[2011-Dec-11] Coins

[Spaceguy5]

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2458#comic

The currency of the future looks much more high tech than the silly coinage we use now. Discuss.

[Quintushalls]

If he is going to do these super long philosophy panels, then he really needs a joke to tie it all in.

[Someone]

I really like this comic. I've been following it for the past several years now.

But it's getting too 'nerdy' even for my taste. Zach, you're preaching and rambling too much, you seem to have lost the entire point of this webcomic. I always thought this was meant to be entertaining, one-panel comic. It turned into a bunch of boring lectures, which are getting more and more frequent. This is too much, really. The entertainment value is really non-existent.

I didn't plan on telling you what to do, since this is you're webcomic, but please consider stopping that practice. One-panel comics are a bit hard to do, I'm sure, but at least consider stopping using your characters for out-of-character preaches. Thanks.

[Cheeetar]

Longer comics like these are generally the ones I enjoy more, and I don't read this comic solely for the humour in it. I think thinking about stuff is neat!

[I am but a man]

I really like this comic. I've been following it for the past several years now.

But it's getting too 'nerdy' even for my taste. Zach, you're preaching and rambling too much, you seem to have lost the entire point of this webcomic. I always thought this was meant to be entertaining, one-panel comic. It turned into a bunch of boring lectures, which are getting more and more frequent. This is too much, really. The entertainment value is really non-existent.

I didn't plan on telling you what to do, since this is you're webcomic, but please consider stopping that practice. One-panel comics are a bit hard to do, I'm sure, but at least consider stopping using your characters for out-of-character preaches. Thanks.

The more popular someone gets the more preachy they get. You think Brad Pitt cared about saving Darfur or whatever when he was waiting tables?

[woodenbadger]

Longer comics like these are generally the ones I enjoy more, and I don't read this comic solely for the humour in it. I think thinking about stuff is neat!

Thinking about stuff is neat. But sometimes these comics make my head hurt. I feel like I need to go to a monster truck rally to even everything out.

[GUTCHUCKER]

Nyahah. I just noticed that Zach got the names mixed around. It's Smith who got the idea wrong, not Jones, as the strangely knowledgeable little girl failed to observe.
I don't like that the concepts of truth, justice and consciousness are dismissed. When the father flicks her in the nose, she observes an injustice, and in making his point he obviously feels that justice has been done regardless of his dismissal of its existence.
Truth is in two parts: what we think is true and what actually is. Neither is based on silly thoughts like "the man with 10 coins will get the job"; what Smith thought was that Jones would get it, which was not true. "The man with 10 coins will get the job" was untrue as well, in the same manner that 'the cat will steal my lunch' is incorrect when it is taken by a different cat. It was a pretty terrible example.
Zach seems to think that brain cells somehow refute the existence of our conscience. I don't think so. To me they are part of the reason we are capable of consciousness. I am a neural network, therefore I am.

"If you can have the right knowledge for the wrong reason, what is the meaning of knowledge?"
Uhh. Knowing things, I guess? Stored information? I know it's not the point of the comic, but the question annoyed me anyway.

Okay, I have no idea where he's going with this. I've realised that you can cut out everything between "No, there are facts" and nose-flick and the comic would actually make some sense. The little girl is trying to compare quantum physics to real life situations? You can't because common sense doesn't apply to quantum. The two don't tie in due to out lack of understanding, it's true, but how many people know that? Is the flick in the nose supposed to be a big SHUT UP NONE OF THAT MATTERS or something, 'cause I don't know. I'm not even sure what is meant by middle child.
RAMBLE RAMBLE RAMBLE >SUBMIT

[N]

I like long comics like this one. I think this one is great but I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion, I have come here, to the forums to point out that my view is correct and everyone who posted above me is stupid*. Gutchuker, I think the point about the philosophy problem is that the nose flick may seem to us like an injustice but our concept of knowledge could be wrong and in fact the nose flick is some sort of coincidence we can't see.

However, just because physics isn't a solved science doesn't mean we can't try to explain emergent properties in terms of system components (brain cells etc.) I don't think that commits us to determinism or any other implications of the little girl's train of thought. Just because we could be wrong about knowledge in every instance doesn't mean we are. The fact that knowledge has allowed us to do certain things (technology etc.) suggests we may not always be wrong. That's a very empirical argument. Let's see how it works in the analogy. Smith notices the ten coin phenomenon a lot. In fact he starts selling self-help books telling people to go to interviews with coins. Now either it works and we learn something about job interviews, or it doesn't and smith realizes he was wrong. We can test our knowledge to determine its validity and this is not limited to obscure models of particle physics, we can test knowledge at "middle-levels" legitimately.

Anyway, I probably sound like a dick at this point who's only saying things people are very familiar with to make a point that is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the comic so please kindly show me what that misunderstanding is.

