conscious-5
Original: conscious-5 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1: A man lies in bed in a dark room at night, looking up.
Man: God, what is consciousness?
God (offscreen, in a yellow speech bubble): Man, humans are boring.
Panel 2 (God speaking, yellow caption):
God: Look, this is just a definition thing and the definitions are on a spectrum. You can say consciousness is whenever a system can examine itself and make adjustments. That's clear and sensible, but now you gotta include stuff that REALLY doesn't seem conscious like a program that plays checkers.
Panel 3 (God speaking, yellow caption):
God: You can scale up to saying "it has to have subjective experience" which requires you to define subjective and experience, but now you're in this hideous infinite regression where you define subjectivity subjectively and define experience based on your experience.
Panel 4 (God speaking, yellow caption):
God: You can get more exclusive and say a conscious being is anything with a brain more or less like mine, which is mostly soggy cholesterol devoted to thinking about food and butts.
Panel 5 (God speaking, yellow caption):
God: For all I know there are humans somewhere like "consciousness is when you're me and my friends Dave, Jerry, and Bill and NOBODY ELSE."
Panel 6: The man sits up in bed.
Man: Thanks God but I think you're missing the point?
Panel 7 (God speaking, yellow caption):
God: "Is it conscious" is shorthand for "can I treat it like trash all the time, maybe eat it, then go play video games and not feel shame."
Panel 8: The man gestures with both hands, talking.
Panel 9: A close-up of a dark, oblong shape (a cow patty / pile resting on the ground).
Panel 10 (God speaking, yellow caption):
God: I've been running heaven for 13 billion years and nobody has shown up and now I know why.
Panel 11: The man stands and gestures, speaking in a large speech bubble.
Man: Evolution is a bad way to make life, but the important thing is you're learning!
Votey:
A yellow communion wafer / cracker (dotted with holes) hovers above a small white scrap of paper. On the paper, handwritten, is the word "flush" (styled as ":flush").
Man: God, what is consciousness?
God (offscreen, in a yellow speech bubble): Man, humans are boring.
Panel 2 (God speaking, yellow caption):
God: Look, this is just a definition thing and the definitions are on a spectrum. You can say consciousness is whenever a system can examine itself and make adjustments. That's clear and sensible, but now you gotta include stuff that REALLY doesn't seem conscious like a program that plays checkers.
Panel 3 (God speaking, yellow caption):
God: You can scale up to saying "it has to have subjective experience" which requires you to define subjective and experience, but now you're in this hideous infinite regression where you define subjectivity subjectively and define experience based on your experience.
Panel 4 (God speaking, yellow caption):
God: You can get more exclusive and say a conscious being is anything with a brain more or less like mine, which is mostly soggy cholesterol devoted to thinking about food and butts.
Panel 5 (God speaking, yellow caption):
God: For all I know there are humans somewhere like "consciousness is when you're me and my friends Dave, Jerry, and Bill and NOBODY ELSE."
Panel 6: The man sits up in bed.
Man: Thanks God but I think you're missing the point?
Panel 7 (God speaking, yellow caption):
God: "Is it conscious" is shorthand for "can I treat it like trash all the time, maybe eat it, then go play video games and not feel shame."
Panel 8: The man gestures with both hands, talking.
Panel 9: A close-up of a dark, oblong shape (a cow patty / pile resting on the ground).
Panel 10 (God speaking, yellow caption):
God: I've been running heaven for 13 billion years and nobody has shown up and now I know why.
Panel 11: The man stands and gestures, speaking in a large speech bubble.
Man: Evolution is a bad way to make life, but the important thing is you're learning!
Votey:
A yellow communion wafer / cracker (dotted with holes) hovers above a small white scrap of paper. On the paper, handwritten, is the word "flush" (styled as ":flush").
Alt text
An SMBC comic. A man lies awake in bed at night and asks, "God, what is consciousness?" God answers offscreen in yellow caption boxes, starting with "Man, humans are boring." Over several panels God explains that consciousness is just a definition on a spectrum: you could say it's any system that examines itself and adjusts (which would include a checkers-playing program), or demand "subjective experience" (a hideous infinite regression), or restrict it to brains like God's own "mostly soggy cholesterol devoted to thinking about food and butts," or even to a clique of "me and my friends Dave, Jerry, and Bill and NOBODY ELSE." The man sits up and says, "Thanks God but I think you're missing the point?" God replies that "is it conscious" is really shorthand for "can I treat it like trash all the time, maybe eat it, then go play video games and not feel shame." A panel shows the man gesturing, then a close-up of a dark oblong pile on the ground. God admits, "I've been running heaven for 13 billion years and nobody has shown up and now I know why." In the final panel the man stands and cheerfully declares, "Evolution is a bad way to make life, but the important thing is you're learning!" Votey (aftercomic): a yellow communion wafer dotted with holes floats above a torn white scrap of paper on which "flush" is handwritten, styled like the emoji code ":flush".
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.