• Question: Did you Simpsons predicted president trump #CONSPIRACY. Do you like conspiracy's??

    Asked by anon-181139 on 12 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Liza Selley

      Liza Selley answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      The Simpsons has predicted so many things- the Ebola outbreak, building The Shard, the horse meat scandal ….. I don’t believe all conspiracy theories but they do make for a good Netflix documentary!

    • Photo: Ashley Akbari

      Ashley Akbari answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      I think when you have that many shows and have showcased that many episodes, probabilistic outcome is that you are going to get some of it correct

    • Photo: Nathan Clarke

      Nathan Clarke answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      I love Ashley’s answer. Another way to say this is: “if you make a lot of predictions, some are bound to come true”. This may seem obvious but we’re exceptionally bad at understanding probability as a species (particularly scientists – after all, we like science because we like discovering patterns in things!). The Simpsons have been on TV for a very long time and made a lot of episodes – some of them are bound to reflect reality. It’s quite useful to think of all the things in the Simpsons that haven’t come true to make a fair comparison when considering conspiracies and the writers’ ability to predict the future. Another animation (South Park) made a whole episode (and gave birth to a meme) where one character nearly loses his mind trying to think of something that the Simpsons haven’t already done (“Simpsons did it!”) 🙂

    • Photo: Lauren Burns

      Lauren Burns answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      I love the Simpsons, I think it is a great show. But I agree with what has been said, chances are when something (such as the Simpsons) has so many episodes, chances are something will line up with reality. I find conspiracy theories entertaining, but I don’t necessarily believe them!

Comments

  • Photo: anon-181139

    anon-181139 commented on :

    @Nathan I love that you know what memes are! You are such an intellectual millennial. Haha.

  • Photo: Nathan

    Nathan commented on :

    Haha – thanks! To bring this back to science, the term meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his book ‘The Selfish Gene’. He meant this as a term that compared how ideas are passed between people like genes are; once an idea is made, it takes on a life of its own and the most successful ones multiply and spread through the population – very similar to genes! The term is now commonly understood as those funny pictures with misspelt slogans on them that we’re all familiar with. But someone had the bright idea of calling them memes in the first place because of how quickly we like to spread these things around!

  • Photo: anon-181139

    anon-181139 commented on :

    @Nathan You are an actual Icon