explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:3007: Probabilistic Uncertainty

2024-11-05T15:39:01Z

172.71.31.24:

Emotional spirals are useless. I've been coping by pretending we're in scenario 1, it keeps me sane. If I'm wrong, I'll jump off that bridge when we come to it. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 20:23, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
:And I have a friend whose strategy is baking. It's both therapeutic and delicious. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 20:41, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

:I see I don't know US geography well: which bridge you can jump from to leave it? -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 02:34, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
::Most of them. Some of them may be 'caged in' for safety/anti-suicide/anti-DropThingsInThoseBelow purposes (or a {{w|covered bridge}}). Relatively few of the others will be ones that you would have no qualms about vaulting the railing, but (as well as it clearly being a witticism by Barmar) I think you could easily ''find'' a bridge that you could jump off. And the resulting falling part isn't at all the difficult bit. Landing safely (or, in extremis for those desperate enough, in a guaranteed immediately fatal manner) is more the challenge. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.206|172.70.86.206]] 14:48, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

I can't help but think that at preparing for the negative outcome regardless of which outcome is more likely (unless that outcome is *very* unlikely) is a healthy thing to do. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.147.141|172.71.147.141]] 20:30, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
: "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst" is my usual approach to things. [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 07:45, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

This comic appeared the day before the 2024 United States Presidential Election. At publication time, polls were strongly suggesting about a 50/50 odds that either major candidate would win. Recent news items included advice from mental-health professionals on how to deal with election-related anxiety. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.167.195|172.71.167.195]] 20:32, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
:Definitely related. This should be in the text, not in the comments, frankly. The yanks are going nuts about the election right now. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.124.243|172.71.124.243]] 20:57, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
:Did the advice suggested narcotics? -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 02:34, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

My personal policy is to expect and prepare for the worst. That way I can be surprised when it doesn't happen, and not surprised when it does, rather than the other way around. I don't "do" emotions, so it's basically just planning and mumbling colloquialisms involving the digestive system... [[Special:Contributions/172.71.134.64|172.71.134.64]] 21:31, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
:As someone who used to think this way, this is obstructively cynical, and downright ''sad''. I mean, in theory you should be pleasantly surprised by the good, and prepared for the bad, but in practice you just dismiss anything good and focus exclusively on the bad. As someone with experience in this type of thinking, it isn't healthy. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.22.85|172.71.22.85]] 15:15, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

I can't help but feel that it's mostly Democrats that are anxious, where Trump winning is the bad case. Not being an American I don't have much perspective. Are many Republicans likely to also be anxious, and if so, why? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.60.170|172.69.60.170]] 21:55, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
:Not sure about "anxious", for Trump-supporting Rs (as opposed to Trump-opposing ones, who are both anxious and tremendously conflicted), but there's certainly a buzz of some emotion. That, if ''their'' expectations/hopes/desires are dashed, seem more likely to turn into more direct push-back than Ds would in their case. i.e. if Trump truly wins, there'll be turmoil as the legitimate government forcefully pushes against large subsets of the people, if Harris truly wins then small but determined fractions of the people will push back against the legitimate government. (If it's any way ambiguous, for long enough, which 'truth' indicates a win, it could easily be people vs. people for at least as long as the confusion lasts, with very little reason to believe that it'll be Harris supporters throwing the first stone, probably making Florida 2000 look like a "neat transition"). But this is just what it looks like at this moment. Within a day we ''might'' get to see whose words get eaten, or it could be at least a month of building tensions (due to the US system of elections, deliberately legislated to be so much more inefcicient than it needs to be, compared to various other Western nations). [[Special:Contributions/172.68.186.106|172.68.186.106]] 15:28, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

From what I've seen the ones in public-facing forums seem pretty indifferent. They do talk a lot about election fraud though. {{unsigned ip|172.70.34.117|22:42, 4 November 2024 (UTC)}}

