Again, this is mutated. People aren't saying "it's shit", the word "the" handily tags it for my brain parser to handle differently.<br />
:* "That's bad" - Well, you've got me here actually. I mean, context (and tone) makes the meaning obvious but I can't objectively understand why this phrase doesn't cause me the same sort of difficulties at all. Perhaps because I grew up in the 80s, and a big part of my musical upbringing was Michael Jackson. ''♬ A-hee-hee! Hoo! ♬''<br />
:* "She's phat" - This is completely literal, "phat" is a slang term meaning excellent or attractive. It may be a mutation of the word "fat" or not, its etymology is uncertain, but it is indisputably a very different word now (much like how "orchids" means a species of flower rather than testicles, and "sinister" hasn't meant left in centuries).<br />
:* "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" - This is also completely literal, Freud meant that while he believed many things ''could'' have hidden, psychosexual meanings... that while sometimes a person might be puffing on a cigar due to some suppressed phallic desires... they could also just be puffing on a cigar because they're enjoying a nice cigar. That is to say, not everything has a hidden subconscious meaning, and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not a substitute object to fellate.<br />
:* "Irregardless" - Well yes, the suffix added to "regardless" here would usually invert its meaning, but "irregardless" isn't actually a word that existed before it came into use with its current meaning so it's not like saying a previously established and defined word (or phrase).<br />
: Anyway, while I do believe language is flexible and mutable, this particular phrase fails the easily interpretable test for my brain. I try not to be too uptight about it, but it really does irritate me in a way I can't help. Obviously my opinion is not the only one, so that's just my 1.29587 British pence on the matter :D [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.195|141.101.98.195]] 12:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
::(In response to Cwallenpoole, not 141.101.98.195, who makes good points that I didn't actually read first!) "Head over heels" is of course "head over (and down), heels (upwards) (...and continue this rotation to its logical conclusion)"; "Break a leg" has {{w|Break_a_leg|a number of possible origins}} (I always assumed wishing luck was unlucky, thus the inverse, but several "the leg not being yours" versions also ring true); "It's the shit" is using a somewhat unfortunate object (certainly if you miss out the "the") that is a short-cut off-colour superlative like "the dog's bollocks"; "bad==good" I always assumed was "what's bad to the establishment is good for our own clique"; "phat" is far too modern for me, but probably arises a similar positive superlative with some counter-culture anti-standard spelling; Cigars being cigars don't sound diametrically opposed, to me, although who knows ''what'' went on in Freud's head!; "Irregardless" is an obvious portmanteau/malapropism blend that is so easy to create. - Or so I would personally explain these.<br />
:: Here's an additional one, though, if you care for it: "Cheap at half the price". It sounds wrong if you dig deep and work out that it must mean "It is not more than or equal to twice the actually fair price you should have been asking" (i.e. it's less than double the price). But I've always internally rationalised it as really saying "If this figure you mention actually were only half of the full price you are ''truly'' asking for, the real price would still be considered cheap" (i.e. it's less than half price). Or it could just be obfuscated salesman patter, i.e. telling the truth (still making a profit, but less than a 100% mark-up) but using weasel-words and terminology that create misleading imagery in the listener's mind. i.e. No crime, no foul, should Trading Standards happen to come-a-visiting, one day... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:21, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:::''Actually'', to follow-up on myself: "It's cheap(, it being in this instance) at half the price (I would normally charge)" works best. Why has that only just occured to me? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:33, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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'I couldn't care less' is the standard formulation in the UK, for one. I always assumed that the US version was originally a variant on this which was later contracted, eg 'I could care less, but not much'.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.106|141.101.99.106]] 07:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Given that xkcd is so pro-science, I don't think the analysis here should endorse the peeve that there's anything wrong with "I could care less" (or use of "literally" as an intensifier), since most actual linguists, experts on how language works, think it's fine. See for example the list of posts dealing with the question here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21170#more-21170 And of course, the comic itself points out how petty an besides the point this kind of "correction" is. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 07:43, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
: As a linguist, regarding the claim that most actual linguists think it's fine, I'd have to respectfully say HELL NO! There is a difference between acknowledging the pragmatic implementation of the phrase, that is, its use in common parlance and the general acceptance and understanding of it, and the question wether or not it is "fine". The comic exemplifies a rather extreme version of the idea "Whatever people use is proper language" - in other words, as long as everybody involved in a conversation gets what is meant, there is no point in arguing semantics, grammer, etc. This is, however, neither the only, nor the dominant approach to language and linguistics. For exapmle, it doesn't answer the question how such an ostensibly paradox use of this phrase came to happen, where (geographically, socially, etc.) the phrase might have originated, and other puzzless regarding the origin of the phrase; this attitude also dismisses any inquiry into how humans process (or ignore) such discrepancies between literal meaning and actual use, and in general, how humans organise, structure, and conecptualise language. Additionally, this comic adds a radical deconstructional (and maybe existential) twist to this perspective by basically saying, "We're all alone, and can never really know or understand anybody else".<br />
: Such an attitude of total relativism ("Every experience ist entirely subjective and unique") makes my skin crawl. It is by far more presumptious than being a little pedantic about grammar and the use of expressions.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.176|162.158.114.176]] 11:35, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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As it's currently written, the explanation seems to suggest that "I could care less" is the American form and "I couldn't care less" British. In fact, both forms are in use in the US, and it wouldn't surprise me if "I could care less" occurs occasionally in British English as well. There are also other English-speaking countries in the world. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 07:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:As a Brit, I can't think of any time I've heard a fellow Briton say "I could care less", it's always seemed very much an American phenomenon. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.195|141.101.98.195]] 12:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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As for the title text, I'd disagree with "The sentence is also ambiguous, as it may mean that literally or figuratively, the speaker could or couldn't care less." I think that Randall is pretty clear here: he ''should'' ('could' as in polite request) care less about irrational idioms instead of wasting time drawing comics about it. But he just can't resist. And without him doing so, we wouldn't be here. So in fact, it is nonsense for Randall to care less, and this contradiction is the point of the title text joke. But then again, I'm not native English speaker, and even less of a thought reader to understand what was on his mind. -- kavol, [[Special:Contributions/141.101.96.224|141.101.96.224]] 08:30, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
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I think "I could care less" is completely unheard of in Britain - I had to come here to find out what this was all about! In the UK the correction wouldn't be seen as pedantic, but rather that you had said something really rather odd, possibly for effect. I'm guessing in the US this doesn't stand out, and the phrase is "familiar" so the brain will run with it, but it just sounds really weird and jarring to me. That's not being pedantic, we toss double negatives around all over the place. Randall's point is that it how you interpret the words, rather than exact rules. So if ponytail is British then she is genuinely just trying to check that it wasn't a slip of the tongue and not meant for effect. To experience how odd it sounds its like a similar phrase "I don't give a s**t", but someone saying "I do give a s**t" (unless you guy's say that as well?!). {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.205}}<br />
<br />
