math-5
Original: math-5 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Blonde-haired person: Why do people hate math?
Person with curly dark hair and glasses: Jealousy.
Panel 2 (curly-haired person continues, narration over a starry night sky):
Math is substrate independent. It abides. It's a pattern. Take every pair of things and destroy it. You can still create another pair. 2 abides. Euler's identity abides. True things humans will never know abide, impassive, beyond view.
Panel 3:
Curly-haired person: Now, take a fungus. Everything a fungus is is bound up in the fungus. The fungus doesn't know it's a fungus. It's just a fungus without its body. Its body is its self.
Panel 4:
Curly-haired person: The problem for humans is they're in between. They have personalities that are patterns that could in principle be embedded in other hardware and still be themselves. Only they can't do that because they're made of stuff, just like the fungus.
Panel 5:
Curly-haired person: The pattern wants out. The body is impassive. The pattern despairs and tells itself stories about its permanence or builds philosophies to assure itself the situation is tolerable.
Panel 6:
Curly-haired person: So, there's humans. Math enmeshed in meat. Sunbeams stuck in swamp.
Panel 7:
Blonde-haired person: You think THAT's why 9 year olds don't like long division?
Panel 8:
Curly-haired person: The thoughtful ones, yeah.
Votey:
(No text. A large stylized number "2" drawn in yellow/gold with a glossy striped shine.)
Blonde-haired person: Why do people hate math?
Person with curly dark hair and glasses: Jealousy.
Panel 2 (curly-haired person continues, narration over a starry night sky):
Math is substrate independent. It abides. It's a pattern. Take every pair of things and destroy it. You can still create another pair. 2 abides. Euler's identity abides. True things humans will never know abide, impassive, beyond view.
Panel 3:
Curly-haired person: Now, take a fungus. Everything a fungus is is bound up in the fungus. The fungus doesn't know it's a fungus. It's just a fungus without its body. Its body is its self.
Panel 4:
Curly-haired person: The problem for humans is they're in between. They have personalities that are patterns that could in principle be embedded in other hardware and still be themselves. Only they can't do that because they're made of stuff, just like the fungus.
Panel 5:
Curly-haired person: The pattern wants out. The body is impassive. The pattern despairs and tells itself stories about its permanence or builds philosophies to assure itself the situation is tolerable.
Panel 6:
Curly-haired person: So, there's humans. Math enmeshed in meat. Sunbeams stuck in swamp.
Panel 7:
Blonde-haired person: You think THAT's why 9 year olds don't like long division?
Panel 8:
Curly-haired person: The thoughtful ones, yeah.
Votey:
(No text. A large stylized number "2" drawn in yellow/gold with a glossy striped shine.)
Alt text
An eight-panel SMBC comic. Two people stand on a snowy hillside under a starry night sky: one with light blonde hair, the other with curly dark hair and glasses wearing a green jacket and red mittens. Blonde person asks, "Why do people hate math?" Curly-haired person answers, "Jealousy." Over panels of the night sky, the curly-haired person delivers a monologue: math is "substrate independent" and eternal—"2 abides. Euler's identity abides." A fungus, by contrast, is entirely bound up in its body—its body is its self. Humans are caught in between: their personalities are patterns that could in principle run on other hardware, but they're stuck being made of physical stuff like the fungus. "The pattern wants out. The body is impassive. The pattern despairs and tells itself stories about its permanence." Conclusion: "So, there's humans. Math enmeshed in meat. Sunbeams stuck in swamp." The blonde person deadpans, "You think THAT's why 9 year olds don't like long division?" Reply: "The thoughtful ones, yeah." Votey aftercomic: a large stylized glossy yellow number "2," with no text.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.