2012-08-03
Explanation
This comic is titled "The College Paradox" and presents a graph with age on the x-axis and two plotted lines. The red line represents "confidence in received wisdom from a small number of books" and the blue line represents "rejection of authority." Both lines spike dramatically around the college years (roughly age 18-22) and then decline with age, though the red line (confidence in received wisdom) stays elevated longer than the blue line (rejection of authority).
The paradox being illustrated is the contradictory mindset common among college-age people: they simultaneously hold enormous confidence in ideas they have absorbed from a relatively small number of books or courses, while also strongly rejecting authority and established wisdom. These two attitudes are inherently in tension -- you cannot logically be both supremely confident in what a few professors taught you AND dismissive of authority figures -- yet they peak at exactly the same time in life. The graph shows that both tendencies fade with age and experience, as people realize that knowledge is more complex and nuanced than a handful of influential texts suggest.
The votey panel shows the comic'''s author, Zach Weinersmith, depicted as an old man shaking his cane with the caption "In short: Old Man Weiner shakes his cane at you," acknowledging that the comic itself is a somewhat curmudgeonly observation about young people -- exactly the kind of thing an older person shaking their fist at the younger generation would say.