: You're right, the British National Corpus has essentially no hits for "could care less" [http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/]. However, Ponytail's "correction" doesn't sound like she's unfamiliar with the expression, but more like the common pedantic objection to it, so I doubt that she's intended to be British, or that it's anything other than "showing off how well she knows some mental checklist." The Lawler link above ([http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/giveadamn.html]) discusses the example "They could give a damn about Whitewater" (as in they '''don't''' actually give a damn about it). I think you could get away with "I give a shit?" or "[Like] I give a shit!" (with the "like" elided) as implicitly negative, but no, you can't put in an affirmative "do." [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 10:05, 11 September 2015 (UTC)</div>141.101.98.32https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1576:_I_Could_Care_Less&diff=101537Talk:1576: I Could Care Less2015-09-11T13:23:00Z<p>141.101.98.32: </p>
<hr />
<div>Another excellent comic by Randall. In case of interest to anyone a different perspective, David Mitchell did a wonder rant on this... "Dear America... | David Mitchell's SoapBox" <br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.100}}<br />
<br />
The only people who complain about this phrase are pedantic morons who have never heard such things as "head over heels". <br />
<br />
Here, I've composed a list of common vernacular/slang idioms which are valid, clear, and diametrically opposed to their original meaning:<br />
* "Head over heels"<br />
* "Break a leg"<br />
* "It's the shit"<br />
* "That's bad"<br />
* "She's phat"<br />
* "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"<br />
* "Irregardless"{{unsigned|Cwallenpoole}}<br />
:The reason I dislike "I could care less" is because it just grates me. It disrupts the flow of parsing language in my brain, throwing up a "wait, what?" exception that I have to expend far more mental energy than usual to correctly interpret the meaning of something in my head. I'm not being pedantic for the sake of uptight rule adherence and feeling superior (I play around with language and use it in non-standard forms all the time), I'm pedantic because it causes my brain real difficulties in processing the meaning of what a person's said. I mean I'm a woman with Asperger's (and a British one at that) so maybe things are a little different for me, but that's just why I personally strongly dislike this usage. The things on your list though are all different in some way to "I could care less", at least for me, for example:<br />
:* "Head over heels" - How is this an opposite meaning, exactly? Doesn't it give a rather nice metaphor for being giddy about something? Being hyperbolic and metaphorical doesn't make it an opposite meaning.<br />
:* "Break a leg" - This is closer to being an opposite, but the exact opposite to wishing an actor good luck would be to wish them bad luck. The mutation to a slightly absurdist statement marks it out as having a different meaning, especially as "break a leg" isn't really used in any other context than to wish a person good luck. While it may be the case that "I could care less" is rarely (if at all) used in its literal form, there's still nothing to mutate it and obviously mark it out as a linguistic special usage case. It's also still how I'd expect someone to phrase it if they were actually telling me they could care less about something.<br />
:* "It's the shit" - Again, this is mutated. People aren't saying "it's shit", the word "the" handily tags it for my brain parser to handle differently.<br />
:* "That's bad" - Well, you've got me here actually. I mean, context (and tone) makes the meaning obvious but I can't objectively understand why this phrase doesn't cause me the same sort of difficulties at all. Perhaps because I grew up in the 80s, and a big part of my musical upbringing was Michael Jackson. ''♬ A-hee-hee! Hoo! ♬''<br />
:* "She's phat" - This is completely literal, "phat" is a slang term meaning excellent or attractive. It may be a mutation of the word "fat" or not, its etymology is uncertain, but it is indisputably a very different word now (much like how "orchids" means a species of flower rather than testicles, and "sinister" hasn't meant left in centuries).<br />
:* "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" - This is also completely literal, Freud meant that while he believed many things ''could'' have hidden, psychosexual meanings... that while sometimes a person might be puffing on a cigar due to some suppressed phallic desires... they could also just be puffing on a cigar because they're enjoying a nice cigar. That is to say, not everything has a hidden subconscious meaning, and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not a substitute object to fellate.<br />
:* "Irregardless" - Well yes, the suffix added to "regardless" here would usually invert its meaning, but "irregardless" isn't actually a word that existed before it came into use with its current meaning so it's not like saying a previously established and defined word (or phrase).<br />
: Anyway, while I do believe language is flexible and mutable, this particular phrase fails the easily interpretable test for my brain. I try not to be too uptight about it, but it really does irritate me in a way I can't help. Obviously my opinion is not the only one, so that's just my 1.29587 British pence on the matter :D [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.195|141.101.98.195]] 12:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
::(In response to Cwallenpoole, not 141.101.98.195, who makes good points that I didn't actually read first!) "Head over heels" is of course "head over (and down), heels (upwards) (...and continue this rotation to its logical conclusion)"; "Break a leg" has {{w|Break_a_leg|a number of possible origins}} (I always assumed wishing luck was unlucky, thus the inverse, but several "the leg not being yours" versions also ring true); "It's the shit" is using a somewhat unfortunate object (certainly if you miss out the "the") that is a short-cut off-colour superlative like "the dog's bollocks"; "bad==good" I always assumed was "what's bad to the establishment is good for our own clique"; "phat" is far too modern for me, but probably arises a similar positive superlative with some counter-culture anti-standard spelling; Cigars being cigars don't sound diametrically opposed, to me, although who knows ''what'' went on in Freud's head!; "Irregardless" is an obvious portmanteau/malapropism blend that is so easy to create. - Or so I would personally explain these.<br />
:: Here's an additional one, though, if you care for it: "Cheap at half the price". It sounds wrong if you dig deep and work out that it must mean "It is not more than or equal to twice the actually fair price you should have been asking" (i.e. it's less than double the price). But I've always internally rationalised it as really saying "If this figure you mention actually were only half of the full price you are ''truly'' asking for, the real price would still be considered cheap" (i.e. it's less than half price). Or it could just be obfuscated salesman patter, i.e. telling the truth (still making a profit, but less than a 100% mark-up) but using weasel-words and terminology that create misleading imagery in the listener's mind. i.e. No crime, no foul, should Trading Standards happen to come-a-visiting, one day... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:21, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
'I couldn't care less' is the standard formulation in the UK, for one. I always assumed that the US version was originally a variant on this which was later contracted, eg 'I could care less, but not much'.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.106|141.101.99.106]] 07:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Given that xkcd is so pro-science, I don't think the analysis here should endorse the peeve that there's anything wrong with "I could care less" (or use of "literally" as an intensifier), since most actual linguists, experts on how language works, think it's fine. See for example the list of posts dealing with the question here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21170#more-21170 And of course, the comic itself points out how petty an besides the point this kind of "correction" is. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 07:43, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
: As a linguist, regarding the claim that most actual linguists think it's fine, I'd have to respectfully say HELL NO! There is a difference between acknowledging the pragmatic implementation of the phrase, that is, its use in common parlance and the general acceptance and understanding of it, and the question wether or not it is "fine". The comic exemplifies a rather extreme version of the idea "Whatever people use is proper language" - in other words, as long as everybody involved in a conversation gets what is meant, there is no point in arguing semantics, grammer, etc. This is, however, neither the only, nor the dominant approach to language and linguistics. For exapmle, it doesn't answer the question how such an ostensibly paradox use of this phrase came to happen, where (geographically, socially, etc.) the phrase might have originated, and other puzzless regarding the origin of the phrase; this attitude also dismisses any inquiry into how humans process (or ignore) such discrepancies between literal meaning and actual use, and in general, how humans organise, structure, and conecptualise language. Additionally, this comic adds a radical deconstructional (and maybe existential) twist to this perspective by basically saying, "We're all alone, and can never really know or understand anybody else".<br />
: Such an attitude of total relativism ("Every experience ist entirely subjective and unique") makes my skin crawl. It is by far more presumptious than being a little pedantic about grammar and the use of expressions.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.176|162.158.114.176]] 11:35, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
