2011-06-26
Explanation
This two-panel comic satirizes the hypocrisy of selectively applying skepticism. In the first panel, an older man scoffs at psychics, saying, "Pff. How can anyone believe psychics. They just say the vague and obvious and pass it off as clairvoyance." He is dismissive and confident in his rationality.
In the second panel, captioned "Later...", the same man is sitting at home watching a financial news broadcast. The pundit on TV declares, "The market is headed for a downturn at some point in the future." This statement is every bit as vague and unfalsifiable as anything a psychic might say -- predicting that the market will go down "at some point" is a trivially true non-prediction. Yet the man watches attentively, apparently taking it seriously, completely unaware that he is falling for the exact same trick he just mocked.
The votey panel takes the joke further by proposing "combo pundit/psychics" -- a person who says, "I predict a good winter market. Now, would you like to speak with your mom from beyond the pale of death?" This highlights how both professions rely on the same rhetorical technique of making vague pronouncements that sound meaningful, suggesting that financial punditry and psychic readings are essentially interchangeable forms of confident-sounding nonsense. The comic is a pointed critique of how people often reserve their skepticism for culturally disfavored forms of prediction while uncritically accepting equally baseless forecasting from more "respectable" sources.