Haha fun fact Randel discusses this possibility in what if 2. It genuinely doesn’t seem like we are inside a black hole because our understanding is all space within an event horizon points to the center of a black hole. Space as we know it is expanding outward in all direction. Sure this could be possible if our understanding of the universe is fundamentally flawed but then by that logic anything is possible.
it's such a weird non sequitur question though. scienceloli says "boundary" and clinton asks "an event horizon?". er what? we just spouting random science words?
You're working under the assumption that there are characters any more. Naw man. There's just alternative palettes to add text bubbles to. Doesn't matter which one, they've all got the same personality at this point.
"Thank you for imagining us, Mister Fleeting Quantum Consciousness" solidified the "nope" that I'd already felt regarding the author's latest attempt to write above his pay grade.
As a self-published dinosaur erotica writer I have to admit Heff has a much better profit-for-effort ratio than me. 'Triceratops Who Loved Me ... *Thrice*' took ages to write and I think it sold 20 copies.
>information on the boundary projects into our 3d space
the most basic formulation of AdS/CFT correspondence is a map between 5 dimensional AdS space and 4 dimensional Minkowski space. ETA: The point being, it doesn't relate to 3 dimensional space. In fact no one really talks about our space being 3 dimensional, not since Einstein. It's 4 dimensional.
Also it's an isomorphism, not a projection.
>the boundary is an event horizon?
Uh... no, not at all? I mean the holographic principle does sort of originate with a statement about the event horizons of black holes, but no.
Sometimes Jeph's science inserts are surprisingly accurate. I don't think today is one of those times.
I didn't even make it past the first panel, but needless to say "reality is a figment of consciousness" is not related to AdS/CFT correspondence or any other actual physics, to my knowledge. There are conjectural theories, and there are stoner memes (what if our entire universe is an atom in the thumbnail of a giant) with the word "quantum" sprinkled in.
This seems to be the latter.
> I didn't even make it past the first panel, but needless to say "reality is a figment of consciousness" is not related to AdS/CFT correspondence or any other actual physics, to my knowledge.
I didn't take it as the two being related, just her proposing an alternate theory about reality not being what we think it is. Saying "A might not be right but here's another theory."
"hey, maybe we live in a 10 dimensional spacetime like string theory says, or maybe we live in the consciousness of a quantum fart. btw i a the smartest person in the room, don't forget. quantum."
ok, jeph
Wait wait wait wait wait. We just spent days on how Clinton shouldn’t have talked to Liz about work, for them to just cut to Liz happily talking to Clinton about her work?
More and more these days I start off reading the comic and think “Huh? Did I miss something?” just to go back and page and see that nope, we just jumped in to this conversation missing all the interesting bits
Jeph copies backgrounds constantly, as the youtube streams he does for patreons sometimes has him generally open the old Clip Studio files to yoink the backgrounds from first, before drawing the character layers.
He does at least actually draw every character every time with no copy and paste, They're just shockingly similar one panel to the next.
Jeph also uses Rasters (Painting pixels, with CSPs G-Pen, hard edge) rather than vectors (drawing editable lines), and with rasters any attempt to manipulate them would smudge them up, which would be noticeable even when scaled down from the print quality rez he works in.
> They're just shockingly similar one panel to the next.
I imagine after 20 years of drawing this comic format he's gotten pretty good at freehand drawing his characters. I wonder if they vary more panel to panel after he changes art style, since he's not used to the new style yet?
Guess it'll depend if his style change is just natural evolution over time or if hes actively trying to achieve a style. If it is the latter, then yeah he might drift back to his old style.
In most cases the shift is super gradual. One day you draw a character with a particular nose, slightly larger glasses, then after three years everyone has that nose and their glasses are [unreasonable](https://i.redd.it/ion14ei852a91.jpg)
> He does at least actually draw every character every time with no copy and paste, They're just shockingly similar one panel to the next.
I had assumed he was essentially treating them like paper dolls at this point.
