Science Memes

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A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

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Here kitty kitty (slrpnk.net)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

This meme is making these different disciplines answer questions they were never intended to answer. It's like complaining that a school principal isn't out there teaching students: that's not their role and it would be silly to expect them to do otherwise.

Philosophers would ask something like, "what is a cat?"

Metaphysicians would ask something like, "how can we know that the cat truly exists?"

Theologians would ask something like, "what does the Bible say about cats?"

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The categories themselves also show his ignorance.

Metaphysics is a sub-discipline of Philosophy.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And theology and science stood on philosophy's shoulders as a means to different ends. It's almost like the author started at the beginning and selectively broke off little bits to build up a joke, in service of the joke.

The joke didn't land. That's cool. It's not my joke, I'm not offended. But I am mystified by the number of "well akshully..." replies. Had this been intended to be a serious, thorough commentary on various disciplines maybe I could understand the circlejerk around pedantry. But it's not. It's a gag based on oversimplification. In a meme community.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Comedy can be and is used to make real criticisms of the world and various institutions. "It's just a joke" is one of the most common lies.

People can laugh at the joke, or disagree with the criticism it communicates, or both, or neither.

But having and exercising critical thinking skills when engaging with memes in a meme community full of scholars and academics is exactly what I would expect.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

I love The Oatmeal, but yeah, this one's a miss