As it's currently written, the explanation seems to suggest that "I could care less" is the American form and "I couldn't care less" British. In fact, both forms are in use in the US, and it wouldn't surprise me if "I could care less" occurs occasionally in British English as well. There are also other English-speaking countries in the world. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 07:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:As a Brit, I can't think of any time I've heard a fellow Briton say "I could care less", it's always seemed very much an American phenomenon. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.195|141.101.98.195]] 12:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
As for the title text, I'd disagree with "The sentence is also ambiguous, as it may mean that literally or figuratively, the speaker could or couldn't care less." I think that Randall is pretty clear here: he ''should'' ('could' as in polite request) care less about irrational idioms instead of wasting time drawing comics about it. But he just can't resist. And without him doing so, we wouldn't be here. So in fact, it is nonsense for Randall to care less, and this contradiction is the point of the title text joke. But then again, I'm not native English speaker, and even less of a thought reader to understand what was on his mind. -- kavol, [[Special:Contributions/141.101.96.224|141.101.96.224]] 08:30, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
I think "I could care less" is completely unheard of in Britain - I had to come here to find out what this was all about! In the UK the correction wouldn't be seen as pedantic, but rather that you had said something really rather odd, possibly for effect. I'm guessing in the US this doesn't stand out, and the phrase is "familiar" so the brain will run with it, but it just sounds really weird and jarring to me. That's not being pedantic, we toss double negatives around all over the place. Randall's point is that it how you interpret the words, rather than exact rules. So if ponytail is British then she is genuinely just trying to check that it wasn't a slip of the tongue and not meant for effect. To experience how odd it sounds its like a similar phrase "I don't give a s**t", but someone saying "I do give a s**t" (unless you guy's say that as well?!). {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.205}}<br />
<br />
: You're right, the British National Corpus has essentially no hits for "could care less" [http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/]. However, Ponytail's "correction" doesn't sound like she's unfamiliar with the expression, but more like the common pedantic objection to it, so I doubt that she's intended to be British, or that it's anything other than "showing off how well she knows some mental checklist." The Lawler link above ([http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/giveadamn.html]) discusses the example "They could give a damn about Whitewater" (as in they '''don't''' actually give a damn about it). I think you could get away with "I give a shit?" or "[Like] I give a shit!" (with the "like" elided) as implicitly negative, but no, you can't put in an affirmative "do." [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 10:05, 11 September 2015 (UTC)</div>141.101.98.32https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1576:_I_Could_Care_Less&diff=101536Talk:1576: I Could Care Less2015-09-11T13:21:39Z<p>141.101.98.32: </p>
<hr />
<div>Another excellent comic by Randall. In case of interest to anyone a different perspective, David Mitchell did a wonder rant on this... "Dear America... | David Mitchell's SoapBox" <br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.100}}<br />
<br />
The only people who complain about this phrase are pedantic morons who have never heard such things as "head over heels". <br />
<br />
Here, I've composed a list of common vernacular/slang idioms which are valid, clear, and diametrically opposed to their original meaning:<br />
* "Head over heels"<br />
* "Break a leg"<br />
* "It's the shit"<br />
* "That's bad"<br />
* "She's phat"<br />
* "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"<br />
* "Irregardless"{{unsigned|Cwallenpoole}}<br />
:The reason I dislike "I could care less" is because it just grates me. It disrupts the flow of parsing language in my brain, throwing up a "wait, what?" exception that I have to expend far more mental energy than usual to correctly interpret the meaning of something in my head. I'm not being pedantic for the sake of uptight rule adherence and feeling superior (I play around with language and use it in non-standard forms all the time), I'm pedantic because it causes my brain real difficulties in processing the meaning of what a person's said. I mean I'm a woman with Asperger's (and a British one at that) so maybe things are a little different for me, but that's just why I personally strongly dislike this usage. The things on your list though are all different in some way to "I could care less", at least for me, for example:<br />
:* "Head over heels" - How is this an opposite meaning, exactly? Doesn't it give a rather nice metaphor for being giddy about something? Being hyperbolic and metaphorical doesn't make it an opposite meaning.<br />
:* "Break a leg" - This is closer to being an opposite, but the exact opposite to wishing an actor good luck would be to wish them bad luck. The mutation to a slightly absurdist statement marks it out as having a different meaning, especially as "break a leg" isn't really used in any other context than to wish a person good luck. While it may be the case that "I could care less" is rarely (if at all) used in its literal form, there's still nothing to mutate it and obviously mark it out as a linguistic special usage case. It's also still how I'd expect someone to phrase it if they were actually telling me they could care less about something.<br />
:* "It's the shit" - Again, this is mutated. People aren't saying "it's shit", the word "the" handily tags it for my brain parser to handle differently.<br />
:* "That's bad" - Well, you've got me here actually. I mean, context (and tone) makes the meaning obvious but I can't objectively understand why this phrase doesn't cause me the same sort of difficulties at all. Perhaps because I grew up in the 80s, and a big part of my musical upbringing was Michael Jackson. ''♬ A-hee-hee! Hoo! ♬''<br />
:* "She's phat" - This is completely literal, "phat" is a slang term meaning excellent or attractive. It may be a mutation of the word "fat" or not, its etymology is uncertain, but it is indisputably a very different word now (much like how "orchids" means a species of flower rather than testicles, and "sinister" hasn't meant left in centuries).<br />
:* "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" - This is also completely literal, Freud meant that while he believed many things ''could'' have hidden, psychosexual meanings... that while sometimes a person might be puffing on a cigar due to some suppressed phallic desires... they could also just be puffing on a cigar because they're enjoying a nice cigar. That is to say, not everything has a hidden subconscious meaning, and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not a substitute object to fellate.<br />
:* "Irregardless" - Well yes, the suffix added to "regardless" here would usually invert its meaning, but "irregardless" isn't actually a word that existed before it came into use with its current meaning so it's not like saying a previously established and defined word (or phrase).<br />
: Anyway, while I do believe language is flexible and mutable, this particular phrase fails the easily interpretable test for my brain. I try not to be too uptight about it, but it really does irritate me in a way I can't help. Obviously my opinion is not the only one, so that's just my 1.29587 British pence on the matter :D [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.195|141.101.98.195]] 12:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
::(In response to Cwallenpoole, not 141.101.98.195, who makes good points that I didn't actually read first!) "Head over heels" is of course "head over (and down), heels (upwards)"; "Break a leg" has {w|Break_a_leg|a number of possible origins} (I always assumed wishing luck was unlucky, thus the inverse, but several "the leg not being yours" versions also ring true); "It's the shit" is using a somewhat unfortunate object (certainly if you miss out the "the") that is a short-cut off-colour superlative like "the dog's bollocks"; "bad==good" I always assumed was "what's bad to the establishment is good for our own clique"; "phat" is far too modern for me, but probably arises a similar positive superlative with some counter-culture anti-standard spelling; Cigars being cigars don't sound diametrically opposed, to me, although who knows ''what'' went on in Freud's head!; "Irregardless" is an obvious portmanteau/malapropism blend that is so easy to create. - Or so I would personally explain these.<br />
:: Here's an additional one, though, if you care for it: "Cheap at half the price". It sounds wrong if you dig deep and work out that it must mean "It is not more than or equal to twice the actually fair price you should have been asking" (i.e. it's less than double the price). But I've always internally rationalised it as really saying "If this figure you mention actually were only half of the full price you are ''truly'' asking for, the real price would still be considered cheap" (i.e. it's less than half price). Or it could just be obfuscated salesman patter, i.e. telling the truth (still making a profit, but less than a 100% mark-up) but using weasel-words and terminology that create misleading imagery in the listener's mind. i.e. No crime, no foul, should Trading Standards happen to come-a-visiting, one day... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 13:21, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
