pleasure
Original: pleasure on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Woman with light hair (offscreen/at left): Suppose you could step inside a "pleasure box" where you're constantly experiencing happiness. Would you choose that over real life?
Woman with dark curly hair and glasses: Obviously?
Panel 2:
Woman with light hair: This whole problem is poorly defined. These philosophers always wink at the idea that the box is filled with like, cheeseburgers and re-run sitcoms or something else that gives the riff-raff joy.
Panel 3:
Woman with dark hair and glasses: Suppose we say "the pleasure box is filled with brand new essays by Willard Quine FOREVER. The box delivers perfect fidelity evenings debating with de Beauvoir, Hume, Kant, Plato, Voltaire is fixing snacks and Einstein, Godel, and Ramanujan are on deck for technical disputes."
Panel 4:
Woman with dark hair and glasses (gesturing): Either you have a piece of trash pleasure box that delivers a pantry of spray cheez and Godzilla movies or you have a good one that somehow simulates your brain and the brains of ideal companions perfectly forever!
Panel 5:
Woman with dark hair and glasses: Now, compare the evening with Plato and Einstein to your typical night at home.
Woman with light hair: Which is more 'real'?
Panel 6 (snowy mountaintop scene):
Woman with light hair: I dunno. It seems wrong to me.
Woman with dark hair and glasses: You are in the cave! The pleasure box is the light!
Votey:
A distant mountaintop with two tiny silhouetted figures.
First figure: PLEASE LET US OUT, AUTHOR.
Second figure: PLEASE
Woman with light hair (offscreen/at left): Suppose you could step inside a "pleasure box" where you're constantly experiencing happiness. Would you choose that over real life?
Woman with dark curly hair and glasses: Obviously?
Panel 2:
Woman with light hair: This whole problem is poorly defined. These philosophers always wink at the idea that the box is filled with like, cheeseburgers and re-run sitcoms or something else that gives the riff-raff joy.
Panel 3:
Woman with dark hair and glasses: Suppose we say "the pleasure box is filled with brand new essays by Willard Quine FOREVER. The box delivers perfect fidelity evenings debating with de Beauvoir, Hume, Kant, Plato, Voltaire is fixing snacks and Einstein, Godel, and Ramanujan are on deck for technical disputes."
Panel 4:
Woman with dark hair and glasses (gesturing): Either you have a piece of trash pleasure box that delivers a pantry of spray cheez and Godzilla movies or you have a good one that somehow simulates your brain and the brains of ideal companions perfectly forever!
Panel 5:
Woman with dark hair and glasses: Now, compare the evening with Plato and Einstein to your typical night at home.
Woman with light hair: Which is more 'real'?
Panel 6 (snowy mountaintop scene):
Woman with light hair: I dunno. It seems wrong to me.
Woman with dark hair and glasses: You are in the cave! The pleasure box is the light!
Votey:
A distant mountaintop with two tiny silhouetted figures.
First figure: PLEASE LET US OUT, AUTHOR.
Second figure: PLEASE
Alt text
A six-panel comic. A woman with light hair asks a woman with dark curly hair and glasses whether she'd choose a "pleasure box" of constant happiness over real life; the glasses woman immediately replies "Obviously?" The light-haired woman objects that the thought experiment is poorly defined, claiming philosophers imagine the box is filled with cheeseburgers and sitcom reruns. The glasses woman counters with escalating intensity: suppose the box is filled with brand-new essays by Willard Quine forever, with perfect-fidelity evenings debating de Beauvoir, Hume, Kant, Plato, and Voltaire, while Einstein, Godel, and Ramanujan are on deck for technical disputes. She argues you either have a trashy box of spray cheez and Godzilla movies, or a good one that perfectly simulates ideal intellectual companions forever. She tells the woman to compare an evening with Plato and Einstein to a typical night at home, asking which is more 'real.' In the final panel, on a snowy mountaintop, the light-haired woman says it still seems wrong, and the glasses woman shouts "You are in the cave! The pleasure box is the light!" In the votey, a far-off mountaintop shows two tiny silhouetted figures who, realizing they are simulated, call out "PLEASE LET US OUT, AUTHOR" and "PLEASE."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.