calculus
Original: calculus on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1
Man with curly orange hair: God life is a net negative. Doesn't that imply you have a moral duty to destroy all humans?
Panel 2
God (off-panel, yellow speech bubble): Not so! I'm trying to get the maximum integral of happiness over time, summed over all of history throughout the universe!
Panel 3
God: Life like you will eventually give rise to self-modifying cyborgs experiencing constant pleasure / a harmony of glorious sensation, symphonic braided beauty, in all-surpassing combination - animal, intellectual, transcendent. The final, forever, melody of joy.
Panel 4
God: You won't be there for it but the math works out GREAT.
Panel 5
Man: Can't you give us that stuff now?
Panel 6
God: No, the cyborgs' favorite activity will be being glad they don't live in the past.
Panel 7
God: And because they're so good at happiness it easily counterbalances your suffering.
Panel 8
Man: Ah.
Panel 9
Man: I understand, but I don't understand
God: I'd show you the math if you were a cyborg, but it'd be like trying to teach a turnip calculus.
Votey:
Handwritten text: I will personally donate 4 dollars.
Man with curly orange hair: God life is a net negative. Doesn't that imply you have a moral duty to destroy all humans?
Panel 2
God (off-panel, yellow speech bubble): Not so! I'm trying to get the maximum integral of happiness over time, summed over all of history throughout the universe!
Panel 3
God: Life like you will eventually give rise to self-modifying cyborgs experiencing constant pleasure / a harmony of glorious sensation, symphonic braided beauty, in all-surpassing combination - animal, intellectual, transcendent. The final, forever, melody of joy.
Panel 4
God: You won't be there for it but the math works out GREAT.
Panel 5
Man: Can't you give us that stuff now?
Panel 6
God: No, the cyborgs' favorite activity will be being glad they don't live in the past.
Panel 7
God: And because they're so good at happiness it easily counterbalances your suffering.
Panel 8
Man: Ah.
Panel 9
Man: I understand, but I don't understand
God: I'd show you the math if you were a cyborg, but it'd be like trying to teach a turnip calculus.
Votey:
Handwritten text: I will personally donate 4 dollars.
Alt text
A nine-panel SMBC comic. A man with curly orange hair argues with God, who speaks only in off-panel yellow speech bubbles. The man asks: if life is a net negative, doesn't God have a moral duty to destroy all humans? God says no - the goal is to maximize the integral of happiness over all of history, because life like this man's will eventually give rise to self-modifying cyborgs experiencing constant pleasure and 'the final, forever, melody of joy.' God adds, 'You won't be there for it but the math works out GREAT.' The man asks whether God could just give them that happiness now. God refuses: the cyborgs' favorite activity will be being glad they don't live in the past, and their happiness easily counterbalances present suffering. Across the panels the man's face shifts from arguing to a dim, dejected slump (one dark panel shows him face-down on a table). He finally says, 'I understand, but I don't understand,' and God replies that explaining the math to a non-cyborg would be 'like trying to teach a turnip calculus.' Votey: a handwritten note reading 'I will personally donate 4 dollars.'
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.