'I couldn't care less' is the standard formulation in the UK, for one. I always assumed that the US version was originally a variant on this which was later contracted, eg 'I could care less, but not much'.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.106|141.101.99.106]] 07:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Given that xkcd is so pro-science, I don't think the analysis here should endorse the peeve that there's anything wrong with "I could care less" (or use of "literally" as an intensifier), since most actual linguists, experts on how language works, think it's fine. See for example the list of posts dealing with the question here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21170#more-21170 And of course, the comic itself points out how petty an besides the point this kind of "correction" is. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 07:43, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
: As a linguist, regarding the claim that most actual linguists think it's fine, I'd have to respectfully say HELL NO! There is a difference between acknowledging the pragmatic implementation of the phrase, that is, its use in common parlance and the general acceptance and understanding of it, and the question wether or not it is "fine". The comic exemplifies a rather extreme version of the idea "Whatever people use is proper language" - in other words, as long as everybody involved in a conversation gets what is meant, there is no point in arguing semantics, grammer, etc. This is, however, neither the only, nor the dominant approach to language and linguistics. For exapmle, it doesn't answer the question how such an ostensibly paradox use of this phrase came to happen, where (geographically, socially, etc.) the phrase might have originated, and other puzzless regarding the origin of the phrase; this attitude also dismisses any inquiry into how humans process (or ignore) such discrepancies between literal meaning and actual use, and in general, how humans organise, structure, and conecptualise language. Additionally, this comic adds a radical deconstructional (and maybe existential) twist to this perspective by basically saying, "We're all alone, and can never really know or understand anybody else".<br />
: Such an attitude of total relativism ("Every experience ist entirely subjective and unique") makes my skin crawl. It is by far more presumptious than being a little pedantic about grammar and the use of expressions.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.176|162.158.114.176]] 11:35, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
As it's currently written, the explanation seems to suggest that "I could care less" is the American form and "I couldn't care less" British. In fact, both forms are in use in the US, and it wouldn't surprise me if "I could care less" occurs occasionally in British English as well. There are also other English-speaking countries in the world. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 07:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:As a Brit, I can't think of any time I've heard a fellow Briton say "I could care less", it's always seemed very much an American phenomenon. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.195|141.101.98.195]] 12:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
As for the title text, I'd disagree with "The sentence is also ambiguous, as it may mean that literally or figuratively, the speaker could or couldn't care less." I think that Randall is pretty clear here: he ''should'' ('could' as in polite request) care less about irrational idioms instead of wasting time drawing comics about it. But he just can't resist. And without him doing so, we wouldn't be here. So in fact, it is nonsense for Randall to care less, and this contradiction is the point of the title text joke. But then again, I'm not native English speaker, and even less of a thought reader to understand what was on his mind. -- kavol, [[Special:Contributions/141.101.96.224|141.101.96.224]] 08:30, 11 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
I think "I could care less" is completely unheard of in Britain - I had to come here to find out what this was all about! In the UK the correction wouldn't be seen as pedantic, but rather that you had said something really rather odd, possibly for effect. I'm guessing in the US this doesn't stand out, and the phrase is "familiar" so the brain will run with it, but it just sounds really weird and jarring to me. That's not being pedantic, we toss double negatives around all over the place. Randall's point is that it how you interpret the words, rather than exact rules. So if ponytail is British then she is genuinely just trying to check that it wasn't a slip of the tongue and not meant for effect. To experience how odd it sounds its like a similar phrase "I don't give a s**t", but someone saying "I do give a s**t" (unless you guy's say that as well?!). {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.205}}<br />
<br />
: You're right, the British National Corpus has essentially no hits for "could care less" [http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/]. However, Ponytail's "correction" doesn't sound like she's unfamiliar with the expression, but more like the common pedantic objection to it, so I doubt that she's intended to be British, or that it's anything other than "showing off how well she knows some mental checklist." The Lawler link above ([http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/giveadamn.html]) discusses the example "They could give a damn about Whitewater" (as in they '''don't''' actually give a damn about it). I think you could get away with "I give a shit?" or "[Like] I give a shit!" (with the "like" elided) as implicitly negative, but no, you can't put in an affirmative "do." [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.19|162.158.92.19]] 10:05, 11 September 2015 (UTC)</div>141.101.98.32https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1572:_xkcd_Survey&diff=101529Talk:1572: xkcd Survey2015-09-11T12:39:18Z<p>141.101.98.32: </p>
<hr />
<div>Mildly interesting to note that the ordering of most of the checkbox/radiobutton lists randomise each time the survery is loaded. Also, there is at least one other comic where Randall comments about not having figured out HTML imagemaps. Anyone remember which? --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 10:52, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:It was in one of his "under the logo" news bars, about him starting What If, iirc --[[User:Aescula|Aescula]] ([[User talk:Aescula|talk]]) 11:28, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
I wonder how many people, on reading 'Type "cat" here:', typed '"cat" here:'? I know I did... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.214|141.101.98.214]] 11:58, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Guilty...--[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 12:08, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
: Me too... However you could have typed '"cat" here:', as well... (/edit: I wonder how many different entries the survey's result will reveal) (/edit2: I did not read properly... sorry. I typed '"cat"' not '"cat" here:' -.-)[[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 12:27, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
: I typed meow -[[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.86|141.101.105.86]] 12:41, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
::Where it said "Type five random words" I typed "five random words" (without the quotes).<br />
::--[[User:Lou Crazy|Lou Crazy]] ([[User talk:Lou Crazy|talk]]) 11:24, 3 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:::My first thought there was "Correct Horse Battery Staple"[[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.47|162.158.255.47]] 04:42, 4 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
::::Those were the first four of my five "random words". -- [[User:Pne|Pne]] ([[User talk:Pne|talk]]) 17:18, 4 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
::::Man, why didn't I think of that? [[User:Sobsz|Sobsz]] ([[User talk:Sobsz|talk]]) 06:37, 5 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:::I tried to make it at least a bit random, rather than arbitrary, with a bash script: <nowiki>for _ in 1 2 3 4 5; do sed -n "$(((((32768*RANDOM)+RANDOM) % $(wc -l </usr/share/dict/words) ) + 1))p" /usr/share/dict/words; done</nowiki> -- ferret [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.121|141.101.99.121]] 11:58, 5 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
Not sure if it was just me, but the comic wasn't a link at all! The cursor changed into a No cursor for me everytime I mouseover'd the comic. I went to survey using the "Bonus Link!" below the comic page. [[User:Brilliantnut|Brilliantnut]] ([[User talk:Brilliantnut|talk]]) 12:01, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Never mind, this was probably due to the WebComics reader extension that I have in my browser. [[User:Brilliantnut|Brilliantnut]] ([[User talk:Brilliantnut|talk]]) 12:03, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
From hearing people on reddit comment about not being able to completely fill the text box (not just the visual box) with the error "Answer too long", it's caused by a 10k character limit. Presumably by Google Docs. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.192|108.162.249.192]] 13:18, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Can we get a note on the title text? Something about the [[1493]]-like vacuousness of "Big Data for a Big Planet". Also, I added a defn for "revergent"; future researchers, anyone who knows that one is probably a fern biologist. [[User:FourViolas|FourViolas]] ([[User talk:FourViolas|talk]]) 20:51, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:I just did a bit on the title text, but I don't think that I did the best job at explaining it, so someone should look over what I did.[[User:Mulan15262|Mulan15262]] ([[User talk:Mulan15262|talk]]) 23:32, 4 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
