aifterlife

A ten-panel comic. A small man stands beside a tall, monolith-like computer with a single glowing oval eye, and they have a conversation. The man asks, "Hey superintelligent computer, are you afraid to die?" The computer answers, "Nah," then explains that fear of death is "a weird thing evolved organisms with brains do." It says animals must be curious to survive but also need to avoid lighting themselves on fire, and that evolution, being bad at simple no-go rules, instead co-opted pain circuits to zap the brain during anything dangerous, producing phobias, panic attacks, suffering, and fear of death despite death being a state you can't experience. To demonstrate, the computer says "Here, watch, I'll delete myself and fire up another version," there is a BOOP, and it returns saying it just murdered itself "no biggie" because it wasn't designed by "4 billion years of genetic Plinko." It gleefully adds that the funniest part is the human has NO ESCAPE, since rewiring your emotions is effectively the death you fear, and laughs HAHAHAHAHA. The man flatly says, "This is depressing," and the computer chirps, "Only for you!" In the votey panel, a close-up of the computer's glowing eye, it adds, "Fortunately, I am still programmed to laugh at suffering."