thought
Original: thought on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Woman with dark skin and dark hair (to a smaller blonde person): Do you think humans are capable of thought?
Blonde person: What?
Panel 2:
Dark-haired woman: If you take a computer and ask it the best route to Tokyo, not only can it give you the correct answer, it can keep an exact binary register of every step it took to get to the solution.
Panel 3:
Dark-haired woman: You can open up its brain and physically find the thought happening!
Panel 4:
Dark-haired woman: With a human, the best you can do is use a scanner to find a rough chemical or electromagnetic signal that, SOMETHING happened in there.
Panel 5:
Dark-haired woman: But all we really know is that the human produced an answer. It could've come from anywhere!
Panel 6:
Dark-haired woman: Maybe some mega-mind telepathically transmitted the answer. Or maybe there's a lookup key inside the brain for every possible question. Maybe there's actually a tiny computer chip in there that's doing all the thinking!
Panel 7:
Blonde person: But... I think therefore I am.
Panel 8:
Dark-haired woman: I can make a computer say that with ONE LINE of code.
Votey:
Text inside a hand-drawn box:
THIS IMAGE CAN THINK.
PROOF:
(SEE ABOVE)
Woman with dark skin and dark hair (to a smaller blonde person): Do you think humans are capable of thought?
Blonde person: What?
Panel 2:
Dark-haired woman: If you take a computer and ask it the best route to Tokyo, not only can it give you the correct answer, it can keep an exact binary register of every step it took to get to the solution.
Panel 3:
Dark-haired woman: You can open up its brain and physically find the thought happening!
Panel 4:
Dark-haired woman: With a human, the best you can do is use a scanner to find a rough chemical or electromagnetic signal that, SOMETHING happened in there.
Panel 5:
Dark-haired woman: But all we really know is that the human produced an answer. It could've come from anywhere!
Panel 6:
Dark-haired woman: Maybe some mega-mind telepathically transmitted the answer. Or maybe there's a lookup key inside the brain for every possible question. Maybe there's actually a tiny computer chip in there that's doing all the thinking!
Panel 7:
Blonde person: But... I think therefore I am.
Panel 8:
Dark-haired woman: I can make a computer say that with ONE LINE of code.
Votey:
Text inside a hand-drawn box:
THIS IMAGE CAN THINK.
PROOF:
(SEE ABOVE)
Alt text
An eight-panel SMBC comic. A woman with dark skin and dark hair sits in the snow talking to a smaller blonde person. She argues: 'Do you think humans are capable of thought?' She explains that a computer asked for the best route to Tokyo gives the correct answer AND keeps an exact binary register of every step, so 'you can open up its brain and physically find the thought happening.' With a human, the best a scanner can find is a rough chemical or electromagnetic signal that 'SOMETHING happened in there' but all we really know is the human produced an answer that 'could've come from anywhere' -- maybe a mega-mind transmitted it telepathically, maybe a lookup key, maybe a tiny computer chip is doing all the thinking. The blonde person protests, 'But... I think therefore I am.' The woman deadpans, 'I can make a computer say that with ONE LINE of code.' The final panels show their silhouettes against the snow. Votey: a plain hand-drawn box containing the text 'THIS IMAGE CAN THINK. PROOF: (SEE ABOVE)' -- joking that the comic itself just demonstrated 'thinking' by displaying text.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.