explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2726: Methodology Trial

2023-01-19T09:50:33Z

172.71.242.35: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2726
| date = January 18, 2023
| title = Methodology Trial
| image = methodology_trial_2x.png
| imagesize = 339x459px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = If you think THAT'S unethical, you should see the stuff we approved via our Placebo IRB.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a PLACEBO RESEARCHER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

When testing the efficacy of a potential medical treatment, researchers compare subjects who got the treatment against subjects who got a {{w|placebo}}. Usually each subject does not know whether they received the treatment or placebo, and neither do the researchers, until the end of the trial. This distinguishes the actual effects of the treatment from the effects of simply participating in a study. People who receive a placebo (or an ineffective treatment) often believe their treatment is working due to such causes as paying more attention to one's health or expecting to feel better. This misattribution of effect to a non-treatment is called the "placebo effect".

In this comic a team of researchers appears to have studied some medical treatment, using a placebo controlled test. When they present their findings, however, it is revealed that the treatment they were given was also a placebo. Their own study was the subject of a placebo controlled test conducted on their methodology. They were the placebo group, while a different team used the same methodology to study the real treatment. Thus, all of this team's findings were due to the placebo effect, instead of any real merit to the "treatment", meaning that their methodology shouldn't be used for any real world applications.

The particular flaw in the methodology appears to be dividing their subjects into too many sub-groups in order to get an apparent result. The researcher did find significance in one sub-group, even though in reality there was no signal, just noise, since it was all placebo groups. This references the same p-hacking problem as [[882: Significant]]. Only in this case the researcher themself is the subject of the real trial.

Treatments ''can'' be more effective on specific subgroups of the population; for example, an anti-cancer drug might only work against specific mutations that cause cancer. But any such result needs to have appropriate statistical significance and new subjects from that subgroup should be tested to ensure the result is repeated.

Such an experiment might be considered unethical, because one researcher offers what he believes to be genuine treatment to a large number of participants only for a third party (the offscreen speaker) to replace all his medicine with placebos, ultimately deceiving the patients. The title text references that it was approved by a genuine Institutional Review Board (IRB), the group which decides whether a proposed experiment is ethical to perform. However they also have a "placebo IRB", presumably made up of people who have no qualifications to make such judgements well, or perhaps not made up of people at all, but simply a mechanism for generating random decisions.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball stands in front of a poster holding a pointer. The poster shows a scatter plot with four points and error bars, with one data point labeled "Subgroup" is marked with an asterisk and is placed somewhat higher up than the other three points.]
:Cueball: However, we see clear evidence that the treatment is more effective than the placebo for some subgroups.
:Off-panel voice: Thank you.
:Off-panel voice: However, we can now reveal that the '''''London''''' team was studying the real treatment. Both groups in your study got a placebo.
:Cueball: Aw, '''''maaan...'''''
:[Caption below panel]
:Researchers hate it when you do placebo controlled trials of their methodology.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Scientific research]]

2726: Methodology Trial

2023-01-19T09:48:17Z

172.71.242.35: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2726
| date = January 18, 2023
| title = Methodology Trial
| image = methodology_trial_2x.png
| imagesize = 339x459px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = If you think THAT'S unethical, you should see the stuff we approved via our Placebo IRB.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a PLACEBO RESEARCHER - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

When testing the efficacy of a potential medical treatment, researchers compare subjects who got the treatment against subjects who got a {{w|placebo}}. Usually each subject does not know whether they received the treatment or placebo, and neither do the researchers, until the end of the trial. This distinguishes the actual effects of the treatment from the effects of simply participating in a study. People who receive a placebo (or an ineffective treatment) often believe their treatment is working due to such causes as paying more attention to one's health or expecting to feel better. This misattribution of effect to a non-treatment is called the "placebo effect".

In this comic a team of researchers appears to have studied some medical treatment, using a placebo controlled test. When they present their findings, however, it is revealed that the treatment they were given was also a placebo. Their own study was the subject of a placebo controlled test conducted on their methodology. They were the placebo group, while a different team used the same methodology to study the real treatment. Thus, all of this team's findings were due to the placebo effect, instead of any real merit to the "treatment", meaning that their methodology shouldn't be used for any real world applications.

The particular flaw in the methodology appears to be dividing their subjects into too many sub-groups in order to get an apparent result. The researcher did find significance in one sub-group, even though in reality there was no signal, just noise, since it was all placebo groups. This references the same p-hacking problem as [[882: Significant]]. Only in this case the researcher themself is the subject of the real trial.

