How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems

by Randall Munroe

Maybe an idea is bad, but figuring out exactly why it’s a bad idea can teach you a lot—and might help you think of a better approach.

That’s why I don’t like making fun of people for admitting they don’t know something or never learned how to do something. Because if you do that, all it does is teach them not to tell you when they’re learning something . . . and you miss out on the fun.

Physics doesn’t care if your question is weird. It just gives you the answer, without judging.

This idea sounds ridiculous, so, unsurprisingly, the US military studied it during the Cold War.

There’s a giant, weird world out there. Ideas that sound good can have terrible consequences, and ideas that sound ridiculous can turn out to be revolutionary. Sometimes you can figure out which ones work ahead of time, and sometimes you just have to try them and see what happens.