2010-09-23
Explanation
This comic tackles the problem of "premature nihilism" in debates and discussions. It opens by noting that any argument can be destroyed by nihilism, illustrated by an existentialist debate club where someone declares "Reality is subjective, so nobody wins the debate." It then shows this tendency coming from multiple epistemological directions: a postmodernist who declares "There's no such thing as truth" and a skeptic who dismisses 42 evidence-based arguments because they were not 43 (which would have overcome his status quo bias). The comic also notes that while logic not being self-proving is an important philosophical observation, it is not very pragmatic, illustrated by a fast food worker at "Sokalburger" responding to a complaint about cheese with "Sorry, reality is a lie."
The comic concludes with a scene of someone in a debate who, after two minutes, begins having a meltdown screaming "Facts are inscrutable!" -- a "premature nihilator." The term "premature nihilator" is a play on "premature ejaculator," suggesting someone who reaches for nihilistic arguments too quickly in a discussion, effectively killing productive discourse before it can go anywhere. The comic argues that while philosophical skepticism about the nature of reality and truth has its place, wielding it carelessly in everyday arguments is both unproductive and intellectually lazy. The "Sokalburger" is a reference to the Sokal affair, where physicist Alan Sokal submitted a deliberately nonsensical paper to a postmodern journal, which accepted it, exposing the excesses of postmodern skepticism.