Treatments ''can'' be more effective on specific subgroups of the population; for example, an anti-cancer drug might only work against specific mutations that cause cancer. But any such result needs to have appropriate statistical significance and new subjects from that subgroup should be tested to ensure the result is repeated.

Such an experiment might be considered unethical, because one researcher offers what he believes to be genuine treatment to a large number of participants only for a third party (the offscreen speaker) to replace all his medicine with placebos, ultimately deceiving the patients. The title text references that it was approved by a genuine Institutional Review Board (IRB), the group which decides whether a proposed experiment is ethical to perform. However they also have a "placebo IRB", presumably made up of people who have no qualifications to make such judgements well.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball stands in front of a poster holding a pointer. The poster shows a scatter plot with four points and error bars, with one data point labeled "Subgroup" is marked with an asterisk and is placed somewhat higher up than the other three points.]
:Cueball: However, we see clear evidence that the treatment is more effective than the placebo for some subgroups.
:Off-panel voice: Thank you.
:Off-panel voice: However, we can now reveal that the '''''London''''' team was studying the real treatment. Both groups in your study got a placebo.
:Cueball: Aw, '''''maaan...'''''
:[Caption below panel]
:Researchers hate it when you do placebo controlled trials of their methodology.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Scientific research]]

2725: Sunspot Cycle

2023-01-17T10:37:24Z

172.71.242.35: /* Explanation */ ...as it refers to the state of play only during the meme-season of the 2010s, both that and the darkness being old-hat again.

{{comic
| number = 2725
| date = January 16, 2023
| title = Sunspot Cycle
| image = sunspot_cycle_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x503px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Who can forget the early 2010s memes? 'You know you're a 90s kid if you remember the feeling of warm sunlight on your face.' 'Only 90s kids remember the dawn.'
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a NINETIES KID WHO FELT SUN - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic seems to be set in an alternative reality where the Sun's brightness rises and falls based upon an 11 year cycle, causing there to be complete darkness for around 10 years. The change in brightness over the cycle is due to sunspots accumulating over half of the cycle. When standard sunspots appear, the Sun darkens. When fictitious 'bright' sunspots appear (in the midst of the now all-covering dark sunspot mass), it brightens.

This is probably a reference to the {{w|solar cycle}}, which is a roughly 11-year cycle of changes in the Sun's activity from a period of minimal levels of solar radiation, ejecta, sunspots and solar flares to maximum activity in these areas. Historically this cycle was observed by changes in the Sun's appearance, which this comic exaggerates.

This would obviously be impossible{{Citation needed}} as not only do sunspots cool the area of the Sun where they appear but, during a dark phase, no light is coming from the Sun, so the Earth would freeze if all wavelengths of the Sun were blocked (if the spots only affect light in the visible spectrum, then Earth would not freeze but plants would have trouble with photosynthesis). Sunspots are also not totally dark; NASA says that each sunspot on its own would glow orange brighter than the full moon.[https://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/workbook/sunspot.html]

The title text indicates the effect on internet memes that this process has. During the 2010s, when '90s kid' memes were still funny,{{Citation needed}} many have changed to reflect that the Earth had at that time been dark since the 2000s, and thus only those born in the 90s and before would remember dawn.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Caption above the comic]:
:Ever wonder why the sun disappears for about 10 years every other decade? This terrifying period of worldwide darkness is a natural consequence of the 11-year sunspot cycle:

:[A graph with "Sunspot number" on the Y axis and "Time" on the X axis. A dashed line increases, then decreases, then slightly increases again. Above the dashed line are eight circles representing the sun with various levels of sunspots, with an arrow between each circle. From left to right: The first circle is clear. The second circle has a few sunspots.]
:Dark sunspots appear.
:[The third circle has a few more, and darker, sunspots.]
:Sunspot number rises.
:[The fourth circle has some large black sunspots with much of the remainder of the circle in gray. Between the fourth and fifth circle is a label:]
:Number falls as sunspots merge.
:[The fifth circle is mostly black. The sixth circle is all black.]
:Sunspots envelop sun, Earth enters years of darkness.
:[The seventh circle is mostly black with a few light areas. The eighth circle is still mostly black but with some larger white areas.]
:Bright sunspots appear, cycle reverses.