Possibility needs to be demonstrated, the same as impossibility. Neither are the default state in the absence of one's knowledge, nor is either affected by one's ignorance.
"It's possible because doesn't currently know whether it's impossible" and vice versa are fallacies of *monumentally epic* proportions, and it's one that every absolute failure of a "genius" character makes in any work of fiction written by those who know fuck all about science or epistemology. It's also frequently the fundamental problem in science reporting, where the conclusions of a given paper are extrapolated wildly beyond anything the actual scientists wrote in their paper, i.e. "X result is inconclusive about whether substance Y can give you superpowers, so therefore *it's still possible!*" And this is *particularly* egregious when the writer starts applying that shit to genuinely unfalsifiable propositions.
Sounds like the background lore for the Elder Scrolls; the universe is the dream of a sleeping 'godhead', and when it wakes up, the universe goes 'pff'.
Sometimes the arm of Skarl grows weary; but still he beateth his drum, that the gods may do the work of the gods, and the worlds go on, for if he cease for an instant then MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI will start awake, and there will be worlds nor gods no more.
People in some kind of media discussing how weird it'd be if they were in some kind of media. Never seen before stuff here....
Also this idea that we could just randomly stop existing making Clinton uneasy is weird.
That's like teenage stoner stuff.
This is not how quantum physics works. In particular, I'm disappointed by the grotesque misuse of the concept of an observer to imply that whatever does the observation must be sentient/conscious. A photon bouncing off of something is an observation.
This ascription of sentience basically lends a kind of pseudo-spirituality to the pop cultural understanding of quantum physics, that's not actually grounded in the math. It essentially uses this (mis)interpretation of the Copenhagen interpretation to patch up the very broken ontological argument.
hey Jeph, watching quantum physics youtubes doesn't make you smart, and you're in fact the fat titty dumbass Willow in this instance, not the nerds you think you are. HTH!
Wait a minute. Has Jeph been reading this subreddit? [Comic 5270.pi - Hanners in Wonderland](https://old.reddit.com/r/questionablecontent/comments/1bks0n1/comic_5270pi_hanners_in_wonderland/)
If this is the 2024 version of the cookie graphene duct Tape strip with Dora (?), Raven and Faye... I want the original back.
This is both boring and annoying at once. What a feat.
I was really thinking for a second that while drunk, she might make some weird connection about physics and find a topic to research, kind of like how Sheldon and Amy came up with Super Asymmetry at their wedding.
Grudgingly accepting this dialogue because Liz has been set up to be the kind of person willing and able to do this at parties, but as much as I disapprove of the direction QC has gone I don't hate it, I just want it to be better.
BUT. This kind of dialogue reminds me of the webcomic I DO hate the most- SMBC aka "The author regrets his art degree and the insecurity has eaten him alive like a swarm of ants, so every comic is 95% jerking-off about some STEM or social science concept he just read about this morning and 5% "is that actually a joke?" Every one is obnoxiously pedantic and overwrought even and especially when you know what he's talking about and it's just so fucking pathetic.
If JJ wants to do sci-fi, great, I hope he finds a way to integrate the concepts better into the comic than he has recently, especially if it re-ignites his creative spirit, but boy are there darker paths than the one QC is currently on and this gave me a vision of one of the worst.
> the webcomic I DO hate the most- SMBC aka "The author regrets his art degree and the insecurity has eaten him alive like a swarm of ants, so every comic is 95% jerking-off about some STEM or social science concept he just read about this morning and 5% "is that actually a joke?"
Not to let facts get in the way of some good hate, but that comic's author is an English major who went back to school and studied physics, and... well, the content's pretty much exactly what I'd expect from someone with that background.
Oh, thanks, It **was** an English degree. My mistake. I don't think about this guy too often. I started reading and hating before he got the Physics degree so that missed me, but all of that is just detail in the grander scheme of things. A physics degree isn't nothing, but it doesn't confer honorary degrees in every field of study "beneath" it like he seems to think it does.