* Ok actually I just want to know if I'm understanding things correctly

[WorstHaircutEver]

My take on this comic was as follows:
In the first part, after the explanation of a Gettier problem, the daughter is exasperated with her father about how there are no easy answers, and concludes that one can't draw any conclusions about deeper patterns beyond what's immediately observable (hence, no justice, just things that happen; no consciousness, just brain cells).

Of course, in doing so she implicitly assumes that we do have absolutely certain knowledge about what's directly observable. In the second part, however, her father teaches her quantum physics, and explains that we don't even understand the small stuff, which effectively means that we don't understand anything perfectly.

And then he snaps her back to reality with a flick on the nose. Even if we don't actually know anything, we're still confronted with day-to-day problems and choices. Ultimately, we have to accept that the universe is absurdly, obscenely complicated, and that we have no choice but to speculate and work off of imperfect knowledge; the only alternative is to sit on our hands and do nothing.

Of course, this could all be complete BS.

[N]

Ultimately, we have to accept that the universe is absurdly, obscenely complicated, and that we have no choice but to speculate and work off of imperfect knowledge; the only alternative is to sit on our hands and do nothing.

Can't argue with that. Thanks!

[Lethal Interjection]

If he is going to do these super long philosophy panels, then he really needs a joke to tie it all in.

Exactly.

Also, this thread should've been moved to the philosophy section before it was even made.*

*Please don't take the time to discuss the philosophical ramifications of this statement.

[UnclGhost]

The joke was a bit weak on this one, but so very, very much of philosophy is a confusion between map and territory.

[GUTCHUCKER]

Cool

[UnclGhost]

I know, I know, you said it better and in more detail.

[Yoo-jin]

Nyahah. I just noticed that Zach got the names mixed around. It's Smith who got the idea wrong, not Jones, as the strangely knowledgeable little girl failed to observe.
I don't like that the concepts of truth, justice and consciousness are dismissed. When the father flicks her in the nose, she observes an injustice, and in making his point he obviously feels that justice has been done regardless of his dismissal of its existence.
Truth is in two parts: what we think is true and what actually is. Neither is based on silly thoughts like "the man with 10 coins will get the job"; what Smith thought was that Jones would get it, which was not true. "The man with 10 coins will get the job" was untrue as well, in the same manner that 'the cat will steal my lunch' is incorrect when it is taken by a different cat. It was a pretty terrible example.
Zach seems to think that brain cells somehow refute the existence of our conscience. I don't think so. To me they are part of the reason we are capable of consciousness. I am a neural network, therefore I am.

"If you can have the right knowledge for the wrong reason, what is the meaning of knowledge?"
Uhh. Knowing things, I guess? Stored information? I know it's not the point of the comic, but the question annoyed me anyway.

Okay, I have no idea where he's going with this. I've realised that you can cut out everything between "No, there are facts" and nose-flick and the comic would actually make some sense. The little girl is trying to compare quantum physics to real life situations? You can't because common sense doesn't apply to quantum. The two don't tie in due to out lack of understanding, it's true, but how many people know that? Is the flick in the nose supposed to be a big SHUT UP NONE OF THAT MATTERS or something, 'cause I don't know. I'm not even sure what is meant by middle child.
RAMBLE RAMBLE RAMBLE >SUBMIT

"The man with 10 coins will get the job" is not the same as "the cat will steal my lunch" as "the man" is a more general, abstract concept which could be applied to several different people whereas "the cat" would refer to a singular cat that one is thinking about. If you wanted to make them more equivalent, it would be "the cat that steals my lunch will have stripes" seeing a certain cat with stripes but then having a different cat with stripes steal the lunch. Of course, this is sort of obscured by how one should interpret "the man" in such a case. However, in order to illuminate the problem of knowledge as "justified, true belief" we'd simply have to assume that Smith was imagining an abstraction rather than the concrete idea of "the man" as Jones. Otherwise, he would have thought "Jones, who has 10 coins, will get the job". All in all, I must say, the Smith in this case must be a rather roundabout guy since "the man with 10 coins will get the job" isn't a way that most people would think.

The quantum mechanics thing was mainly to show that "the small things" in life were more complicated than one might think. Thus, the "small things" which one might imagine is "common sense" isn't so common sensical at all.

But anyway, I would caution that one doesn't necessarily interpret these things as Zach's own views. Perhaps they are, but they are not necessarily so. The conclusion, however, does point to an idea that we are just immersed in the world and we simply have to deal with it (well, deal with it or choose the alternative, suicide) and thus we form these ideas of justice, knowledge, et cetera. As for the middle child comment, it's probably referring to the idea that the middle child kind of gets neglected. Too young to be the oldest and treated as such, too old to be the baby and treated as such.