:[A second graph is labeled "History" but its Y axis is not labeled. The X axis has the years "1970", "1980", "1990", "2000", "2010", and "2020" labeled. The areas between 1970 and 1980, 1990 and 2000, and approximately 2012 and 2025 are labeled "Sun is bright". The areas between 1980 and 1990, and 2000 and approximately 2012 are labeled "Sun is dark".]
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Timelines]]
[[Category:Line graphs]]

Talk:2724: Washing Machine Settings

2023-01-16T13:44:13Z

172.71.242.35:

> [...] standing in front of a washing machine [...]

To be more exact, this is a combo washer dryer (also known as washer-dryer) - which looks like so called laundry center design (one unit, with washer on bottom, and what looks like heat-pump or vented dryer on top). --[[User:JakubNarebski|JakubNarebski]] ([[User talk:JakubNarebski|talk]]) 10:01, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

: Thanks! I was wondering about that, since it doesn't look at all like any washing machine I've ever seen before [[User:Zoid42|Zoid42]] ([[User talk:Zoid42|talk]]) 16:35, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Does anybody even own a houshold applicance whose manual was written by engineers - or at least someone who knows what the device they write the manual for is actually doing? I once had a toaster that came with a 96-page-manual that actually was good. But for most devices it is clear that they payed someone with less hands-on experience than GhatGPT to write one. --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.110.187|172.68.110.187]] 14:40, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
:Most manuals these days don't seem to be written at all, consisting entirely of incomprehensible illustrations instead.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.47|172.70.162.47]] 09:47, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
::Well, a competently-'written' illustrated guide can (in suitable cases, e.g. a self-assembly item; the ultimate practical example is a Lego set, where they've got it down to a fine art arguably far beyond the likes of Ikea) by the best solution. Not ''necessarily'' intended as a (working) manual, I know, but a "don't hold flames against this highly flammable bit of our product" can be usefully summarised by symbology, as can "don't leave your hand/shopping/baby in this area of the product whilst folding it for storage/transportation".
::Especially where products are intended for multiple markets with multiple possible languages. The last 96-page(-or-thereabouts) manual I may have had was probably <s>twelve</s> sixteen ''<s>eight</s> six''-page manuals, featuring English, French, Spanish, Portugese, German, Dutch, Italian, Greek, Polish, (at least) two different Cyrillic languages, Arabic, Hindu, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Not necessarily in that order, and the English was actually in American (and/or maybe just not entirely translated from the original eastern language, to add extra confusion), which may have been the source language that some of the others got onward retranslated from but was clearly not the original.
::(And I resisted the urge to suggest that Portugese was "just a dialect of Spanish", ditto Dutch as either German or "English with a heavy cold". That would be lazy. More lazy than my lumping all "Arabic" languages together, less lazy than when I realised I was already at my predicted twelve representative languages and had only just gotten out of the general area of Europe (without even going into Flemish; already summarised Russian and A.N.Other, without specifying from the host of choices), was probably going to skip both Hebrew and Farsi, and yet needed to have the Big Three far-Eastern lingos because this hypothetical manual was doubtless for a product created primarily in/for one or other of them. So, with special apologies to all flavours of Scandinavian (including overseas, inc. ''native'' Greenlandish). And the whole of Africa, quite pointedly, but you're probably fairly used to not even having four pages out of 24, as I don't think I've seen written Xhosa (though I have Afrikaans, or "German+Dutch ''with a cold''"... ;) ), nor Igbo, Yoruba or any of the others all across the area that I might mention but probably can't easily recall anyway.)
::..erm, so, anyway. I ''was'' going to allude to the Rosetta Stone, but it seems I got sidetracked. You get my point, I'm sure. And I probably have a (circa) 96-page manual around here actually all in English, if I search but it's likely something that came with a '90s operating system. Itself a climb-down from the... <hastilly grabs nearest suitable example> ...BBC Microcomputer manual which is a 500+ page (250+ leaf, if you prefer) ringbound behemoth from when OEM manuals ''were'' often still manuals, and you didn't mostly need 3rd-party ones like Haynes or O'Reilly or even a "... for Dummies/Idiots" to fill in the necessary details. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.35|172.71.242.35]] 13:44, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Even more important than the owner’s manual are the instructions written on the inside of your clothes. It turns out that those obscure runes actually mean something! [[Special:Contributions/172.71.142.170|172.71.142.170]] 17:28, 13 January 2023 (UTC)


It's been decades since I've seen an appliance user manual half as detailed as what Cueball describes. Mostly they say things like 'plug it in' & 'pressing Power button starts the device, pressing again turns it off'; ''never'' details such as 'Delicates mode reduces agitation'/spin etc. Even widely used software often goes without significant documentation. Randall makes a joke that user manuals already exist, but I feel they're rather rare!?
[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 18:32, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
:I believe you're right, was coming here to complain that my user manual on my new washer does not explain what the various settings do, but says such useless things as "use cotton setting for cotton fabric". Telling me it's a hot water setting (which I don't want, as I never bother connecting the hot water to a machine) would be useful, but doesn't appear to be a feature of user manuals these days.

