2014-11-15
Original: 2014-11-15 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
First person: What's the matter?
Second person: Have you heard of Schrodinger's cat?
Panel 2:
It's a human idea. Due to the quantum nature of a system, you can have a cat that is both alive and dead at once. It's not one or the other until you observe. It's a sort of paradox. Like... how can it be both? Is reality even real?
Panel 3:
Nonsense. There's a trivial solution: Kill all cats. If all cats are dead, the cat in the box is dead. No ambiguity.
Panel 4:
Well, that doesn't solve the problem. They also have a version with gunpowder that is both exploded and not exploded until you observe.
Panel 5:
Trivial solution: Explode all gunpowder.
Panel 6:
You're missing the point.
Panel 7:
No I'm not. This is easily resolvable: Find all things that could exist in two or more states and reduce them to one state. BAM. No paradoxes.
Panel 8:
That... is BRILLIANT. Let's do it!
Panel 9 (caption banner): ABOUT TEN BILLION YEARS LATER
Professor figure: But professor, why was the universe a singularity before the big bang?
Student figure: Nobody knows.
Votey:
Speaker (in a speech bubble pointing at a black hole / singularity): SUCK IT, MULTIVERSE!
First person: What's the matter?
Second person: Have you heard of Schrodinger's cat?
Panel 2:
It's a human idea. Due to the quantum nature of a system, you can have a cat that is both alive and dead at once. It's not one or the other until you observe. It's a sort of paradox. Like... how can it be both? Is reality even real?
Panel 3:
Nonsense. There's a trivial solution: Kill all cats. If all cats are dead, the cat in the box is dead. No ambiguity.
Panel 4:
Well, that doesn't solve the problem. They also have a version with gunpowder that is both exploded and not exploded until you observe.
Panel 5:
Trivial solution: Explode all gunpowder.
Panel 6:
You're missing the point.
Panel 7:
No I'm not. This is easily resolvable: Find all things that could exist in two or more states and reduce them to one state. BAM. No paradoxes.
Panel 8:
That... is BRILLIANT. Let's do it!
Panel 9 (caption banner): ABOUT TEN BILLION YEARS LATER
Professor figure: But professor, why was the universe a singularity before the big bang?
Student figure: Nobody knows.
Votey:
Speaker (in a speech bubble pointing at a black hole / singularity): SUCK IT, MULTIVERSE!
Alt text
A nine-panel SMBC comic. In the first panels two people talk over a backdrop of glowing ringed shapes (stylized atoms or black holes). One asks if the other has heard of Schrodinger's cat, and explains the human idea that, due to the quantum nature of a system, a cat can be both alive and dead at once until observed, a paradox raising whether reality is even real. The other character keeps proposing blunt 'trivial solutions': kill all cats so the cat in the box is definitely dead, then explode all gunpowder. Told they're missing the point, they declare it's easily resolvable: find all things that could exist in two or more states and reduce them to one state, with no more paradoxes. The other character calls this brilliant and says 'Let's do it!' A final caption reads 'ABOUT TEN BILLION YEARS LATER,' showing a small alien-like figure asking a professor why the universe was a singularity before the big bang; the professor answers 'Nobody knows' -- the joke being their plan collapsed all quantum states into one, leaving a single dead universe. Votey panel: a hand-drawn black hole with a speech bubble shouting 'SUCK IT, MULTIVERSE!'
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.