I like that the comic leaves "good" and "bad" open to interpretation.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.83|172.70.211.83]] 22:29, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
:He doesn't want to start fights in the comments/discussion pages/replies! Good to see him appealing to no specific demographic in this one. -[[User:Psychoticpotato|P?sych??otic?pot??at???o ]] ([[User talk:Psychoticpotato|talk]]) 22:40, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
::Considering that the "Harris for President" banner is still active, I'm not sure I agree with that. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.22.4|172.68.22.4]] 22:53, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
:::yeah, for that reason i think it's more just so the comic can have further longevity, as this way it can be applied to any number of things with two outcomes, not just the current election [[Special:Contributions/141.101.109.193|141.101.109.193]] 00:02, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
::Well, so far so good ... -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 02:34, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Re [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=3007:_Probabilistic_Uncertainty&oldid=355799 Further, with regards to N/A - the odds of "precisely" 50/50 are probabilistically zero]: Bear in mind that with the Electoral College system and the fact that only 7 US states are "likely in play," we are talking only hundreds or thousands of realistic possibilities. The odds of a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College are far more than 0. One possibility of a tie that is "on the radar" is if the Republicans take Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and the 2nd Congressional District of Nebraska (which is very likely to go Democratic) and the Democrats take Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. If you consider just the 7 "in play" states but Arizona "flips" from Republican to Democratic, there are 3 combinations that yield a 269-269 tie. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.210.249|172.70.210.249]] 01:29, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
: If there's a 269-269 tie, that's basically going to be a Trump win due to how the contingent election process works. (For that matter the far more plausible 270-268 to Harris, which happens if she wins Nevada but not Pennsylvania, is likely going to result in Trump getting the presidency as well, but let's ignore that.) However, many analysts, when faced with numbers like Nate Silver's 50.015%, are going to round it to 50% or 50.0% in the public-facing reports, resulting in apparent exact 50/50 odds even if mathematically they actually favor one side slightly. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.130.3|172.71.130.3]] 10:07, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
::There's little point in being so precise, since the fraction is far less than the margin of error in the polling. Anything between 49% and 51% is essentially a toss-up. If the 51% is in your favor you can feel hopeful, but hardly confident. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:11, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Re '''We contacted several researchers who are experts in emotional spirals to ask them, but none of them were in a state to speak with us''': Is it a stretch to think that the emotional-spiral experts were all "in Puerto Rico" (which is not a state), emotionally speaking? In the last week a supporter of one of the candidates insulted Puerto Rico and by extension, people of Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican descent, causing an emotional uproar all over the inter-tubes. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.210|162.158.90.210]] 01:37, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Created an account just to say this; don't get mad at me but in my opinion, both candidates are equally bad, which has led to a weird sense of calmness in me due to my belief that we'll be equally screwed no matter what, just in different ways. Tbh in my opinion both candidates are in between what their supporters think of them and what their opponents think of them. Please be civil if you reply, no ad hominem please. [[User:BurnV06|BurnV06]] ([[User talk:BurnV06|talk]]) 05:24, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
:No, one of them is clearly worse than the other. How do you feel about LGBTQ+ rights? Abortion? Medicare? Teaching kids that racism and homophobia in schools is bad? Well, if Project 2025 is anything to go by, one side ''clearly'' is the unpreferable unless you're a white, Christian, rich, and male. This is not a "both sides" issue. One is clearly the worse option. And frankly, I wish centrists knew this. I can agree to disagree on some issues but I just cannot elect someone who wants to punish people for the egregious crime of, ''gasp'', not conforming to societal standard of gender and romance.[[Special:Contributions/172.71.22.85|172.71.22.85]] 15:15, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
:"Equally bad" is highly subjective, Burn. More people would consider "a total disaster" vs "at least they're not a total disaster!" as a closer truth (whether their own personally-configured disastermeter comes in a Red or Blue casing), and consider balancing dead in the center of the fence to be the most inexplicable position to take. (Not to mention those like above, and also their antithesis opinions, who have a very definite good/bad opinion 9n the pair.)
:Not that I'd support being mad at you, as the problem with politics today is ''too much'' extreme polarization (we need more moderate voices, rather than wedging open an ever wider void between both limits of opinion). But there's just no realistic middle-ground to gather support around, and what middle-ground there is might also be moving one way or another (depending upon who you ask), so I'm afraid that the strictly neutral "as bad as each other" types are just guaranteed to be setting themselves up to be disappointed. In the 'best' case scenario, disappointed that things aint turning out to be as bad as feared, but I'm not sure that's reassuringly likely enough to comfort you. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.186.106|172.68.186.106]] 15:28, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
:Well said, and I think it's important to mention that the reason there isn't any moderates is that the moderates ''just don't care anymore''. At least online, complete political apathy is a position I've seen a lot of people take ("Why are they constantly slamming politics into my face, I just don't care"). Unfortunately, these kinds of people are also the moderates, people who aren't particularly one side or the other. This leads to a political landscape where you have 2 extremes, and a bunch of people in the middle who couldn't care less because of said extremes. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.31.24|172.71.31.24]] 15:39, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

I think it's funny that so many Democrats are genuinely terrified of the results and spend their days anxiously refreshing 538, whereas Republicans are filled with optimism and already know that the democrats have run the weakest candidate since Dukakis. Ah well, maybe in four years you'll actually get to vote for who leads your ticket instead of having them be appointed by the party elites directly without a vote. ;) {{unsigned ip|172.71.22.120|07:35, 5 November 2024}}
:Given the indirect democracy system the US has, there's a number of problems with who gets to be President. And if Harris is weaker than H. Clinton, but it's still on a knife-edge of popular/EC voting, does that mean that Trump's win was therefore less legitimate? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.186.106|172.68.186.106]] 15:28, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

2872: Hydrothermal Vents

2023-12-26T21:08:11Z

172.71.31.24: /* Explanation */ Okay...????

{{comic
| number = 2872
| date = December 25, 2023
| title = Hydrothermal Vents
| image = hydrothermal vents 2x.png
| imagesize = 330x459px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Benthic Santas weren't even discovered until the 1970s, but many scientists now believe Christmas may have originally developed around hydrothermal vents and only later migrated to the surface.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by SANTA'S REMAINS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This [[:Category:Christmas|Christmas comic]] was released on {{w|Christmas Day}} 2023, in the morning (at least in [[Randall]]'s timezone in Boston).

It is the second Christmas comic using [[:Category:Facts|Facts]], and Ocean Fact in this comic. The first of these was released six years earlier, also on Christmas Day in comic [[1933: Santa Facts]].

In the world above the surface of the sea, {{w|Santa Claus}} had just finished his annual trip around the world when this comic was posted. It makes a joke on that by saying that there are "{{wiktionary|benthic}} Santas", meaning there are Santas that deliver gifts {{w|Benthic zone|to the seafloor}}. The joke here is that all Santas may tend to [[1620: Christmas Settings|go down chimneys]], and that {{w|hydrothermal vent|hydrothermal vents}} have {{w|Aggressive mimicry|evolved}} to trick undersea Santa into entering them, believing they were real chimneys, and thus getting killed and digested by the vents as seen in the comic. This is not an entirely unknown {{w|Pitcher plant|digestive mechanism}}, although the depicted version goes beyond all known biological processes. This comic is [[2559: December 25th Launch|one of]] the darker-themed Christmas comics, compared to the usual merry xmas comics.

There are many things that are very strange mentioned.{{Citation needed}} There is little to no evidence that actual humans live down deep in the sea, and fish and other undersea creatures are unlikely to know what "Santa" is or understand the concept of Christmas, so it is unclear what the exact goals of "benthic Santas" might be.{{Citation needed}} The comic shows the remains of many "Santas", suggesting that there are multiple members of the 'Santa' species (this might also explain the many Santas who appear on street corners, shopping malls, etc.) in contrast to some assertions in the literature that there is only one. It is also possible that there is only one (perhaps or perhaps not specifically subsea) Santa, whose death invokes the spontaneous appearance of [https://buffy.fandom.com/wiki/Slayer a replacement].

The title text may referring to {{w|abiogenesis}}, the origin of life. It was thought non-living matter combined into living cells in shallow water through the energy supplied from the sun and lightning. At least, amino acids can be synthesized this way, as proven by the {{w|Miller–Urey experiment}}. A new explanation places the origin of life on hydrothermal vents, as it's rich in chemicals and rocks there serve as catalysts, with energy coming from earth's heat. Either way, forms of life are known to migrate environments to fill new (or vacated) niches, after having been established in another. The current residents of {{w|hydrothermal vents#Black_smokers|'black smokers'}} include creatures (like shrimps, worms and crabs) that are known elsewhere, but could theoretically repopulate the surface if there were ever further mass extinctions across the uppermost layers of the real world, as there have been in prior times.

The 1970s timeframe likely refers to the discovery in 1977 of hydrothermal vent ecosystems near the Galapagos Rift, which formed the basis of this new theory of abiogenesis. By suggesting that the "benthic Santas" were part of this discovery, the comic implies that a key aspect of Christmas folklore might also have its roots in these deep-sea ecosystems.

==Transcript==
:[An undersea landscape is shown. A rock formation goes up from the the middle part op the bottom of the panel. The top of the formation has five "hot-smoker" chimneys of different heights, almost like a hand with the thumb to the right, but the middle finger being the shortest and the "index finger" being somewhat longer than all the others. From all five chimneys thick gray smoke is emitted. The smoke rises almost vertically to start from all five, and the four to the left have their smoke combine rather early and it bulges to the left. The rightmost chimney's smoke bends to the right and only merges with the combined smoke from the others at the top right. Below the chimneys their interior in the rock formation is indicated with dotted lines and the inside of these chimneys are thus displayed. At the bottom all five merge into a large cavity (shown with dotted lines) inside the rock formation. In this cavity there is a liquid in which several items float around, most notably two Santa Claus hats and two large bones surrounded by five smaller blobs of material and several smaller specks. On the outside on the rock formation grow four types of sea-life, a sponge and some sea lilies or the like, one on the left side and three on the right. To the left two fish are swimming near the rock and close to it on the right there is an octopus. There are three labels with lines pointing to the smoke, to the vents, and to the cavity in the rock formation containing the Santa hats.]
:Top label: Smoke
:Middle label: Chimneys
:Bottom label: Santas being digested

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Ocean fact: Hydrothermal vent black smokers actually evolved as predatory chimney mimics to feed on benthic Santas.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Facts]]
[[Category:Christmas]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Animals]]