explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:850: World According to Americans

2014-03-25T17:31:56Z

173.245.53.200: Add new comment

NB: Paupa (sic!) New Guinea
[[User:Leob|Leob]] ([[User talk:Leob|talk]]) 20:10, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

:You're right, there's a typo in the comic! Good catch ;) --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 17:10, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

98% of American's would only be able to locate about 4 countries so this is way too generous ~JFreund

@JFreund: That's not true... I'm a seventh grader who can't stand geography for the life of me, yet I can name a good twenty or so.
And as a very very simplified example, most fifth graders can easily name America (duh), Mexico, Canada, Russia, and England.
That is rather, for lack of a better term, racist of you. ~jazz14456

@jazz14456 Well for comparison I'm an seventh grader from europe(We call it year eight there) and I can name 64 off the top of my head, that's 320% more. Therefore the point of the comic and @JFreund 's point still stand. ~Samarthwiz

Talk:1310: Goldbach Conjectures

2014-01-01T07:30:02Z

173.245.53.200:

If a bot can create the text I read here, we have made great strides in artificial intelligence. Probably a human editor forgot to change the "incomplete/incorrect" heading. [[User:Tenrek|Tenrek]] ([[User talk:Tenrek|talk]]) 05:53, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
:You never know, AI has come a loong way. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 06:39, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

::Let's ask: Tepples, are you a bot? And 199.27.128.62, what about you? -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:09, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

:::Yes, I'm a bot. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.62|199.27.128.62]] 21:42, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I thought that <nowiki>{{incomplete|Created by a BOT}}</nowiki> means that the template was inserted by a BOT. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.84|173.245.50.84]] 13:55, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
:It does mean that. But as others edit the page, they should keep the "incomplete" reason up-to-date. I've changed it to "incomplete|surely not quite complete yet..." ;) [[User:Nealmcb|Nealmcb]] ([[User talk:Nealmcb|talk]]) 14:28, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
::I will change this text template beginning at the Friday update when I'm back home. Happy NEW YEAR to everybody! --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 15:16, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

It all seems to work except that the extremely strong seems to imply the opposite of the extremely weak [[User:Djbrasier|Djbrasier]] ([[User talk:Djbrasier|talk]]) 02:19, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
:I think the mistake is in the implication of the very weak to the extremely weak version. In fact, if there is any connection between those two statements it is an implication that goes the other way round. If the extremely strong version is true, we are not looking at the natural numbers. Thus, "Every number greater than 7 is the sum of two other numbers." does ''not'' imply "Numbers just keep going.", at all. (Also this accounts for no numbers at all, so the very weak version would still be correct.) Then there is the case that the extremely strong version is false. An implication from something false to anything is always true. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.200|173.245.53.200]] 07:30, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I always find it amusing that people assume that something phrased 'scientifically' is therefore right, whereas something phrased unscientifically (eg religious beliefs taken on faith) are automatically wrong. There seems to be an unexamined assumption that science is some magical dark art for uncovering infallible truths. Of course science is really just a methodological system for testing theories. Whenever I try to explain this concept, I try to come up with a general, untestable (non-scientific) assertion that is nonetheless true, alongside a very specific, repeatedly testable (falsifiable) assertion that is therefore eminently scientific, but which happens to be wrong. (Eg "it sometimes rains on Wednesday" and "it rains at least 100mm every Wednesday in Riyadh"). So for me this comic is a commentary on that principle - that the "strength" of a statement is only really impressive if it has also survived testing. [[User:Tarkov|Tarkov]] ([[User talk:Tarkov|talk]]) 10:47, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
:The assumption is not "that science is some magical dark art for uncovering infallible truths" but that science works. [[54: Science|Bitches]]. Also, the example you have given is quite bad considering that your first statement is so vague that it is essentially meaningless and apparently, what you want to say with your second statement is that falsifiable claims are falsifiable, which is pretty trivial. Finally, the statements that are phrased unscientifically are not assumed to be automatically wrong but they are impossible to be proven or disproven and are often worded so vaguely that nobody in the known universe knows just what the hell they are supposed to even mean. They are just empty phrases that carry no information whatsoever. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.200|173.245.53.200]] 07:30, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