;Validation<br />
The validation choices are interesting.<br />
* "Enter a number between 1 and 100" rejects numbers outside this range (e.g. -1) but also reject valid responses (e.g. &pi;).<br />
* "Enter your age" and "Enter the number of $SIBLING" accept invalid responses such as -1. [[User:Paddles|Paddles]] ([[User talk:Paddles|talk]]) 13:29, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:I (with ''fairly'' honest intention) tried to give non-numeric answers to the two Think Of A Number questions and my the age one (honestly, I had to actually think about that one, for a moment) and found them restricted to numbers only. So obviously Randall's not ''so'' subversive as to allow free text. (BTW, I've ''only'' driven 'stick shift', though an old friend of mine has just gotten an automatic, I think for the first time, which said was rather posh of him.) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.108|141.101.99.108]] 15:55, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
I used an HTML inspector tool to create a unique response to one of the radio button questions. The form claimed to submit successfully; it should be obvious in the results if it worked. - [[User:Frankie|Frankie]] ([[User talk:Frankie|talk]]) 16:29, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
;Identification<br />
"it's possible that someone may be able to identify you by looking at your responses"<br />
Then why send those informations to Google ? I find the idea of thee survey interesting but why Google doc ? There are other options like Lime Survey. [[User:Seipas|Seipas]] ([[User talk:Seipas|talk]]) 13:37, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
: Given the stated intention to make the collected dataset available publicly, there's no information-security reason to prefer another survey tool over Google. [[User:Paddles|Paddles]] ([[User talk:Paddles|talk]]) 14:21, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:: Technically Google could de-anonymize the data if you're logged in or otherwise identifiable when submitting the survey. When Randall publishes the data set it can be completely anonymized. Not that I care if Google knows I claim to consider myself half-cat, half-person. [[User:Jestempies|Jestempies]] ([[User talk:Jestempies|talk]]) 21:15, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
;Not a transcript<br />
This is mildly interesting, but it is not a transcript. Transcripts are meant mainly for blind people and search engines. Different letter sizes and a frame are not needed. [[User:Xhfz|Xhfz]] ([[User talk:Xhfz|talk]]) 12:54, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:{| style="text-align:center; border:1pt black solid;"<br />
|| Introducing <p style="font-size:large; margin:0px;"> '''THE XKCD SURVEY''' </p> A search for weird correlations <br/> Note: This survey is anonymous, but <br/> <font color="red"> all responses will be posted publicly </font> <br/> so people can play with the data. <br/> '''Click here to''' <br/> '''take the survey''' <p style="font-size:x-small"> Or click here, or here. <br/> The whole comic is a link, <br/> because I still haven't gotten <br/> the hang of HTML imagemaps. </p><br />
|}<br />
::The transcript is not only for blind people. And an enhanced layout doesn't harm them but instead it would help them. A speech synthesizer would tell them something like "headline" or "small text at bottom" so that the impaired people would get a much better feeling of the comic. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 15:12, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
I wonder how many people included "battery, horse, staple, correct" in the five random words box. {{unsigned ip|173.245.56.64}}<br />
:I typed ');drop table survey; -- at the end of the random characters text box. I must have been the first person to think of that because the survey was still working. [[User:Jeremyp|Jeremyp]] ([[User talk:Jeremyp|talk]]) 13:46, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:I typed "cat, cat, cat, cat, cat" in random words and "lion, cat, dog, horse, '''''lettuce'''''" for the random animals. Yes, I was trolling. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.150|108.162.221.150]] 06:38, 4 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I wish it was funny. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.148|108.162.241.148]] 16:20, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
;Tables Vs Bulleted List<br />
<br />
The list of questions and possible responses has been added to the explanation by myself and xhfz, in different formats. I went for a wikitable, xhfz used a bulleted list. Rather than just overwrite each other, I think we need to have a discussion on which is the best choice. The reasons I believe a wikitable is the best option:<br />
:*Far better expandability, in anticipation of survey results<br />
:*More structured and neater presentation<br />
In general I tend to lean towards tables, but it is probably a constructive discussion to have for the wiki as a whole. I would be interested to hear opinions of bulleted list vs tables in these types of situation.--[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 13:42, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
If we have a table we need colspan instead of rowspan. On the other hand a table is very difficult to maintain. In addition, the table didn't have space for explanations (another column, maybe). [[User:Xhfz|Xhfz]] ([[User talk:Xhfz|talk]]) 13:44, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:If you used colspan, questions like "How many of these 20 words do you know" would be excessively wide. Perhaps a combination of colspan and rowspan, or simply a single cell with the responses listed as comma seperated list. As far as adding a column for explanations, its pretty trivial. What I'm getting at is that perhaps the format of a table would need to be optimised, but that is entirely feasible.<br />
:I agree with you as far as tables being more intimidating to edit and maintain, but once set up they aren't that bad.<br />
:Bulleted lists (to me at least) look messy, and tend to lack a coherent structure. As more information is added, sub-levels and sub-sub-levels are added without much thought as to the overall intent. --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 14:14, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
By colspan I mean this:<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
!Question<br />
!Possible Answers<br />
|-<br />
|colspan="2"|When you think about stuff on the internet, where do you picture it being physically located? Even if you know it's not really how things work, is there a place you imagine websites and social media posts sitting before you look at them? If so, where is it?<br />
|-<br />
|<br />
|''Multi-line text box'' <br />
|- <br />
|colspan="2"|Which of these words do you know the meaning of? <br />
|-<br />
|<br />
|Slickle <br />
|-<br />
|<br />
|Rife <br />
|-<br />
|<br />
|Soliloquy <br />
|-<br />
|<br />
|Fination <br />
|-<br />
|<br />
|Stipple <br />
|-<br />
|<br />
|Peristeronic <br />
|-<br />
|<br />
|Modicum <br />
|-<br />
|<br />
|Trephony <br />
|-<br />
|<br />
|Tribution <br />
|-<br />
|colspan="2"|Have you ever thrown out all your different pairs of socks/underwear, bought a bunch of replacements that were all one kind, and then told all your friends how great it was and how they should do it too? <br />
|-<br />
|<br />
|Yes <br />
|-<br />
|<br />
|No <br />
|-<br />
|<br />
|I did the throwing out thing, but didn't talk to everyone about it <br />
|-<br />
|<br />
|No, but I'm totally doing that now <br />
|}<br />
[[User:Xhfz|Xhfz]] ([[User talk:Xhfz|talk]]) 14:44, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
: Yeah, if someone just did that, that would be great. [[User:Nk22|The Twenty-second. The Not So Only. The Nathan/Nk22]] ([[User talk:Nk22|talk]]) 18:54, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
;Missing questions<br />
Something notably missing which would have greatly helped later analysis was a question about where someone is - Country and/or State. Some of the questions and answers will be differently understood because of that (eg meaning if 'sandwich') --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.65|141.101.98.65]] 14:23, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I think that is the whole point though, to provide a data set that actively attempts to ''prevent'' the obvious simple analysis. There are plenty of statistics on how people from place A are more likely to do thing B. What I want to know is "How many people who would class a taco as a sandwich and can drive stick shift are able to juggle?". Also, is it true that most people think they are above average drivers? --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 15:09, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
::If you're actually curious about those questions, the answers are "0" and "yes". No one classes a taco as a sandwich. The only thing that this data set will provide is how many sandwich-<u>trolls</u> ''claim'' to be able to drive stick shifts and juggle.--[[User:Antipudder|Antipudder]] ([[User talk:Talk/talk/talk|talk]]) 15:10, 7 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
;Subsections were added for ease of editing<br />
<br />
You can delete the subsections later. [[User:Xhfz|Xhfz]] ([[User talk:Xhfz|talk]]) 15:30, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Ok, I agree on that. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 15:42, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
;I think we shouldn't force the reader to go to Wikipedia<br />
