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Comment by sgarland | Hacker News Reader

> bodybuilding.com

Obligatory post about the dumbest argument to ever be had online [0]. It’s so good, the Wikipedia entry [1] has a section devoted to it.

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20240123134202/https://forum.bod...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodybuilding.com

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For the record this is an example of the "Fencepost error" where the last item in a range gets double counted as the first item in the next range and is incredibly common in dyscalculia (the math version of dyslexia) as people will have "visual number lines" in their head that cover ranges of numbers but the ends get double counted, so there will be a 10-20 number line then a 20-30 number line.

I suspect TheJosh had something like that with the week where he visualized it with Sundays at both ends but lacked the self awareness to realize that this was not a universal representation.

Can we pause and admire the sheer contagiousness of the debate? We are now extending it to the meta-realm, discussing the possible mental states that led to one or more of the original participants adopting certain lines of reasoning...

Speaking of the meta-realm, I've always wondered how messages in forum flamewars always seemed to gravitate toward a very specific pattern:

You see this pattern all over the Internet. For example, from that bodybuilding.com thread:

    Are you retarded? [personal insult]

    Maybe you should look at a calander, I didn't double count sunday, my two weeks started and ended on sunday, exactly 14 days. [the point]

    What don't you understand? [bait to continue flaming]

There's a related, more polite version of "are you retarded" which is not uncommon even here on HN. It is "I'm confused". I don't know whether it's a phrase that I'm over analysing, but it always comes across as disingenuous to me.

The responder is never actually confused, they have a question that they should just ask.

Haha, I do the I'm confused, but that is:

1 me being polite and not calling you an idiot.

2 me hedging my bets in case I am the idiot.

Yeah I definitely do that too. I've never really thought about why I use that language, but thinking about it, it feels like a short hand and slightly politer way of saying

> I think you're wrong

> Here's why I think you're wrong

> Please correct me if I've misunderstood something

And I thought this is the pinnacle of being a well mannered netizen. It turns out you actually shouldn't even THINK of others as idiots?

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

There's also "I'm retarded" or "Retard here".

Uh... I use "I'm confused" a lot. Because often I am confused! Someone said something that didn't make sense given what I know.

It divides fairly evenly (I think, being generous to myself here) between:

Yep, something I thought was true was not true.

Something they said was wrong, or they omitted something without which their meaning was ambiguous.

Maybe a smattering of "I/they misparsed what was said" too. But really. Often I'm just confused. When I use it I definitely don't mean they're an idiot I just worry that they'll think I'm an idiot... (...and that they might be right.)

The poster is likely confused at how anybody can be so r-slurred.

There is no better way to destroy the ability to communicate than by assuming there is evil lurking around every corner and all you have to do is uncover it!

Thinking that every conversation you have is high stakes, that the fate of the world hangs in the balance to be decided by your ability to conquer your conversational opponents, is a really insidious form of mind rot that is prevalent across the web and seems to know no ideological bounds.

Maybe it's just what happens when narcissists get online. The inability to acknowledge that the argument doesn't matter and so you can chill out and let retards be retards is fundamentally a failure in humility.

"I really don't understand why people would think X"

is another example but I think there may be some expression of non-understanding. "So retarted it doesnt make sense."

Similar, "are you a n*zi" never seen here but as a simple but clever "Could you elaborate?" often as a reply to a polite but ambiguous comment. It's basically bait for the ambiguous commenter to confirm or deny the morality of their comment.

"genuinely curious" is the new one I see everywhere lately.

"Genuinely curious" or "honest question" are the internet equivalent of "don't shoot, I'm coming out with my hands up". The disclaimer people feel the need to put so they don't catch a bullet for no good reason, when most internet forums are filled to the brim with trigger happy people with itchy fingers and immunity from consequences (barring a few reputation points).

Could be similar to "I'm not trying to be offensive but ${offensive statement}" Its a kind of disclaimer but more often found in speech than on websites.

I like playing with this sometimes by saying something like "I'm not trying to be racist but have you noticed that the weather is a bit cold today"... "that wasn't racist?!" ... "yes, I said it wasn't"

> "Genuinely curious" is the internet equivalent of a "don't shoot, I'm coming out with my hands up".

Ha, that's a great thought and I will doubtless quote (steal) it in the future.

Yes! Like "real question" it should be redundant.

The passive aggressive Gen Z version is “make it make sense” which I despise

Something I’ve noticed (and which is present among all people, but seems particularly common with younger people today) is a sort of unconsidered, unobserved sense of authority over social matters.

I know this was a thing when I was a kid, but something is different now. I watch my kids do it and part of me gets it, but another part of me wonders if it’s heavily influenced by something modern like social media.

It leads to this sort of attitude, like thinking you can tell people to make it make sense. It offloads a lot of cognitive burden onto others while assuming a position of authority.

I don’t want this to sound like “kids these days!”, because I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Perhaps it’s most obvious in kids because the attitude is most well-imprinted in them, but it’s absolutely present elsewhere in older people as well. Yet I didn’t see it so prevalent when I was younger.

It’s very common in political debates. Part of what exemplifies it best is a reluctance or outright refusal to do the mental labour of explaining one’s position on a matter. That is, without fail, someone else’s job. You’ve already got it figured out. It’s their fault that they don’t get it.

Like, you don’t get why Some Idea is correct and all Other Ideas are stupid? Your loss. Make it make sense.

I’m missing a lot here. Fundamentally it’s an unwillingness and a failure to actually engage, participate in having and defending ideas, and being accountable to held beliefs. I have to constantly tell my kids to own their beliefs and understand them, because they’re remarkably comfortable adopting and espousing ideas and beliefs without examination and intentionality.

