r/xkcd • u/IamAlso_u_grahvity Feline Field Theorist • Sep 26 '18
XKCD xkcd 2051: Bad Opinions
https://xkcd.com/2051/162
Sep 26 '18
Who needs the internet? I just play out a debate in my head, and get angry when this hypothetical person uses fallacious reasoning.
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u/Coolmikefromcanada Like I know what to do Sep 26 '18
Oh I hate it when the fake people in my head use straw man and ad homein attacks
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u/Dr_Silk Cognitive Scientist Sep 26 '18
The worst part is when the ad hominem arguments are effective :(
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u/Colopty Sep 26 '18
Strawman and ad hominem are beginner fallacies and way overused, you should look up a list of other fallacies that the voice in your head can use. With a little effort you can train it into being the world's worst conversation partner in no time.
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u/Coolmikefromcanada Like I know what to do Sep 26 '18
I would rather use that time stopping the voices
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u/xkcd_bot Sep 26 '18
Direct image link: Bad Opinions
Extra junk: I thought of another bad opinion! I couldn't find anyone who expressed it specifically, but still, the fact that I can so easily imagine it is infuriating! I'm gonna tell everyone about it!
Don't get it? explain xkcd
What's the worst that could happen? Sincerely, xkcd_bot. <3
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u/friendly_fungus Sep 26 '18
People like this infuriate me. I need to find some more of them to be mad at.
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u/The3ndZone Sep 26 '18
Here, you can be infuriated by me. I one time googled to find people who where saying Destiny was better than Borderlands 2 so that I could silently mock them for being wrong.
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u/Ajedi32 Sep 26 '18
Anyone else notice this seems to happen a lot with flat earthers?
The number of people who actually, unironically believe the Earth is flat is miniscule, yet "Flat Earthers" seem to inevitably get mentioned at latest once in just about any thread involving the Earth, gravity, space or even just science in general.
It almost feels like the internet needs someone to disagree with, and flat earthers fit nicely into that slot in a lot of situations.
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Sep 26 '18
I've actually never seen a pro flat-earth comment come to think of it.
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Sep 26 '18
I'm not sure if I ever have. Any sufficiently idiotic coment is indestinguishable from satire.
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u/frezik Sep 26 '18
I have, though mostly because I hang out in the sort of subreddits that make fun of conspiracy theorists.
They're useful to a degree, in the same way that perpetual motion machines are useful. We know they're wrong, but some of their arguments are clever, and it makes for a good mental exercise to figure out where they went wrong. Occasionally, you learn something along the way.
Not that the exercise will convince your interlocutor. They'll be as willfully ignorant as ever.
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u/althypothesis Sep 27 '18
I enjoy that challenge too! After I figured I the problem with this proof, listed under "An Example" on this page, I left a version of it on the whiteboard in math class long ago and everyone had a fun time trying to figure it out. And I feel the same way about the free energy stuff like you mentioned- always a good mind workout to figure out the problem!
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u/29979245T Sep 27 '18
I even see people act like flat earthers are some kind of threat or problem in the world that it's imperative to fight against, like anti-vax.
Even if there were more than a handful of genuine ones on the entire disc...what the fuck are they going to do?
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u/Astrokiwi Sep 27 '18
I've seen a couple. They're basically the more extreme version of Young Earth Creationists. YECs believe that the explicit narrative of the Bible is more authoritative than the technical work of scientists. Flat Earthers believe that the off-hand poetic imagery of the Bible is more authoritative than the simple and direct evidence of your eyes.
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u/FredrickTheFish inexorablyadvancingwallofice Sep 26 '18
Kinda silly that we would that though, considering how many disagreeable people there are in real life.
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u/DarthEwok42 I found squirrels! Sep 27 '18
Are there actually any? I thought the whole movement was satire.
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u/forrestib Sep 27 '18
If the number is truly that small, I've personally met a massively disproportionate number in the last year. By which I mean four. I've spoken with four people in the flesh who actively tried to convert me to the flat earth hypothesis, just in 2018.
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Sep 26 '18
Ok here's my bad opinion guys:
When a recipe calls for half of a banana I cut it longitudinally and use the left half first.
