impure
Original: impure on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
A person with red hair and glasses: "How does it feel to be in one of the impure unfundamental sciences, biologist?"
Panel 2:
The other person (brown hair, glasses, green jacket): "Kiss my evolved ass, that's how."
Panel 3:
Red-haired person: "'Fundamental' just means there's no available deeper level of analysis. Well, I study patterns that can't be understood at a deeper level because doing so would take more computer power than could conceivably exist in our universe, you shit-quark."
Panel 4:
Brown-haired person (grabbing the red-haired person by the collar): "I am studying qualities that DO NOT EXIST at the 'fundamental level.' I am operating at the FOUNDATIONS of epistemology for the system I am studying! The only difference between you and me is that YOUR systems are so simple, you can afford to put 400 dudes on figuring out how half a particle works!"
Panel 5:
Red-haired person, hand on chin, reflective: "I... I never thought of it that way."
Panel 6:
Two figures shown as white silhouettes against a black background.
First voice: "Let us compromise and hate the chemists."
Second voice: "It is well."
Votey:
Close-up of the brown-haired person's face.
Brown-haired person: "I mean when do we even use chemistry in real life?"
A person with red hair and glasses: "How does it feel to be in one of the impure unfundamental sciences, biologist?"
Panel 2:
The other person (brown hair, glasses, green jacket): "Kiss my evolved ass, that's how."
Panel 3:
Red-haired person: "'Fundamental' just means there's no available deeper level of analysis. Well, I study patterns that can't be understood at a deeper level because doing so would take more computer power than could conceivably exist in our universe, you shit-quark."
Panel 4:
Brown-haired person (grabbing the red-haired person by the collar): "I am studying qualities that DO NOT EXIST at the 'fundamental level.' I am operating at the FOUNDATIONS of epistemology for the system I am studying! The only difference between you and me is that YOUR systems are so simple, you can afford to put 400 dudes on figuring out how half a particle works!"
Panel 5:
Red-haired person, hand on chin, reflective: "I... I never thought of it that way."
Panel 6:
Two figures shown as white silhouettes against a black background.
First voice: "Let us compromise and hate the chemists."
Second voice: "It is well."
Votey:
Close-up of the brown-haired person's face.
Brown-haired person: "I mean when do we even use chemistry in real life?"
Alt text
A six-panel SMBC comic, teal background, between two scientists—one with red hair and round glasses, the other with brown hair, glasses, and a green jacket. Panel 1: the red-haired one taunts, "How does it feel to be in one of the impure unfundamental sciences, biologist?" Panel 2: the brown-haired one snaps back, "Kiss my evolved ass, that's how." Panel 3: the red-haired one lectures that "fundamental" just means there's no deeper level of analysis, then claims to study patterns too computationally vast to ever reduce, ending with the insult "you shit-quark." Panel 4: the brown-haired one, now furiously grabbing the other by the collar, retorts that they study qualities that don't exist at the fundamental level and operate at the foundations of epistemology, sneering that the only difference is the red-haired one's systems are "so simple, you can afford to put 400 dudes on figuring out how half a particle works!" Panel 5: the red-haired one, hand on chin, softens: "I... I never thought of it that way." Panel 6: the two now shown as white silhouettes against black, reconciled—one says, "Let us compromise and hate the chemists," the other replies, "It is well." Votey: a close-up of the brown-haired scientist's face, doubling down: "I mean when do we even use chemistry in real life?"
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.