I’m not claiming it’s a problem with youth though. I think it’s a problem with the dispersal and sheer density of information these days. People are overwhelmed. More than ever we go with vibes over actual considered interpretations of what we encounter. The default in the vibe based information economy is to assume a confident position and refuse to engage in good faith discussions, because you’re not even sure how you got where you are. People’s belief systems are like a social media Plinko machine.

I don’t mean that condescendingly. There’s so much information, so much to process, so many complex matters, etc. We’re all maxed out. Make it make sense.

Good post, and I believe indeed it is caused by social media and newer generations molded by it.

Go find some controversial discussion from 80-something years ago on Youtube, say, about homosexuality. Even as an older Millennial it feels the ability to entertain and politely discuss ideas we do not own nor approve of has completely disappeared. Now it’s literally just black and white, right or wrong, with or against us, with no nuance or possibility for one’s opinion to move towards compromise. It’s two camps making hateful memes about the other.

We are not made for this style of socialization and discourse, and no one is taking this problem seriously. It worries me a lot.

That's basically the opposite of /s - "I know it's hard to tell whether something is sarcasm or not through text, so I want to emphasise that I am not".

Of course, people will inevitably use it sarcastically.

Actually the brain is part of the body, so it doesn’t extend into the meta realm, the debate is still about dates and body building just with a different organ.

As the quip goes, there are two hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.

That's three though.

That's the neat part.

Depends what you mean by the name "three"

or "neat"

Not if you start counting at zero!

0,1,2,3

That's 5

"Five is right out"

Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.

The week starts and ends on zero

Whoosh

This has to be the most hilarious comment I've ever seen on HN.

Well, actually...

I'm not sure about the "fencepost error" part, but he's thinking of days as durations rather than points. It's early in the thread, about halfway down the first page:

> You don't start counting on sunday, it hasn't been a day yet, you don't start counting til monday. You can't count the day that it is, did you never take basic elementrary math?

Put in other terms, TheJosh uses "Sun - Sun" as inclusive start and exclusive end, while Justin-27 uses "Sun - Sat" as inclusive start and inclusive end.

I think TheJosh mixed things up when trying to explain it (durations vs inclusive/exclusive), so doubles down and comes up with weirder stuff later in the thread. I didn't read the whole thing though, stopped near the bottom of the first page.

>days as durations rather than points

Isn't thinking of day X as the range [midnight of X, X+1 midnight) isomoprhic to associating it with a point for X, at least for purposes of considering coverage (e.g. both approaches work to show that there are 7 days that cover a week).

Yes, see the end of my comment:

> I think TheJosh mixed things up when trying to explain it (durations vs inclusive/exclusive)

I wanted to keep going but pages 3 onwards don't seem to be archived. Argh, back to work I guess

Enjoy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=teC_uksSPBU

Maybe I have that. I can totally solve much more complicated problems but this fencepost shit just messes with. Recently I thought last quarter ended March 1st because a quarter has 3 months and March is the third month.

My personal favorite rendition of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqylqmDl0Mw (Mega64 - Flame War Theater - "Full Body Workout Every Other Day?")

I had to watch that at 2x to keep the thoughts-per-second above catatonic.

In the same vein, for those who haven't seen it, the classic "Is soup a drink?" debate: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IDNuz_VFJtU

Somewhere, there are ancient Greek rhetoric teachers spinning in their graves.

Is cereal soup?

Yes. And a vanilla soy latte is a three bean soup.

No, that’s just an extra dressed salad.

Objection.

That was a treat, thank you.

Cultured gentlemen such as yourself may also appreciate:

>Intellectuals Solve Life's Big Mysteries | Big Brain by Tom and Don

[nsfw discussion] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcYzzS7PwG8

This is amazing, thank you.

If a woman ever asks what men’s locker room talk is like, just show them that post. We really are a simple bunch.

> In 2015, Vice News contacted mathematician Joanna Nelson for a resolution, and she said that TheJosh would have to schedule his workouts in two-week chunks, claiming a week is seven days from Monday to Sunday.

Why was a mathematician necessary for this assertion?

Because if you ask an economist you'll get two answers, neither of which will be helpful.

lol that was a bait thread, this is the same place that had a discussion on whether a pitbull could defeat the Sun if it snuck up on it at night

Do you have a link or reference to this? I'm going to be thinking about this for weeks now.

I found some fragmented search scraps earlier today which I saved.

The thread is possibly: https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=170324391 (now defunct)

The link title was "Pitbull vs Sun, Pitbull wins because.... - Bodybuilding.com Forums"

The link text preview was "it just has to attack in the night time when the Sun is sleeping. amirite or is there a way for the Sun to win?"

Unfortunately this is not in archive.org or archive.is

I never saw this before. Thank you to share. Truly, this is peak Interwebs.

That IS dumb -- everyone knows there are 8 days in a week. Sunday to Sunday -- you can count it on your hands!

Well, the thing is that if it's Sunday you can't know if it's the Sunday at the end of the week or the Sunday at the beginning of the week. Therefore, each Sunday is in two weeks and should be counted twice, 8 + 2 = 10 days in a week. Don't feel bad, a lot of people miss this.

Phewah. I feel like you just upgraded my entire life!

> Obligatory post about the dumbest argument to ever be had online

Jon Bois did an amazing video about this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eECjjLNAOd4

Laughing my head off reading through this. Thank you

I need to thank you for the web archive post. The argument was amusing as it was dumb.

I love this thread so much

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