<br />
I added explanations in "Activities" and twice they were deleted. Why? [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1572:_xkcd_Survey&diff=prev&oldid=100879] [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1572%3A_xkcd_Survey&diff=100921&oldid=100920] [[User:Xhfz|Xhfz]] ([[User talk:Xhfz|talk]]) 15:39, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Personally, I think those activities are so easily understood, that adding an "explanation" is not necessary. I think wiki links are sufficient, so that if somehow people don't know what the activities are, they can go look. --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 15:45, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
::I know 20,000 words in [http://testyourvocab.com testyourvocab.com]. I also know soliloquy, modicum, amiable and salient. I had never heard of dunk, sheet bend, bowline, or stick shift, but I know the meaning of manual transmission without going to Wikipedia. [[User:Xhfz|Xhfz]] ([[User talk:Xhfz|talk]]) 15:47, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:::For the record, it wasn't me who deleted the explanations. The fact that Randall included those words in his survey without any explanation shows that they are fairly common words. In the context of the question, the meaning becomes clearer (Tie a sheet bend or bowline = its very likely those are knots), and if people still don't know, they can click on the wiki link. --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 16:14, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:::From a different perspective, I ''understand'' a number of the words and terms, even though they aren't the ones I'd use, locally. i.e. gas/petrol, stick-shift/gears, cell phone/mobile phone, soda/pop (and where would cordial, to be diluted with water, sit in that list of drinks..? either way, I chose "fruit juice" so maybe that covers it). Also I think I would call an "open-faced sandwich" a {{w|Sm%C3%B6rg%C3%A5sbord|'Smorgasbord'}}, but that seems to be a childhood misunderstanding of what the scandinavian term actually represents (the whole buffet, not any individual item bread-and-topping construct that you end up with on your platter). "Condiments" obviously means something differently, too. For me that's the likes of salt, pepper and vinegar - along with other chopped herbs at a push - but from context it sounds like it includes dips such as mayonnaise, and/or sauces like ketchup/brown/tartar. A different world, truly! [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.108|141.101.99.108]] 17:46, 2 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
::::It's a poorly worded question to which people in some countries would answer the opposite of that intended because of the way the question is worded. Very few cars run on gas (a friend's van runs on LPG), but many use petrol or diesel. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.239.32|198.41.239.32]] 05:55, 3 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:::::Fellow Brits? No, IP of the latter appears to be Arizona (or at least the ISP, in Phoenix). Strange. Anyway, thanks to copious imports of 'Merkin TV and film, it'd be obvious to most(/all?) people I know that gas(olene) would be the common word in the US for the fuel that I'd call petrol(eum). Or so I was under the impression of, until now. Of course there is ''actual'' gas (modern LPG or [https://www.pinterest.com/pin/155585362099248762/ wartime contingencies]) but so far liquid hydrocarbons seem to still be king, inclusive of DERV. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.188|141.101.98.188]] 07:51, 3 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I changed them to Wikipedia links because it seemed neater, uses the hypertext features of HTML for the reason they were intended, and seemed more in line with general style here. No-one is forced to go to Wikipedia, but providing useful hyperlinks instead of having to explain everything inline is generally considered A Good Thing &tm;. It wasn't intended as a personal affront. This is a wiki - we can all edit to make things (hopefully) a bit better. [[User:Paddles|Paddles]] ([[User talk:Paddles|talk]]) 12:40, 3 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
;Can we access the results now?<br />
<br />
Are the contents available at a known URL? I use Google Docs but have never done a survey before...[[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.24|141.101.105.24]] 06:03, 3 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
;Maple syrup<br />
<br />
The current article comments that the "Maple syrup" option to the ''any that you drink'' question is a joke. Are you sure? I have met several people (to clarify, adults, I'm not even considering children) who drink straight maple syrup, and many times more who pour maple syrup into their drinks (notably coffee, tea, and milk are the most common I see people pour it into). There are webpages devoted to maple syrup drink recipes (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) and people debating other people's opinions on whether maple syrup is better drunk hot, cold, or room temperature. There is a possibility that Randall was not intending this question as a joke since it seems to be "a thing" among some people. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.220.11|108.162.220.11]] 12:16, 3 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:I was very delighted to see maple syrup under the drink options! When I started the survey with my co-workers I came to the condiments question and was explaining to them how I even drink maple syrup. So I was very giddy when I came to the drink question! Yes, I do drink maple syrup and not as a joke, usually at night and only Grade B. --[[User:R0hrshach|R0hrshach]] ([[User talk:R0hrshach|talk]]) 15:40, 4 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
;Regarding "Difficult words" not currently linked<br />
*Trephony - Another (equally obselete) term for Trepanning. The not listed directly on the Wikipedia page for the topic (the article uses gerund forms in discussing other names for the procedure), but the related gerund "trephining" is listed. Cf. also Trephine, which was the actual surgical instrument used for these procedures (and for which Trephony occasionally served as an alternate spelling).<br />
*Tribution appears to be the result of converting the [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tribute#Verb tribute (when used as a verb)]into a noun by use of the [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-tion#English -tion suffix]. While this is a standard form, it is also nonsense (as the nounal form is also tribute).<br />
*Unitory - An obsolete spelling unitary used in mathematics, chiefly British. Several examples appear in the of the papers of the [https://books.google.com/books?id=Wl1BAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA5-PA27&lpg=RA5-PA27&dq=unitory+method&source=bl&ots=rfRKJXAJqV&sig=Wsr_gV7xG6Airah9Lx1M0hi-7Zc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDsQ6AEwBmoVChMInd_R9qTbxwIVChU-Ch36IAh_#v=onepage&q=unitory%20method&f=false 1913 Imperial Education Conference] (I've linked to the instance on page 97 as an example). You will still occasionally see this spelling in use when discussing the Unitary Method in former British Colonies.<br />
*Cadine -- the french term also saw some use in English as a loanword. Cf. [https://books.google.com/books?id=4yz-Y-_OOO0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=cadine&f=false page 146 of Volume 99 of The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Chronicle (published 1829)] for several examples.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.36|108.162.216.36]] 16:54, 3 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
;Apricity: this appears to be an obsolete, poetic and/or pompous word to describe the sun's heat in winter. It shows up in several dictionaries from the 1700's through the Victorian era; e.g., [http://books.google.com/books?id=CFBGAAAAYAAJ&pg=PT76&dq=apricity#v=onepage&q=apricity&f=false Bailey 1775] - Anonymous<br />
<br />
Should we move the survey section to a different page (e.g. [[1572: xkcd Survey/Survey]])? It takes up most of the current page. {{User:17jiangz1/signature|13:10, 04 September 2015}}<br />
:The survey section is a transcript, so I moved it appropriately for now. {{User:17jiangz1/signature|13:14, 04 September 2015}}<br />
::The survey is not a transcript. And even if it was it is not the comic and should thus not be listed as part of this comics transcript. But the survey section is used to explain the survey and this is certainly not supposed to happen in a transcript. I have moved it above the transcript again. But it could be an idea to make separate survey page and link to it from the comic page. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 21:39, 5 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
If one is free to skip any question, how does the survey distinguish between a skiped question and a question for which the answer is nothing, e.g. if one does not dislike any named beverage? --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.241|162.158.90.241]] 11:47, 8 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
'''[[Difficult words]]'''<br />
Does anyone have access to a good bio-org chemistry reference? I seem to remember "-fination" as a valid suffix for O-Chem usage for fixation of certain kinds of reactions (ex. Pearson ole-fination), but I don't remember if there is a general meaning of the term. {{unsigned ip|108.162.216.36}}<br />
<br />
;HTML image maps<br />
As a web designer, I'm certain that a big part of the joke is that almost no one uses image maps anymore -- the technique of cutting up images and laying them out using CSS or HTML tables (the latter now mostly obsolete) won out back in the 90s. The trouble you have to go to to create an image map is nowhere near worth the payoff. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.91|199.27.128.91]] 21:30, 8 September 2015 (UTC)<br />
