2014-09-14
Original: 2014-09-14 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Woman: My experiment found an effect, but I'm not sure it's real.
Panel 2:
Man: Did you run an SMF?
Woman: A what?
Panel 3:
Man: An SMF. It's the easiest way to verify a result.
Panel 4:
Man: If your effect is real, you should be able to activate or deactivate it at will. If you say "active +1, inactive +0" then you can transmit a signal in binary.
Panel 5:
Man: My experiment showed that men who watch Batman movies report higher baseline confidence.
Woman: Perfect!
Panel 6:
Man: Tell an observer to only look at initial and final confidence reports. Higher levels are to be noted as "1" and lower levels are written down as "0." If your effect is real, you can transmit this signal with perfect fidelity.
Panel 7 (the man holds up a long banner of binary digits):
Banner: 1001011010010100101011001010110100101011010010110...
Panel 8:
Woman: That's... okay, yeah, that might actually work. But... why is it called an SMF?
Panel 9 (the man holds up another binary banner, with an arrow pointing from it to a caption):
Banner: 01010110101010\n101001100101110
Arrow points to caption: "SCIENCE MOTHER FUCKERS."
Votey:
A small child being held in someone's arms: Even I think that's dorky!
Woman: My experiment found an effect, but I'm not sure it's real.
Panel 2:
Man: Did you run an SMF?
Woman: A what?
Panel 3:
Man: An SMF. It's the easiest way to verify a result.
Panel 4:
Man: If your effect is real, you should be able to activate or deactivate it at will. If you say "active +1, inactive +0" then you can transmit a signal in binary.
Panel 5:
Man: My experiment showed that men who watch Batman movies report higher baseline confidence.
Woman: Perfect!
Panel 6:
Man: Tell an observer to only look at initial and final confidence reports. Higher levels are to be noted as "1" and lower levels are written down as "0." If your effect is real, you can transmit this signal with perfect fidelity.
Panel 7 (the man holds up a long banner of binary digits):
Banner: 1001011010010100101011001010110100101011010010110...
Panel 8:
Woman: That's... okay, yeah, that might actually work. But... why is it called an SMF?
Panel 9 (the man holds up another binary banner, with an arrow pointing from it to a caption):
Banner: 01010110101010\n101001100101110
Arrow points to caption: "SCIENCE MOTHER FUCKERS."
Votey:
A small child being held in someone's arms: Even I think that's dorky!
Alt text
An eight-panel SMBC comic. A woman tells a man her experiment found an effect but she isn't sure it's real. He asks if she ran an "SMF." She doesn't know what that is. He explains: an SMF is the easiest way to verify a result. If the effect is real, you should be able to activate or deactivate it at will, encoding it as binary (active = 1, inactive = 0) to transmit a signal. As his example, he cites his own finding that men who watch Batman movies report higher baseline confidence; the woman says "Perfect!" He continues: have an observer note higher confidence levels as 1 and lower as 0, and if the effect is real you can transmit the signal with perfect fidelity. He then holds up a long banner covered in a string of binary 1s and 0s. The woman admits it might actually work, then asks why it's called an SMF. He holds up another binary banner with an arrow pointing to the answer: "SCIENCE MOTHER FUCKERS." Votey: a hand-drawn panel of an adult cradling a small child, who looks up and says, "Even I think that's dorky!"
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.