The manual for my washing machine actually lists the available programs along with a short description, tips (like "use less detergent for washing laces") and various metrics (like max load and energy consumption). However, this is for a machine installed at a home. Cueball in the comic seems to be standing in a laundromat. Even if those machines came with a manual, can the end-user actually access them? I guess you could pester an employee to dig them up for you...
[[Special:Contributions/172.68.50.134|172.68.50.134]] 22:10, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
:I don't think it's a laundromat, there would be more than one machine. I think the joke is based the fact that so many things are done with GUI applications these days, and they have very limited manuals, if any at all. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 23:23, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
:For my part, I'm not even familiar with that style of machine. Looks like some sort of top-loader base (haven't used one of them, a twin-tub, since the late-seventies/early-eighties when we transitioned to the first in a series of standard front loaders) with a tumble-dryer above (never bothered with a tumble-dryer since the university laundromat, and they were floor-to- ceiling with ''huge'' drums and eventually I worked out I was just feeding a huge slot machine where I couldn't even get the three lemons).
:But I deduce probably a stereotypical 'Merkin "big home, big utility basement" thing, rather than a more UK-market piece of whitegoods.
:As an equivalent example, you do at least see those huge two-door fridges (with ice-despensors in them) in the electrical goods stores, even though I know of no-one who has actually gone and got one. But washers and dryers always tend to be standard (and separate) front-loaders (with occasional 'retro' top-loaders), even if most people seem to consign the latter to a corner of the garage. (And I just use a washing line/drape in front of a warm radiator!) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.136|172.69.79.136]] 23:44, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Appliance use manuals seem to be written by legal staff, not engineers. Mine are full of warnings and "Do not ..." statements.
Specific to laundry appliances, settings on the washing machine never match those on the drier. For example, there is a drier setting for "Jeans" but nothing comparable for the washer. [[User:TCMits|TCMits]] ([[User talk:TCMits|talk]]) 15:47, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

While paper manuals are easy to lose, some appliances have manuals online / in PDF. Those tend to be easier to find. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 15:48, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

When I read this comic, my first reaction was that Randall was pretty much exactly describing the current process for learning how to use Stable Diffussion AI art generation, including it's dozens of different GUI's and Models. NOBODY has an actual manual written yet, although the user advice threads can get pretty detailed. On the other hand, we mostly use Reddit and Discord, not Quora. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.127.38|172.70.127.38]] 01:57, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

== Quora ==

Quora is the absolute worst. Nearly every time you see a Quora blurb in Google, you can bet that the opposite is true. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.79|172.70.114.79]] 06:43, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
:: Quora has invited me to earn money by getting a "Quora Patner" that posts controversal questions that cause much traffic. That was the moment I learned that it might not be worthwhile to spend precious lifetime at that site.--[[User:Gunterkoenigsmann|Gunterkoenigsmann]] ([[User talk:Gunterkoenigsmann|talk]]) 14:45, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
:::: Wow. While that make sense from a purely business standpoint, it doesn't make sense from a "helpfulness to society" standpoint. I'll remember this when I see questions I wouldn't have expected someone to ask. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.174.25|172.70.174.25]] 17:46, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
: I think it's Quora where if I arrive by Google (or other search-engine!) I get to read it, but trying to then follow an 'internal' link to a related (or otherwise intruiging/sufficiently) question's page tries to get me to log in. (Which I refuse to do. Being fed up with ''having'' to have accounts for things I actually don't see the technical need for. Witness here, but for Quora I additionally manage to resist asking novel questions; or answering any in the face of so many other free opinions.) But if I'm weak-willed/desperate nough to decide that I actually do want to read what others have said about onward items then I'vs found that copying the link-question's ''text'' and going back to plug it into the searchbox will ''often'' give me a login-free access.
: Though, in that way of by-passing the more obvious clicks-to-revenue tricks of the Quora website itself, you are instead giving slightly more detail about yourself (or at least your current whims and flights of fancy) to your chosen search-provider. Which has potentially more ways to make business use of such things. (So, a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, arguably.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.135|172.70.162.135]] 11:35, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

