by Maze1125 » Mon Jun 11, 2012 8:38 am
Okay, I think I understand this comic, here's my idea:
First panel:
This talks about a universe being created as a test, and the people in the panel are the usual gods, so the implication (as usual) is that the universe being created is ours. This leads to the joke of the speech in that panel "I wonder what it's like if karma is arbitrary." the implication being that for a "normal" universe karma is non-arbitrary, so good things happen to good people and bad to bad, whereas our universe was created as a test to, in part, see how life would react if things just happened, regardless of if you were good or not.
Second and third panels:
Here a language is being created so life forms can communicate, and the third panel shows numerical sequences so it's easy to infer that this language is being created out of mathematics.
But I don't believe that is what is actually being implied. I believe what the comic actually is going for is, given that our universe is the one being created, that the language being created is mathematics itself. The idea is that mathematics was created, for us, as a language.
This leads to the fourth panel...
Fourth panel:
Here it is said that the language was so universal that it allowed life to talk to non-life. The image it leaves in your mind (and the one actually shown in the comic) is that people can just shout at rockets to tell them what to do but, assuming my interpretation of the previous panels is right, what I think it actually means is that all our technology, which is all based on mathematics, is in fact an unintended by-product of the universal language that was created, and the image in the panel is what the gods who created the universe see as happening, as that have no concept of technology and they just see mathematics as a language (as that is what they created it for). So, when we design rockets, they see us talking to them with a universal language.
The last panels shows the usual mutually destructive war concept, which I feel the comic would have been stronger without.
So that's what I think.
Okay, I think I understand this comic, here's my idea:
First panel:
This talks about a universe being created as a test, and the people in the panel are the usual gods, so the implication (as usual) is that the universe being created is ours. This leads to the joke of the speech in that panel "I wonder what it's like if karma is arbitrary." the implication being that for a "normal" universe karma is non-arbitrary, so good things happen to good people and bad to bad, whereas our universe was created as a test to, in part, see how life would react if things just happened, regardless of if you were good or not.
Second and third panels:
Here a language is being created so life forms can communicate, and the third panel shows numerical sequences so it's easy to infer that this language is being created out of mathematics.
But I don't believe that is what is actually being implied. I believe what the comic actually is going for is, given that our universe is the one being created, that the language being created [b]is[/b] mathematics itself. The idea is that mathematics was created, for us, as a language.
This leads to the fourth panel...
Fourth panel:
Here it is said that the language was so universal that it allowed life to talk to non-life. The image it leaves in your mind (and the one actually shown in the comic) is that people can just shout at rockets to tell them what to do but, assuming my interpretation of the previous panels is right, what I think it actually means is that all our technology, which is all based on mathematics, is in fact an unintended by-product of the universal language that was created, and the image in the panel is what the gods who created the universe see as happening, as that have no concept of technology and they just see mathematics as a language (as that is what they created it for). So, when we design rockets, they see us talking to them with a universal language.
The last panels shows the usual mutually destructive war concept, which I feel the comic would have been stronger without.
So that's what I think.