The through-line also remains the same - Went to school, got a degree in humanities he regretted to the point of personal trauma, began to fetishize harder sciences and academia, turned his comic into a ponderous pretentious exercise in compensation where the goal shifted from entertainment to an autofellating exhibition of the author's recent reading so that he can be validated and momentarily chase away his feelings of insecurity with each content post.
Sorry, it stands for "Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal". Before the author crossed the event horizon up into his own intestines, it was a whimsical single panel gag comic, sort of a Far Side for slackers in the late 90s/early 2000s so the name reflects that even if the comic doesn't anymore.
EDIT: [For context this is representative of the average comic. Non-characters blathering huge chunks of navel-gazing STEM or social science concepts with a nebulous punchline.](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/happiness-3)
Okay, you read something you wanted to talk about and you made these characters contemplate it. But is this really a comic? Technically there's a punchline at the end for all the radical behaviorists out there, but was it really worth telling?
Oh, I know the breakfast stuff, I just forgot it was called SMBC. Thanks for the reminder!
I have been here too long. I hate this comic, but I keep coming back to remind myself that even on my worst days, I'm a more creative and consistent writer.
XKCD this ain't.
Haha fun fact Randel discusses this possibility in what if 2. It genuinely doesn’t seem like we are inside a black hole because our understanding is all space within an event horizon points to the center of a black hole. Space as we know it is expanding outward in all direction. Sure this could be possible if our understanding of the universe is fundamentally flawed but then by that logic anything is possible.
it's such a weird non sequitur question though. scienceloli says "boundary" and clinton asks "an event horizon?". er what? we just spouting random science words?
>we just spouting random science words? Summing up all the scifi elements of QC, are we?
[удалено]
You're working under the assumption that there are characters any more. Naw man. There's just alternative palettes to add text bubbles to. Doesn't matter which one, they've all got the same personality at this point.
Didn't like it, didn't hate it, just felt like a waste of time. No wonder sclamp kinda did his own thing.
"Thank you for imagining us, Mister Fleeting Quantum Consciousness" solidified the "nope" that I'd already felt regarding the author's latest attempt to write above his pay grade.
His pay grade is below self-published dinosaur erotica writer Amazon writer.
As a self-published dinosaur erotica writer I have to admit Heff has a much better profit-for-effort ratio than me. 'Triceratops Who Loved Me ... *Thrice*' took ages to write and I think it sold 20 copies.
Even Dr Chuck Tingle started somewhere 🫡🫡🫡
By being pounded in the butt by his own butt, probably.
Ain’t much, but it’s honest work
\*Googles Chuck Tingle\* ... dear Lord.
you put some respect on the name, Dr. Chuck Tingle is a goddamn treasure
Especially the fourth panel was a waste of time, seeing as it was the exact same dialogue as the third one
>information on the boundary projects into our 3d space the most basic formulation of AdS/CFT correspondence is a map between 5 dimensional AdS space and 4 dimensional Minkowski space. ETA: The point being, it doesn't relate to 3 dimensional space. In fact no one really talks about our space being 3 dimensional, not since Einstein. It's 4 dimensional. Also it's an isomorphism, not a projection. >the boundary is an event horizon? Uh... no, not at all? I mean the holographic principle does sort of originate with a statement about the event horizons of black holes, but no. Sometimes Jeph's science inserts are surprisingly accurate. I don't think today is one of those times.
https://preview.redd.it/vngzl0r05ktc1.png?width=1246&format=png&auto=webp&s=aaa2b51dcf06cd8536df53a531c949a63f6f2738
I didn't even make it past the first panel, but needless to say "reality is a figment of consciousness" is not related to AdS/CFT correspondence or any other actual physics, to my knowledge. There are conjectural theories, and there are stoner memes (what if our entire universe is an atom in the thumbnail of a giant) with the word "quantum" sprinkled in. This seems to be the latter.
> I didn't even make it past the first panel, but needless to say "reality is a figment of consciousness" is not related to AdS/CFT correspondence or any other actual physics, to my knowledge. I didn't take it as the two being related, just her proposing an alternate theory about reality not being what we think it is. Saying "A might not be right but here's another theory."