2723: Outdated Periodic Table

2023-01-13T12:39:37Z

172.71.242.35: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2723
| date = January 11, 2023
| title = Outdated Periodic Table
| image = outdated_periodic_table_2x.png
| imagesize = 360x350px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Researchers claim to have synthesized six additional elements in the second row, temporarily named 'pentium' through 'unnilium'.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by BERYLLIUM-BASED LIFE - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic shows figure 6.14 from a science text book, which displays ''The periodic table of the elements'', but with only the first four elements ({{w|Hydrogen}}, {{w|Helium}}, {{w|Lithium}} and {{w|Beryllium}}) shown. [[Randall]] claims, in the caption, that you can use the layout of an included {{w|Periodic table}} to date a publication based upon the elements present or missing. In this case, his book was somehow published just half an hour after the {{w|Big Bang}}, at which time those four elements were the only ones present. The joke here is that he has conflated elements being absent from the periodic table because they have not yet been discovered, with them being absent because they do not yet exist.

From about 10 seconds until about 20 minutes after the Big Bang, the phase that is known as the {{w|Big Bang nucleosynthesis}} occurred. At that time, hydrogen ions (single protons) provided for helium in abundance and traces of lithium. Some berylium-7 was also formed, which is an unstable {{w|Isotopes of beryllium|isotope}}, and with a half life of 53 days, an appreciable amount of what had been created would still be there several months after the Big Bang, and certainly most of what was created would be there half an hour after.

The conclusion is that Randall's science book was published when those four elements were the only ones in existence, and before the point where practically all the beryllium had decayed. After that point, only the three first would be present, until star formation began and started the process of {{w|Stellar nucleosynthesis}}.

Of course no life as we know it could exist until long after stellar nucleosynthesis had created all the other elements needed to support {{w|Carbon-based life}}. And no life, as we could even imagine, would be able to exist for the first 370,000 years after Big Bang as atoms (in a form that could eventually form molecules) could not exist until the {{w|Recombination (cosmology)|Recombination}} phase of the universe, due to the high energy of the {{w|Cosmic background radiation}}. Textbooks, also being carbon-based {{Citation needed}} could not exist either.

Even now, many {{w|Chemical elements|elements}} do not occur naturally on Earth and have to be {{w|Synthetic element|synthesized}} to be practically studied, or deduced from what was seen during their often short lives. Others were always very hard to detect, collect enough in pure form or purify enough to properly discover them. Until these elements were discovered, one way or another, they were not included in the periodic table. Various versions of the periodic table had left spaces for these {{w|Mendeleev's predicted elements|expected elements}}, but these gaps have now all been filled, and all recent modifications have been either additions to the end of the prior version of the table or changes of {{w|List of chemical element naming controversies|the names given}} to recent additions. As printed scientific textbooks do not update themselves after being published, one can determine the general age of the work by checking which elements were present in the periodic table that was included.

The title text refers to how yet-undiscovered elements are given a {{w|systematic element name}} as a temporary name, until a more permanent name is decided upon. The names are based upon a standard group of Greek and Latin roots (depicting the decimal digits used to 'spell out' an element's unique {{w|atomic number}}, i.e., the number of protons) and adding an "-ium" at the end. The claim in the title text is that, in the textbook with the figure, researchers claim they have synthesized six additional elements in the second row, temporarily named 'pentium' (atomic number "5") through to 'unnilium' ("one zero", or "10"), just as element "118" was provisionally called "ununoctium". At the time of release of this comic, element 118 is currently the last confirmed element and has been officially called {{w|Oganesson}}. The title text of [[2639: Periodic Table Changes]], the previous comic to draw a periodic table, also refers to this.

Element number five is, in our time and reality, actually well known as {{w|Boron}}. (Its 'provisional' name of {{w|Pentium}} was also used for a series of microprocessors launched by Intel in the 1990s.) "Unnilium", element number 10, is {{w|Neon}}, a member of the group of {{w|Noble gas}}es, which (along with fellow group member helium) was discovered only at the very end of the 19th century. Despite helium being one of the first elements to exist, and still one of the most common in the universe (roughly 24%, by mass, with hydrogen being around 75% and every other element combined being the remainder), it did not appear in the earliest periodic tables. It was only first detected from afar, as a constituent of the Sun, about thirty years before it was finally physically discovered in an actual lab here on Earth. (This is likely because helium is both inert and light.) It is also possible that neon's provisional name in 'early science' might have been something more along the lines of "decium", all else being equal.

