Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

stupid

2022-06-22 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
stupid
Votey panel for stupid
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic addresses the logical fallacy of using someone else's stupidity to validate your own intelligence.

In the first panel, someone watching TV or reading comments online says, "Oh my god, look at these idiots." A second character points out: "This moron is using a logical fallacy in every other sentence, not citing his sources, does not appear to know history. What does that have to do with you, though? How does pointing that out tell us what the right answer is?"

The next panels sharpen the point: "But it's true: one day you found one moron who fits the caricature that you've always fantasized about, and can you prove you're right just because he's stupid?" The response: "Other people being stupid does not make you smart. Good luck getting an audience with that attitude."

The comic satirizes the common internet behavior of finding the dumbest possible representative of an opposing viewpoint and using them as proof that your own side is correct. This is related to the "straw man" fallacy and the tendency in online discourse to seek out the worst arguments from the other side rather than engaging with the strongest ones (sometimes called "nut-picking" or the opposite of "steelmanning"). The final line -- "Good luck getting an audience with that attitude" -- acknowledges that while this critique is logically sound, it's not what people want to hear, because dunking on idiots is far more entertaining and emotionally satisfying than rigorous self-examination.

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