2013-07-18
Explanation
This comic is titled "Why ''You Can''t Teach an Old Dog New Tricks'' in Two Graphs" and presents a clever psychological explanation for why older people tend to stop learning new things. The first graph plots "How Stupid You Feel" against "How Much You''re Learning," showing a positive correlation -- the more you are learning, the more stupid you feel. This makes intuitive sense: genuine learning requires confronting your own ignorance, making mistakes, and struggling with material you do not yet understand.
The second graph plots "Fear of Looking Stupid" against "Age," showing that this fear increases dramatically as people get older. Taken together, the two graphs suggest a vicious cycle: learning makes you feel stupid, and older people are more afraid of feeling stupid, so older people avoid learning. It is not that older people are incapable of learning new things (as the folk saying implies), but rather that their psychological resistance to the discomfort of learning increases with age. Pride, social status, and a lifetime of being seen as competent all make it harder to put yourself in the vulnerable position of being a beginner again.
The votey shows a thought bubble labeled "You right now:" with someone at a computer thinking, "Oh baby. Two graphs at once," which is a self-aware joke about the SMBC audience''s love of data visualization. It pokes fun at the kind of nerdy reader who finds two graphs in a webcomic genuinely exciting -- which, given SMBC''s audience of scientists and engineers, is probably most of them.