Since life could not have existed at the time this book should have been published, the idea of researchers synthesizing elements, or indeed the existence of books or even researchers, is of course just part of the joke.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Subheading]: Figure 6.14
:[Title]: The periodic table of the elements

:[The following four rectangles featuring the large element abbreviation, with the full element name written below, in a typical periodic table style]
:[Top row, far left]: H Hydrogen
:[Top row, far right, detached from any other box]: He Helium
:[Bottom row, attached directly below the "H" box]: Li Lithium
:[Bottom row, attached directly to the right of "Li"]: Be Beryllium

:[Caption below the panel]:
:You can spot an outdated science textbook by checking the bottom of the periodic table for missing elements. For example, mine was published half an hour after the Big Bang.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Chemistry]]
[[Category:Cosmology]]
[[Category:Science]]

Talk:2720: Biology vs Robotics

2023-01-05T15:58:33Z

172.71.242.35:

The Explanation says "'Cueball complains to the robot that biology (And presumably being biological) is annoying/bad, stating "Biology sucks" and "Bodies have all these problems'" but the comic currently says "Biology is *the worst*. Bodies have all these *random* problems." Was the comic updated or is the explanation inaccurate? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.102.100|172.71.102.100]] 23:29, 4 January 2023‎ (UTC)

As part of building the robot, Cueball (or xer builder, if he didn't build xim) have been drilling holes in xim. Xe doesn't care because xe doesn't have nerve endings. As a result of this conversation, xe discovers that the not-caring would not be reciprocated if xe began drilling holes in humans.{{unsigned ip|172.68.34.215|05:41, 5 January 2023}}
:I think it's not quite that, perhaps just more a passive-aggressive attitude by the robot, who just happens to know that any damage ''they'' suffer is going to need at the very least some form of metalworking handyman to patch the damage up (possibly an engineer). But there's not enough context to reliably narrow it down. For example, does a hole 'hurt' the robot (independently of whether it impairs functionality), or is it just an annoyance (or necessitates a system shut-down) until repairs are completed. Yet obviously they like the idea of having a self-repairing system, without understanding that there are different limitations and consequences...
:''But'', the joke appears to be (to me) that the biological being is bemoaning all the flaws in his body's design, whilst not appreciating how truly remarkable are its many useful features, such as (limited, but not insignificant) recovery from trauma. Something the robot has its own perspective on. Simple as that? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.224|172.70.85.224]] 10:54, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Very tempted to add in that, if there was a designer/engineer, the problems of biology might be so easily identified and designed out (or never designed in, in the first place). Except that there's often a few 'awkward' (or even unidentified) flaws in an ostensibly finalised project (at least with man-made things) and I also would attract the ire of the YECs/etc who believe there ''was'' a biological 'designer' (despite seemingly having made such errors along the way). [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.186|172.71.178.186]] 11:51, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
:The paradox is that there 'is' an intelligent designer of robots, yet they don't have remarkable features like self-healing. While there are lots of problems in biology that would be considered design flaws if there were a designer (the inside-out placement of the optic nerve is the classic example), millions of years of evolution still produced results that are incredibly robust and far more flexible than anything human designers can create. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:19, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
::Yet, while the robot is a fairly new thing (less time to sort out the flaws, or understand how not to even introduce them) presumably created by a human (flawed and fallible, we all can agree), the whole issue of biology is millions of years in continuous test/development cycle (or maybe just ''thousands'', but that's still more than mere years or decades) and that designer is supposed to be Perfect (omniscience, omnipresent ''and'' omnipotent) and should have been capable of resolving any loose ends they somehow allowed to be unresolved in the initially rushed six day period of manufacture and integration.
::Ultimately, the reason our bodies weren't made to be unflawed (either initially or by tweaking further down the line) falls into the same sort of philosophical realm as "why do bad things happen" (indeed, it is one, perhaps with the likes of Methuselah and other antedeluvian lifetimes being deprecated afterwards, as well as playing their part in confusing Bishop Usher's estimates).
::Usually, the cover-all of having summarised God's 'plan' as being ineffable plasters over all the logical cracks, so it takes a very determined thinker to imagine they fully understand how it could (or could not) have happened, except by just applying the eponymous Razor and declaring all the unknowables to be irrelevent. (Which mightily upsets those who vehementally disagree, by their own principles.) So let us not go too deep into that, beyond acknowledging the competing ideas involved. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.35|172.71.242.35]] 15:58, 5 January 2023 (UTC)