xkcd was for a long time one of the eminent webcomic series on the internet, and had a large cultural impact on the internet of the late '00s and '10s. it represented (and influenced) the thoughts, opinions, and attitudes of the university-educated millennial cohort, the culture-bearing class of said generation. while the author, randall munroe continues to appeal to said aging millennials as well as democrats like bill gates, he has long since lost relevance in trendy internet circles. some of his older comics i still like, and on occasion one sees a "relevant xkcd" trotted out. certainly, he was not entirely bereft of talent.
my impetus for making this post was this particular comic https://xkcd.com/675/ which came to mind. on the surface, it's a simple strawman for one of the author's past interlocutors, but it provides a candid look into a particular view of science, and epistemology in general. the first 3 panels are statements of what are presented as facts: that "science" is a democratic, egalitarian process open to everybody, and that a degree "equips" someone with powerful intellectual capabilities that set him apart from laymen. yet the punchline, which is meant to be a powerful rhetorical blow, amounts to "you did NOT just say that, the experts disagree." i think it's very telling that randall chose this pathetic sort of appeal to authority when trying to make himself look as good as possible. every libtard you see on twitter still talks exactly like this, in their eyes it is genuinely a decisive tactic to win an argument. randall has to resort to this because the logical conclusion the assumptions he outlines is in fact that the philosophy major is endowed with the ability to disprove special relativity, but to him this is obviously wrong because all the experts agree that special relativity is real.
my impetus for making this post was this particular comic https://xkcd.com/675/ which came to mind. on the surface, it's a simple strawman for one of the author's past interlocutors, but it provides a candid look into a particular view of science, and epistemology in general. the first 3 panels are statements of what are presented as facts: that "science" is a democratic, egalitarian process open to everybody, and that a degree "equips" someone with powerful intellectual capabilities that set him apart from laymen. yet the punchline, which is meant to be a powerful rhetorical blow, amounts to "you did NOT just say that, the experts disagree." i think it's very telling that randall chose this pathetic sort of appeal to authority when trying to make himself look as good as possible. every libtard you see on twitter still talks exactly like this, in their eyes it is genuinely a decisive tactic to win an argument. randall has to resort to this because the logical conclusion the assumptions he outlines is in fact that the philosophy major is endowed with the ability to disprove special relativity, but to him this is obviously wrong because all the experts agree that special relativity is real.