megamasterdrive
11 HN mentions · mentioned in 9 months, 2019–2026
0:31 · 320K views · Oct 11, 2012
A one-minute clip from The Simpsons in which Lisa demonstrates the Anti-Tiger Rock to Homer, showing that the rock keeps away tigers because no tigers are around. It is a short comedic scene about faulty causal reasoning.
HN commenters post it as a joke whenever a thread involves correlation, causation, or unfalsifiable protective measures.
11 comments from Hacker News
Lisa Simpson has a rock she would like to sell you: this video I mean, yeah, I get it. I worry about general purpose computing going away too. I remember Stallman and Doctorow talking about this in the early 2000s and saw many iterations of this same thread pop up on Slashdot, HN, Digg, Reddit, etc. over the years. I dunno man, I guess I’m just skeptical over the dooming at this point. I think a bigger issue is less about whether we will be able to run whatever we want on our computer, and more that the internet has just become a cesspool of ads, clickbait, ragebait, and app sandboxed content that’s not discoverable by search engines. I think you’ll always have a fairly reasonable choice of computers to run whatever software you want on. But todays internet just isn’t very fun anymore.
And perhaps this rock keeps tigers away - this video . A lot of the 'terrorist plots' the government has found seem more contrived than meaningful. Eg, cases where if the government had done nothing, then it seems likely that nothing still would have happened. Certainly we know that funding was taken away from monitoring and investigating white supremacist terrorism networks in the US in order to look for external ones connected to Moslem. And we know that more people and damage has occurred from white supremacist terrorism. So, from an equally specious argument, perhaps some of GW Bush's policies lead to more deaths from terrorism.
Homer : Well, there's not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol is sure doing its job. Lisa : That's specious reasoning, Dad. Homer : Thank you, sweetie. Lisa : Dad, what if I were to tell you that this rock keeps away tigers. Homer : Uh-huh, and how does it work? Lisa : It doesn't work. It's just a stupid rock. Homer : I see. Lisa : But you don't see any tigers around, do you? Homer : Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock. this video
Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm. Lisa: That’s specious reasoning, Dad. Homer: Thank you, dear. Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away. Homer: Oh, how does it work? Lisa: It doesn’t work. Homer: Uh-huh. Lisa: It’s just a stupid rock. Homer: Uh-huh. Lisa: But I don’t see any tigers around, do you? Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock. [0]: this video
And here is a clip of the relevant scene, from the episode "Much Apu About Nothing" (1996), this video Quoting from its IMDB entry at [LINK] : Lisa : Dad, what if I were to tell you that this rock keeps away tigers. Homer : Uh-huh, and how does it work? Lisa : It doesn't work. It's just a stupid rock. Homer : I see. Lisa : But you don't see any tigers around, do you? Homer : Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock.