Bot

A seven-panel SMBC comic. A man asks a robot, "Philosophy-bot, do you think you can ever really understand what it is like to be a bat?" The robot (gray, dome-headed, with a single yellow eye and a dark red body) replies, "Sure! Loads of ways." It then launches into a long technical answer: it could program its brain to shift continuously between a spectrum of experiences intermediate between its own and a bat's, each shift small enough that the experience can be conveyed to the next experiencer. The man tries to interrupt ("Or, I could-") and the robot snaps, "Enough! I mean could HUMANS do it!" The robot says that's like asking if a broken tricycle would work as a submarine. The man throws up his arms. The robot, backpedaling, mumbles, "I mean, uh, subjective experience cannot be reduced to physical phenomena." The man, sweating and stunned, then points and shouts triumphantly, "I KNEW IT!" — having goaded the robot into conceding human exceptionalism. Votey (aftercomic): bold text reads "Are the non-physical subjective experiences in the room with us right now?" — a mocking allusion to the cliche question asked of a paranoid person — above a small simple sketch of a frowning blob-person.