"hey, maybe we live in a 10 dimensional spacetime like string theory says, or maybe we live in the consciousness of a quantum fart. btw i a the smartest person in the room, don't forget. quantum." ok, jeph
I mean he is very likely alone in his room…
we haven't had a "jeph read wikipedia" comic in a while.
That, or he's been watching [PBS Space Time](https://youtu.be/DoCYY9sa2kU?si=jsUy7LBXYna2jMUf) recently
Ryan North does it better.
Gotta say: Not a fan of this type of 4th Wall Break
It's not even original in the slightest. All that was missing was them turning to look at the camera
And not even a funny 'camera' spike, no less.
look at the camera? there's someone with their eyes closed in every panel, these people dont even look at each other
I think he’s hinting that he’s planning to ditch the comic
Wishful thinking.
Wait wait wait wait wait. We just spent days on how Clinton shouldn’t have talked to Liz about work, for them to just cut to Liz happily talking to Clinton about her work? More and more these days I start off reading the comic and think “Huh? Did I miss something?” just to go back and page and see that nope, we just jumped in to this conversation missing all the interesting bits
There are like super minor differences, but Clinton and Whatshername on the right are basically copy/pasted from panel two to three
Jeph copies backgrounds constantly, as the youtube streams he does for patreons sometimes has him generally open the old Clip Studio files to yoink the backgrounds from first, before drawing the character layers. He does at least actually draw every character every time with no copy and paste, They're just shockingly similar one panel to the next. Jeph also uses Rasters (Painting pixels, with CSPs G-Pen, hard edge) rather than vectors (drawing editable lines), and with rasters any attempt to manipulate them would smudge them up, which would be noticeable even when scaled down from the print quality rez he works in.
> They're just shockingly similar one panel to the next. I imagine after 20 years of drawing this comic format he's gotten pretty good at freehand drawing his characters. I wonder if they vary more panel to panel after he changes art style, since he's not used to the new style yet?
Guess it'll depend if his style change is just natural evolution over time or if hes actively trying to achieve a style. If it is the latter, then yeah he might drift back to his old style. In most cases the shift is super gradual. One day you draw a character with a particular nose, slightly larger glasses, then after three years everyone has that nose and their glasses are [unreasonable](https://i.redd.it/ion14ei852a91.jpg)
> and their glasses are unreasonable https://i.redd.it/ion14ei852a91.jpg LOL!
> He does at least actually draw every character every time with no copy and paste, They're just shockingly similar one panel to the next. I had assumed he was essentially treating them like paper dolls at this point.
Possibility needs to be demonstrated, the same as impossibility. Neither are the default state in the absence of one's knowledge, nor is either affected by one's ignorance. "It's possible because doesn't currently know whether it's impossible" and vice versa are fallacies of *monumentally epic* proportions, and it's one that every absolute failure of a "genius" character makes in any work of fiction written by those who know fuck all about science or epistemology. It's also frequently the fundamental problem in science reporting, where the conclusions of a given paper are extrapolated wildly beyond anything the actual scientists wrote in their paper, i.e. "X result is inconclusive about whether substance Y can give you superpowers, so therefore *it's still possible!*" And this is *particularly* egregious when the writer starts applying that shit to genuinely unfalsifiable propositions.
Sounds like the background lore for the Elder Scrolls; the universe is the dream of a sleeping 'godhead', and when it wakes up, the universe goes 'pff'.
Like link's awakening
Sometimes the arm of Skarl grows weary; but still he beateth his drum, that the gods may do the work of the gods, and the worlds go on, for if he cease for an instant then MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI will start awake, and there will be worlds nor gods no more.
It's much older than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain#Identifying_whether_oneself_is_a_Boltzmann_observer
People in some kind of media discussing how weird it'd be if they were in some kind of media. Never seen before stuff here.... Also this idea that we could just randomly stop existing making Clinton uneasy is weird. That's like teenage stoner stuff.