:When it comes to ''that'', I know someone who (in the mid 2000s!) made a web-page by rendering the entire page (including all text-as-raster, and it was ''mostly'' text) into a single image file (vastly over-assuming the consistency of the end-user's screen/browser-window dimensions), and image-mapped it. Yes, CSS already existed, and even without I would never have used it. I did a byte-for-byte comparison with an HTML-rendered version (even though that has its own inefficiences in sprawling across multiple bytes, in <LONGTAGNAMES></LONGTAGNAMES> in particular) and it was horrific. Never mind horribly unfriendly to anyone with a non-standard/special-needs browsing environment!<br />
:Which might in part be why (more intelligent!) image-mapping never took off in the adolescent years of the web (once it became predominantly dial-up by home users, rather than those sat directly upon academic/etc LANs sitting on high=bandwidth fat pipes to the internet in its infancy, with bandwidth already used (outside of 'proper' usage)to pre/early Eternal September propgation of Usenet and UUEncoded images sent over email), even though quite intelligent usages of the art had been long pioneered for such purposes as literal (i.e. geographical!) map-clicking rather than the Mysterious Meat navigation method.<br />
:But then it might also have died out after the initial bloom of Geocities, when the tedious last remnants of the <BLINK> tag phenomenon merged into the ubiquity of the over-use of animated GIFs depicting some form of "Website under construction" message, and there were so many other tricks to (over-)use in a person's supposedly interesting self-publicising page. Ahh... nostalgia!<br />
:Seriously, however, looking at the design elements of site design, e.g. curve-effect button/frame areas and scrolling galleries, amongst other things, and a simple markup imagemap (if not coordinate-sending to be processed by the server-side scripting through URL-query format) has outlived its easy usefulness (for the coder in a hurry, who has so many other tool-scripts available) and now we need this complicated and often vastly obfuscated client-side scripting to make the gloriously laid-out web-pages react (consistently) to the end-user in the way intended. I'm sure you make sure your web pages work in the likes of Lynx and even screen-readers (where practical, and of course imagemaps always did work horribly for both of these!), but modern bells-and-whistles have progressed far beyond imagemap tomfoolery. Not always because the new method is ''better'', for a given instance, but that's progress for ya. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.32|141.101.98.32]] 12:39, 11 September 2015 (UTC)</div>141.101.98.32https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1500:_Upside-Down_Map&diff=86657Talk:1500: Upside-Down Map2015-03-19T21:28:18Z<p>141.101.98.32: </p>
<hr />
<div>What's the point? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.173|108.162.249.173]] 09:59, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:In my opinion, part of the joke which is hinted at but never explicitly stated in the explanation, is that normal south-up orientation maps are just as "correct" as their north-up counterparts, but they still appear "wrong" to us. The fact that correctly projected south-up maps feel "wrong" supposedly reveals some deep-seeded biases about how we view the world, or at least shows that we have very limited and rigid worldviews. The joke here is that this map isn't just showing the world differently, it's blatantly distorting the geography of the entire planet. At a glance, you may think it's a typical south-up map, but the humor is revealed as you notice all the new associations created by the rotation. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.194|173.245.54.194]] 14:13, 19 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Australia is still the "right" way up! {{unsigned|Thematkinson}}<br />
:No it is not. But Tasmania stays put as it is an island. Maybe that has caused some confusion? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:46, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:What sort of projection have you been looking at if you think these three look the same when rotated 180 degrees? I'd forgive someone for thinking that about New Guinea, but for the other three it just seems laughable. Especially if you know what "map of Tasmamia" is slang for. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.190|108.162.249.190]] 14:13, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
"People often say that maps with the south pole at the top will change your perspective." Is this really something that people ''often'' say? I've never heard anyone say it... --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 10:06, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:I have heard it... --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:46, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:I agree with Pudder. Who are these people and how often to they say it? Explanation edited. - Equinox [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.120|199.27.128.120]] 15:23, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Is perhaps the comic's explanation about a previous map version? The comment about Australia being the normal way is wrong. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.80|108.162.254.80]] 10:10, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:could be - I see Australia as being pivoted just like all the other continents (?) {{unsigned|Brettpeirce}}<br />
::Agreed - see my comment above when this was first mentioned here. Now it has been corrected in the explain. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:46, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Should the title text not say South Korea, rather than North Korea? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.101|141.101.106.101]] 10:41, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Well it is North Korea we have issues with today. But maybe it is not the former South Korea instead...? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:46, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
UK was rotated, Japan was not rotated. Sardinia, Cyprus and other are missing. Hmm... is it a pre-alpha release?<br />
[[Special:Contributions/188.114.103.245|188.114.103.245]] 13:18, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Japan sure looks rotated. Maybe it just looks similar upside-down? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.180|108.162.237.180]] 13:45, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Japan is rotated. As a Sardinian, I noticed the absence of Sardinia (and Sicily) and now I'm wondering whether I'd live near Japan (my sister would be extremely happy about it) or near China [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.246|108.162.229.246]] 14:59, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
::Then why northern Hokkaido is towards north, and only Honshu is rotated? [[Special:Contributions/188.114.103.245|188.114.103.245]] 16:19, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:::It is not that Japan is rotated. It is the individual island that are rotated. So the island to the north would still be to the north. And also this map is not so detailed that you can expect to see the difference if some fairly rotational symmetric islands are rotated. Also - thee are many islands that are not included. But for Sardinia and Cyprus. Since they are islands they will not be rotated with the Mediterranean Sea. So they would stay far away from Japan. Progably under some part of Asia where there is no seas to show them. The fact that many island must disappear after the rotation, and also the likeliness that some islands that are shown should have disappeared is mentioned in the explain --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 18:33, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
The explanation is inaccurate in a few spots in the "jokes" section. Specifically, all the points that say "X is now on the east/west (formerly west/east) of Y" are inaccurate. The whole point is that the spatial relationships of the land masses are unchanged with respect to the cardinal directions. In other words, Cuba is still off the east coast of the US, it's just that Seattle is where Miami used to be. {{unsigned ip|173.245.54.193}}<br />
:Well someone changed this back from the true version. I have changed this back. Also the main part of this "joke" was that it was now next to the Canada. It would just be wrong to say it was only next to the Canada as was written originally, since it is next to the border between US and Canada. Made a small correction also for this to be more clear. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 18:37, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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I always wanted a height-inverted map (ocean trenches are mountain ridges, and vice-versa), with realistic national boundaries set upon the land (that was sea) based on where they might have existed in the sea (that, for us, is land). But I suppose one could go ''too'' far in such fripperies... ;) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.63|141.101.98.63]] 14:44, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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I thought this was a reference to clickbait based on the caption, where you are told it will change your perspective, and it didn't, it was just a stupid map. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.173|199.27.128.173]] 16:19, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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Yay comic 1500!<br />
