p-np
Original: p-np on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Speaker (a woman with red hair and glasses, standing at a lectern, giving a talk): "It has been shown that all NP-hard problems are the same. If you've solved one, you've solved them all."
Panel 2:
Speaker: "I propose a corollary: if you have a stupid solution to one NP-hard problem, it stupidly solves them all. I call this a 'sullooshun.'"
(A projector screen beside her displays the word: 'SULLOOSHUN')
Panel 3:
Speaker: "For instance, the traveling salesman problem. A salesman has to visit a lot of cities, once each, then go home. What's the shortest route?"
Panel 4:
Speaker: "Well, if you collapse the universe into a singularity, there's only ever one route. So, the sullooshun to every traveling salesman problem is 'collapse the universe.'"
(The screen shows a sketch of scattered dots collapsing toward a single red point, with a question mark.)
Panel 5:
Speaker (wide-eyed, intense): "SOLVED!"
Panel 6:
Speaker: "Now, let's apply this sullooshun to the bin-packing problem, which concerns how to efficiently pack boxes of various sizes into bins."
Panel 7:
Speaker: "If you collapse the universe, everything is the same size, and anyway, why bother packing if you can't go anywhere?"
Panel 8:
Speaker (wide-eyed, intense): "SOLVED!"
Panel 9:
Speaker: "Consider the halting problem. Is there a general way to tell if a program with a given input will ever stop?"
Panel 10:
Speaker: "The sullooshun is yes. In the singularity, time doesn't exist. The program can't even start, much less stop."
Panel 11:
Speaker (wide-eyed, intense): "SOLVED!"
Panel 12:
Audience member (off to the side): "Do you know anything about mathematics?"
Speaker: "That is beyond the scope of this talk."
(A small audience is visible, listening.)
Votey:
A close-up of the speaker's face, looking intense and slightly unhinged.
Speaker: "I'll make your face a singularity."
Speaker (a woman with red hair and glasses, standing at a lectern, giving a talk): "It has been shown that all NP-hard problems are the same. If you've solved one, you've solved them all."
Panel 2:
Speaker: "I propose a corollary: if you have a stupid solution to one NP-hard problem, it stupidly solves them all. I call this a 'sullooshun.'"
(A projector screen beside her displays the word: 'SULLOOSHUN')
Panel 3:
Speaker: "For instance, the traveling salesman problem. A salesman has to visit a lot of cities, once each, then go home. What's the shortest route?"
Panel 4:
Speaker: "Well, if you collapse the universe into a singularity, there's only ever one route. So, the sullooshun to every traveling salesman problem is 'collapse the universe.'"
(The screen shows a sketch of scattered dots collapsing toward a single red point, with a question mark.)
Panel 5:
Speaker (wide-eyed, intense): "SOLVED!"
Panel 6:
Speaker: "Now, let's apply this sullooshun to the bin-packing problem, which concerns how to efficiently pack boxes of various sizes into bins."
Panel 7:
Speaker: "If you collapse the universe, everything is the same size, and anyway, why bother packing if you can't go anywhere?"
Panel 8:
Speaker (wide-eyed, intense): "SOLVED!"
Panel 9:
Speaker: "Consider the halting problem. Is there a general way to tell if a program with a given input will ever stop?"
Panel 10:
Speaker: "The sullooshun is yes. In the singularity, time doesn't exist. The program can't even start, much less stop."
Panel 11:
Speaker (wide-eyed, intense): "SOLVED!"
Panel 12:
Audience member (off to the side): "Do you know anything about mathematics?"
Speaker: "That is beyond the scope of this talk."
(A small audience is visible, listening.)
Votey:
A close-up of the speaker's face, looking intense and slightly unhinged.
Speaker: "I'll make your face a singularity."
Alt text
A tall multi-panel SMBC comic. A red-haired woman in glasses and a green shirt gives an academic talk from a lectern. She says it has been shown that all NP-hard problems are the same, so solving one solves them all, and proposes a corollary: a stupid solution to one NP-hard problem stupidly solves them all, which she calls a 'sullooshun' (shown on a projector screen). For the traveling salesman problem, her 'sullooshun' is to collapse the universe into a singularity so there's only one route; a screen sketch shows scattered dots collapsing to a single point. She shouts 'SOLVED!' with wide, manic eyes. She applies the same trick to the bin-packing problem (if you collapse the universe, everything is the same size and you can't go anywhere) and the halting problem (in the singularity time doesn't exist, so the program can't even start), shouting 'SOLVED!' each time. An audience member asks, 'Do you know anything about mathematics?' She replies, 'That is beyond the scope of this talk.' The joke is that her absurd universe-collapsing answer 'solves' every hard computer-science problem by destroying everything. Votey: a close-up of her intense, unhinged face saying, 'I'll make your face a singularity.'
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.