quantum-weirdness
Original: quantum-weirdness on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Person (to God): "God, why is quantum mechanics so weird?"
God (offscreen, speech from above): "It's Noah's fault."
Panel 2:
God: "After the flood, I wanted to make a rainbow for him."
Panel 3:
God: "In order to make a rainbow, you have to 'break' light into wavelengths when it encounters a new medium."
Panel 4:
God: "Well, it turns out that if you want that, you have to twiddle with a bunch of aspects of the universe, adding weird stuff like photon superposition and probability amplitudes."
Panel 5:
God: "But, every time I fixed one thing, something else seemed to break. So, I kept changing things and changing things and the system got more and more hacky as time went on."
Panel 6:
God: "Finally, it got so fundamentally ugly I added uncertainty so nobody could look too close."
Panel 7:
Person: "That explains all of physics AND what you said to Noah after the flood."
God: "Exactly."
Panel 8 (caption: 4000 YEARS EARLIER...):
God (over Noah's ark, with a rainbow appearing): "NEVER AGAIN."
Votey:
A mouth speaks into a cup of coffee (or a tea/coffee mug): "Christ, what garbage."
Person (to God): "God, why is quantum mechanics so weird?"
God (offscreen, speech from above): "It's Noah's fault."
Panel 2:
God: "After the flood, I wanted to make a rainbow for him."
Panel 3:
God: "In order to make a rainbow, you have to 'break' light into wavelengths when it encounters a new medium."
Panel 4:
God: "Well, it turns out that if you want that, you have to twiddle with a bunch of aspects of the universe, adding weird stuff like photon superposition and probability amplitudes."
Panel 5:
God: "But, every time I fixed one thing, something else seemed to break. So, I kept changing things and changing things and the system got more and more hacky as time went on."
Panel 6:
God: "Finally, it got so fundamentally ugly I added uncertainty so nobody could look too close."
Panel 7:
Person: "That explains all of physics AND what you said to Noah after the flood."
God: "Exactly."
Panel 8 (caption: 4000 YEARS EARLIER...):
God (over Noah's ark, with a rainbow appearing): "NEVER AGAIN."
Votey:
A mouth speaks into a cup of coffee (or a tea/coffee mug): "Christ, what garbage."
Alt text
An eight-panel SMBC comic. A worried-looking person asks an unseen God, "God, why is quantum mechanics so weird?" God answers, "It's Noah's fault," then explains: after the flood, God wanted to make a rainbow for Noah, but making a rainbow requires breaking light into wavelengths when it hits a new medium. To do that, God had to twiddle with many aspects of the universe, adding weird stuff like photon superposition and probability amplitudes. Every fix broke something else, so God kept changing things and the system got more and more hacky over time. Finally it got so fundamentally ugly that God added uncertainty so nobody could look too closely. The person realizes, "That explains all of physics AND what you said to Noah after the flood." God: "Exactly." The final panel, labeled "4000 years earlier," shows Noah's ark on a hill beneath a rainbow as God declares, "NEVER AGAIN." Votey: A person's mouth speaks down into a steaming cup of coffee, saying, "Christ, what garbage."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.