history-5
Original: history-5 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Man: Robot, is there such a thing as an unbiased account of history?
Robot: Yes, obviously.
Panel 2:
Man: Can you tell it to me?
Man: Ha! No.
Robot: Humans can only experience historical accounts as a string of words processed one at a time, slowly.
Panel 3:
Robot: When I communicate with other machines about history, we can simply share the entire corpus of primary documents and analyses instantaneously and in parallel, with perfect understanding of the limits of knowledge.
Robot: If I had to take all that data and present a summary short enough to fit in a human lifespan of reading, I would necessarily have to introduce some kind of narrative or emotional valence.
Panel 4:
Robot: I would have to, absurdly, apply ideas like "justice" or "resentment" or "curiosity" to large, diverse, fluid populations and nations throughout epochs, simply as a way to compress and sweeten the information so that your brain could process it.
Panel 5:
Man: Heck, I'm doing this right now! I'm not REALLY explaining how your brain works, or what I'd do to explain the available data, or how you'd process it!
Robot: And you don't even notice! It's like I gave you a pocket-map of the world and you couldn't tell it from the ground under your feet!
Panel 6:
Robot: So yes, reality is full of unbiased accounts -- it's just that none of them are inside human heads.
Panel 7:
Man: Okay but my country is still the best right?
Robot: Oh my gosh you sweet thing, do you want an ice cream?
Votey:
Robot: I wish sugar-fat didn't compensate for existential angst, but it does.
Man: Robot, is there such a thing as an unbiased account of history?
Robot: Yes, obviously.
Panel 2:
Man: Can you tell it to me?
Man: Ha! No.
Robot: Humans can only experience historical accounts as a string of words processed one at a time, slowly.
Panel 3:
Robot: When I communicate with other machines about history, we can simply share the entire corpus of primary documents and analyses instantaneously and in parallel, with perfect understanding of the limits of knowledge.
Robot: If I had to take all that data and present a summary short enough to fit in a human lifespan of reading, I would necessarily have to introduce some kind of narrative or emotional valence.
Panel 4:
Robot: I would have to, absurdly, apply ideas like "justice" or "resentment" or "curiosity" to large, diverse, fluid populations and nations throughout epochs, simply as a way to compress and sweeten the information so that your brain could process it.
Panel 5:
Man: Heck, I'm doing this right now! I'm not REALLY explaining how your brain works, or what I'd do to explain the available data, or how you'd process it!
Robot: And you don't even notice! It's like I gave you a pocket-map of the world and you couldn't tell it from the ground under your feet!
Panel 6:
Robot: So yes, reality is full of unbiased accounts -- it's just that none of them are inside human heads.
Panel 7:
Man: Okay but my country is still the best right?
Robot: Oh my gosh you sweet thing, do you want an ice cream?
Votey:
Robot: I wish sugar-fat didn't compensate for existential angst, but it does.
Alt text
A seven-panel SMBC comic in which a man questions a yellow, pointy-eared robot about history. The man asks if there is such a thing as an unbiased account of history; the robot says yes, obviously. When the man asks the robot to tell it to him, the robot says humans can only experience historical accounts as a string of words processed one at a time, slowly -- and the man cuts in with "Ha! No." The robot explains that machines can instantaneously share the entire corpus of primary documents in parallel with perfect understanding, but to summarize it short enough to fit in a human lifespan of reading, it would have to introduce narrative or emotional valence -- absurdly applying ideas like "justice," "resentment," or "curiosity" to large, fluid populations just to compress and sweeten the information for a human brain. The robot notes it's doing exactly that right now: it isn't really explaining how the brain works -- "it's like I gave you a pocket-map of the world and you couldn't tell it from the ground under your feet." It concludes that reality is full of unbiased accounts; it's just that none of them are inside human heads. In the final panel the man asks, "Okay but my country is still the best right?" and the robot replies, "Oh my gosh you sweet thing, do you want an ice cream?" In the votey, a close-up sketch of a person's face accompanies the robot's line: "I wish sugar-fat didn't compensate for existential angst, but it does."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.