![[1260] Larisa’s Life Advice, Part 1](/comics/2021-04-13-1260-larisas-life-advice-part-1.png "[1260] Larisa’s Life Advice, Part 1")
This strip was only on the front page for a couple of hours before being replaced by the advertisement for our Kickstarter campaign for the Gaia anthology. It will now stay on the front page until Wednesday or Thursday when Part 2 will be published.
The full quote by Michael Crichton was too long for the comic:
“You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward, reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
- Larisa: You can tell that it’s great advice based on the fact that it’s from me!
- Sign: Larisa’s Life Advice – Part 1
- Larisa: You’ll make much better memories if you spend your money on experiences instead of things.
- Larisa: Smartphones have many uses. Recording concerts or fireworks isn’t one of them.
- Larisa: The internet is full of propaganda, even Wikipedia!
- Wikipedia: Fire – Disadvantages – Advantages
- Larisa: However, don’t ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
- Michael Crichton: You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of the facts. Often, the article is so wrong it presents the story backward, reversing cause and effect.
- Larisa: Gain the reputation of being a very honest person, then everyone will believe your one BIG FAT LIE!
- Larisa: … … Someone should have given me that advice five years ago!
- Jelena: As if anyone else could have been responsible for the plasma incident…
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Yuna, I would say?
This is shockingly not terrible advice! Who is this and what happened to Larisa?
Kurt A wrote:
You mean the same Larisa who give us this dating tips?
http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2017/03/06/0866-dating-tips-for-girls-part-1-of-4/
No wait, you’re right! Who is this imposter? lol
Hah, great advice. I’d add that our world is full of propaganda, question EVERYTHING. It is just easier to spread it on the internet with social media. It’s everywhere, can be as simple as a picture & fake quote or even an article in a “scientific journal” (lookup “What’s the deal with birds?”). Even the media is full of it, Fox and CNN being the biggest propagandists.
Steeeve wrote:
Uyghurs*insert hotbutton topic of choice, especially in a region half a world away from you.I’m sure most if not all of you immediately have 5 inches to post on the subject, it’s going to be rare to see a person on the internet NOT know what’s going on with 6that one.
I’m posting that word here not to ask you to present to me those inches of paper, but to rather apply the above quote to everything surrounding that word: no matter your opinion for or against, I’m sure half of you are wrong, almost all of the other half of you are utterly wrong, and the remaining 0.1% of you are comically ridiculously wrong.
…. and by the way, I’m the only correct one. Naturally.
The comic has evolved to the point where the question is not ‘What plasma incident? but ‘Which plasma incident?’
Ahhh, Crichton before he became a climate change skeptic for some reason.
Consider that his entire theme was corporate corruption, misinformation, and dangers of not listening to scientists (Jurassic Park movies kinda missed this).
Especially wikipedia.
…or, flood every thought and idea you promulgate with lies and you’ll have people believe it’s the truth.
@ Kaze Koichi:Not especially Wikipedia, which has plenty of eagle-eyed editors watching for someone trying to pull a fast one.
Except for the smartphone, I agree with her.
Now, put down that plasma torch.
I’m not sure about this focus on the high end of journalism. High standards are good but you must beware promoting false equivalence. People end up presenting the implication the New York Times and the BBC are not absolutely perfect and are therefore on the same level as fakebook posts and Fox news.
Reminds of reading papers and noting journalists being consistently wrong on stuff I know about, then started wondering why should I trust them about the stuff I don’t know about.
And don’t get me started on smartphone idiots at concerts, if they love recording so much, why don’t they just wear GoPro?
I have a feeling that single word under fire’s disadvantages is “none”
This is surprisingly good advice. Especially given how Larisa was acting in the last comic. That said I like this advice!
@ maarvarq:
I think Kaze Koichi’s “especially” is accurate enough. Why do educators insist that Wikipedia does not qualify as a scholarly source for research papers?
A bunch of eagle-eyed editors is a good defense against misinformation, but it isn’t infallible. In an analogous situation, a bunch of eagle-eyed programmers failed to do anything about the Heartbleed Bug until after it had already been exploited.
Panel 5 is weirdly insightful to my own thesis research and I am tempted to include it in my defense in 2 weeks
Panel 5 is analogous to the Fraud theory.
Commit only one fraud, make it big enough to last your whole life and do not even think about committing another.
RIP Bernie, you almost got there.
I’ve had work colleagues who didn’t so much lie, as never told the truth.
I think the term is ‘passive aggressive’.
@ t209:
Having read his novels, I’d say he’s skeptical of all the doom and gloom. The repeated failed predictions have gotten tiresome.
Based and redpilled.
@ maarvarq:
Are you living in the land of pink ponies? Those editors ARE the ones that spread propaganda. And if you try to clear their posts, you’ll learn that they are more eagle-eyed then you,and they’ll be the one to edit you out in the end.
Steeeve wrote:
Why?
Nimz wrote:
Educators do that for a very good reason–peer-reviewed research journals do not accept Wikipedia listings as references. Educators are introducing students to professional standards.
I use Wikipedia all the time to check spelling or basic facts. But I’m just cleaning up the manuscript. That’s very different from justifying how your research results are adding new knowledge to the literature.
Michael Crichton tagged this the “Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect”. You can see a longer quote here. I think Crichton picked kind of an awkward name, which is unfortunate, because there is real wisdom in the idea, and a better name for it might result in its becoming more widely known.
Huh, not what I was expecting Larisa to give advice about (especially advice that is pretty good), I though she was going to lecture about fire, like igniting buildings, old objects, effigies, failed projects, liar’s pants, peoples clothe without them noticing until they’re naked/semi naked, etc. Well, there’s always part 2+!
Nimz wrote:
No. There are plenty of sources considerably less reliable than wikipedia. The danger of wikipedia is that people are trusting it more than it deserves. Most people realize that what they see on facebook is crap, but don’t realize that the same crap can remain on wikipedia for years if its in some less frequent area.
And, yes, wikipedia editors definitely DO have opinions and are not as neutral and unbiased as they claim. Again, the difference to newspapers is not that newspapers would be more neutral and unbiased: it’s just that newspapers usually don’t even pretend to be.
However, wikipedia is quite good tool for research actually. You just need to ignore everything except the “references” sections.
I think I really like this quote:
“Don’t ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.” – Oliver Knörzer
@ chasbanner:
Even then have to ask is this a news reporter story or is this written by an editor for an opinion piece.
Leaf Mautrec wrote:
That goes well back before Oliver was born though the original quote ended in ‘stupidity’ rather than incompetence.
@ Leaf Mautrec:
That’s Hanlon’s Razor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor