1448: Question

2014-11-18T19:51:34Z

Anthony Fok: Use em-dash where appropriate.

{{comic
| number = 1448
| date = November 17, 2014
| title = Question
| image = question.png
| titletext = The universe long dead, IsaAC surveyed the formless chaos. At last, he had arrived at an answer. 'I like you,' he declared to the void, 'but I don't LIKE like you.'
}}

==Explanation==
The comic depicts a note to “Isaac”. The note asks Isaac whether Isaac likes the note-writer and asks Isaac to choose either “yes” or “no” as the answer, but Isaac (whose pen is red) has written and selected a third answer, "there is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer".

Notes of this form—“Do you like me?”, “yes”, “no”—are sometimes written by young schoolchildren to each other as a way of gauging or inciting romantic interest. That is, the note-writer is interested in Isaac, or maybe is wondering why Isaac is staring at the note-writer so much, and passed him this note to get his answer without the embarrassment of asking face-to-face. Isaac is supposed to check an answer and hand the note back.

The comic is a reference to a short story by Isaac Asimov "[http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html The Last Question]", where humans kept asking successively more complex computers whether [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy entropy] can be reversed, thereby preventing the {{w|heat death of the universe}}. The computers always answered "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER". In the end, the final computer figured out the answer, but there were no humans left to give the answer to.

We won’t spoil what the machine said at the end of “The Last Question” here, although the title text is a reference to this ending. However, in this comic, Isaac is ruminating on the question of whether he likes the note-writer rather than the entropy question. He answers that he likes the note-writer as a friend, but not as a romantic partner—“LIKE like” is a childish euphemism for “love”.
Another interpretation—which also takes the capitalization of both LIKE and IsaAC into account—would be that IsaAC likes the note-writer but being a supercomputer its way of liking someone or something will likely be entirely different.

The odd capitalization of "IsaAC" implies that the note's recipient, rather than being a human, is a supercomputer named with an acronym in the style of the real "UNIVAC" or the fictional "MULTIVAC". Following the naming conventions in "The Last Question" story, the final two letters stand for "analog computer" or "automatic computer".

==Transcript==
:[A piece of paper.]
:Dear IsaAC
:Do you like me?
:□ Yes
:□ No
:[Written in red.] ☒ there is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer
{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]

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1448: Question