17:48, 18 March 2015 (UTC) or 12:48, 18 March 2015 (EDT)<br />
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It's not on the map, but I'm curious what happens to Antarctica in this little exercise? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.53|108.162.216.53]] 17:05, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Not that much probably since it is faily centered on the pole and except for one "tail" it is rather rotational symmetric. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 18:40, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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What's the island southwest of Newfoundland? It looks large for Prince Edward Island, and most of Nova Scotia isn't an island. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.160|173.245.52.160]] 19:08, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:While Randall will know which squiggles arise from which real-world features, I reckon there'll be some contention regarding the small islands, given the resolution of the 'pen and ink' sketch doesn't do justice to the smallest (and often least familiar, to start with) perimiter-shapes. I've just gone and edited the bit about "The Falkland Islands" (mainly because I didn't like the technical "''it'' is", grammatically... maybe the better solution would have been for me to just to have made it "The Falkland Islands group|archipelago", though) and while I was there allowed for the fact that it's actually hard to say what that single island blob is precisely intended to be representative of. Note all the other little rocks also out there (but not generally lumped into the same island group), like South Georgia, and the nigh-on numberless ones of similar scale elsewhere around the planet, like the Canaries. Or the Hawaiian islands (if those aren't represented by the above-questioned blob).[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.63|141.101.98.63]] 19:18, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
::Wouldn't it be rather Colombia and maybe Venezuela that could claim the Falklands? Ecuador and especially Peru are way too in the North I think. --[[User:Nezmo|Nezmo]] ([[User talk:Nezmo|talk]]) 21:02, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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Can someone explain why an upside down map changes your perspective? I've seen many before but no explanation of why it is any different. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.222|141.101.98.222]] 07:19, 19 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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There are three main reasons I have heard for upside down maps changing one's perspective, although only the first one is inherently a question of vertical orientation. 1) We associate up-ness with superiority. Because we read top down and therefore habitually see what's at the top of a page as being first, but also as evidenced by phrases like "things are looking up", "at the top of her field", "coming out on top", "high up in the organisation", "top of the food chain", etc. etc. Wikipedia mention this in their page on South-up Map Orientations, and cite a paper "Spatial Metaphor and Real Estate North–South Location Biases Housing Preference", which claims to have demonstrated it with various studies. You can google the paper and read its abstract for free. 2) The fact that most maps one sees in Europe put Europe in the centre makes everything else seem a bit peripheral. 3) The projection increases the size of countries towards the top and bottom of the map, relative to those in the middle, so that, for example, Greenland and Africa look about the same size, when really Africa is 14 times larger (that factoid comes from an article in The Economist entitled "The True True Size of Africa"). Although this doesn't significantly increase the relative size of Europe and America, because they're about in the middle, it does make e.g. Canada and Russia seem much larger than they are, and massively diminish the relative size of Africa. I imagine, speculatively, that this could be a big deal for Africans who feel that the importance of their continent is overlooked. (I'm not familiar with the protocol on this page, so I haven't included links to the articles I mentioned, but anyone who wants to can easily do so.) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.165|108.162.229.165]] 10:53, 19 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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In my opinion, the point of this comic is an observation of a fact how much of our deep-rooted and regarded as inevitable inter-human dealings and problems are utterly determined by purely random factors such as Earth plate tectonics and the actual nick of time (in the geological scale) at which human civilization developed into a global one. -- [[Special:Contributions/141.101.88.225|141.101.88.225]] 12:50, 19 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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I interpreted it as a reference to the book by (recently deceased) Terry Pratchett, 'Nation', one of the messages of which was "changing the way you look at the map changes your perspective".</div>141.101.98.32https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1455:_Trolley_Problem&diff=801371455: Trolley Problem2014-12-03T12:34:47Z<p>141.101.98.32: Addition of Cueballs discovery, as seen on his tablet.</p>
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<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1455<br />
| date = December 3, 2014<br />
| title = Trolley Problem<br />
| image = trolley_problem.png<br />
| titletext = For $5 I promise not to orchestrate this situation, and for $25 I promise not to take further advantage of this ability to create incentives.<br />
}}<br />
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==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Just a rough draft.}}<br />
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The {{w|trolley problem}} is a thought experiment often posed in {{w|philosophy}} to test the morals of the person in question, and to explain the systems of thinking. The full problem is that there are 5 people on one track, and 1 innocent worker on an adjacent track. The trolley (or train) is out of control and can be diverted from 5 people by using a lever, with the consequence of killing the 1 worker. <br />
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This results of [http://www.philosophyexperiments.com/fatman/Default4.aspx this test] report that around 86% of respondents choose the utilitarian option of diverting the trolley. Utilitarian ethics holds that the morally correct option is that which results in the most amount of good for most amount of people, and as such will choose to sacrifice the 1 worker for 5 people.<br />
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After discovering this problem on the [http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3556#comic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal] webcomic, [[Cueball]] presents it to sadistic [[Black Hat]], Black Hat questions whether he would need to get up to reach the lever and how much it would interrupt his other activities. This indicates that, typically for him, he cares nothing at all about what happens to other people. This response is linked to another theory in philosophy, that of {{w|self interest}} or {{w|egoism}}, in which a person will choose the action with the most benefit for them personally.<br />
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Black Hat then takes over being the questioner by posing an offer: he promises to divert the train if Cueball is one of the five endangered people, provided that Cueball pays him $1 now. Again Black Hat is turning the situation to his own benefit, in this case monetary. The joke is that the Trolley Problem is to test one's morals, but Black Hat doesn't have any, or is willing to sell them out very cheaply. Cueball decides that there is no point posing the problem to someone like Black Hat and gives up.<br />
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The title text follows this up by continuing Black Hat's offers. For $5 he will not deliberately arrange this situation and for $25 he will quit looking for further incentives. These attempts to exploit the thought exercise for personal gain further demonstrate Black Hat's cynical amorality.<br />
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On the other hand, the fact that Black Hat offers to divert the trolley for only $1 if Cueball would be one of those saved may imply that Black Hat has some affection/acceptance for Cueball as a friend.<br />
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==Transcript==<br />
:Cueball: Ever heard of The trolley problem?<br />
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:Black hat: No. What is it?<br />
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:Cueball: A trolley is barreling towards five helpless people on the tracks. You can pull a lever to direct it onto another track, but-<br />
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:Black hat: Can I reach the lever without getting up?<br />
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:Cueball: Wait, I'm not-<br />
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:Black hat: In this scenario, how busy am I?<br />
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:Cueball: I guess I forgot who I was talking to.<br />
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:Black hat: For a dollar, I'll promise to pull the lever if one of the five people is you.<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
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[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Philosophy]]<br />
[[Category:Comics with color]]</div>141.101.98.32