An Exercise in Abstract Prediction

I heard a joke the other day. It comes by way of u/themanster604 on reddit, who heard it from a professor, who in turn, probably found the thing in a chain-email from his grandmother. 

(Yes, the premise actually is "A maniac murders teens when they 

refuse to forward chain mail." So. Yeah. Gotta look out for that one)

At any rate, the joke goes:

“A physicist, a chemist, and a statistician are called to see their dean. As they arrive the dean leaves his office. On their own, the professors are alarmed to discover there is a fire in the wastebasket. 

The physicist says, 'I know what to do! We must cool down the materials until their temperature is lower than the ignition temperature and then the fire will go out.' 

The chemist says, 'No! No! I know what to do! We must cut off the supply of oxygen so that the fire will go out due to lack of one of the reactants.' 

While the physicist and chemist debate what course to take, they both are further alarmed when the statistician starts running around the room setting other fires. They both scream, 'What are you doing?'

He replies, ‘Trying to get an adequate sample size.’”

Now this got me thinking. Clearly we've reached the punchline. But likewise, it's obvious the scene hasn't ended. It's not as if the physicist and chemist would both cock their heads at such an explanation, shrug, and carry about their business. And what of the dean whose office is getting torched by a pair of idiots and a would-be arsonist. 

We can assume from what we've heard that neither the chemist nor the physicist intends to put these fires out, and further, we know they know how to. They've already offered two effective solutions. So that means the fire grows, someone was probably hurt in it -- more than likely a lot of someones, too, especially if you assume the building also held lecture halls, and it was all highly preventable. That's textbook negligence. So do these men end up in jail? Or do they flee?

The former seems safer to assume. 

Now these three professors are sitting in prison and their students are going uneducated -- though all things considered, were these really the sort of men you wanted your kids educated by? -- the dean's up to his noise with more problems than Dumbledore had at Hogwarts once Voldemort returned, he doesn't even have an office to solve them in, and nobody can adequately explained why any of it happened nor predict what's to follow.

(Paterno: death eater, or yet another victim of the imperius curse?) 

This happens a lot in our humor but it's not an isolated phenomena. We've become a headline society, subjugating additional, important information to obscurity -- if not outright omission. What's worse is many seem content not pursue these omissions.

It's not entirely bad. We consume more information and parse it faster in such a fashion. But I do hope I illustrated that what's left out can sometimes be more fun.

Just kidding. The real lesson is that we need to stop trying to teach each other say many fucking lessons.