entropy
Original: entropy on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Young man (excited): Entropy IS information! Think about it!
Panel 2:
Young man: If you have a sheet of random numbers, it's loaded with information. If you want to share it with someone, they have to see every single number.
Panel 3:
Young man: If you have a sheet that's all ones, you just have to say "A sheet with all ones." No entropy, no information.
Panel 4:
Young man (getting agitated): Chaos is a library of infinite possibilities! Order is silence and death!
Panel 5:
Young man (arms raised, shouting passionately, off-panel listener): [no words]
Panel 6:
A man in a suit and glasses (calm, off-panel): Just clean your room.
Young man (pointing, furious): BOOK-BURNER!
Votey:
Handwritten caption: No more science! Only cartoons!
Below it, a line drawing of a man's face in profile, eyes closed.
Young man (excited): Entropy IS information! Think about it!
Panel 2:
Young man: If you have a sheet of random numbers, it's loaded with information. If you want to share it with someone, they have to see every single number.
Panel 3:
Young man: If you have a sheet that's all ones, you just have to say "A sheet with all ones." No entropy, no information.
Panel 4:
Young man (getting agitated): Chaos is a library of infinite possibilities! Order is silence and death!
Panel 5:
Young man (arms raised, shouting passionately, off-panel listener): [no words]
Panel 6:
A man in a suit and glasses (calm, off-panel): Just clean your room.
Young man (pointing, furious): BOOK-BURNER!
Votey:
Handwritten caption: No more science! Only cartoons!
Below it, a line drawing of a man's face in profile, eyes closed.
Alt text
A six-panel SMBC comic. A young man passionately argues that entropy is information: a sheet of random numbers is loaded with information you'd have to read number by number, while a sheet of all ones can be summarized in one phrase, so it has no entropy and no information. He builds to a fevered pitch, arms raised, declaring "Chaos is a library of infinite possibilities! Order is silence and death!" In the final panel a calm man in a suit and glasses simply replies, "Just clean your room," and the young man points at him in outrage, screaming "BOOK-BURNER!" The joke: messy-room entropy reframed as a grand defense of information theory. Votey: a handwritten note reading "No more science! Only cartoons!" above a simple line-drawn profile of a man's face with eyes closed.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.