According to the strong twin prime conjecture, all positive numbers greater than one are prime, due to 2 and 3 both being prime and extrapolation on primes from there. Thus, this nearly proves the very strong Goldbach conjecture, excluding one. Should this be noted in the explanation? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.4|108.162.237.4]] 02:08, 1 January 2014 (UTC)(Kyt)

1287: Puzzle

2013-11-06T11:16:13Z

173.245.53.200: Added relevant topical detail

{{comic
| number = 1287
| date = November 6, 2013
| title = Puzzle
| image = puzzle.png
| titletext = Prediction for Carlsen v. Anand: ... 25. Qb8+ Nxb8 26. Rd8# f6 27. "... dude." Qf5 28. "The game is over, dude." Qxg5 29. Rxe8 0-1 30. "Dude, your move can't be '0-1'. Don't write that down." [Black flips board]
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete}}

The game of {{w|Go (game)|go}} (also called Weiqi, Baduk or Igo) is usually played on the 19x19 intersections of a grid, but sometimes a faster, simpler version is played on the 9x9 intersections of a grid (which thus has 8x8 squares, as a chessboard, though they are not colored in an alternating pattern - {{w|White and Black in chess|introduced to chess in the 13th century}}). In the comic, white has chess figures and plays against black, which uses go stones.

Two versions of the board were posted by Randall: both had white after P-K3, P-Q4, N-KB3, N-QB3, but the first with an extra bishop at K4 (B@K4), the second after B-Q2.

B@K4 in the first version of the board was perhaps intended to represent confusion in White's mind whether he was playing Go (placing a piece) or Chess (it's a chess piece) - as a 'placement' this move could have been first, and could explain P-K3 with K4 already being blocked.

It it unclear whether black has gone first (as is traditional in Go) with five Go stones (none in the 3-3 handicap positions marked on a 9x9 Go board) vs five chess moves. White moves first has been traditional in Chess for about a century.

With only five moves evident on either side, it is curious that the title text's moves start with the 25th, and curious too that black has apparently conceded that they're playing chess after all: white Queen to b8 check is countered by black Knight taking Queen at b8, but after white Rook checkmates at d8 (presumably the king is trapped on 8), Black plays f6 (which could be interpreted as a Go move), and then responds to White's protests with the chess moves Queen to f5 and Queen takes at g5. White's Rook takes something - presumably Black's king, which it had in check - at e8 and black responds by writing 0-1, which looks similar to the 0-0 notation for 'castling', but is in fact the notation used to declare that black has won the game - perhaps the psychological game of forcing white to play 'Chess' after the checkmate, thereby conceding that the game is not - after all - chess.

{{w|Magnus Carlsen}} and {{w|Viswanathan Anand}} are professional chess players, due to play each other in the {{w|World Chess Championship 2013|2013 World Chess Championship}} which opens the day after the comic's publication. The text is in the format of a game transcript, but black continues to make moves after white wins the game (checkmate is denoted by #). White eventually responds by taking black's king; black's "move" is to declare that he (black) won. The rest is clear.

==Transcript==
:[A game board with 8x8 white squares and black borders, like a goboard or an all white chessboard, there are white chess pieces in starting position on the bottom after P-K3, P-Q4, N-KB3, N-QB3, B-Q2 and five black go pieces on the edges in the center of the board on d4 d5 c6 g4 g6.]
:White to continue insisting this is a chessboard

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Chess]]

Talk:810: Constructive

2013-11-05T15:57:47Z

173.245.53.200:

I know just the guy to create this system. I'm going to PM him now :D

No guys, if spammers invent a bot which can give constructive comments, that will be an ***AI***, i.e. a major breakthrough in itself.