Editing 1448: Question
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| title = Question | | title = Question | ||
| image = question.png | | image = question.png | ||
− | | titletext = The universe long dead, | + | | 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== | ==Explanation== | ||
− | The comic | + | 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 filled in a third answer and selected that one. |
− | + | 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 her 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 entropy can be reversed, and the answer was always "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER". In the end, it 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. However, in this comic, Isaac has instead being ruminating on the question of whether he likes the note-writer. 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”. | |
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==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
− | :[A | + | :[A piece of paper.] |
:Dear Isaac | :Dear Isaac | ||
:Do you like me? | :Do you like me? | ||
− | : | + | :□Yes |
− | : | + | :□No |
− | :[ | + | :[Written in red.] ☒there is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer |
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{{comic discussion}} | {{comic discussion}} | ||
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