simulation-2
Original: simulation-2 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
A person with curly blue hair, hands clasped in prayer, looks upward.
Person: "Dear simulation creator, why do bad things happen to good people?"
Creator (small reply box): "No clue."
Panel 2:
The creator continues.
Creator: "This whole thing was generated by a neural network. I don't know where the rules come from."
Panel 3:
Creator: "A lot of the obvious stuff feels like a kluge. Speed is capped, I think to prevent collapse? Okay no collapse, but then there are whole sections of the universe you can't reach from other sections?"
Panel 4:
Creator: "Also you know how everything looks continuous? Just a cheap trick. Anytime you get close to something it's discrete. Not gorgeous, but hey it saves computing power."
Panel 5:
A white silhouette of a head against a black background (the creator).
Creator: "Ha, which was probably used to generate all that unreachable space."
Panel 6:
The person looks up in profile.
Person: "So you're not all-knowing?"
Creator: "I think once I finish my master's I'll feel more confident."
Votey:
A man looks upward, slightly nervous.
Creator (caption above): "Okay, wait, I got some software that'll nail it down to only 8,892,723,582,376,928,375 possibilities."
A person with curly blue hair, hands clasped in prayer, looks upward.
Person: "Dear simulation creator, why do bad things happen to good people?"
Creator (small reply box): "No clue."
Panel 2:
The creator continues.
Creator: "This whole thing was generated by a neural network. I don't know where the rules come from."
Panel 3:
Creator: "A lot of the obvious stuff feels like a kluge. Speed is capped, I think to prevent collapse? Okay no collapse, but then there are whole sections of the universe you can't reach from other sections?"
Panel 4:
Creator: "Also you know how everything looks continuous? Just a cheap trick. Anytime you get close to something it's discrete. Not gorgeous, but hey it saves computing power."
Panel 5:
A white silhouette of a head against a black background (the creator).
Creator: "Ha, which was probably used to generate all that unreachable space."
Panel 6:
The person looks up in profile.
Person: "So you're not all-knowing?"
Creator: "I think once I finish my master's I'll feel more confident."
Votey:
A man looks upward, slightly nervous.
Creator (caption above): "Okay, wait, I got some software that'll nail it down to only 8,892,723,582,376,928,375 possibilities."
Alt text
A six-panel SMBC comic. A person with curly blue hair clasps their hands and prays: "Dear simulation creator, why do bad things happen to good people?" A reply box answers "No clue." The creator explains that the whole universe was generated by a neural network and they don't know where the rules come from. They go on: much of the obvious stuff feels like a kluge — the speed cap to prevent collapse, the unreachable sections of the universe, and the fact that everything only looks continuous but is actually discrete up close, "a cheap trick" that saves computing power. The creator, shown as a white silhouette against black, muses that this savings was probably used to generate all that unreachable space. The person asks, "So you're not all-knowing?" The creator replies, "I think once I finish my master's I'll feel more confident." The joke is that the god of the simulation is just an underconfident grad student running a sloppy neural-net universe. Votey: A man looks up nervously while the creator says, "Okay, wait, I got some software that'll nail it down to only 8,892,723,582,376,928,375 possibilities."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.