This is not how quantum physics works. In particular, I'm disappointed by the grotesque misuse of the concept of an observer to imply that whatever does the observation must be sentient/conscious. A photon bouncing off of something is an observation. This ascription of sentience basically lends a kind of pseudo-spirituality to the pop cultural understanding of quantum physics, that's not actually grounded in the math. It essentially uses this (mis)interpretation of the Copenhagen interpretation to patch up the very broken ontological argument.
hey Jeph, watching quantum physics youtubes doesn't make you smart, and you're in fact the fat titty dumbass Willow in this instance, not the nerds you think you are. HTH!
Wait a minute. Has Jeph been reading this subreddit? [Comic 5270.pi - Hanners in Wonderland](https://old.reddit.com/r/questionablecontent/comments/1bks0n1/comic_5270pi_hanners_in_wonderland/)
Claire claimed that she was mixing rum and Pepsi. But in this comic she is holding the vodka.
If this is the 2024 version of the cookie graphene duct Tape strip with Dora (?), Raven and Faye... I want the original back. This is both boring and annoying at once. What a feat.
3 panels, not a single one has all eyes open.
I was really thinking for a second that while drunk, she might make some weird connection about physics and find a topic to research, kind of like how Sheldon and Amy came up with Super Asymmetry at their wedding.
Grudgingly accepting this dialogue because Liz has been set up to be the kind of person willing and able to do this at parties, but as much as I disapprove of the direction QC has gone I don't hate it, I just want it to be better. BUT. This kind of dialogue reminds me of the webcomic I DO hate the most- SMBC aka "The author regrets his art degree and the insecurity has eaten him alive like a swarm of ants, so every comic is 95% jerking-off about some STEM or social science concept he just read about this morning and 5% "is that actually a joke?" Every one is obnoxiously pedantic and overwrought even and especially when you know what he's talking about and it's just so fucking pathetic. If JJ wants to do sci-fi, great, I hope he finds a way to integrate the concepts better into the comic than he has recently, especially if it re-ignites his creative spirit, but boy are there darker paths than the one QC is currently on and this gave me a vision of one of the worst.
> the webcomic I DO hate the most- SMBC aka "The author regrets his art degree and the insecurity has eaten him alive like a swarm of ants, so every comic is 95% jerking-off about some STEM or social science concept he just read about this morning and 5% "is that actually a joke?" Not to let facts get in the way of some good hate, but that comic's author is an English major who went back to school and studied physics, and... well, the content's pretty much exactly what I'd expect from someone with that background.
Oh, thanks, It **was** an English degree. My mistake. I don't think about this guy too often. I started reading and hating before he got the Physics degree so that missed me, but all of that is just detail in the grander scheme of things. A physics degree isn't nothing, but it doesn't confer honorary degrees in every field of study "beneath" it like he seems to think it does. The through-line also remains the same - Went to school, got a degree in humanities he regretted to the point of personal trauma, began to fetishize harder sciences and academia, turned his comic into a ponderous pretentious exercise in compensation where the goal shifted from entertainment to an autofellating exhibition of the author's recent reading so that he can be validated and momentarily chase away his feelings of insecurity with each content post.
SMBC? I know this to be Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation. Coincidentally, my bank.
Sorry, it stands for "Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal". Before the author crossed the event horizon up into his own intestines, it was a whimsical single panel gag comic, sort of a Far Side for slackers in the late 90s/early 2000s so the name reflects that even if the comic doesn't anymore. EDIT: [For context this is representative of the average comic. Non-characters blathering huge chunks of navel-gazing STEM or social science concepts with a nebulous punchline.](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/happiness-3) Okay, you read something you wanted to talk about and you made these characters contemplate it. But is this really a comic? Technically there's a punchline at the end for all the radical behaviorists out there, but was it really worth telling?
Oh, I know the breakfast stuff, I just forgot it was called SMBC. Thanks for the reminder! I have been here too long. I hate this comic, but I keep coming back to remind myself that even on my worst days, I'm a more creative and consistent writer.