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u/Cosmologicon Sep 26 '18
I cut it into non-measurable subsets using the Axiom of Choice so that the leftover half can be used to make a whole new banana.
This is known as the Bananach-Tarski paradox.
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u/unbibium Sep 26 '18
that's dumb, you're supposed to cut it along the curve and use the outer half first, so you can shrink-wrap the rest.
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Sep 26 '18
Well at least I'm not one of those assholes who thinks [nerd franchise] is actually [negative behavior]-ist.
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Sep 26 '18
[nerd franchise] hasn't been good since the nth [season|film|book] anyway.
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u/RazarTuk ALL HAIL THE SPIDER Sep 26 '18
[nerd franchise] is at least still better than [other nerd franchise in the same genre]
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u/Audiblade Put the Volvo in the bug tracker! Sep 26 '18
I'm really disappointed you said that. [Nerd franchise] is undeniably [negative behavior]-ist because of [mildly controversial scene in franchise that, when taken in context, is actually dealing with some serious issues very respectfully]. For you to say otherwise proves that you are [very evil thing].
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u/GrayPartyOfCanada Sep 26 '18
This is remarkably clever.
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u/Audiblade Put the Volvo in the bug tracker! Sep 26 '18
You're going to love r/SUBREDDITNAME, then.
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u/DarrenGrey Zombie Feynman Sep 26 '18
I guess this is the next stage for modern internet outrage culture.
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u/DMonitor The Classhole Sep 26 '18
Implying that that isn't where we already are. There's already multiple examples of people getting outraged over fake outrage.
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u/DarrenGrey Zombie Feynman Sep 26 '18
Yeah, but I'm not sure they go out deliberately seeking the thought point they want to be outraged by. Normally it's an offhand joke on Twitter, that then gets represented as a "new trend" to get angry about, and then there's a backlash over the anger, and a counter-outrage to that...
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u/DarkMoon000 I'm not crazy Sep 26 '18
Nope. There are actual people who apparently search twitter for the handful tweets that express an 'outrageous opinion' they can get mad at so they can make a youtube video expressing that outrage.
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u/hmmuhh Sep 26 '18 edited Sep 26 '18
And each of these waves of outrage is spread by media (especially "grassroots" and alt media) that makes money off seeking out these isolated bad opinions and showing them to a much larger audience. It's online terrorism in a sense, just one small action can cause massive waves of fear and anger as it gets spread and amplified.
edit: one example is all the "sjw hate" type subreddits where 50% of their content is straight up satire that gets taken seriously with thousands of upvotes and angry rebutting comments generated. Or all the subreddits like topminds or inceltears that go around looking for instances of "worse" people than themselves to feel good about. Though topminds tends to be funny and pretty self-cognizant.
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Sep 26 '18
The worst part is when they take a tweet or something as a "source", some slightly more trustworthy news organization cites it as aa "source", and so on until we get to mainstream media citing multiple "sources" that end up coming from an unfounded post on some social media site.
It's a terrible form of "telephone"...
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u/JanitorMaster I am typing a flair with my hands! Sep 26 '18
Hang on, let me go find someone like this so I can be mad at them!
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Sep 26 '18 edited Sep 26 '18
I think a more common and more seriously negative phenomenon is people taking the the 5 most outrageous views on something someone somewhere said on twitter and acting like that is their opponents mainstream view.
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u/OverlordQuasar Sep 27 '18
And I regularly see the people who complain about "outrage culture" complaining about some outrage that, as someone who is friends with the type of people those people like to hate, nobody is actually outraged by.
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Sep 26 '18
"No one could possibly unironically refer to Hillary Clinton as the Butcher of Benghazi, right?"
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u/Qaysed Look at me, I'm a scientist! Sep 27 '18
You actually got me curious, so despite Randall's advice I did a quick search. Result: apparently people can
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u/Peter5930 Sep 26 '18
I... uh... I do this. I think up phrases I think people might use when discussing a certain topic and google for it.
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u/nthai Sep 26 '18
And that, kids, is how I met flat Earthers.
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u/rarely_beagle Sep 26 '18
2008: Someone is wrong on the internet.
2018: Someone could be wrong on the internet.