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

by Randall Munroe

In Terry Pratchett’s novel Carpe Jugulum, the character Granny Weatherwax expressed the principle more succinctly. A young man tried to tell Granny that the nature of sin was a complicated thing. She said that, no, it was very simple. “Sin,” she said, “is when you treat people as things.”

Whatever our faults, humans have countless millennia of experience in judging the intentions of others—a skill much older and deeper than our ability to put our feelings into words. We can be shortsighted and confused and make lots of mistakes, but we can smell disdain and condescension from a mile away.